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The St. John’s Review
Volume 56.1 (Fall 2014)
Editor
William Pastille
Editorial Board
Eva T. H. Brann
Frank Hunt
Joe Sachs
John Van Doren
Robert B. Williamson
Elliott Zuckerman
Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant
Allison Tretina
The St. John’s Review is published by the Office of the Dean,
St. John’s College, Annapolis: Christopher B. Nelson, President;
Pamela Kraus, Dean. All manuscripts are subject to blind review.
Address correspondence to The St. John’s Review, St. John’s College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401-1687.
©2014 St. John’s College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in
whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
Desktop Publishing
The St. John’s Communications Office
Current and back issues of The St. John’s Review are available online at
http://www.sjc.edu/blog/st-johns-review
��Contents
Essays & Lectures
Momentary Morality and Extended Ethics ..................................1
Eva Brann
Enriching Liberal Education’s Defense in Universities
and Colleges: Liberal Arts, Innovation, and Technē ......................14
J. Scott Lee
Definition and Diairesis in Plato and Aristotle .................................47
Jon Lenkowski
The Stranger as a Socratic Philosopher: The Socratic Nature
of the Stranger’s Investigation of the Sophist................................65
Corinne Painter
The Concept of Measure and the Criterion of Sustainability ...........74
John D. Pappas
Platonic Theōria................................................................................95
Mark Shiffman
Poems
Two Villanelles ...............................................................................124
Kemmer Anderson
Two Poems......................................................................................126
Elliott Zuckerman
��Momentary Morality
and Extended Ethics
Eva Brann
You have been reading and talking about virtue for quite a while
now; therefore, that is what your teachers asked me to talk about
to you. So I drew a hot bath (since the mind is freest when the body
is floating) and thought what might be most to the point, most helpful to you.
Should I review some theories about virtue, perhaps give you
my interpretation of Socrates’s or Aristotle's notions of virtue, perhaps dwell on whether from reading Platonic dialogues we can tell
if Socrates and Plato thought the same and if Aristotle responds to
either of them? Or should I introduce you to Kantian morality, a
world apart from the ancients? Should I distinguish for you a vision
of virtue that looks to an ideal heaven beyond and longs for perfection from one that pays regard to the world right here and goes
for moderation? Should I explain to you that the Greek philosophers tends toward ethics, toward developing personal qualities of
excellence, while the Judeo-Christian tradition tends toward morality, willingness to obey the laws of God and nature? Should I list
for you different doctrines of doing right, such as eudaemonism,
the teaching that happiness is the aim of virtue, or deontology, the
account of virtue as duty and the obligation to obey commands, of
which Kant is the most extreme representative? For while Socrates,
Plato, and Aristotle, whatever their differences, think that ethics
involves some sort of rightness in our feelings, emotions, and passions, Kant is clear that morality at its purest is a matter of reason
alone. Reason is in its essence universal: to think rationally is to
think unexceptionably, comprehensively. So to obey the commands
of reason is to suppress all merely natural inclinations, all purely
Eva Brann is a tutor and former Dean at St. John’s College in Annapolis,
Maryland. This lecture was delivered at the “Windows on the Good Life”
Course at Carlton College on 16 April 2014.
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idiosyncratic desires, and to intend only such actions as we would
want to be intended by everyone—or even to be seen as commanded by a law of nature. This is the notorious “categorical imperative”: “imperative” means “command” and “categorical”
means “without ifs and buts” (as when someone says to you “that's
a categorical no!”). You'll see in a moment why I've brought Kantian morality into this talk.
One last thing I might be speaking about, and which in fact I
will talk of in a moment, is the word “virtue.” I'll argue that this
translation of the word the Greeks use, aretē, has its virtues, but
we should probably give it up, or at least use it with raised eyebrows.
I now want to say why none of the above, except the last, appealed to me. I will tell you what seems to me the biggest trouble
with academic study, and so with most of our eduction. I call it
the problem of lost immediacy. This is what I mean: There are
books—and if your teachers chose well, they will be great ones—
that are full of substance. Then there are books and articles and
lectures about books. The great books (or texts of any sort) contain
opinions. The next level of books and articles also contain opinions, but they are opinions about the original opinions, because
whoever interprets a primary text adds a perspective to it. Then
here we are, your teachers, and we’ve absorbed some of these
original opinions, as well as some of the opinions about them—
and we’ve acquired some opinions of our own on top of that. All
those levels of learning on our part can smother, drown out, your
immediate relation to the book. But even a powerful, first-rate
book—perhaps especially such a book—can also stand between
you and yourself. It intervenes in your thinking and can capture
it, so that you are content to think its thoughts and co-feel its feelings, rather than being immediately present to yourself. Or worse,
it can put you off its possibly life-changing content because you
see no direct entrance to it.
Now I hasten to say that I pity people who have never been
taken over by a book or even by a teacher in that way—if, that is,
the being-taken-over is the beginning of an effort, a struggle, that
issues in a gradual emergence or a tumultuous bursting out of a
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3
discovery that is truly your own. And I pity even more students
who have been turned off by a life-enhancing text because no one
helped them to make a direct connection with it.
A witty outside observer of my college used to tell the world
that our students arrive knowing nothing and leave knowing that
they know nothing. I hope it’s true, provided you keep in mind that
to know that you know nothing is knowing a lot. What he meant,
though, was that they had absorbed so many contradictory opinions
from reading so many deep books that they were in a state of ultimate and utterconfusion. But in that he was surely mistaken. Such
riches may be oppressive and discombobulating for a while, but
that’s a state you work yourself out of into some clarity—clarity
about “who you are,” which is a formulaic way of saying “what
your thinking can accept and your feelings can embrace.”
Therefore I think that the second-best thing we teachers can
do for our students is to show how books can be, in a fancy term,
“appropriated,” made one’s own—and not just a few books of the
same sort, but many books of different sorts, different in genre,
different in opinion. The very best thing we can do, of course, is
to get students to read them well and talk about them to each other.
Doesn’t that broad appropriation, you might ask, imply eclecticism, which is a sort of intellectual cherry-picking that disregards
the generality of a well thought-out theory, and—especially if it’s
an ethical or moral theory—its integration into a comprehensive
view of the ways things are? Well, yes, if ecleticism means indiscriminately collecting low-hanging fruit from here and there, it will
be cherry-picking, extracting now contextless bits and pieces. But
no, if eclecticism has a basis in the very nature of things. In a moment I’ll explain this oracular pronouncement.
But first, there’s the word “virtue,” the supposed subject of my
talk. Let everyone talk as they wish, as long as they know what
they’re saying; but I wish we wouldn't use “virtue” as a translation
of that Greek word aretē—or at least that we would use it mostly
with raised eyebrows. To be sure, it has a nice argument in its
favor: “virtue” is related both to the Latin vis, force, and vir, man.
Virtue is the energy of a being that holds it together, and gives it
power, as when they say in stories: “All the virtue went out of
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him.” Now as it happens, aretē is related to a Greek prefix ari-,
meaning “very much, forcefully so”; thus aretē is the potency in a
person or thing to be what it is supposed to be. (Some Greeks seem
to have seen a relation between aretē and Ares, the powerful warrior-god.) Moreover, the moral virtue most highly regarded by Aristotle, courage, is literally called “manliness” (andreia) in Greek.
So it all fits together. On the other hand, “virtue,” in a use that goes
back to Shakespearean times and into the nineteenth century, was
a woman’s particular kind of manliness, namely, well-girded
chastity, her bodily and psychic inviolability. We have nothing left
but a smile for such passionless purity. More recently, the adjective
“virtual,” in its meaning of “inactual,” has come front-and-center
as an attribute of cyberspace: “virtual reality,” that is to say, “unreal
reality.” We ought to have a background awareness of the sphere
of connotations of our words, including their history. But, as far as
the contemporary connotations of the adjectival form of “virtue”
is concerned, I don’t think we want to go there.
This means, however, that for the moment I’m left without a
word for my subject. And this lack raises two really interesting
questions: Can we have a thought without a name? and Can we
think without words? Powerful contemporary writers claim that it
is impossible for two reasons: There can be no external proof that
thinking is going on without someone saying something thoughtful: a furrowed brow is no evidence. In fact even our claim to be
thinking doesn’t prove that we are thinking. And more important,
to think is really to marshall meanings, and meanings are drifting
vapours unless they are attached to a word or given structure in a
sentence.
Here I beg to differ with these contemporary writers. I think
we all experience that sense of a disembodied meaning, of pre-verbal thinking, that moves in our mind, sometimes like a gentle aromatic breeze over the mental plain, sometimes like a powerful push
of air pressure against a mental wall, rousing us to seek the right
term to catch it, the accurate language to describe it, the suitable
words to embody it.
So then, what is this mental presence that is called virtue, effectiveness, excellence, dutifulness, goodness? I am supposing
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN
5
here that to have too many words is equivalent to having no cogent
idea. But that may be a mistake. The reason why there are numerous translations for the Greek word you’ve thought about under
the term “virtue” may be that in fact it encompasses a number of
ways of being what is called broadly, and so a little bluntly, “good”;
there are many terms because there really are different ways of
being humanly good. This possibility of earthly variety kicks the
meaning they share, “goodness,” way upstairs, so to speak—up
into the highest reaches of thought. In the Republic, Socrates says
to the two very intelligent young men he is speaking with that he
can’t explain this Good to them in the brief space of one evening.
So I feel excused from even trying in this short hour.
On the other hand, I do want to make use of the notion that
there might be more than one way of being good—an idea that will
probably underwhelm you. It would not even have shocked people
who lived before the First World War, like your great-great-grand
parents—though for different reasons. Nowadays many people,
certainly among them the most articulate ones, believe that as long
as we are socially right-minded and we don’t discriminate among
our fellow humans for being what nature made them, we can be
fairly forgiving of a loose personal morality. So there is public and
private morality, one rigorous, the other relaxed. (Of course, these
are generalizations, which are never true of those in whose hearing
they are made.) Your ancestors, on the other hand, would have
tended to believe what Socrates sets out in the Republic, namely,
that members of different castes or classes belonging to one political community have different characteristic excellences. Moreover, they knew quite well that, even within their class,
people—especially well-off men—lived quite comfortably within
a double moral framework. For example, men could maintain a respectable but loveless marriage to one woman whom they publicly
honored, while at the same time engaging in a passionate but disreputable attachment to a mistress who had only private privileges.
My own uncle lived that way. When he and his wife fled Germany
from the Nazis in 1939, his mistress was on the same train in a separate compartment.
Here is what I want to do now, killing two birds with one stone
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(though I’m not so much for killing birds, especially not en masse).
My first aim is to take off on my own, so that my primary point
will not be so much to explain a theory found in a book—though,
as you’ll see, I’ll have to do that too in order to achieve my second
purpose. And that second purpose is to show how one might be
eclectic without being incoherent, how we might engage in picking-out parts of theories of goodness without producing a mere
self-pleasing miscellany, a tasty thought-goulash.
This second purpose might be of real use to you if you’re feeling a little snowed by all the deep and sometimes difficult theories
you’ve studied this year. I mean to show that you can fashion an
opinion to live by through combining the most disparate conceptions. My first aim, however, is to think out something for myself
and articulate it before a sympathetic audience.
So now to it. One human being may indeed live with two
moralities, one public, one private, and this duplicity is not always
hypocritical; it may simply make life livable and prevent it from
becoming worse. Or, looking at it another way, there is a saying
that hypocrisy is the respect vice pays to virtue: I think it’s better
all around that there should be such respect, once humanly understandable and inevitable wrong-doing is on the scene. Again, coming to our day, some people quite comfortably cheat on their taxes
and tell you that it’s a form of civic virtue to short-change a wasteful government, but they observe strict correctness when it comes
to matters of social justice. They too live in a dual moral frame.
But I want to introduce another, I think more fundamental, duality: the pacing of time, or, more accurately, of psychic motion. If
you watch the stream of cars coming toward you on the opposite
side of a highway, and there is a good deal of traffic, you’ll notice
that the cars bunch up; they practically tailgate each other until the
density dissolves into long stretches of lighter flow. The world is
like that, and so are our lives; it and we are in sync. There’s an
earthquake, a tsunami, a storm, an eruption all at once after years
of nothing. A dreary winter has lasted for ever, suddenly it’s spring,
the forsythia is in bloom, the trees are bursting into leaf, and it’s
time for outdoor-idling, but there are summer jobs to be lined up,
final exams, parties, last-moment bonding, packing, all at once.
That’s outside, but it’s similar inside: There are undistinguished
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN
7
times marked, very unremarkably, by routine and repetition; life
flows away and is canceled, collapses into one-and-any-day’s
schedule. Then suddenly time develops densities; all the momentous moments happen together, for better or for worse. When it
rains, it pours, as the saying goes.
I should remind you here that the exhilarating heights and tearful depths of time, or rather of eventfulness, separated by expanses
of flat dailiness—these closings-up and drawings-apart of happenings—are a Western way of seeing the world and living in it. There
are teachings of the East that make a virtue of unbunching time, of
letting life flow evenly—every moment as charged with presence
as any other. Thus when I called this talk “Momentary Morality
and Extended Ethics,” I was thinking only of our half of the world.
So now I’ll explain what I mean by momentary morality. I’ve
been describing an experience of time and events that includes moments of crisis, either imposed on us by nature or manufactured
by us from sheer cussed, willful Westernness. Although krisis is a
Greek word meaning “separation” or “decision,” and so might just
betoken any branching in the flow of events, we generally don’t
mean something good by it. A crisis, as we use the word, is not so
much a branching as a stanching of the flow of events that makes
its elements pile up and then burst out, often in a kind of relieving
demolition of the status quo. Certainly the living pace we share,
consisting of stretches of eventless, quiet desperation or contentment, as the case may be, which are interspersed with somewhat
frantic eventfulness, practically guarantees that every high will be
at the expense of a low, as a hill is paid for by a hollow. I think that
I’ve told things the way they really are, but that I’ve left two questions (at least) quite unanswered: Are the highs higher than the
lows are low, that is, are there more great moments than sorry
ones? and What is the logic, or better, the ontology of these eventpairings of high and low? Why is natural and human life subject
to these oppositions? By “ontology,” which signifies an “account
of being,” I mean the most fundamental explanation we can find
for the way things are, including psychology in the non-medical
sense: an account of the human soul.
But I want to use this notion of bunched time, of high moments
we may hope for and low ones we can expect, of events shaped in
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time like wave packets connected by a flat line—unexamined
though the image be—to speak about the type of morality which I
call “momentary morality.” I mean those critical moments when
you’re up against the wall, when it’s too late to think things out,
when you need to be ready with an inner command to tell you what
to do—what you must do—at that very moment. The human condition being what it is, what you must do will tend to be something
you don’t want to do, or rather, something you will want with every
fiber of your feelings not to do. If at that moment you waffle about
what you ought to do, or if you fail to do as you ought, you’ll never
forget that you were unprepared in a moral emergency or unsteadfast in doing your duty. You will be diminished in your self-respect.
I’ve seen it written and heard it said that such moments of extremity reveal who a person really is. I don’t believe it. I think what
you do day-by-blessedly-ordinary-day is more apt to reveal, even
while it is shaping, who you are. But I do know that moral failure
in a crisis sticks with you: I know it from myself, I know it from a
tale one day told me, almost in passing, by a man I admired, and I
know it from fiction, especially Joseph Conrad’s novel Lord Jim
and Ernest Hemingway’s short story “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.”
There is a theory of morality that seems to me tailored for moments of crisis and, consequently, inept in daily use. It is the Kantian theory of the categorical imperative I mentioned earlier on. It
is, in the compass of my reading, the most powerful, coherent, ingenious and, not incidentally, the most earnestly extremist theory
of human goodness ever devised. Like all great specific theory it
is embedded in a grand grounding of human consciousness. Kant
would turn, nay, whirl in his grave to hear me assign it to so particular a use, so momentary an occasion. But since I am convinced
that it is not possible to live well through the flats of life on Kantian
morality (though I lack time in this talk to explain why) and find
that even his own applications sometimes have repellent results, I
feel less abashed at saving the pieces, so to speak. Let me explain
as simply and briefly as I can how this morality might work in an
emergency, and that explanation itself will go a little ways toward
showing why one can’t live that way through extended time.
We have, Kant says, a faculty for freedom, namely, our will,
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our free will. To be free means to take orders from no one but oneself. Thus the free will commands itself. It gives itself its own law.
There must be law, Kant thinks, because if the will were lawless it
would be the opposite of free—call it capricious, wanton. Now the
will, Kant also thinks, is an aspect of reason, which has two sides.
One side is theoretical reason. This reason gives nature its laws
and then recognizes them as necessary. I will set this activity of
reason aside here—it’s what I mean by ripping his moral theory
out of the grand whole. The other side is practical reason; it gives
itself its laws and so knows itself as free. You can see that it is identical with the free will. The will—really myself as a free person—
should, of course, obey the command of its self-given law, its
imperative. As I said earlier, this imperative permits no ifs and buts,
admits no special cases, allows no individual exceptions, because
it is addressed to reason, and reason does not contradict its own
universal judgment, for then it would be self-contradictory. Above
all, it avoids the necessities, the unfree determinism, of lawful nature. We human beings are in part natural, namely, in our inclinations and desires. Our free will, our practical reason, has no truck
with the emotions and feelings that drive us. It chooses a course
entirely because it is right and not in the least because we feel good
about it; in fact, the more it hurts the better we know we are doing
our duty, doing purely as we ought. And we have a test to tell us
whether our decision is right, a test that expresses the essence of
reason: If I can universalize my particular motive for choosing an
action so as to turn it into a general law of human action or a conceivable law of nature, then I am choosing as I ought. I am preserving the purity of reason, namely its universality and its
avoidance of self-contradiction by exception-making.
Let me give a famous example by Kant himself. Suppose a
persecutor comes to my door and asks if his intended victim is
within. All my inclination is to deny it, to protect the fugitive. But
if I generalize my motive it assumes this form: Under humanitarian
pressure anyone may tell a lie. And then all trust in anyone’s declarations collapses, for anyone can construe an exception. So you
must tell the truth, and you will have done your duty, come hell or
highwater or the murder of a fugitive. I’ve told this example be-
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cause it seems to me to show how Kantian purity can turn into
moral catastrophe when life is fraught with daily danger. Just imagine that you’re harboring a fugitive dissident in some totalitarian
state, and, as you well know they might, the secret police come
knocking at your door. Will you tell them the truth for the sake of
the self-consistency of reason? No, you will have recourse—if you
think you need it—to the very paralogical, paradoxical principle of
the white lie. And, in general, I think that this absolutist morality is
not only too inhumane, but also too joyless to be livable day by day.
But let there be that one life-changing moment when, torn from
the usually peaceful flux of ordinary life, you suddenly must decide. The occasion might be a temptation to commit a minor transgression in the world’s eyes, but one weighing heavily on your
conscience. Or it could be an unexpected call on your courage, unwelcome but unavoidable, perhaps never patent to the world but
well enough known to yourself.
These are, I think, Kantian moments, spots of time when a
morality is wanted that disparages our inclinations and prompts us
to duty, that provides an effective on-the-spot test of what ought
to be done, to wit: What if everyone did what it has just crossed
my mind to do? That decisive moment’s morality is the kind which
commands without hedging.
But for most of us in this country these excruciating moments
that, when they do come, tend, to be sure, to come in multiples,
are blessedly sparse. The rational points on a mathematical line are
said to be dense, meaning that they leave no empty interval and
yet do not form a continuum (since the irrational points are missing). Such is the incident-line, the event-time of our ordinary daily
life, in which every little station has its happening; but though they
are all discrete, they are so closely packed together that they are
scarcely discernible. Our day has 86,400 seconds and our week
604,800 seconds, and we can calculate the number of seconds in
our month, our year, our decade, our lifetime. This flattish life-line
of instants, with the peaks and troughs it occasionally develops,
surely requires a different notion of goodness from the one that is
marked by excruciating, disruptive moments. As I called the latter
“momentary morality,” so I will call the former “extended ethics.”
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Morality, remember, requires command-issuing universal law;
ethics, on the other hand, demands natural and acquired personal
qualities. Of the possible English alternatives to the term “virtue,”
I think that “excellence” best expresses the connotations the ancient users of the word aretē seem to have had in mind, even before
the philosophers got to discerning a comprehensive meaning.
Let me list those connotations of aretē, understood as excellence, that I can think of: 1. effectiveness; 2. competition; 3. happiness; 4. enumerability; 5. habituation. They all have to do with
the long runs of life, the flat stretches that may buckle into peaks
and valleys of glory and misery; they have little or nothing to do
with the up-against-the-wall decisions of a life fractured by a moral
emergency.
I’ve spoken of the notion of aretē as an effective, potent way
of being that betokens a soul honed to a fine edge, just as a wellsharpened pruning knife is an efficient and perhaps somewhat dangerous object. There is a competitive tone to aretē, just as to be
excellent means literally “to rise above,” as we say, “to be outstanding.” The possessor of aretē glories in it, vaunts and flaunts
it, as do the Homeric heroes. A hero is high in self-esteem, in current language. Furthermore, the aretai, the excellences that everyone recognizes, can be counted off. Socrates regularly refers to
four cardinal ones: wisdom, justice, courage, and sound-mindedness. These excellences require the right sort of body and soul—
physical and psychic talent as we would say—but also practice,
habituation. It is in this last element that the difference between
Kantian morality and ethics, as I have delineated it, shows up most.
Personal qualities are confirmed in habituation, in being habitually
practiced, but the free will, the self-legislation of morality is essentially at odds with habituation. For habit puts the natural laws
of psychology to work, and these are deterministic mechanisms.
In fact, habit as a mechanism is an inhibition on spontaneousness,
on freedom. What’s more, for Kant the will’s intention trumps
practical execution.
Indeed, all the points of the ethics of individual qualities are
contrasted with law-morality. The categorical imperative has, to
be sure, several forms, but it is basically one, a super-command-
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ment that the free will issues and obeys, while the human excellences are enumerably multiple. For although excellence as excellence may be one super-quality, it needs to assume various
specifications, and these may even be at odds with each other. For
instance, courage and sound-mindedness (whose Greek term,
sophrosyne, is often translated as “moderation”) may pull in opposite directions. Certainly the competitive glorying of excellence
is unthinkable in a dutiful moralist, and the sharp-set potency and
effectiveness which goes with any excellence is absolutely out of
play for the moral mode. Once more, in Kant’s great works of
moral philosophy, the issue of execution, of how the passage from
decision to effective action is accomplished, which is so crucial a
juncture in ethics, is almost completely suppressed. Ethics is a way
of being objectively good in the world; the doing is almost everything. Kantian morality is primarily concerned with being right
with oneself, subjectively good; the intention is everything, though
hard actions may, indeed should, follow. As Kant famously says:
There is nothing unqualifiedly good except a good will. Note that
he does not say “a good deed.”
It is with respect to my middle point, happiness, that the difference is greatest and that ethics seems to me a far more livable,
day-by-day useful theory. It is essential to moral intention that no
hint of nature-bound desire should taint the purity of duty done for
its own sake, meaning for the sake of self-rule; no psychic pleasure-seeking mechanism should confuse the clarity of a command
obeyed for the sake of one's rational integrity, one’s rational consistency. Ethics, on the other hand, cooperates with nature; although it distinguishes between sound and corrupt pleasure,
between excess and moderation, it nevertheless regards pleasure,
in Aristotle’s words, as the bloom on our activity, and considers
happiness, whatever its definition, as the proper, indeed self-evident, human aim.
Recall that I have spoken about “extended ethics” as opposed
to “momentary morality” and distinguished the two theories of
human goodness by their relation to time, or rather, to eventuation.
Morality was for intense, abrupt, exigent, emergent moments of
up-against-the-wall decision making; ethics was for a looser,
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN
13
smoother, less urgent, more subdued tenor of life. And indeed,
everything I’ve observed about ethics seems to me to fit this latter
temporal mode better: our natural longing for accessible daily
pleasure and sustainable long-term happiness in the world; our innocent, or not-so-innocent, human-all-too-human eagerness for
admiration; our comfort in a being buoyed up by a tradition of
recognizably articulated excellencies; our time-consuming growth
into profitable habits and productive routines.
Above I calculated our line of life in myriads of instants almost too brief for detection (as distinct from discernible moments). Yet each had to be occupied and vacated, lived in and
through, for better or for worse. It seemed to me that this analogy
of life to a line, at once dense and pointillistic, recommended to
us a theory of goodness which allowed us to be all there as natural
beings, driven at every point of temporal existence by desire, fastening on some moments for fulfillment, developing excellence
and glorying in it, engaging with the world in action and with ourselves in thinking. But it also seemed that there were moments of
heightened urgency when we must oppose our pleasure-seeking
and happiness-enjoying nature and forget all the flourishing excellence promotes in order to obey the harsh self-command of
“you ought”—no ifs and buts.
My overarching purpose, however, was to persuade you that
your studies of ways to be humanly good can be appropriated
by you to fashion a way of your own, that they need not add up
to mutual canceling-out of theories and all-round confusion of
soul. In fact, I’m paying you a major compliment: I’m supposing
that you’re taking your learning seriously, not just, as the phrase
goes, “academically”—that you take your studies to heart as lifeshaping.
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Enriching Liberal Education’s
Defense in Universities and Colleges:
Liberal Arts, Innovation, and Technē
J. Scott Lee
For a number of years, it has struck me that people who write
about a “liberal-arts education” rarely write directly about the
arts. They write about political, religious, and moral dispositions;
they write about the rise of the sciences; they write about cultures; and recently, they write about the conditions of education.
Sometimes, they write about books and core texts within the tradition of the liberal arts, but these books and their associated arts
are written about as exemplars of politics, morals, science, and
culture—rarely as exemplars of arts.
A recent spate of writings defending the humanities and humanism, the college and the purpose of education—by Martha
Nussbaum, Tony Kronman, Andrew Delbanco, and Patrick Deneen—all mention liberal-arts education. They defend the fine
or liberal arts, but none of these authors ground their defenses
of liberal-arts education in art per se.1 All these writers sense an
J. Scott Lee is the Executive Director of the Association for Core Texts
and Courses. An earlier version of this essay was presented at the Research University and Liberal Arts College Conference, held at Notre
Dame University in Notre Dame, Indiana, 9-11 June 2013.
1. Andrew Delbanco hardily approves of Anthony Kronman’s greatbooks curriculum for the ideas it raises, and he cites the artes liberales
ideal of education that Bruce Kimball has extensively documented as a
tradition of aristocratic European liberal learning that opens the mind.
But it is America’s “attempt to democratize” this tradition through its
collegiate educations that really interests him (College: What It Was,
Is, and Should Be [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012], 33.)
“Working to keep the ideal of democratic education alive,” Delbanco,
in an extensive analysis of the past and present social conditions of col-
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ebbing of liberal education correlated with the economic, scientific, and technological conditions under which we live. Nearly
leges as institutions, ultimately locates the “universal value of a liberal
education” in the belief, derived from the nineteenth-century religious
college, that “no outward mark—wealth or poverty, high or low social
position, credentials or lack thereof—tells anything about the inward
condition of the soul” (171). He transmutes this belief, today, into a
liberal education whose “saving power” (171) that allows students to
“ignite in one another a sense of the possibilities of democratic community” through “the intellectual and imaginative enlargement [college]
makes possible” (172). He concludes, “we owe it to posterity to preserve and protect this institution. Democracy depends on it.” (177).
Martha Nussbaum begins her “manifesto” in defense of the humanities
and arts with a crisis in which “the humanities and the arts are being
cut away in both primary/secondary and college/university education,
in virtually every nation in the world.” This entails “discarding of skills
that are needed to keep democracies alive.” In the survival of the humanities and arts within educational institutions “the future of the
world’s democracies” is said to “hang in the balance” (Not for Profit:
Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010], 1-2).
Notwithstanding a very serious concern with “ideals of freedom,”
Anthony Kronman is less focused on the links between democracy and
liberal education than on the links between the humanities and our culture (Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given
Up on the Meaning of Life. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007).
He stresses particularly the humanities’ abandonment, within colleges
and universities, of the search for meaning in our individual lives, and
he warns against our scientific culture’s way of aggrandizing our technical powers without setting them within the limitations of human finitude. The combination, he believes, yields a kind of spiritual desiccation.
Oddly similar to Kronman notwithstanding their published differences,
Patrick Deneen argues that since the Enlightenment, greatness seems
to rest in transformation, whereas before the rise of the New Sciences,
whose authors often belittled ancient books, greatness rested in a “predominant understanding” of cultivated endurance, and an acceptance
of the limits of human power, knowledge, and ambition. The modern
great books program contains many scientific, political and economic
works which support the idea of transformation. So Deneen asks, might
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all find that the present responses of our institutions to these conditions impede rather than aid the robust maintenance or development of something like a liberal education. Most of their
arguments rely on research, though their positions on whether research—scientific, bibliographic or otherwise—within a university favors or harms undergraduate liberal education tends to
range Nussbaum on one side and Delbanco, Kronman, and Deneen on the other. In contrast, each author attempts to revive traditions of the liberal arts by linking them to current conditions
of democracy, spiritual needs of cultures, or ethical understandings of faith. All believe that the souls of our students and our
citizens are at stake, though of course they disagree about the
constitution of the soul and the education designed to nurture it.
A common concern among these authors is whether our cultural assumption that we can transform almost anything, particularly through the technology of science, is good for our souls and
good for liberal education. For Nussbaum, technology appears as
the attractive image of students in a lab—instead of pictures of
students “thinking”—that administrators use to lure students to
universities.2 Delbanco notes the advantage that the sciences have
over the humanities in public evaluations: technological landmarks of progress, accompanied by an occasional historical or
philosophic “breakthrough.”3 For Kronman and Deneen, technology is the differential gear which imparts varying force to science,
culture, and education. Further, Kronman and Deneen come very
close to each other in noting the meretricious effects upon our
character and our sense of limits that technological achievement
unleashes in the form of pleonexia. The humanities currently fail
to oppose it (Kronman), or worse, education encourages it through
there be an alternative way to think about the core texts of the ancient
to medieval Western tradition, ultimately as a way of restraining our
scientifically released pleonexia for mastering and transforming our
world? He suggests great books might be justified by recovering this
earlier understanding’s humility (“Against Great Books,” in First
Things [January 2013], 35.)
2. Nussbaum, Not for Profit, 133.
3. Delbanco, College, 95. Apparently, literature does not rise to “breakthroughs.”
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a philosophy of transformation, of creating original knowledge
and innovations through research (Deneen).4
4. At one point, Kronman and Deneen come very close to saying—and
meaning—the same thing. Kronman’s case for the humanities in large
part rests on controlling technology through a recognition of human limits: “We have a desire for control that can never be satisfied by any degree of control we actually achieve. We always want more. . . . This is
the human condition, which is characterized by our subjection to fateful
limits that we can neither tolerate nor do without. . . . The most important
thing about technology is not what it does but what it aspires to do. . . .
Technology encourages us to believe that the abolition of fate should be
our goal. . . . Technology discourages the thought that our finitude is a
condition of the meaningfulness of our lives. . . . It makes the effort to
recall our limits and to reflect upon them seem less valuable and important” (Kronman, Education’s End, 230-233). For Kronman, the research
ideal is, of course, partly justified in the sciences by the “fruit”—both in
discovery and in technology—that it produces: “The research ideal is
today the organizing principle of work in every academic discipline. . . .
In the natural sciences, the research ideal has proved remarkably fruitful.
The new discoveries that pour from our college and university laboratories every year and the clear sense of progressive movement toward an
objective understanding of the structure and mechanisms of the natural
world testify to the productive fit between the natural sciences and the
modern research ideal.” Whereas in the humanities “understanding,” but
not a productive technology characterizes research results: “In the humanities . . . the benefits of research are less uniform or certain” (ibid.,
130-133). Nevertheless “research in the humanities has produced results
of lasting value. It has added importantly to our understanding of the
historical, literary, artistic, and philosophical subjects with which the humanities deal.” The demands for specialization and for teaching to that
specialization ought to be less insistently felt in the humanities: “What
must be resisted is the imperial sprawl of the research ideal, its expansive
tendency to fill every corner of each discipline in which it takes hold
and to color the expectations and judgments of teachers in these disciplines regarding what they do. Admittedly this is asking a lot. . . . But . . .
it is merely asking for a somewhat greater degree of humility on the
part of those in the humanities who first allegiance is to this ideal” (ibid.,
248-249).
For Deneen, the (current) point of a philosophy of education is not
to admire the world, or suffer its limits, but to change it, to transform it.
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Finally, while all these authors seem to be convinced that the
products of arts are essential to any revival, and while they are
skilled fashioners of argument in areas where no single discipline
can claim precedence, the discussion of fine or liberal arts and
their products is not in terms of art, but in the terms of the political, cultural, or religious end sought. For example, Nussbaum
devotes large portions of her book exploring arts and a whole
chapter to “Cultivating the Imagination: Literature and the Arts.”
To Deneen, it seems that since the Enlightenment, greatness seems to
rest in transformation. So he asks, might there be an alternative way to
think about and assign terms to the core texts of the Western tradition,
ultimately as a way of restraining our excesses in transforming our
world? He begins by accepting a stasis in the political, moral, religious,
and poetic inheritance of books that extends from the ancients through
the first stirrings of modernity: “Great books such as Paradise Lost
sought to inculcate a sense of limits, . . . we could look at a dominant
understanding of a long succession of great books from antiquity to the
Middle Ages . . . to conform human behavior and aspirations to the natural or created order” (“Against Great Books,” 35). By way of Baconian,
Cartesian, and Hobbesian repudiation of books, Deneen elaborates the argument the he feels undermines the “human limits” understanding by trying to discriminate two kinds of liberty. The first, associated with great
books, is a “liberty . . . of hard-won self-control through the discipline of
virtue,” which often animates defenses of great books as materials in
preparing for citizenship. The second is a liberty with “the stress . . .
upon the research, creative activity, scholarly inquiry and the development of new knowledge” (ibid., 37). The former constrains our desires,
the latter endlessly satisfies them through “the human project of mastery.” The latter pursuits were justified by the arguments of Bacon,
Descartes, and Hobbes, reinforced by Dewey, which depended on the
idea “that a larger number of natural forces and objects [could be or]
have been transformed into instrumentalities of action” in the West than
in cultures which did not exploit the natural resources available through
scientific technology (ibid., 36). Deneen concludes that we do need to
teach these two competing notions of liberty through the great books,
but defenders should exchange the notion of “greatness” for a notion
of “humility” derived from the earlier works of the intellectual tradition
represented in the West (ibid., 38). Humility might, then, restrain our
excesses in regard to transformation.
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In the latter, we learn that “in order to be stably linked to democratic values, [both the artistic cultivation of capacities for play
and empathy in a general way, and the treatment of particular cultural blind spots] require a normative view of how human beings
ought to relate to one another . . . and, both therefore require selectivity regarding the artworks used.”5 A catalog follows of the
failures of artworks, of “defective forms of ‘literature,” to cultivate the sympathy that Nussbaum desires. Undoubtedly, Kronman’s understanding of the search for meaning and his discussion
of civilizational “conversation” depends on art; Delbanco’s distinction between research and reading instances canonical works
from ancient to modern times; and Deneen’s argument is concerned with a residuum of teachings that earlier great books leave
us. Yet, in these social-moral defenses, an entire line of argument
concerning the arts is, for the most part, relegated to an instrumental, supporting, or ancillary role in a discussion that might be
titled: “Social Conditions, Educational Institutions, and Individual
Capacities: Wither Liberal Education?”
I wish to suggest now that the ecology of liberal education
defense could be enriched by also focusing on the arts of liberalarts education. Then we will see what liberal education’s relation
to research, democracy, or culture might be when looked at
through the lens of the arts. Please note that my preceding remarks are not meant to imply the absence of artistic works in liberal-arts programs, nor that some parts of those programs are not
structured by the arts. For example Yale’s Directed Studies program has courses explicitly divided into three groups: Literature,
Philosophy, and Historical and Political Thought. Clearly literature is art. Columbia’s Core’s program has the Literature/Humanities and the Contemporary Civilization sequences, not to
mention the Music offerings. Again, no one doubts that this program involves art. What I am interested in are the rationales and
justifications for programs using core texts that can be grounded
in the liberal arts.
Why is it important to develop a line of argument about arts
5. Nussbaum, Not for Profit, 108.
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to the point where we might see them in the guise of an end, not
just a means, to liberal-arts education? Do you remember, about
forty or fifty years ago, if you aspired to a bachelor degree, you
chose either a bachelor of science or a bachelor of arts? No one
today questions whether a student possesses a science if she or he
earns a B.S. What art or arts, however, do our students possess if
they have earned a B.A.? So, if we claim to offer a liberal-arts education in undergraduate bachelor programs, it might not be amiss
to ask what arts are our students learning and we are teaching.
And asking such a question can enrich our view of liberal-arts education using core texts—whether of the Western tradition or not.
When educators of any stripe are seeking renewal, they often
resort to an examination of the past, so I thought the best place
to begin a search for a renewal of liberal-arts education might be
in a book by Bruce Kimball first published in 1986: Orators and
Philosophers: A History of the Idea of Liberal Education.6 The
book’s scholarship and judicious consideration of a vast number
of core texts, curricular materials, and the scholarly production
surrounding liberal education make this work a seminal contribution to the history of liberal education. Kimball has paid much
more explicit attention to the artes liberales educational ideal,
especially in relation to the research ideal—or, as he styles it, the
liberal-free ideal—than any current author we have examined.
For our purposes he also reaches more thoroughly into the past.
With the important exception of an unstable accommodation in
a very few universities and colleges between these two ideals—
Chicago, Columbia, St. John’s College being the primary examples—his extended history gives little comfort to the conviction
that liberal-arts education, particularly in relation to democracy,
has much of a chance of revival in most of today’s universities
or colleges, precisely because of the success of the ideal of research throughout academe, and its allied notion of freedom.
Kimball’s history, which extends from ancient Greece to late
6. Bruce Kimball, Orators and Philosophers: A History of the Idea of
Liberal Education (New York: Teachers College, 1986; rev. ed., New
York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1995).
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twentieth-century America, reflects a two-fold tradition in education. A rhetorical liberal tradition complains about disarray and
divisions of undergraduate education, while an epistemic, research quarrel among the fields of science, social science, and
the humanities over “definitions of knowledge and culture” influences undergraduate education.7 These two educational traditions—the artes liberales ideal for citizenship and the liberal-free
ideal for specialization—compete in public, graduate, and undergraduate contexts. To bring this competition down to earth at the
undergraduate level: Kimball finds “it is supremely difficult for
an undergraduate major . . . to coexist with a thorough [curricular]
commitment to citizenship, virtues, the republic, and the appropriation of the textual tradition of a community.”8 The reason is
that these two polarities, or ideals, are systematic: they entail different ends, characteristic qualities, and, ultimately, curricular expressions. Syntheses, accommodations, or blends of the two have
limited appeal and, typically, short lives. The artes liberales accommodation is unstable partly because it cannot readily convince
academics that classics are necessary to a critical intellect, and partly
because its insistence upon exploring ancient texts “conflicts with
the liberal-free mind” in its desire to range where it will.9
To varying degrees, then, Kimball anticipates the ambivalence that Kronman and Delbanco feel about reading great texts
at the undergraduate level with modern research in mind. Kimball
also anticipates Kronman and Deneen’s concern with the way in
which the rise of science has shaped our educational institutions
toward a research ideal and away from a reflective, characterbuilding liberal-arts education. And, in a strange twist of fate,
Kimball also recognizes the role of the liberal-free ideal in harnessing science and research to the democratic and market-based
national project of the United States. And in this he anticipates
Nussbaum’s and Delbanco’s attempts to have our educational institutions, committed as they are to the research ideal, serve the
7. Ibid., 286.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., 223, 225, 226.
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national or international life of democracies—a role formerly reserved for the artes liberales ideal.
In sum, historically and philosophically, with research and
disciplines firmly entrenched by the rise of science in the modern
university, all of these authors find themselves in a very difficult
position. They sense a pervasive cultural and ethical emptiness
related to the very institution of education to which their lives
are committed. They resist this emptiness by offering an alternative end to liberal education—call it democracy, humanity, or
faith—something other than research. Yet all supporters of liberal
education are faced with an institutional history that is well documented and that holds out little hope (but let us not say no hope)
of successfully wooing the disciplines and departments that mark
universities and colleges to the ends of liberal education.
Since all of these authors are interested in liberal education
and in renewing its institutional life, it is not a fault that they
should closely examine institutional histories of liberal education.
But the origins of liberal-arts education were not entirely institutional. As I will argue shortly, before and even after the innovative congregating of lecturers into medieval universities,
education in the liberal arts was often done outside an institutional context. This “outside” development matters because in
one way or another almost all of our authors acknowledge institutional atrophy at various points in the history of liberal education. And if, today, liberal-arts education is institutionally
“strangled” rather than atrophied, that is all the more reason to
examine sources outside academe, or sources within academe
that are not currently predominant in models of education, for inspiration in renewing liberal-arts education. In particular, the
transition from Aquinas to Bacon has as its backdrop the rise of
universities—but the actual stage was filled with liberal artists
outside of academia who were actively developing new educations, arts, and sciences. The work of these liberal artists may
provide us with generative—perhaps even transformative—models, grounded in the classics, that can contribute appreciably to
institutional revival of the liberal arts.
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Through tracing the specific use of the words “liberal education” and “liberal arts,” Kimball concludes that, as a historical
fact, liberal education based in a normative curriculum of the
seven liberal arts simply didn’t exist until the late Roman
Empire.10 Thus, the seven liberal arts, which eventually became
the trivium and quadrivium, circumscribe what Kimball takes
historically to be the instantiation of a liberal-arts curriculum.
Under Roman development, the general artes liberales educational ideal becomes firmly tied to “the goal of training the good
citizen to lead society,” as well as to the “prescription of values
and standards for character and conduct,” through this normative
curriculum.11 To cut a very complicated story short: this ideal and
its primus-inter-pares art was rhetorical, and the situation remained so until the rise of the medieval university.12 That rise is
accompanied by the rise of philosophy as the organizing discipline of university education. Kimball finds that when medieval
universities began to concentrate on theoretical matters or systematic matters of philosophy, a “philosophic” curriculum replaced an oratorical one.
This “revolution” and “transformation” is traced to “the
rediscovery and translation of the lost philosophical learning
of Greek antiquity, especially the corpus of Aristotle . . . [as
well as] Arabic, Jewish and other Greek writings on mathematics and natural science.”13 But in Kimball’s analysis, the
philosophic takeover of the liberal-arts curriculum does not
give rise to a philosophic ideal associated with it that can be
described as a systematic ideal for liberal education. One
might have expected the liberal arts to have been strengthened
by four developments that occurred during this time: the new
relative importance of logic; the rise of “technical and
schematized artes”; the formation of “a curriculum of liberal
education dedicated to scientiae speculativae” within medieval universities; and the innovation of grammatica specu10. Ibid., 3, 25, 29.
11. Ibid., 37.
12. Ibid., 31-33.
13. Ibid., 58, and 61.
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lativa as an investigation of the universal grammar that “underlies the different grammars of all languages.” On the contrary, the septem artes diminished in importance, largely
owing to Aquinas’s dictum that “the seven liberal arts do not
sufficiently divide theoretical philosophy” and the emergence
of new studies in graduate programs. All of this led to a distinct separation of the seven arts from philosophy within the
curriculum of new medieval universities.14 All of this leads
Kimball’s argument to an unstated conclusion: the liberal arts
were not being led by philosophy; they were slowly being trivialized or supplanted by it. To push the unstated conclusion a
step further: despite many innovations in logic and grammar,
as well as in mathematics, the scientiae speculativae that supplanted the liberal arts were not really sciences in our modern
sense. So, to read backwards from Kimball’s Enlightenment
identification of the liberal-free ideal’s characteristics, the medieval rediscovery of the ancients seems not to have been an
exercise in “freedom from a-priori strictures and standards”
nor “a critical skepticism” linked to “scientific method.”15
On the other hand, the humanists’ interest in oratorical
skills allowed the liberal arts to flourish successfully outside
the universities during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
Kimball finds, that beginning with Petrarch’s interest in Cicero and Quintilian, the artes liberales ideal leads to a revival
and spread of enthusiasm for literature among the general public, but a widespread revival of studying literary classics in
the curricula of universities did not take hold until the middle
of the fifteenth century.16
A similar historical development occurred in the emergence of modern science, notwithstanding Newton’s appointment at Cambridge, the pursuit of philosophy in the name of
the New Science of Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, and Spinoza
led to a blockade of natural philosophy from the curricula of
14. Ibid., 66 and 71.
15. Ibid., 120-121.
16. Ibid., 80.
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universities. The philosophically based liberal-free ideal
emerges outside of the universities, relying for its support on
widespread Enlightenment attachment to freedom and rationality. The ideal does not shape curricula until it combines with
the re-organization of German universities under the research
program in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
That re-organization, in turn, leads to the destruction, in the
U.S., of the more or less uniform liberal-arts curricula by the
nineteenth century’s end.17 These historical threads, Kimball
shows, are the roots of the two ideals that lay claim to the title
of liberal education. Infrequent and mostly unstable accommodations between these two ideals, Kimball says, with a few
precedents in the nineteenth century, only happened in the
twentieth.18
Since the rhetorical ideal and its foundational art, rhetoric,
was excluded from universities in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, while the philosophical, liberal-free ideal and its
new sciences were excluded from the sixteenth to nearly the
end of the eighteenth centuries, the faculties shaping university curricula for long periods in the West have excluded one
or another version—or, at least, significant portion—of what
could be termed “liberal education.” So then, we might ask, in
these periods where did liberal arts and liberal education go?
Kimball recognizes that humanists outside the universities
were concerned, beyond politics, with the “development of
personality.” 19 In Bruni’s fourteenth-century letter to Lady
Battista Malatesta of Montefeltro on “the Study of Literature,”
this shift has importance to the ideal, the curriculum, and the
goal of education. Bruni is addressing a woman who must, of
course, “leave the rough-and-tumble of the forum entirely to
men.” What, then, is she studying for? This turns out to be
“human excellence,” which transcends the historical circumstances of political life: “There is, indeed, no lack of examples
of women renowned for literary study and eloquence that I
17. Ibid., 146.
18. Ibid., 151, 153, 186, 221.
19. Ibid., 78.
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could mention to exhort you to excellence.” Here Bruni cites
Cornelia, Sappho, and Aspasia.20
The point of Bruni’s urging is to form a liberal education outside the university and the common expectations of men.21 In
consequence, Bruni does not recommend a technical study of
rhetoric, but rather a grammatical and broad “knowledge of sacred letters” (54), philosophy, and poetry. What Bruni is doing is
explicitly substituting for the Ciceronian, highly developed, technical elaboration of rhetorical distinctions and artifices (no “practice of the commonplaces” nor study of “knotty quaestiones to
be untied”) the broader literatures of history, philosophy, and poetry, which are exercised in writing.22 While his treatise’s intellectual roots lie in grammatical considerations of such authors as
Augustine and Isadore, Bruni is accomplishing a re-ordering of
liberal education that is new and innovative. It is neither directed
toward philosophy in the medieval sense, nor directed toward salvation in the Christian sense, nor directed toward statecraft and
citizenship in the Roman sense. The character one achieves is that
of a fine artist.
Invention is the principal organizing part of Ciceronian, and
indeed Roman, rhetoric. Invention is the discovery or devising
of things, arguments or signs, to render a case probable or true
(De Inventione, I, vi, 9). As such, invention is embedded in the
artes liberales ideal. Commonplaces or topoi are central to invention and (De Topica, I, ii 7; De Partitione Oratoria I, ii, 9;
xx, 68) one of principal technical features which dialectic shares
with rhetoric is the use of commonplaces or topoi.
These features of invention, discovery, and commonplaces,
ultimately, suggest ground of accommodation between Kimball’s two ideals. Three works beyond Bruni may serve as examples. Machiavelli’s Prince, in its operational concerns, its
20. Leonardo Bruni. “The Student of Literature To Lady Battista Malatesta of Montefeltro,” in Humanist Educational Treatises, trans. Craig W.
Kallendorf (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 47-63.
21. Ibid., 47-48.
22. Ibid., 53, 55.
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focus on the problem of new states, and its topical organization
of how to analyze a state or ruler’s situation falls well within the
traditions of expedience and invention characteristic of the
rhetorical tradition. Galileo’s Starry Messenger is the application
of dialectical commonplaces derived from observation of nature.
The moon is examined first as whole, which is light, and then as
a whole which is dark; its parts are, then, divided into light and
dark, and its boundaries into continuous and discrete.23 The entire
treatise continues in similar fashion as it produces its four major
discoveries. Finally, Bacon, readily acknowledging in the New
Organon that current philosophy and arts are “use[ful] for supplying matters for disputations or ornaments for discourse,” distinguishes between “methods [of] cultivation” of those matters
and “invention of knowledge” which he is engaged in developing.24 The sciences should be “methods for invention or directions
for new works.”25 Yet, much of his analysis is directed less toward
the experimental manipulation of phenomena, than the re-ordering of the mind, or “intellectual operations” by frameworks properly adapted to nature.26 The analysis of the blocks to scientific
progress, occupying the first book of the New Organon, is presented as a series of “aphorisms,” a dialectical term indicating
definitions or important distinctions. These aphorisms either
move toward properly orienting the mind or showing that current
systems of disputation, philosophy, and experience distract the
mind. Indeed, Bacon sounds something like Bruni, for he says
that, “my purpose [is not to ‘found a new sect of philosophy’ but]
to try whether I cannot . . . extend more widely the limits, of the
power and greatness of man.”27
By converting the principal part of rhetoric, invention, into its
23. Galileo Galilei. “The Starry Messenger,” in Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, trans. and ed. by Stillman Drake (New York: Doubleday, 1957), 21-58, esp. 31.
24. Francis Bacon, “New Organon,” in Selected Philosophical Works,
Indianapolis: Hackett, 1999), 63-206; 88, aphorism 8; 90.)
25. Ibid., 90, aphorism 8.
26. Ibid., 92, aphorism 18.
27. Ibid., 138, aphorism 118.
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end, the aphorisms take on the character, not of persuasion or eloquence, but discovery. The “Interpretation of Nature” in Book II,
which is either to increase man’s powers over natures or to discover
the form of a nature, is carried on in aphorisms. And, in illustrating
discovery which is subsumed under the invention of knowledge,
Bacon outlines a procedure of collecting physical instances, instead
of opinions, forming tables of instances (of the presence or absence
of the nature in question), and, then, applying “induction”—that
is, separation, inclusions, and exclusions of the sought for nature
from other natures—based on the table of instances.28
Bacon criticized the arts and philosophies of his day as useless
in the production of knowledge. Galileo tired of “long and windy
debates.” Machiavelli pitted imaginary constructions of polities
and ideal descriptions of human behavior against the usefulness of
his treatise based in “realities.” Bruni not only found scholastic
subjects to be useless, but also clearly tried to provide a liberal education for a woman while wondering whether the standard rhetorical arts educated men at all. I want to stress here that in the hands
of these authors the liberal arts were essential in challenging and
criticizing the learning that came before. Yet, however much all
these authors argued their separation from the past or their differences with current versions of education, none of their protests can
obscure the continuity of art that tied the past to the present. So the
transition from Aquinas to Bacon was actually a roadway paved
by innovation as individuals attempted to extend the liberal arts
into many different areas—including, apparently, areas universities
simply wouldn’t touch.
Now, Kimball acknowledges that the artes liberales ideal incorporates a critical skepticism, yet, in the end, he concludes that
this skepticism “misses the point of the scientific method: any conclusions inferred become new hypotheses and are always subject
to challenge and criticism.”29 So, let us ask: While the hypothesis
28. Ibid., 178, aphorism 21.
29. Kimball, Orators and Philosophers, 121, 172; see also 225-26. This
same objection is reformulated in Kimball’s characterization of the mutual misunderstanding of each other’s position over the phrase “criticism of life” that Huxley and Arnold both employed.
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may well be essential to the science of a liberal-free ideal, is it the
hypothesis or, on the contrary, the continuous growth of knowledge
that is essential to the liberal-free ideal as a whole? Kimball was
not the first to conclude that the German research university
changed American institutions toward something like the liberalfree ideal. And research—not hypotheses or laboratories per se—
is what changed higher education from within:
Visiting American graduate students and professors returned from German universities enamored of the specialized scholarship, the commitment to speculative
research, and, above all, the atmosphere of freedom
they had seen in their host institutions. Particularly this
latter aspect—Lehrfreiheit (freedom to teach what one
wishes) and Lernfreiheit (freedom to study what one
wishes)—impressed the Americans. [The atmosphere
of freedom] was seen “to follow from the searching
function, the presumption that knowledge was not
fixed or final,” a presumption underlying all aspects of
the idealized German university that the Americans
took to be “dedicated to a search to widen the bounds
of knowledge rather than merely to preserve the store
of knowledge undiminished.”30
Thus, the question of whether hypotheses or the growth of
knowledge is essential to the liberal-free ideal is not without significance. The former, representing science, tends to draw a firm
distinction between the humanities and the sciences; the latter,
representing the humanities, tends to admit that instances of significant mutual influence shape education. The former tends to
restrict criticism to specialists. The latter tends to make criticism
and critical thought dependent on broad views of knowledge.
If in their artistic inventions Bruni, Machiavelli, Galileo, and
Bacon were using the liberal arts, then, they were “proving opposites.” But they were not simply constructing arguments opposed to works of the past. They were constructing extensions of
30. Kimball, Orators and Philosophers, 161, quoting Carl Diehl, Americans and German Scholarship: 1770-1870 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978).
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the arts they knew, the liberal arts. They thought that they were
breaking with a past of instruction and knowledge in the liberal
arts; yet, because arts proceed by invention, not hypothesis, these
artists refashioned liberal-arts ends, principal parts, techniques,
and devices, and made them suitable for new discoveries of
knowledge, new feats of action, new methods of production, new
formations of character, and new explorations for expanding the
bounds of human inquiry. In other words, invention is the characteristic response of the liberal arts to the project of continuing
the quest for knowledge. In our context, invention provided the
bridge between old and new knowledge, while it simultaneously
constructed both the distinction between past and future, and also
the distinction between the sciences and the humanities. Thus, in
the transition between Aquinas and Bacon, liberal-arts invention
provided as much continuity as discontinuity. The foundation for
an accommodation between the liberal-free ideal and the artes
liberales ideal appears, therefore, to be inherent in the development of the New Philosophy or New Science, and, more deeply,
inherent in the liberal arts themselves.31
The complex interrelations among the liberal-arts projects
of Bruni, Machiavelli, Galileo, and Bacon suggest that the places
to look for liberal education not only include institutional curricula, but individual instances that evidence liberal learning or
31. In 2003, the Association of Core Texts and Courses began a threeyear NEH grant, “Bridging the Gap Between the Humanities and Sciences.” The grant had three summer syllabi on “Motion and Natural
Law in the Physical and Political World,” “Life, Origins, Purposivenesss, and Transformations,” and “Technology, Art, Values, and the
Problems of Technoscience.” All three syllabi began with ancient Greek
texts; the first ended with texts of the seventeenth century; the others
ended with later texts. Teams from ten institutions—each composed of
one humanist, one scientist, and one administrator drawn from any discipline—attended the sessions and to their home institutions to devise
curricula and even teaching teams that “bridged the gap.” The whole
effort was inconceivable without a liberal-arts orientation. See
http://www.coretexts.org/projects-and-grants/neh-grant-bridging-thegap-between-the-humanities-and-sciences.
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education. All of these authors were learning via the liberal arts;
only one of them was doing it in a university, and he found few
who embraced his extension of dialectical methods. No curriculum for women existed until Bruni devised one for Lady Battista.
No widespread method of science existed until Bacon articulated
one. These examples of individuals practicing and acquiring liberal education outside of an academic institution show that an
“artes liberales accommodation”—a synthesis of the artes liberales and liberal-free ideals of education— not only might have
occurred earlier than we usually think, but also might have been
more persistent and coherent in educational history than seems
apparent.
All of our authors demonstrate an acute awareness of the
work of predecessors. Galileo is, of course, the patron saint of
scientists; and though Bacon may or may not capture the essence
of science, no one doubts he was advocating for what is recognized as modern science by first reviewing works and knowledge from the past. Thus, it was the liberal arts that first brought
us research in its nascent form, before it reached the universities.
Is there, then, an illustration of humanities research requiring
liberal education by an individual after research reaches the universities? An example is depicted by Henry Adams in his book,
The Education of Henry Adams.32 Adams was a man groomed
by lineage and by a stale antebellum, Harvard liberal-arts education to become, later, one of America’s foremost specialized
historians of the nineteenth century at his alma mater, during the
very time that Harvard made the transition from a college to a
research university.33 Yet, the book’s first person narrative
shows that in the opening of his specialized historical study to
any source of knowledge or human achievement, an opening
which begins in the 1890’s well after his undergraduate education and his life as a professor had ended, Adams exhibits some
of the finer uses of liberal-arts, core-text study. His service in
32. Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams in Adams: Democracy, Esther, Mont Saint Michel and Chartres, The Education of Henry
Adams (New York: The Library of America, 1983), 715-1181.
33. Ibid., 777 and 993-997.
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Great Britain during the American Civil War, followed by
comic revelations, some thirty years after the fact, by principals of the British government about their real motives in considering entering the war on behalf of the South in 1862,
convinced Adams that private experience, or even, a research
career devoted to historical analysis of American Presidencies,
was too small a scale for adequate judgment of the motives of
men—or, what was the same, “a chart of history.”34 This conviction was augmented, in part, by his friendship with John
Hay, the Secretary of State, who quickened Adams’s interest
in the international scale of human relations—the true locus,
Adams ultimately decides, that determines the motives of
human beings. Only as Adams moved from the local to the remote, only as he took an interest in symbols, only as he began
to study seriously not only politics, but science, art, religious
thought, and their core monuments—at Chartres, in the theology of Aquinas, in the dynamo, in the discoveries of Curie, in
the art of LaFarge—and added these to his store of diplomatic
and governmental knowledge—only then did he discover the
Education of Henry Adams.35
The education Adams garnered at the end of his life was a
preparation for a new theory, a new art, a new science—in this
case a theory of history. But let us make a quick induction using
all of the authors we have discussed. The proper use of education, and particularly the liberal arts, is to render students capable of making available to themselves the world’s cultural
resources in order to construct a future. Adams’s employment
of cultural history as the means for his re-education suggests, as
do the works of our other authors, that no one should presuppose
education begins with firm, well-grounded disciplinary assumptions and then proceeds to the mastery of the discipline’s tools.
Actually, it seems to be quite the opposite: if we are to offer students real education, then we are obliged to abandon the presumption of given disciplines and construct a curriculum in
34. Ibid., 1105.
35. Ibid., 1066ff and 1109ff.
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which students may explore and conceive the foundations of disciplines for themselves.36
In constructing such curricula, there is an obvious need for liberal-arts education to select core texts. This brings us back to several arguments mentioned earlier: namely, that ancient, medieval,
and early modern moral teachings can be reduced to restraint; or
that a proper selection of texts can promote the correct democratic
values and skills; or that the limitlessness of technology is destroying our culture and character. Each of these serious arguments may
be true, but they simply don’t come close to expressing the fullness
that a liberal-arts education can offer. The liberal arts have never
been merely moral, ethical, political, and cultural. They are fundamentally inventive and transformative. We remember that Aeschylus disapproved so much of the blood-bath at the end of the
Odyssey that he devised a tragic trilogy, the Oresteia, to celebrate
the creation of the jury trial, in which justice, and not merely revenge, could be felt by all. I recall the attempt in Plato’s Republic
to replace Homer with philosophy, and rhetoric with dialectic as
the basis of education—and, perhaps, of society. We remember Aristotle writing—in a society that seemed unaware of human rights
in general, and of the right of expression in particular—a treatise
on art which defended its own governing principles. We recall that
the Aeneid not only artfully incorporates the two Homeric epics,
but also incorporates art into Aeneas’s education. In having Aeneas
gaze upon the artfully wrought wall of Carthage, and upon Vulcan’s artfully wrought shield, and upon the artfully wrought belt
of Turnus, Virgil incorporates art into the education of his hero—
36. I mean to suggest that by continuously returning to the principal parts
of liberal arts—poetic and rhetorical invention, as well as dialectical discovery—the liberal arts and their associated core texts played a significant
artistic role in developing the new philosophy or new science. In the same
way, they may continue to develop human innovation today. This argument
can be extended across civilizations backward in time, and forward toward
the present-day sciences, particularly in their use of the humanities and
liberal arts to explain themselves. Examples are: Darwin’s Origin of
Species; portions of Einstein’s The Meaning of Relativity; Skinner’s Beyond Freedom and Dignity; Feynman’s QED; Wilson’s Consilience.
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an education into a vast enterprise beyond his ken—in a way that
neither Homer nor most of the Biblical writers employ. We recall
the importance of books—scriptures—to ancient Jews and Christians, not only in the canon that became the Bible, but in the remarkable synthesis of writers and texts that Ezra seems to have
read to the people of Jerusalem as he united them after their second
exile. We remember from the opening “archaeology” of Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War the kind of works one
reads matters. And we recall the sharp contrast between the Athenian virtues of Pericles’s “Funeral Oration” and the Judeo-Christian
virtues of Christ’s “Sermon on the Mount”—the importance of the
soul in each, together with the enormous differences of those souls
and their purposes. And we remember Augustine’s struggle with
the uses of the liberal arts and the wealth of pagan works his society
possessed as he came to be not only one of the greatest expositors
of the Bible, but also one of the chief agents who synthesized
Athens and Jerusalem into a single educated culture.
And so I think we arrive at a justification for great books or
core texts which is, perhaps, essential if our moral, cultural, political, or religious perceptions of the past’s resources are to be made
available to us in a way that is promising and fruitful. Often we
read core texts from many disciplines to explore ideas as a way to
enlarge student experience. This is laudable, but in exploring great
ideas, it seems to me that we don’t want to lose the thread of our
own story—I mean the story of making books. This is the story
about writing books, about reading and contemplating them, and
about building educations around them. As I have suggested above,
the production of books is part of the larger story of made things,
the story of art, technē. Technē has been a chief source of change
in civilization almost since its inception, and if you want to learn
how and why culture, religion, literature, philosophy, morals, and
science change, you must read books of great depth and invention
across genres, disciplines, cultures, and eras.37 When we do present
37. By a book I mean any written work that comes down to us, and which,
of course, may be found in many different media—scrolls, velum, hypertext, and someday, I suspect, something like holographic-imaging ipods.
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the story of making books—and, more broadly, the story of developing arts—and when we build an education around them, it is not
only our students who gain a powerful resource for building the
future. We, the educators, do so as well.
Specific liberal arts are instantiations of technē, that intellectual
virtue concerned with making something out of the world of the
variable, bringing something into existence that otherwise might
not be. And the essence of a liberal-arts education is the development of artistry in relation to making—technē in relation to poiēsis.
Here we approach, at first, what are collectively known as the fine
arts. In a discussion of liberal education, literature has something
of a pride of place in any list of fine arts because of the early development of the education fashioned by Isocrates and Cicero. Yet neither Isocrates nor Cicero best capture what freedom of artistry is
about, as Aristotle did in the final chapters of the Poetics. Throughout the Poetics an argument builds that poetry is something more
philosophic—more general—than history, and that, indeed, its function is not to narrate or dramatize “the thing that has happened, but
a kind of thing that might happen, i.e., what is possible” [italics
mine] (1451a 36). The argument continues to the end with a defense
of poets and poetry against the challenges of philosophers, politicians, and technical disciplinarians who in their systems and educational plans always tie art to the truth. Aristotle reminds us that
the standard of correctness “is not the same . . . in poetry (poiētikēs)
as in politics or, indeed, in any other art (technē).” Indeed, if, an
“error” in any art object was useful, if the poet meant to “describe
[a thing] in some incorrect way . . . [so that] it serves the end of poetry itself,” then objections by other disciplines about the product
or the artistry are really to no avail. This is even the case in moral
questions, for in the Poetics Aristotle’s interest in poetry is not
whether an action or character conforms to a specific ethical or political system, or models or cultivates a specific character in the audience; his interest is in what to consider when answering whether
“something said or done in a poem is morally right or not.” That is,
he is concerned with “intrinsic qualities of the actual word or deed,”
as well as the agent, the purpose, the patient, the means, the time,
and the relations of the actions to greater or lesser goods or evils.
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More generally, then, Aristotle’s Poetics is far less concerned with
constructions that use rhythm, language, and harmony as matters
of truth, than as matters of what might be: “If the poet’s description
be criticized as not true to fact, one may urge perhaps that the object
ought to be as described—an answer like that of Sophocles, who
said that he drew men as they ought to be” (1460b33-35).
In the Poetics, Aristotle takes poetry’s side by constructing a
dialectical defense. The defense depends on a criticism which investigates poetry in its own terms, that is, in the internal functioning
of its products. In this sense, when we come to consider the construction of curricula of books, the Poetics, notwithstanding Aristotle’s statements about liberal education in his Politics, structures
a liberal-arts education and promotes the free character that it produces, for such an education is less a study of the truth, than of the
possibilities humans have invented and made for themselves.
The point is extendable to all books, as well as to literature and
artistry from any discipline. Thus, a similar point about the object
of a liberal education is suggested by Aristotle for “literary” constructions such as Bruni’s, Machiavelli’s, Galileo’s, and Bacon’s.
Aristotle makes a distinction in his Parts of Animals between “two
distinct kinds of proficiency”: “scientific knowledge” and “educational acquaintance” with any subject. Indeed, the mark of a “universal [i.e, general] education” is for the holder of such an education
to “to be able to form a fair offhand judgment as to the goodness or
badness of the method used by a professor in his exposition.” And
this acquired ability applies to “all or nearly all branches of knowledge” (639a1-10). Subsequently, Aristotle constructs a dialectical
set of questions pertaining to characteristics of animals and the
processes which lead to the formation of those characteristics, as
well as a review of how earlier authors had treated both characteristics and processes. And, indeed, he analogizes this treatment arising out of general education to analyses of art (640a25-33). In sum,
tracing the invention of fine arts or sciences or the characteristics
and foundations of such arts and sciences relies on a process of
“criticism” (kritikon) “quite independent of the question whether
the statements [in a work] be true or false” (639a14-15). What is at
stake educationally is knowledge of the available and variable
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means of construction for any given art or science. This is what
freedom in artistry is. Education needs institutions and curricula in
which students can acquire the arts that make such constructions
available.
I have used Bruce Kimball’s distinctions between the artes liberales and liberal-free ideals and traditions of education to suggest
that the accommodations in higher education during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries may have stronger, longer, more continuous historical foundations than seem apparent from educational
documents and curricula created during the same period.
So far we have seen that the principal parts of the liberal arts—
rhetorical invention and dialectical discovery—played a significant
artistic role in developing the new philosophy or new science ideal.
Furthermore, we have seen that the long tradition of the liberal arts
is concerned with transformative arts, ideas, and culture. And, finally, we have seen that the free character of a liberal artist is not
only a propaedeutic for research, but also a source of invention and
imagination for the future.
Each of these considerations seems to have implications for the
future of the liberal arts in research universities and colleges. If it is
plausible that the liberal-arts accommodation—that is, recognizable
liberal-arts curricula, innovation, and a productive, but not stifling,
link to research—has stronger, systematic ties to education than
might be suspected, then we should see these ties in histories of institutions, as well as in analyses of the place of liberal-arts education
up to the current time.38 Kimball focuses on the liberal-arts influ38. Certainly, Kimball’s analysis that a artes liberales accommodation
had real intellectual impetus and some institutional steam by the end of
the nineteenth century is right. Indeed, I think Adams is an individual
instance. But because faculties in the early modern era used to exclude
either the artes liberales ideal or the research ideal, educational historians should not expect to find many instantiations of institutional artes
liberales accommodations until sufficient “steam” develops. Nonetheless, there was some inherent intellectual “inertia” for an accommodation much further back in history than the nineteenth century, and that
inertia, while not a driving force, is still significant for institutions even
at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
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ences of a complex of three related universities and colleges—Columbia, Chicago, and St. John’s. Although he analyzes them quite
sympathetically and sensitively, he nevertheless regards them as
unsuccessful accommodations—not because their programs
foundered, but because their models failed to spread widely, and
when they did spread, they tended not to persist.
Let me take Chicago as my example in this regard, and discuss
the opinions of two key figures in its relation to core texts and liberal arts: Richard McKeon and Leo Strauss.
Strauss first. To cut very short his very complex analysis of
liberal education: the history of Western culture is the history of
solving the problems of governance in a democracy, ultimately
by creating a democratic aristocracy of citizens educated in their
country’s and culture’s intellectual traditions of political science
and freedom. The current problems of governance involve providing wisdom to guide the technological and dehumanizing influences of modern science and systematic tyranny. The great
books stand as a bulwark in this fight: through them, citizens can
discuss what they should value. For researchers like Strauss, the
historical investigation he outlines is education: “education is in
a sense the subject matter of my teaching and research.” Political
science is the science of liberal education.39
For McKeon, the Chicago approach to general eduction—
which is to say, the university approach—is grounded in disciplines and relates them through broadening and widening arts,
methods, ideas, and even sciences. The innovation at Chicago
was not that professors were to survey ever wider swaths of subjects. Nor was it that a professor was to give courses in highly
developed specialized methods that were then to be applied to
previously unsuspected areas of study. Rather, the innovation was
that, to broaden the context in faculty discussions of the so-called
humanities, “the methods employed and developed were the lib39. This admittedly truncated summary is derived from “Liberal Education and Responsibility,” in Liberalism Ancient and Modern (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1995), 9-25, and “What Is Liberal Education?”, ibid., 1-8.
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eral arts.” Those discussions, using different liberal arts, were
necessarily interdisciplinary. In other words, they related one liberal art to another, or one formulation of a discipline to another,
via the liberal arts. For McKeon, general education implied purposeful interdisciplinary attempt to unify the fractured humanistic
subjects and departments through methodical (which is to say,
artful) inquiry—even when disciplines disagreed on what was
said about their subjects.40 The point of McKeon’s discussion of
the Chicago new college was that the design of the college, implied by Hutchins’s stated design of the general education he outlined in the Higher Education in America, was to transform
graduate schools and the organization of their disciplines, even
their research, through general education.41 In these ways, McKeon’s education orders a free character, but the ordering is to
knowledge, not to wisdom, or prudence, or even citizenship. In
both cases, the liberal-free ideal was accommodated to the artes
liberales ideal in that the liberal arts were being used to invigorate research and curricula, not the other way around.
The varieties of Chicago curricula and programs, the conceptions of liberal education that arose out of the different divisions, and the faculty who met there and migrated elsewhere
created a pluralism of ideas about liberal-arts education through
great books or core texts. These different visions have generated
a plethora of liberal-arts developments in institutions around
the world. To point to just a few: Shimer College, Saint Mary’s
College of California, the University of Notre Dame’s Program
of Liberal Studies, Thomas Aquinas College, the University of
Dallas, the Erasmus Institute, the Liberal Arts College of Concordia University in Montreal, the Chinese University of Hong
40. Richard McKeon, “Criticism and the Liberal Arts: The Chicago
School of Criticism” in Profession 1982, ed. Phyllis P. Franklin and
Richard I. Brod, (New York: Modern Language Association, 1982), 2-4.
41. I have argued this more thoroughly, both in a speech given at Marroquín University (see note 44 below), and in a speech delivered in the Public Lecture Series at Shimer College: “Re-thinking Universities and
Hutchins: Faculty and Student Resistance to Core Text Curricula,” which
can be found on the web at http://j.mp/j-scott-lee-at-schimer-college.
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Kong, and Boya College of Sun-Yatsen University are all of
them in some way closely or distantly intellectually, educationally, and personally related to the three institutions mentioned
above. All of these institutions have had self-reflective faculty
who have published materials on some aspect of liberal-arts education. One of them, The University of Dallas, developed a
great books program in literature unrelated to Chicago/Columbia/St. John’s, and then welcomed Straussians to teach in their
core. All of them have different configurations of curricula, different internal organizations, different purposes for a baccalaureate, and different relations between general education and
research.42 The accommodationist ideal has, in fact, stimulated
42. Prior to arriving at Chicago, McKeon and Mortimer Adler were involved together at Columbia with the professors who developed the Contemporary Civilization core sequence and, later, the Literature-Humanities
core sequence. Ultimately, each of these sequences replaced the departmental offerings of general education courses that, in the early twentieth
century, had preceded the requirements for graduation from Columbia.
To this day, Columbia offers a bachelor’s degree without a major. Scott
Buchanan was involved in adult education spin-offs of Columbia in New
York City before he and Hutchins came to Chicago to develop liberal
education programs. Saint John’s College developed, partly, out of this
complex of institutions and personalities. St. John’s curriculum entirely
eschewed the departmental-disciplinary basis of the Chicago program,
while it retained the liberal arts, and it explicitly identified its program
with the great books and authors of the Western world. In 1953, Notre
Dame, in large part through the work of Otto Byrd, whose teachers included Adler, McKeon, and Etienne Gilson (Otto Byrd, My Life as A
Great Bookie, [San Francisco : Ignatius Press, 1991], 46 ff. and 66ff.)
organized a three-year major called the Program of Liberal Studies on
the basis of disciplinary courses that stretch across all the fields found
at Chicago; but Notre Dame retained the idea of interdisciplinary reading
seminars that characterized St. John’s program. A 1941 article by Adler,
delivered to the American Catholic Philosophical Association’s Western
Division, on “The Order of Learning” (in The Moraga Quarterly [Autumn 1941]: 3-25) sparked at first a short-lived attempt (1943-44) and
then the enduring establishment of classics-based liberal-arts education
programs at Saint Mary’s College of California; this ultimately resulted
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the invention of institutions and innovative programs that are
enormously different. Rhodes College’s “Search” courses (formerly “Man” courses) and Yale University’s Directed Studies
Program illustrate innovations not depending on personal conin a St. John’s-like program for a major, alongside a four-semester great
books program taken by those who majored in a discipline. (See What
Is It To Educate Liberally? Essays by Faculty and Friends of St. Mary’s
College [St. Mary’s College: Office of the President, 1996], 1-28).
Though modified, both programs are still running. Shimer College
adopted one version of the Chicago-Hutchins, or “new college,” curriculum, but it has no departments and, for the baccalaureate, only four general concentrations, including one in science; it has carefully staged
integrative courses and requirements in every year of its curriculum.
Straussians graduated from Chicago and went, in particular, to the
University of Dallas. There, in conjunction with literary specialists who
formed a core sequence of genre studies unrelated to political science
that was conceived by Louise and Donald Cowan (who were in turn influenced by southern critics at Vanderbilt), the university faculty formed
a disciplinary core leading to majors that had no interdisciplinary courses
but was founded on great books. This new curriculum transformed the
education at that institution. The University of Dallas founded the only
graduate program explicitly using the Western Great Books, which offers
three PhDs in political science, philosophy, and literature. Its graduates
not only have staffed institutions across America, but also have helped
to re-organize the New England Political Association so that there is a
“core text/political philosophy” section of the Association’s annual meeting that contributes more than a third of the papers at the meeting.
Meanwhile, at Columbia, William Theodore deBary rejected Adler’s
and Hutchin’s contention that great books education had to consist only
of books from the Western tradition. For over fifty years, and continuing
to this day, deBary has translated or collaborated in the translation of
Chinese texts, and has argued for the inclusion of these texts in some
courses of the Columbia core. Although his work took place during the
period when China has risen to threaten the U.S. while at the same time
destroying its own cultural traditions in the Great Leap Forward and the
Cultural Revolution, deBary’s work has no tinge of cultural superiority
about it, for it is not rooted in Greek education or Enlightenment political
philosophy as is Strauss’s. In so far as he is concerned with the core program at Columbia, deBary wishes to “liberate the powers of the indi-
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tact with the complex of institutions above, but emerging rather
from an awareness of problems and solutions in general education.43
vidual by disciplining them” (Kimball, Orators and Philosophers, 4).
His work is part of a larger effort by the University Committee on Asia
and the Middle East to incorporate Chinese, Indian, and Islamic texts
into the core, as well as to develop sophisticated research programs. St.
John’s, motivated by its own experience in teaching great works, has
also developed at its Santa Fe campus a masters degree in Eastern Classics, reading and discussing Indian and Chinese texts. In 1978, Frederick
Kranz, a graduate of Columbia, along with Harvey Shulman and Geoff
Fidler, establish a three-year liberal-arts baccalaureate college founded
on the Western great books tradition at Concordia University in Montreal. In the Far East, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, under the
direction of Cheung Chan Fai and Mei Yee Leung, recently developed
a two-course sequence in the humanities and sciences based on great
texts of the West and East, which owes part of its development both to
Chicago and to Columbia. This program provides a selection of general
education courses to fulfill the Chinese government’s mandate that
higher education institutions convert from the European, specialist,
three-year baccalaureate to the American, mixed, four-year baccalaureate. This list of institutions shows almost all the related forms and affiliations of the accommodated liberal-arts ideal as it is beginning to spread
from North America into the wider world. And yet this list hardly enumerates the whole network of core text programs found worldwide, nor does
it describe the role of the liberal arts in actually shaping that network.
43.Michael Nelson, ed., Celebrating the Humanities: A Half-Century of
the Search Course at Rhodes College (Nashville: Vanderbilt University
Press, 1996), 3-31, begins with a post-World War I narrative of Charles
Diehl’s attempts to bring liberal education to Southwestern (now Rhodes)
College between the 1920s and 1950s. This program was based in Christian traditions, but with an awareness of the educational innovations at
Columbia, Chicago, and Vanderbilt. Justin Zaremby’s Directed Studies
and the Evolution of American General Education (New Haven: The
Whitney Humanities Center of Yale University, 2006), 32ff., says that
Maynard Mack, educated entirely at Yale, helped to devise and found the
program with Dean William Clyde DeVane. Mack was seeking to solve
the problems of “choice” that had arisen in general education, which were
the cause of the differences between Hutchins and Dewey.
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To a large extent, the Association of Core Texts and Courses
(ACTC) is a result of these accommodations and innovations.44
There have been two chief vehicles for ACTC’s growth, both related to the liberal arts. The annual Conference is the first vehicle,
the Liberal Arts Institute, the second. As a pluralist, my goal as
director of ACTC has been to maintain cross-disciplinary, general-education discussions notwithstanding higher education’s
habits of narrow disciplinarity. Part of what is at stake in having
such discussions is fairly obvious: faculty members get exposed
to ways of thought about their own disciplines that they will
44. A precursor to this paper was delivered as a speech entitled “Accommodating the Core Texts Tradition of Liberal Arts in Today’s Universities: History, ACTC, and Marroquín—An International Phenomenon,”
to the faculty of Marroquín University in Guatemala, in September of
2012. At this point in the text, the speech noted that “the Association
for Core Texts and Courses was co-founded by Stephen Zelnick and
myself in 1995 in order to bring together programs that used common
readings, taught in common courses, by shared faculty. The idea was
originally Zelnick’s, who was Director of Temple University’s Intellectual Heritage Program—a two course sequence of texts from the sciences, social sciences, and humanities stretching from ancient to
modern times required of every Temple undergraduate. He had discovered that the wide variety of professional associations at the time did
not really address educational issues of these kinds of programs. As the
organization grew, it encouraged faculty and institutions to develop and
use their own core text programs in their own fashion for their own institutional missions. . . .
After the first organizing conference, under my direction, ACTC
conferences took on the following structure: originally, paper proposals
were organized into panels over two days with each session exclusively
devoted to one of four categories: Interdisciplinary Questions, Science,
Social Science, or the Arts & Humanities, accordingly characterized by
texts, problems, or disciplines discussed—but not by faculty presenters.
That is, if you were a humanist and wished to address Newton’s Principia, that was fine. After about seven years, the membership voiced a
desire to have panels of the four categories appear in each session. Generally, this movement by the membership was an effort to allow conferees to attend the fields, perhaps the disciplines, which they were most
comfortable with.”
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rarely encounter at disciplinary conferences. Another part of what
is at stake is a little more subtle, though it can be found in almost
all the works I have discussed. Many core texts serve a dual role
in intellectual history: on the one hand, they help to found or articulate a discipline; on the other hand, their ideas, deep-seated
attitudes, or basic techniques migrate across disciplines. This is
true in regard both to Eastern and Western texts. So, for both of
these reasons, the determination to keep discussing great texts at
ACTC conferences plays an essential role in maintaining the liberal-arts orientation of the organization.
ACTC does not have a list of canonical texts that must be addressed in papers read at its conferences, though the “usual suspects” among ancient and modern authors frequently appear on
its panel sessions. There is an insistence that every paper address
a core text for at least three quarters of a page in a five-page
paper.45 The treatment of the text is up to the conferee. But what
is most important is whether a given text within a proposal, or a
set of texts within a collection of proposals, will spark an exchange of ideas about the ideas themselves, and about the programs, the texts, the teaching, or other matters of liberal-arts
concern. This is a matter of perception, not a matter of doctrine,
established argument, or disciplinary governance. It is frankly remarkable how many panels actually cohere quite well using texts
as the starting point for potential inquiry and discussion—
whether the panels are disciplinary or interdisciplinary in focus.
ACTC is filled with accomplished scholars and teachers, but
it exists to promote conversations about texts among faculty
members across institutions, programs, and disciplines. Here we
enter a fertile field deeply furrowed by a distinction Bruce Kimball discusses at the beginning of Orators and Philosophers: the
distinction between ratio and oratio. Disciplinary conferences
45. ACTC has published to date ten selected, peer-reviewed proceedings. Seven more are in various states of pre-publication. It also helped
to support the publication of Bruce Kimball’s The Liberal Arts Tradition: A Documentary History (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of
America, 2010), which made selections of core texts in the tradition
available to a wider public.
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45
exist to offer extended versions of the ratio of a discipline—long
papers and complex panel sessions marked by highly specialized
arguments, and offering little actual time for serious questioning
and discussion. ACTC’s conferences exist for a quite different
reason. The first sentence of Aristotle’s Rhetoric is, “Rhetoric is
the counterpart of dialectic.” The Greek word translated here as
“counterpart” is antistrophē—as in the return dance of the chorus
that leads to their exit from the stage. This, of course, makes dialectic into the strophe, and this has important implications for
the relation of these two verbal arts. First, one needs to know
which direction one is headed in. This is not always easy to figure
out, given the nature of language and the closeness of the two
arts. Because the intention of the conferences is to produce serious discussion around the seminar table, the brevity of the papers
leaves the direction of the conversation open. Second, even if a
presenter’s argument is either mainly rhetorical or mainly dialectical, the ensuing conversation will likely lead, at least, to reflections on what the argument would look like from the viewpoint
of the other art. Since there is no list of canonical works and no
standard set of disciplinary preconceptions that contain conversations within pre-set boundaries, ACTC presenters are asked at
least to consider a rationale for why their text should be considered a world classic or a text of major cultural significance. If
this defense were being made to a disciplinary audience, it might
well be entirely dialectical, since the audience already agrees on
the basic outlines of what belongs within the discipline’s boundaries. But because the audience at ACTC’s conferences are interdisciplinary, such defenses must be at least partly rhetorical,
insofar as it is aimed at persuading listeners from many disciplines to consider a text for inclusion in a liberal-arts program.
Even here, however, such a defense would become dialectical if
it focuses on what the liberal arts, a discipline, a text, or an idea
contributes to our understanding of education.
At the close of Orators and Philosophers, Kimball makes a
well pointed observation: In the academy “there is rarely a recognition that the means to accomplish the resuscitation of the community of learning lie in elevating and emphasizing the study of
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expression, rhetoric, and the textual tradition of the community.
Yet the means are self-evident. A community is, after all, a group
of people who talk to each other and do it well. This view of community was dear to Socrates, no less than to Cicero.”46 This is
what ACTC promotes: the opportunity for faculty members,
through the liberal arts and its traditions across all disciplines, to
co-operate in discussing, planning, and implementing general-education curricula. It is very much interested in oratio, in the expression of thought, communicated to others, that concerns itself
with the available resources of intellectual traditions across disciplines and cultures, and with the invention of educational programs that transmit the arts of absorbing and using those
resources. Its continuing mission is to join with all those who share
these aims to promote the invention, enrichment, and development
of more core text, liberal-arts programs in universities and colleges
of the future.
46. Kimball, Orators and Philosophers, 240.
�47
Definition and Diairesis
in Plato and Aristotle
Jon Lenkowski
The understanding of the essential definition that has come down
to us in modern times is traceable to Aristotle’s account of horismos in Book II of the Posterior Analytics. That is, we understand,
as Aristotle did, that by defining something, we “capture” it in
such a way that the definition completely “encloses” what is defined and delimits it from other things.
But common opinion—everyday understanding—makes a
much bolder claim, namely, that we only know something when
we have defined it and that, correspondingly, to define something
is to specify its nature, its essence, its whatness—to say, in other
words, what it is. Is this claim legitimate?
We know this question, “What is something?” to be peculiar
to Socrates; in fact we call it the Socratic question. To ask my
question about the legitimacy of common opinion’s claim, then,
in a somewhat different way: Was Socrates, in asking just this
very specific question, looking for a definition? Does the question “What is something?” seek a definition? And, conversely,
does definition give us the “what is” of something, the “what is”
of the thing defined?
In Book II of the Posterior Analytics Aristotle says, “definition is thought to be [italics mine] of the ‘what is’.” (“Horismos
tou ti estin einai dokei.” [90b4]). And again: “Since definition is
said to be an account of the ‘what is’. . . .” (“Horismos d’epeidē
Jon Lenkowski is a tutor emeritus at St. John’s College in Annapolis.
This essay was presented as a lecture at St. John’s College and elsewhere. The author is especially indebted to Seth Benardete, Stewart
Umphrey, Peter Widulski, and Robert Williamson who were kind
enough to read one or another version of the essay over the years and
offer helpful advice.
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legetai einai logos tou ti esti. . . ” [93b29]. Italics in translation
from the Greek are the author’s.) But if definition is not only
thought to give the “what is” of something, but also really does
give it, then there ought to be no difficulty at all in answering the
“what is” question. Yet finding an adequate answer to this question
particularly is just what the dialogues present as the most difficult
of tasks. And this may indicate that a “definition” is not, after all,
what the question is asking for.
What exactly is it that definition attempts and what does it
actually accomplish? What exactly is it that definition gains for
us? What exactly is it that we do when we “define” something?
Precisely what is it that we know (or think we know) when we
possess the definition of something? An examination of this cluster of questions ought to show that “definition” must fail to meet
whatever demand the “what is” question is making upon us.
A horismos is the result of a horizein, a “bounding” or limiting. A horismos is thus that within which the defined is contained;
it is the outline of the thing. But in so limiting, the horismos “delimits,” or sets off, the defined from other things. Thus it is that
horismos is translated by “definition” (Latin definitio): a “de-fining” is literally a de-limiting. Does delimiting give us the “what
is”? To answer this question we must first turn from Aristotle to
Plato; for horismos understood as a delimiting derives directly
from the Platonic “division” (diairesis). Diairesis is a dividing
with begins with some rather comprehensive class (genos) and
ends in a horismos, which is also a class, though a very limited
one. Sophist 219a-221c provides an example of such a division:
Here Theaetetus and the Eleatic Stranger are preparing to hunt
down the sophist, to discover what the sophist is. The Stranger
has a “method” for the hunt (namely, division), but he thinks that,
before hunting something as difficult as the sophist (they have
him only in name at the outset [218c]), they ought to practice this
method by first hunting something “easier”; and he proposes “the
angler” as their practice quarry. Fig. 1 is a schematic presentation
of the steps that hunt and capture the angler by division.
As the scheme shows, it takes nine divisions to capture the
quarry. It should also be noticed that in the fourth division there is
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Art (Techne)
1
Productive
Acquisitive
2
By Exchange
By Capture or
Coercion
3
(Openly)
Disputation/Fighting
(In secret)
Hunting
4
Of Lifeless
Things
Of Living Things
(specifically
animals)
5
Of Land
Animals
Of Fluid
Animals
6
Of Winged Animals
(Fowling)
Of Water-bound
Animals (Fishing)
7
By Enclosures
By Striking
8
At Night
(Fire-hunting)
Daytime
(Barbhunting)
9
With Spears: Proceeding
Downward from Above
(Tridentry)
Fig. 1: Division of the Angler
With Hooks: Proceeding
Upward from Below
(Angling)
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an abrupt shift from procedure to object sought, and that in the
seventh division there is an abrupt shift back to procedure.
Should we be troubled by the fact that no justification at all is
given for these two shifts? There may indeed be other peculiarities about this and the other examples of presented by the dialogues. We will return to some of these peculiarities in a short
while.
It is the diairesis that progressively tightens the enclosure;
the horismos is the final enclosure, the enclosure brought to its
tightest possible state—this being determined both by the starting
point and by the manner in which the division was executed.
Four dialogues give accounts of diairesis: 1. Phaedrus 264e266b; 2. Sophist 219a-221c (id. 221d, ff. and 264c ff.); 3. Statesman 258b, ff.; 4. Philebus 16c-17a. Sophist and Statesman
provide by far the lengthiest illustrations, but Phaedrus and
Philebus give the most succinct generalized accounts.1 There are,
in the dialogues, two prescriptions for division: 1. to divide according to eide, according to the “natural joints” (kat’arthra), try1. There are numerous studies of diaresis. The following have been consulted in writing this essay: A.C.Lloyd, “Plato’s Description of Division” in Studies in Plato’s Metaphysics, ed. R.E.Allen (New York:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965), 219-230. Seth Benardete, “Plato
Sophist 223bl-7” in Phronesis 5 (1960): 129-139. Seth Benardete,
“Eidos and Diaeresis in Plato’s Statesman” in Philologus 107: 3/4
(1963) 193-226. Jakob Klein, “On Precision” in Lectures and Essays,
ed. Robert Williamson and Elliott Zuckerman (Annapolis: St. John’s
College Press, 1985), 289-308. Jakob Klein, Plato’s Trilogy (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1977), Parts 2 and 4. Julius Stenzel, Studien zur Entwicklung der platonischen Dialektik (Leipzig: Teubner,
1931), especially ch. 4-8. Julius Stenzel, Zahl und Gestalt bei Platon
und Aristoteles (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1959),
especially ch. 2-4, 6. J. B. Skemp, Plato’s Statesman (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952), 66-82. G.E.R. Lloyd, Polarity and Analogy
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), 148-161. Francis M.
Cornford, Plato’s Theory of Knowledge (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill,
1957), 184-187. Reginald Hackforth, Plato’s Phaedrus (Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Merrill, n.d.), 131-137. Reginald Hackforth, Plato’s Examination
of Pleasure (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970, repr.) 20-24.
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ing not to break any part (Phaedrus 265e1-3); 2. to cut “through
the middle” (dia meson), which is the safest way, and the way
more likely to find ideai (Statesman 262b6-7, e3; 265a4-5).
In the Prior Analytics (46a-b) and in the Posterior Analytics
(91b ff.), Aristotle presents an objection to the use of diairesis in
demonstration, on the grounds that diairesis does not give the ti
ēn einai of something, but really gives two exclusive alternatives
(that is, an exclusive disjunction); those who use it as a method
of proof, however, do not treat this as a disjunction but, discarding one side of the division, they really assume already what they
think they are in the process of proving. But, though he criticizes
diairesis as a method of proof or demonstration, he nevertheless
allows that it can be useful in reaching a horismos—as long as
the division is made, at each stage, into opposites which have no
intermediates (an ēi antikeimena hōn mē esti metaxu [Posterior
Analytics 97a21-22]), for this would be the only way to assure
the exhaustion of the genus. The divisions as actually carried out
by example in the dialogues, however, do not remain true to these
prescriptions. This not only suggests a disparity between the prescriptions as “ideals” and the concrete application of this
“method,” but, even more important, it calls into question the
prescriptions themselves.2
As for Phaedrus’s prescriptions, where are the “natural
joints”? Would it be possible to determine these with any certainty? Or would such a determination of these “natural joints”
be itself already a dividing? Would it be itself already having performed the division? And then what would be the prescription
for this division? To begin with some genus and divide it into its
“natural joints” would, moreover, seem to presuppose a prior
knowledge of the genus and of its internal differentiation. But
then what would the division itself accomplish?
2. See Lloyd, Polarity and Analogy, 149-150. On the impreciseness of
the divisions in the Statesman, see Skemp, Plato’s Statesman, 71-72
and Benardete, “Eidos and Diaeresis in Plato’s Statesman,” 196 ff. On
the impreciseness of the division in the Sophist, see Benardete, “Plato
Sophist 223bl-7.” On the impreciseness of diairesis in general, see
Klein, “On precision,” 295-302.
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As for Statesman’s prescription, how could you ever be certain that you had “cut through the middle”? At Sophist 220a6-8,
for example, is the division of animal into land-animal and fluidanimal (neustikon) made “through the middle” of animal? How
indeed could we be sure that we had cut through the middle? Can
we be certain that such a cut would not be into a “greater” and a
“lesser”? How could we know where the “middle” is? There are
innumerable ways of dividing the class animal into two. What
bearings do we have for determining which—if any—of these
cuts through the middle? Of all the possible ways of dividing animal into two, what tells us to divide according to the particular
division between land-animal and fluid-animal? Would this division even be possible, unless we were directed to do so by the
very object of our search—that is, unless our procedure were
guided already from the outset by the object we are seeking? But
if we already know this, then what does the division accomplish?
Furthermore—supposing one could do it—why should division
cut through the middle in the first place? Is it so certain that this
is the most advisable and the safest procedure?
As for Aristotle’s prescription, how could we be certain that
we had made an exhaustive and exclusive dichotomy at each step
in the division? In order to do this, wouldn’t we have to know already the genus and its inner differentiation? And then what
would the division accomplish?
In the Sophist something curious happens. In hunting down
the sophist, the initial division had been made in terms of hunting—and yet this category comes to be abandoned completely,
for the sophist comes to be understood ultimately in terms of
image-making (eikastikē), and not at all in terms of hunting. In
the Statesman too, one of the divisions is made in terms of nurturing herds—yet this is abandoned, and the statesman comes to
be understood in terms of weaving. But why doesn’t where we
end up reflect where we began? What has happened to the rigor
of method here? Why are we being led so unambiguously to see
3. Skemp, Plato’s Statesman, 67 ff., claims (correctly, I believe) that
Statesman’s account of diairesis is really the Platonic criticism of it as
a “method.” Klein, “On Precision,” 301-302, suggests that the excesses
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the defects in this “method” called diairesis?3
All of these questions remain unanswered, both in the prescriptive and in the illustrative accounts of diairesis. This makes
the procedure questionable, even suspect. And it makes us ask
exactly what it is that diairesis does do. And if this “ procedure”
starts to look like a spurious one, then we have to ask why it is
put forth in the dialogues at all.
In an attempt to answer this question, let me rehearse what
happens in the early divisions made by the Stranger and Theaetetus in the Sophist.
In tracking the sophist-as-salesman (223b9-224e5), the
sophist suddenly shows up as a “maker of soul-goods” (224d7),
thereby collapsing the original distinction (219a8-c9) between
acquisition and making—between those arts which gather and
those which make.4 Earlier, in tracking the sophist-as-hunter
(221c5-223b7), the sophist suddenly shows up as a “hunter-forpay” (222d7), whereby he has slid over into the class of salesman,
from which hunting had been originally distinguished. Thus the
sophist constantly switches classes, indicating that the divisions
made by this so-called “method” were not precisely made.
In thus sliding over into the class of salesman, moreover, he
is not forced completely out of the class of hunting; he is now in
two classes previously distinguished as exclusive of one another,
but is not completely either of them. The Stranger says that the
sophist’s art is a “many-sided” one (223cl-2). And within the selling art itself, he turns up in three distinct classes: 1. as a merchandiser of soul-goods; 2. as a retailer of soul-goods made by
others; and 3. as a retailer of soul-goods made by himself
(224d11-e3). The sophist subsequently shows up in three more
divisions, in terms of 1. the art of contesting or disputing (agōnistikē [225a-226a]), 2. the art of discriminating or distinguishing
(diakritikē [226c-231b]), and 3. the art of image-making (eikastikē
and deficiencies of diairesis in Statesman are possibly correctible by
appeal to and reliance on paradeigmata, “examples.” Cf. Benardete,
“Eidos and Diaeresis,” 194 ff.
4. Cf. the schematic presentation in Fig. 1 above.
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[235b ff.]), and he is accordingly given three more definitions,
none of which encloses him fully.
From the outset, the Stranger and Theaetetus are in search of
the sophist, though they don’t even know what kind of being he is.
It turns out, of course, that he is many kinds—but this they only
come to learn during their search. At the very beginning (218b8
ff.) they had the sophist in name only—that is, he was contentless.
This would suggest that the “what” of the sophist is the product of
the method used in pursuing him. Is it possible that what he is is
generated by the Stranger’s procedure?5 Thus at 221c4-5 the
Stranger is fully confident that the very same procedure used in
defining the angler is applicable to the pursuit of the sophist as
well.6 But how can he be so sure of this in advance—unless he
holds the grand belief that his method is an absolutely comprehensive and universal one, applicable to, and yet completely independent of, every possible subject matter?
Such a claim is a rather extraordinary one. It is also a claim to
which we are all too easily drawn. The immediate attraction it holds
for us is natural enough, for it is a claim that appears to us to rescue
us from our own finitude—a claim that holds out to us the promise
of omniscience. Everything is knowable; we have only to take
whatever happens to come along and plug it into our “method,”
our “operation,” our “machine.” To possess this method is to possess a magical shortcut that relieves us of the tiresome task of having to make judgments, in each instance, about what mode of
investigation is most suitable to the object in question. It is the denial that differences among objects matter at all; and it is, correlatively, the claim that knowledge is utterly uniform, that all things
whatsoever are knowable in exactly the same way. It is a magical
shortcut that allows us to forget such troublesome questions and
5. See Philebus 16d1 ff. Socrates begins his account of diairesis by saying: “aei mian idean peri pantos hekastotē themenous zētein—heurēsein gar enousan” (“we must always suppose that there is for
everything one idea and must look for it—for we will find it”). What
guarantees its being there? Does the procedure itself guarantee this?
6. See Benardete’s account of this in “Plato Sophist 223bl-7,” passim.
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gives us a certain command over anything and everything—a sort
of technologization of knowledge. It appeals to a certain hubris
within us. In a rather different context of speaking, it might be said
that it is the temptation to sin—that it appeals to a lust of the spirit,
a lust for knowledge which is at once a lust for power.
To the extent, then, that diairesis is being put forward as such
a claim to universal method, its presentation in the dialogues could
be viewed as an attempt to exhibit the defects of any such pretension to a “method” that is independent of, and yet applicable to,
every possible subject matter. This would go some distance toward
explaining why our attention is being continually drawn to ways
in which the diairesis fails.
But this is only one side of the story. It has to be true to say
that it is the Stranger’s procedure that generates the “what” of the
sophist, for the particular classes he shows up in—the particular
designations he takes on—are the results of the ways in which the
Stranger carries out the divisions. But this can’t be the whole truth,
because the sophist is continually collapsing the class-distinctions
they make, and he is constantly defying their attempt to enclose
him in a single horismos. So, in some important sense, what the
sophist is, is independent of their activity upon him. From this point
of view it could still be said that the procedure produces the “what,”
but only in the sense that, as a result of it, the sophist now for the
first time explicitly acquires determinations he has always had implicitly. Correlatively, it would mean that we are now for the first
time making explicit, as a series of articulate determinations of the
object, our own pre-thematic familiarity with that object. And this
pre-thematic familiarity is something we must have—else we could
never have made this an object of our interest and investigation in
the first place. If we continue to think in this direction, we might
be inclined to revise somewhat our view of what diairesis is supposed to accomplish: Perhaps it’s not (or not completely) the grand
pretension to a universal method that generates its own objects, but
rather a procedure of explication that articulates explicitly what we
already—however dimly—“know.” It might be called a procedure
of “unfolding”—an explicit unfolding of what we already “know”
about the object in a quite pre-thematic way.
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This view of diairesis is supported by a further consideration:
The first division in the Sophist begins with the entire class of art
(technē [219a]). The first division in the Statesman starts one step
higher than that, namely, with the entire class of knowledge (epistemē [258e]). Why, in each case, does the dividing begin just
here? That is, what determines the initial comprehensive class
from which the dividing will take its start—unless it is that we
already know in some sense the object of our search, and unless
this object itself guides the division which is supposed to discover
it? Why, in the pursuit of the sophist, is the sophist placed at the
outset into the limited—albeit large—class of technē—unless this
were so? If diairesis were to be genuinely a process of discovery,
wouldn’t it be necessary for it to begin, not with technē, but with
the most comprehensive class—“the All” (to pan) or “Being” (to
on)? But, after all, no diairesis begins in that way; it is in fact
doubtful that from such a beginning any dividing could ever
begin.7 How could one begin to divide to on or to pan? But even
if it could be done, the very first step one would take from that
beginning would surely betray the guidance given already beforehand by the object sought.
Does diairesis, understood in this way, give us the “what is”
of the sophist? Certainly not in the sense of acquiring for us
something we didn’t have before. Here the procedure called “division” does not produce the “what is”; rather it is thoroughly
guided and directed, both at the very outset and at every single
step of the way, by a knowledge of the “what is” that we already
do—and must—possess. But then the activity of dividing until
one reaches a “definition” can no longer have any significance
as a more or less technical “method” of inquiry designed to give
us new information, to make us knowers where we were not
knowers before. But isn’t this why we always held definition in
such high regard?
7. On the impossibility of doing this, see Klein, “On Precision,” 297298. Aristotle gives the reason in Posterior Analytics II, 92b14: “ou gar
genos to on” (“for being is not a genus.”) Helpful on this point is Martin
Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1963), 3.
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There is something more. At 241b9-c4 the Stranger and
Theaetetus are wondering why they’re having such difficulty capturing their quarry and are now facing up to the possibility that
the “what” of the sophist might be infinite (aperantōn [241c1]).
If the sophist is infinite, then he is indifferently anything. But this
is at odds with how the activity of dividing operates upon him:
the diairesis cannot help but articulate him into specific, de-limited classes; the determinations he takes on are de-limitations,
de-finitions. In other words, the division is imposing limits on a
being whose own nature is to be unlimited. This explains why
the Stranger and Theaetetus are baffled at 241b9-c4: whatever
they say about the sophist can never be wholly false, and yet it
must always fail to enclose him completely. So the “what is” of
something and the procedure that is supposed to reveal it look
incommensurate. And wouldn’t this be the case with any object
one sets out to define? That is, any such object first comes to
sight as some unity—though with certain determinations, a certain number of them. But to speak of the object in terms of just
one or another of these determinations—as diairesis does—limits
the object to just that—delimiting it from those other determinations. It also fails to tell us precisely how the various determinations are related to one another in the object—and really related
in the very being of the object itself, rather than related by our
logical scheme. Even an exhaustive list of these determinations,
by the way, does the very same thing: it must remain forever
merely a list, merely a piecemeal representation of what first
came to sight as a unitary “what.”
So here we seem to be left with the possibility that even if
diairesis were a means of articulation, guided beforehand by the
object sought, even then it would always be essentially defective;
for its piecemeal, limited result would always be disproportionate
with its object.
Can we not, then, rehabilitate diairesis? We can, but only by
moving away from the view that it is intended to be a formal technique which must be learned and practiced according to a set of
rules, a formal technique (not unlike a logical organon) that we
ought to employ in order to actually acquire knowledge. Indeed
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such “rules”—the “prescriptions” given in the dialogues and by
Aristotle—look inexact, spurious, unlearnable, impossible to follow with any sort of precision. Could this be why our attention
is being constantly drawn to arbitrary moves, to gaps, breakdowns and failures in the actual practice of diairesis? That the
dialogues lead us in this way, then, could very well mean that
they are actually attempting to warn us, to show us that if diairesis is understood to be such a formal technique that is both learnable and teachable, that in and of itself transforms us into
knowers, then it is fools’ gold.
What, then, is diairesis? Here it seems to me that, of the four
accounts provided by the dialogues, that given at Phaedrus 265d266 b is the most helpful.8 Socrates speaks there of a pair of activities, “bringing together” and “dividing” (sunagōgē and
diairesis [266b5]), characterized in the following way: 1. “Bringing a scattered many into a single idea, seeing it all together [italics mine], that, defining, one might make clear each thing he
wishes to teach about” (eis mian te idean sunorōnta agein ta pollachē diesparmena, hin hekaston horizomenos dēlon poiēi, peri
hou anaei didaskein ethelēi); 2. “Dividing [these ‘ones’] once
again, according to eidē, according to natural joints” (to palin
kat’ eidē dunasthai temnein, kat’ arthra [265el-2]).
What, then, are these two related procedures? There is a passage in Book VII of the Republic which, I believe, suggests an
answer to this question:
In the context of a discussion of that higher education which
would produce philosopher-kings, calculation (logistikē, logis8. To center on the Phaedrus as the key account depends, of course, on
the interpretation that follows. It is not a position taken by all commentators. I have no quarrel with those whose particular interests lead them
to emphasize one of the other accounts. A.C. Lloyd, for instance, in
“Plato’s Description of Division”, centers on the Philebus because he
thinks he can explain, by appealing to the geometrical practice of dividing a continuous line, why the account in the Philebus is given in
terms of the opposition between the One and the Infinite. I would only
quarrel with those who view diairesis as a bona fide logical-zetetic
organon along the lines indicated above.
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mos)—that art which ostensibly operates on number—is introduced as something that leads directly to intellection and—since
it would be the art of “turning the soul around” (psuchēs periagōgē [521c6])—as something that prepares one for philosophy. But calculation is said not to appear at first as an “art” at all,
but rather as a “trivial” or “lowly” thing (phaulon [522c4]) that
simply distinguishes the “one” and the “two” (522c5 and 524b5).
More particularly it is said that calculation is originally “summoned” (parakalein), called into operation, along with noēsis
and dianoia, by the presence of contradictory sensations (524ab). This explains why calculation is called something “trivial” or
“lowly”: it is the original, most rudimentary, appearance of
human thinking. In other words, what shows up at a higher level
as an “art” is really present already as a most rudimentary feature
of human thought, viz., the activity of bringing together, comparing and distinguishing. Calculation brings together and distinguishes, brings together and separates; the logistical “arts” of
addition and subtraction are higher-level expressions of these utterly natural activities of thought and have their origins in them.9
I would I suggest, then, that the two related “procedures” of
sunagōgē and diairesis are originarily “summoned” in just the
same way, and that the presentation of them in the Phaedrus is
essentially and primarily an account of this originary summoning.
Sunagōgē and diairesis are, I suggest, the account of what we in
fact do—what thinking does—in thematizing something, in isolating it and making it thematic. That is, these “procedures” are
simply ways of talking about what we’ve already done—what
our understanding does—automatically, simply by nature, to get
its bearings, namely, 1. recognize the “sameness” of a many, and
2. recognize the differences inherent in that sameness. The first
moment is a “seeing all together”(the word is sunorōnta)—that
9. This relationship between theoretical acts and conceptual objects, on
the one hand, and certain features of pre-theoretical, pre-conceptual experience, on the other hand, has been studied and worked out extensively by Edmund Husserl. See especially his Erfahrung und Urteil
(Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1972) and Formale und Transzendentale Logik (Halle: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1929).
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is, the recognizing of a single “looks” (idea); the second moment
is a “dividing according to eidē, according to the ‘natural
joints’”—that is, the recognizing of essential differences within
that single “looks.” The first moment is said to “bring a many
into a one”, to “see it all together”, to “make it clear”, to “define”
it. Here the “defining” has to mean “de-fining” it from other such
single “looks.” It de-fines it, isolates it, constitutes it as a single
determinate “whole.” The second moment differentiates this single whole internally. The sunagōge is probably not simply reversed in the diairesis. The differences ignored or sublated in
bringing together the many into a one are probably not those “natural joints” at which the diairetic divisions are subsequently
made—which would mean that the two activities do not correspond exactly. That is, the sunagōge might very well be understood to bring the infinitely many particulars into a unitary whole;
but the diairesis must be understood as the differentiation of this
unitary whole into finite eidetic parts. At Phaedrus 238a3 ff., for
instance, it is said of hubris that it is “many-membered and manysorted” (polumeles kai polueides), and that the name of any particular hubris is taken from whatever (sub-)idea predominates.
And wouldn’t this also be true, for example, of virtue as a whole?
The horismos, then, must be understood as a “de-fining,” a
“de-limiting,” an isolating. In the mere recognition of what is to
be defined, moreover, the thing is already isolated. Thus the explicit activity of defining simply duplicates our initial recognition; it doesn’t essentially add anything, but only shows us what
we’ve already done in recognizing the thing. The explicit activity
of defining does not, in any essential way, give us a “what is” as
an answer that we didn’t have before; it only makes our pre-thematic familiarity with the thing for the first time explicit for us.
Furthermore, insofar as a definition only de-limits, it only isolates
something from other things. And that means: it does not tell us
what the thing is “by itself” (kath’auto), in its own innerness—
but isn’t that precisely what the “what is” question asks for?10
10. As Sophist 248-255 shows, the “what is” of any being is, of course,
both kath’ auto and pros heteron at the same time, and is perhaps both
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In still another way “definition” shows itself to fall short of
giving us the “what is” of what is being defined. At Statesman
267c the Stranger states the result of the first division: Statesmanship is said to be the “art of herding human beings” (anthrōponomikē [cf. 266e]). This definition might be said to be a
fine example of further dividing a genus by the addition of a specific difference: here the genus would be nomeutikē—the art of
herding; and the specific difference would be anthrōpōn—of humans specifically. But—apart from the word—is there really such
an art? This “art” has come about (or has been conjured up) simply by combining the two words anthrōpos and nomeutikē—an
easy enough task. But we shouldn’t be fooled by the word. To
make verbal “wholes” by just putting words together does not affect by one jot whether or not there are such wholes really. Actual
wholes cannot be generated by simply combining words to form
verbal “wholes.”
The flip-side of this problem would be the problem of
whether, and to what extent, it is possible to reflect accurately in
an account of a whole, the “wholeness” of that whole. This problem is mentioned very briefly by Aristotle in Metaphysics Z
(1037b12-14; 25-28). Some being (a “this,” a tode ti ) first appears to us as a unity, a whole, and yet its formulation in speech
has parts. The difficulty then is to determine whether the formulational parts correspond to the real parts in the being itself. While
Aristotle seems to treat this matter merely aporetically, and thus
to leave it an open question, the rhetoric of the passage suggests
otherwise.
The “what is” question, as it comes up in the dialogues, always asks about wholes such as virtue, knowledge, and so forth.
And at first glance it may look as though definition in terms of
genus and specific difference solves the problem of grasping a
whole. But it does not reflect the “wholeness” of a whole, for it
only adds the specific difference to the genus. That is, it might
look like an attempt to integrate the comprehensive character of
inseparably, even in thought; it does seem a formidable difficulty to
isolate the kath’auto aspect in speech.
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the genus with its precise manifestation (namely, the specific difference). But the relation of Part to Whole is not one of addition.
Aristotle’s understanding of definition in terms of genus-plusspecific difference (Posterior Analytics B 96b27-97b13) exhibits
unambiguously its roots in diairesis. And even if we were to construe this in a somewhat softer way as an articulation or explication rather than an addition in the literal sense, there would still
remain the problem of exactly how this articulation is related to
the unity, the wholeness, of what is being defined. Definition in
terms of genus plus specific difference does not adequately address this problem of how to reflect the wholeness of a whole in
speech (and perhaps in thought as well); it does, however, reveal
this problem to us in a quite vivid way.
Throughout the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle’s treatment of
horismos is always addressed to particulars: 1. to events and attributes (92a33-96a19); and 2. to beings (96a24 ff.). And to focus
on these as the primary objects of definition accords with common sense: we encounter something for the first time and, because we don’t have a precise understanding of it, we ask what it
is. But to define such a particular would be simply to specify the
class to which it belongs—and this must already presuppose our
understanding of those class-concepts. This would not, in any
case, give us the “what is” of that particular, not in the sense of
giving us that precise understanding that we didn’t previously
have. If we begin by asking it what it is, and then go on to define
it in the way I’ve just described, we have not answered the “what
is” question, but have simply pushed the question back a step;
for, in referring it to a certain class, we’d then have to pose the
very same question to that class-concept.
But what about these class-concepts themselves, as eidetic
wholes? Couldn’t we just as easily give definitions of these?
These are, after all, the “whatnesses” of things—and so the
thought of defining them might seem to hold out the promise of
finally being able to unify definition and the “what is” question.
But what would such a definition look like? Wouldn’t it too have
to refer this eidetic whole to yet others? The definition of eidē
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then, would seem to presuppose yet other eidē as “tools” or “principles” in the procedure of defining. And this means that, through
definition alone, we’d never get the “what is”—not even of these
eidetic wholes.
At the end of the Posterior Analytics, Aristotle addresses
himself to the question of how we know first principles (archai
or prōtai archai), and he shows that knowledge of these comes,
not through definition or demonstration, but only—and in an
originary way—through intellection (nous). The reason, of
course, is that both demonstration and definition have to start
somewhere, need starting points (archai). Or, stated otherwise,
all discursive, dianoetic activity of thought presupposes and rests
on nous, on an original noēsis, since thinking discourses from
something and about something. At 93b23 he had established that
the “ what is”—the ti esti—is itself an archē; and at 92b37-40
he had established that knowledge of the “what is” cannot be acquired through definition. In other words, to define something is
not to answer the “what is” question; rather, the “what is” must
itself be presupposed as an archē by any act of defining. The ability to define as such presupposes these whatnesses, these eidetic
wholes, as its archai—its starting points or first principles.
There is something further. To have defined is to have de-limited and enclosed something in such a way that it is now presented
to us in marked relief. What we are presented with as the result of
definition is what, from the point of view of a “properly” executed
process of division, came to be called the infima species, or, to
use a more Greek expression, the atomic eidos, the “indivisible
looks.” This would be the horismos, the definition, the enclosure
brought to its tightest possible state. Would this be the ti esti, the
“what is”? No. But it would be that of which we could now for
the first time ask this question: What is its “what is”?
This requires some elaboration: Definition does indeed give
us the “what is,” but not in the sense we had anticipated: to arrive,
through definition, at to ti esti—the “what is”—is to arrive, not
at an answer, but at a question. The substantivized form of that
question—to ti esti—should not for an instant lead us to think
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that it has ceased to be a question: to treat the “what is” as a substantive—to ti esti11—means that the question as a question is
being substantivized. The implication of this is far-reaching, for
it means that the “what is” of something is a question, is a problem; and therefore to know the “what is” of something—to know
an eidetic whole—is to know aporetically, to be in possession,
not of an answer, but of a problem.
The result of definition is the ti esti—not as an answer, but
as a question. More forcefully stated: The “what is” question, as
a question, is what stands at the end of the entire activity of defining. It is the proper telos of definition. The ti esti is the archē of
definition in the most profound sense: it is the archē-archōn; it
stands at the beginning of definition as its necessary startingpoint; it shows up as the end-result of definition; and it rules over
and guides the activity of defining throughout, from beginning
to end. This means that to have defined something is not itself an
end, is not to have reached one’s natural goal. To have defined is
to be brought face to face with the “what is” question and, as
such, has been barely a start. Rather than being an end, definition
is merely the condition for a new and quite different beginning:
To define is to provide oneself with the possibility of philosophy.
11. Cf. inter alia Posterior Analytics II, 92a35, 92b39.
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The Stranger as a Socratic Philosopher:
The Socratic Nature of the Stranger’s
Investigation of the Sophist1
Corinne Painter
Much of the secondary literature on Plato’s Sophist considers the
Stranger to be a non-Socratic philosopher, and regards his appearance in the dialogues as a sign that Plato had moved on from his
fascination with Socrates to develop a more “mature” way of philosophizing.2 This essay will argue, on the contrary, that the investigation led by the Stranger in the Sophist demonstrates an
essentially Socratic philosophical stance. In order to do this, I will
consider carefully some dramatic evidence in the Sophist that allows us to notice a philosophical “transformation” in the Stranger.
My consideration focuses upon the Stranger’s rejection of the Parmenidean way of philosophizing followed by his acceptance of the
Socratic way of practicing philosophy. This is revealed most decisively by the Stranger’s willingness to pursue truth and justice at
the expense of overturning the practices of his philosophical training, and, secondarily, by his genuine concern with showing that
Socrates is not guilty of sophistry.
Corinne Painter is a Professor in the Humanities Department at Washtenaw Community College, in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
1. I would like to thank Joe Sachs for his generous communications with
me about Plato’s Sophist and other Platonic works. His insights have
added greatly to my interpretation and understanding of Plato’s thought.
2. There are far too many accounts to list here; but see, for example, Stanley Rosen, Plato’s Sophist: The Drama of the Original and Image (South
Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine’s Press, 1999). Just as Rosen argues in his
text, most of the accounts in the literature that treat this issue view the
Stranger as non-Socratic and advance the position that he represents at
least a change, or perhaps even a progression, in Plato’s thinking away
from, for instance, emphasis on the Socratic elenchus, to a more developed, mature philosophical practice that emphasizes dialectic.
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Surprisingly, although there has been almost no discussion
in the literature about the Stranger’s philosophical development
in the course of his examination of the Sophist, it is neither difficult to notice nor unimportant to acknowledge the Stranger’s
philosophical “movement” away from Parmenides’s way of philosophy towards a different way. Indeed, on several occasions,
the Stranger doffs his Parmenidean cloak and dons Socratic clothing, a transformation that converts him into a “true” philosopher,
understood as one who attempts to make images in speech of that
which is authentically compelling—that is, the good—which is
therefore of ethical significance.
It is not incidental to the dialogue that Socrates instigates the
discussion by asking the Stranger to “do the favor” (217c) of accounting for the sophist, nor that the Stranger agrees only at
Socrates’s request, after having previously turned down a similar
request made by Theodorus. This shows that the Stranger is more
concerned with satisfying Socrates’s desire to account for the
sophist than Theodorus’s. And this suggests, in turn, that something
about Socrates’s request is more compelling than Theodorus’s.
What is urgent about Socrates’s request would seem to be his present circumstance, namely, his having been accused of crimes
against the polis that include practicing sophistry. Socrates’s own
life situation gives rise to his concern to account properly for
sophistry and distinguish it from philosophy; it is almost certain
that this personal involvement confers on his request an urgency
that simply is not present in Theodorus’s merely theoretical interest. Importantly, the urgency is an ethical one, inasmuch as it is
one that is “related to what truly and ultimately matters,”3 which
in this case arises from Socrates’s “specific human predicament.”4
Since Parmenides’s “style” of philosophizing “requires a stud3. Adriaan Peperzak, System and History in Philosophy: On the Unity of
Thought and Time, Text and Explanation, Solitude and Dialogue, Rhetoric
and Truth in the Practice of Philosophy and its History, (New York: State
University of New York Press, 1986), 13.
4. Drew Hyland, Finitude and Transcendence in the Platonic Dialogues
(New York: State University of New York Press, 1995), 176.
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ied indifference to its topics,”5 there are hints to be found as early
as the dialogue’s beginning that the Stranger might be willing to
reject his Parmenidean training in order to do the favor of accounting properly for the sophist. Indeed, if we believe that “indifference
seems to be the only reaction one cannot have to a philosophic
question, if one is aware of it at all,”6 then the Stranger’s willingness to undergo the difficult and complicated investigation of the
sophist only at Socrates’s request indicates that he takes Socrates’s
question to be one that is asked philosophically. For, because
Socrates’s question originates in a desire to know about something
that is at stake in his life, it therefore deserves serious and sustained
philosophical attention and energy.
Nevertheless, the Stranger does not begin his investigation as
Socrates usually does, namely, with an elenchus. This is probably
why very few scholars see a close connection between the Stranger’s
way of philosophizing and Socrates’s way. Except for the emphasis
that the Stranger places on agreement among the interlocutors—
which mirrors Socrates’s insistence on mutual agreement in the
course of dialectical investigations—he initially conducts his investigation after the fashion of his philosophical father, Parmenides, who claims, in marked contrast to Socrates, that the
“philosophic discipline requires purging ourselves of any motive
to care about any one thing more than another.”7 Before he gets to
his sixth attempt to account for the sophist, the Stranger tries to
track the sophist by employing the method of division by kinds,
according to which a given hunting ground must be cut always into
two and only two opposing divisions, until, at last, a long and logically descriptive title of the intended prey results. Prior to his sixth
division, then, the Stranger proceeds as Parmenides taught him: by
proposing further and further opposing, and thus exhaustive, divisions that allow him eventually to uncover the sophist in as many
different guises as there are different starting points. As the
5. Joe Sachs, “What is a What-is Question?” The St. John’s Review 44.1
(1993): 46.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid., 43.
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Stranger explicitly states, in practicing this logical method there is
no room for caring any more or less for the divisions that are made,
since the method “honors all equally” (227b2), nor is there room
for evaluating the divisions in any “extra-logical sense”—for instance, by an appeal to one’s sense of justice or honor. For, as long
as the divisions are made properly—exhaustively and beginning
from appropriate starting points—the accounts ultimately obtained
will be logically infallible.
With his sixth attempt at finding the sophist, however, the
Stranger employs the method of division in a significantly modified manner, namely, by no longer insisting on pure logic that does
not “care” for its results and does not “trust” the desire to do justice
to the matter under examination. The point of departure for the
sixth division is peculiar in that it begins with what might be called
an “unauthorized division” of expertise into a third subclass, which
goes beyond the authorized two divisions of division by kinds.
Since the sixth account of the sophist is spurred by the Stranger’s
assessment that the first five accounts failed to capture adequately
the sophist’s essence, and since it is impossible to judge the differing accounts critically on the basis of logic alone, the Stranger’s
unauthorized beginning seems to be grounded in his extra-logical
sense that, even though the various accounts hold up to logical
scrutiny, they fail to do true justice to the sophist’s complex nature.
This indicates that the Stranger genuinely cares about keeping the
philosopher and the sophist distinct; for “someone who does not
care about the thing in question cannot see the point of suspending
his prejudices.”8 In this case, the prejudices that need to be suspended are the Stranger’s initial commitment to proceed purely
logically, without any special concern for his divisions, and his
Parmenidean philosophical training.
The Stranger’s decision to go against the rule of his own
method arises from two causes. First, his efforts so far have made
him think that the sophist is so complex and slippery a character
that he evaded the first five attempts to capture him—a judgment,
as we can see, that can be attained only after appealing to an extralogical standard. Second, he genuinely desires to understand how
8. Sachs, 46.
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the philosopher can be misperceived as a sophist, and thus, more
specifically, how it is possible for Socrates to be falsely accused
of being a sophist. Once the Stranger sees that the first five guises
of the sophist do not present engaging images of the philosopher,
and consequently, that they do not address the possibility of confusing the sophist and the philosopher, he is compelled to divide
expertise into an unorthodox third part, so that he can construct an
account that may be sufficient to deal with the apparent proximity
between philosopher and sophist. Put very simply, insofar as the
division of expertise introduced in the sixth account of sophistry,
namely, soul-cleansing refutation (230d-e),9 turns out to be an account of what Socrates does, it provides the necessary link between
Socrates and sophistry that accounts for his being falsely accused
of sophistry. In this way, it provides the Stranger with the opportunity to scrutinize the proposed association between Socrates and
sophistry that seems to be responsible for driving the discussion.
It is at this point in the dialogue that the Stranger gives a critical evaluation of the sixth account that goes beyond revealing his
motivations and intentions, and tells us about the role he plays in
the dialogue. As the three translators of a fine edition of the Sophist
say in the introduction to their translation, the sixth account “curiously reveals the sophist as a cross-examiner of empty sham wisdom and therefore as entangled with the philosophic nature.
Sophist and philosopher appear to be interwoven.”10 This, I think,
compels us to think of Socrates rather than of a sophist, especially
since the Stranger says “he’s afraid to say” that the men he’s described in this way are “sophists” since he does not want “to confer
on them too great an honor” (231a1-3). So I believe, unlike many,
perhaps even most, scholarly commentators, including Rosen, that
the Stranger’s critical assessment of the sixth account points ultimately to his likely desire to want to defend Socrates from the
9. The sixth account of the sophist, like all the others, contains much more
detail than needs to be addressed here. For a helpful discussion see:
Corinne Painter, “In Defense of Socrates,” Epoche 9.2 (2005): 317-333.
10. Plato’s Sophist: The Professor of Wisdom, translated, with introduction and glossary, by Eva Brann, Peter Kalkavage, and Eric Salem (Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 1996), 10.
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charges of sophistry that have been brought against him. I admit
that this remark only explicitly states that the sixth account does
not accurately describe sophists because the activity it elucidates
is too honorable to be one in which sophists engage. But at the
same time, it at least implicitly points us in the direction of
Socrates, since the activity it describes is characteristic of him.
Hence, the Stranger’s implicit association of Socrates with an
honorable activity, together with his willingness to investigate the
sophist only at Socrates’s request appear to point in the direction
of a desire to defend Socrates against the charges leveled at him.
If we add to this the Stranger’s agreement with Socrates that the
philosopher often appears to be something he is not, including a
sophist (216c4-d5), the inference is even stronger. Moreover, if the
contrary motive were to be put forth—that the Stranger really
wants to prosecute Socrates on behalf of the youth of Athens,
whom he supposedly corrupted—this motive too would reflect a
concern with a matter of great political and ethical import. Thus,
even in this case, the Stranger turns out to be a philosopher in the
following Socratic sense: he understands his philosophical inquiry
into the nature of the sophist to be intimately bound up with a matter of practical, ethical significance.
This conviction can be reinforced in several ways. First, the
Stranger eventually rejects his earlier claim that the interlocutors
are not allowed to pass judgment on their accounts by assessing
any of the arts they describe as more honorable or worthy than any
others (227a10-b8). The evidence for this is his willingness to go
against this “rule” of his own method and his related willingness
to discard the wholly “neutral,” Parmenidean attitude. For when
he admits his distaste for describing the sophist as one who engages
in soul-cleansing refutation (231a1-3), the Stranger gives up his
commitment to honor the generals’ art of hunting and the art of
louse-catching equally (227b8-11). In this way, he abandons his
Parmenidean neutrality and recognizes that he will have to take a
new path: if he is to keep sophistry and philosophy distinct, he
must let his genuine, ethical concern over the sixth account of the
sophist guide the rest of his investigation. Indeed, at this point in
the discussion the Stranger realizes that his “technical” procedure
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for hunting down the sophist will not allow him to fulfill his promise of accounting for the sophist in such a way that the philosopher
can no longer be mistaken for him, and the Stranger’s expression
of dismay at having discovered five different accounts of the
sophist shows this:
[I]sn’t it clear that when a person experiences this with
respect to some expertise, he’s not able to see what all
these studies have in view—and that’s why he calls
their possessor by many names instead of one? . . . So
let us avoid experiencing this in our own search because of laziness (232a1-b2).
Accordingly, we have reason to believe that the Stranger no longer
trusts his initially preferred method of division by kinds to complete the investigation. Moreover, this strengthens the impression
that he is prepared to proceed differently, which, again, suggests
that he genuinely cares about the matter at issue—namely, keeping
the philosopher and the sophist distinct.
In fact, the Stranger seems to care so much about distinguishing the philosopher and the sophist that he is willing to suspend all
of his “safe opinions,” all of his “previous prejudices,”11 in order
to do the favor that he promised. Indeed, the Stranger’s worry, particularly over the sixth definition, indicates his recognition that division by kinds, although it may be well suited to mapping out
relationships of subordination between genera and species, is not
well suited for the task of distinguishing the sophist from the
philosopher. In acknowledging that this task cannot be completed
on the basis of division by kinds alone, the Stranger lets his “outrage . . . as a human being”12 compel him to conduct the remainder
of his search for the sophist in another way. This new way, while
still rigorous and careful, seems to the Stranger to be more compatible with the important political and ethical nature of the task,
and at the same time, it allows him to “trust his own desire to do
justice.”13 In allowing the investigation to follow another path, as
11. Sachs, 46.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
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Joe Sachs claims, the Stranger abandons the safe and familiar Parmenidean philosophizing, with its indifferent, dispassionate, and
entirely logical modus operandi,14 and “crosses over from the safe
domain of logic to something called philosophy.”15
Later in the dialogue, the Stranger even makes an explicitly
critical remark about the technique of division by kinds that is quite
scornful: “to attempt to separate off everything from everything is
in other respects discordant, and what’s more, it belongs to a man
who is altogether unmusical and unphilosophical” (259d8-e1, emphasis mine). If we add to this his claim that the one who knows
how to practice the art of division and collection properly is the
one “who philosophizes purely and justly” (253e4-5, emphases
mine), as well as his rather Socratic words of encouragement to
Theaetetus, asking him, for example, to be brave and not to lose
heart (261b5-6), it is quite clear that the Stranger now comports
himself Socratically. All in all, this not only strengthens the notion
that the Stranger’s motivation in the Sophist is more likely connected to a desire to defend Socrates than to a desire to prosecute
him, but it also suggests that he has become “like”—perhaps even
a good image of—a Socratic philosopher.
Finally, there is yet another way in which the Stranger shows
the mark of a Socratic—which is to say, genuine—philosopher,
namely, his eagerness not to assume that he knows what he does
not know. Indeed, the Stranger seems to appreciate very well that
while all of his accounts of the sophist, including the seventh and
final one, capture some significant aspects of the sophist’s deceptive nature, none of them can say the final word about this slippery
creature (268d5). Like Socrates, the Stranger is very careful not to
conflate the images he makes in speech with the originals to which
they point. In other words, the Stranger’s humble acknowledgment
that his logos about the sophist necessarily points beyond itself towards an eidos that it cannot articulate adequately seems to mirror
Socrates’s repeated admonitions that all our words are at once both
themselves and not themselves, insofar as they always point be14. Sachs, 41.
15. Sachs, 43.
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yond themselves to the eide, that is, to the invisible looks that make
them intelligible.
In sum, the investigation led by the Stranger in the Sophist
demonstrates a specifically Socratic philosophical character, and
in the course of attempting to define the sophist, the Stranger shows
that Socrates is not guilty of sophistry. The philosophical conversion undergone by the Stranger—from Parmenides’s way of philosophizing to Socrates’s way—indicates that he recognizes the
superiority of “extra-logical” philosophizing that is rooted in a
sense of ethics. This is revealed by the Stranger’s admission that
the sixth definition of sophistry as “soul cleansing refutation” is
disturbing because it describes an activity that is too honorable to
be connected with sophistry. Since this definition was arrived at
by a non-Parmenidean, Socratic way of philosophizing, it identifies
the Socratic way with virtue, and defends Socrates against the dishonorable charges associated with sophistry. In this way, the
Stranger vindicates Socrates while at the same time he becomes
very much “like” him.
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The Concept of Measure and the
Criterion of Sustainability
John D. Pappas
The classical concept of measure, which is akin to moderation
and balance, has been specified arithmetically in architecture and
the arts. But in law, politics, the social sciences, and the behavioral sciences, measure is a fuzzy concept. A rational definition
of measure in human behavior would curb the impulsive human
tendency to excess, and might thus hedge humanity against the
effects of hubris, which has historically led societies, states, and
even empires to disaster.
When people lose a sense of measure, they also lose touch
with reality. And because there is no settled definition of measure
in practical matters, it is difficult for leaders and policymakers to
see limits begin transgressed in time to avert danger.
The purpose of this essay is to suggest that, in the absence
of a definition of measure, we may instead apply the criterion of
sustainability to detect hubristic aberrations from measure early
enough to curb their ill effects.
1. The universal concept of measure
The concept of measure or mean was the cornerstone of classical
civilization. Measure (metron in Greek1) is akin to the Confucian
Middle Way (zhōng yōng) and the Buddhist Middle Path (majjhimā
paṭipadā). It pertains to aesthetic symmetry and functional harmony
in human interaction with the social and natural environment.
John D. Pappas is legal and economic adviser at AGM Law Firm. He
studied law at Athens University and economics at Columbia University.
1. The English word measure derives from the Latin mensura, which in
turn derives from verb metiri, which is related to the Greek word metron.
This is the etymological root of meter, metro–, –metric, etc., and a component of symmetry and its derivatives (symmetric, asymmetry, and so on.)
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In the arts and particularly in architecture, measure has been
expressed in particular mathematical forms. For example, the
golden ratio, φ (=1.6180339…),2 which Euclid called extreme
and mean ratio, is a well-known mathematical definition of geometric measure:
A straight line is said to have been cut in extreme
and mean ratio when, as the whole line is to the
greater segment, so is the greater to the less. (Akron
kai meson logon eutheia tetmēsthai legetai, hotan
ēi hōs hē holē pros to meizon tmēma, houtōs to
meizon pros to helatton.) (Euclid, Elements, Book
6, Definition 3.)
Even before Euclid showed how to calculate the φ-ratio,
Phidias (c. 480–430 BC) had created a diachronic manifestation
of aesthetic measure in geometry and architecture by “curving”
Fig.1: The Golden Section in the Facade of the Parthenon
2. φ, the asymptotic limit of the Fibonacci sequence Fn+1 / Fn , “has inspired
thinkers of all disciplines like no other number in the history of mathematics.” Mario Livio, The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, the World’s Most
Astonishing Number (New York: Broadway Books, 2002), 6.
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that ratio into marble (Fig. 1).3 The Parthenon seems to be circumscribed conceptually by a Fibonacci-type sequence of golden
rectangles: each rectangle has a length that is the product of its
width and φ, while its width is the length of its predecessor rectangle. The aesthetic effect of the golden rectangle is summarized
by Joe Sachs in this way:
What are the right proportions for the entrance to a temple? . . . The rectangle formed by the columns is wider
than it is high. How much wider? Enough so that it will
not look squashed together, but not so much that it would
become stringy looking. Let your imagination squeeze
and stretch it to see what goes wrong, and then notice
that to get it right again you have to bring it back to a
certain very definite shape. This is the golden rectangle.
It has been produced spontaneously by artists, architects,
and carpenters of any and every time and place.4
But long before Phidias and Euclid, the concept of measure
had been a focal theme in ancient Greek civilization, as is shown
by the frequent recurrence of that concept in Homer’s Odyssey
(for instance, in Bk. 2, l. 230, Bk. 5, l. 9, Bk. 7, l. 310, Bk. 14, l.
434, Bk. 15, l. 68, Bk. 17, l. 321, Bk. 21, l. 294, and Bk. 22, l.
46)—although Homer uses the word aisima rather than metron.
For example, in Bk. 7, l. 310, Alcinous addresses Odysseus with
the same phrase that Menelaus uses in Bk. 15, l. 71 when speaking to Telemachus: “measure is always optimal” (ameinō d’
aisima panta).
In Homeric vocabulary, aisima is related to Aisa, the Greek
3. In 1909, the American mathematician Mark Barr gave the golden
ratio the lower-case Greek letter phi (φ), the first letter in Phidias’s
name, to honor the classical sculptor and architect. (Theodore Andrea
Cook, The Curves of Life [London: Constable, 1914; reprinted inNew
York: Dover Publications, 1979], 420). The capital letter Φ is often used
to symbolize the inverse of φ, i.e. Φ = 1 / φ = Ο.6180339. . . .
4. Joe Sachs, “Measure, Moderation, and the Mean,” The St. John’s Review 46.2 (2002): 7. This article is available on the web here:
http://www.sjc.edu/files/1713/9657/8097/sjc_review_vol46_no2.pdf
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goddess who personifies human destiny. So Homer’s idea of
measure implicitly includes the notions of allotted share, portion,
lot, or term of life, in accordance with the subject’s destiny—that
is, in line with his idiosyncrasies, social constraints, and natural
limits. Moreover, Homer was probably the first to try to describe
measure in human social interaction. In 15.68-74, he suggested
a subjectivist view of social measure by metaphorically depicting
social relations among people as interactions between hosts and
their guests:
Telemachus, I will not keep you here for long when you
are eager to depart:I would even blame another man who,
as host, is either too fond of his guest or too rude to him:
measure is always optimal. Being too quick to send a
guest on his way when he doesn’t want to leave is just as
bad as holding him back when he wants to depart. One
must treat a guest well as long as he is in the house and
let him go promptly when he wants to leave.
(Tēlemach’, ou ti s’ egō ge polun chronon enthad’ eruxō
iemenon nostoio: nemessōmai de kai allōi
andri xeinodokōi, hos k’ exocha men phileēisin,
exocha d’ echthairēisin· ameinō d’ aisima panta.
Ison toi kakon esth’, hos t’ ouk ehtelonta neesthai
xeinon epotrunei kai hos essumenon katerukei.
chrē xeinon paeonta philein, ethelonta de pempein.)
To a considerable degree, Homer’s masterpiece is a poetic
account of four intertwined concepts: 1. human measure; 2.
hubris, that is, extreme aberration away from measure, like the
Massacre at Troy, or like Odysseus’s defiance of nature in the
form of his defiance of the gods, or like the abusive behavior of
Penelope’s suitors during Odysseus’s absence; 3. atē, the goddess
that personifies mischief, delusion and folly, which are states of
mind that accelerate the decline of a hubristic subject; and 4.
nemesis, the goddess that personifies justice and reinstitutes the
balance of social order.
Long before Homer, these concepts were symbolized in the
myth of Icarus. Icarus attempted to escape Minoan Crete by flying in the air on waxed and feathered wings, but he overrated his
capabilities and underrated the forces of nature. He ignored the
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advice of his father Daedalus to “fly the middle course” between
the foam of the sea and the heat of the sun, so that his wings
would neither be soaked nor burned. Icarus soared hubristically
upward toward the sun, which soon melted the wax off his wings,
so that he fell into the sea to his death.
But Homer was the true philosophical pioneer in regard to
the notion of measure. Through his poetic imagery, he laid out a
solid philosophical base concerning the delicate relations between measure, hubris, folly, and justice. This became the foundation for the elaborate work of the philosophers and the
tragedians of the pre-classical and classical periods. For instance,
Homer’s concept of measure was later picked up by Cleobulus
of Rhodes (died ca. 560 BC), one of the Seven Sages of ancient
Greece, in his most celebrated maxim “measure is best” (metron
ariston). And a later philosopher, Protagoras of Abdera (c. 490-420
BC), understood measure in Homer’s subjectivist terms, as is shown
by a quotation that appears in Plato’s Theaetetus (170d–e):
Man [is] the measure of all useful things.
(Pantōn chrēmatōn metron anthrōpos.)
This statement was later quoted, almost ipsissima verba, by
Sextus Empiricus in his Adversus Mathematicos (7.60)]:
[Protagoras said that] man is the measure of all useful
things, that is, in regard to things that exist, how they are,
and in regard to things that do not exist, how they are not.
([Protagoras eipe] pantōn chrēmatōn metron anthrōpon
einai, tōn men ontōn hōs estin, tōn de ouk ontōn hōs ouk
estin.)
Protagoras’s statement is gender-neutral because he refers
to human beings in general rather than men in particular (anthrōpos means “human being” in Greek). Moreover the exact
meaning of the statement (which is as much utilitarian as it is
subjectivist) has been lost in both English and Modern Greek
translations. In all translations I am aware of, chrēmatōn has
been erroneously translated as things (in English) or pragmatōn (in Modern Greek). As result, an overly anthropocentric
sense has been imputed to Protagoras’s statement, as though it
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meant “man is the measure of everything in the universe.” But
in ancient Greek, chrēmata did not signify everything in the
universe, but only things needed or used by humans on earth:
the noun is related to the verb chrēsthai, meaning “to need” or
“to use.” As an example of the sense, Aristotle gives the following definition in his Nichomachean Ethics (1119b26): “By
chrēmata we mean all things whose value is measured by
money.” (Chrēmata legomen panta hosōn hē axia nomismati
metreitai.)
So in the Protagorean subjectivist context, measure is understood as a concept related to human attributes. But somewhat earlier, Heraclitus (ca. 535–475 BC) had proceeded a step further.
He understood measure as a natural phenomenon, or even as the
foundational principle of the universe.
Heraclitus theorized that hubris5 entails inexorable divine
retribution, which is personified by the remorseless goddess
Nemesis. The name of that goddess is related to the Greek verb
nemein, meaning “to distribute appropriately,” which also gives
us the Greek word nomos, meaning “custom” or “law” (as in the
words economy and astronomy). Infractions by mortals against
other mortals (that is, hubris) disturb the “naturally right” proportion that is due to them according to each one’s destiny or
moira. In this context, hubris is either a human activity or a natural phenomenon that takes place beyond or without measure (as
5. The concept of hubris or hybris was introduced into academic literature by Friedrich Nietzsche in his incomplete treatise Philosophy in
the Tragic Age of the Greeks (1873). He explicitly connects it with Heraclitus. “That dangerous word hybris is indeed the touchstone for every
Heraclitan. Here he must show whether he has understood or failed to
recognize his master.” (Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosophy in the Tragic
Age of the Greeks, trans. Mariann Cowan (Washington, D.C.: Regnery
Publishing, 1962), 61. In English, the term hubris means excessive
pride, or insolent self-confidence, or haughtiness. However few modern
English speakers are aware that authors of the Greek classical period
apply the term in a much more restrictive way. The popular English
saying “the sky is the limit” would seem quite hubristic to classical
Greek authors.
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in hybrid, hybridize, hybridization). Such events thus divergefrom the primary or teleological course of nature; then vengeful
Nemesis intervenes as the just balancer who reinstitutes the natural order. establishing a new state of equilibrium. Consequently,
from a Heraclitian perspective of the world, nature tends toward
biodiverse harmony through a dynamic equilibrium process that
hinders any single creature or species from growing to such an
extent that it eventually crowds out all other creatures or species
in nature.
[Heraclitus’s] unified, ordered world of balanced change
is also a world in which the “laws” or norms of justice
prevail. . . . “Justice [Nemesis] will catch up with fabricators of falsehoods and those who bear witness to them”
(fragment 28b). More generally, such norms can be described as “divine law” in nature, a law that is “common”
or universal in its accessibility and applicability: “those
who [would] speak with insight must base themselves
firmly on that which is common to all, as city does upon
its law—and much more firmly! For all human laws are
nourished by one [law], the divine [law]” fragment 114).
But the justice that is cosmic law is the justice of disruption and revolution, of war and violence, not that of balm
and healing. “One must realize,” he says, “that war is
common and justice strife, and that all things come to be
through strife and are [so] ordained.” . . . [A]ll change,
however violent, be it the macrochanges of nature and
the outer cosmos or war among states, or civic strife, or
the battles that rage in the human heart, can be seen as
integral parts of the law or [divine] “plan” that “steers all
things” producing, through change, that higher unity
which is the cosmos.6
Such a cosmic perspective of measure is a recurring theme
in the Koran, where measure is presented as the prime attribute
6. T. M. Robinson, Heraclitus: Fragments, trans. and ed. T. M. Robinson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987), 185. Note also that
in fragment 43 Heraclitus says, “there is a greater need to extinguish
hybris than there is a blazing fire” (ibid., 33).
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of God’s wisdom and omnipotence:7
HE to Whom belongs the Kingdom of the heavens and
the earth. And HE has taken unto Himself no son, and
has no partner in the Kingdom, and HE has created
everything, and has ordained for it its proper measure
(Al-Furqan, 25:3).
And Who sent down out of heaven water in measure; and
We revived thereby a land that was dead; even so you
shall be brought forth (Az-Zukhruf, 43:11).
And whosoever puts his trust in God, He shall suffice
him. God attains his purpose. God has appointed a measure for everything (At-Talaq, 65:3).
Obviously, the Koran’s reference to rainfall as a manifestation of divine measure is in line with the diachronic Heraclitian
concept of cosmic measure: Rainfall may vary in space-time, as
regards to intensity and duration, but is neither too much (to the
extent that all life on earth is flooded off to total extinction) nor
too little (to the extent that no life on earth can be sustained).
Nevertheless, local floods or droughts may occasionally “steer
things” in a local natural environment toward a new dynamic balance of “that higher unity which is the cosmos.”
A historical example of the applicability of the Heraclitian
perspective of measure is the attempt of Artabanus to avert the
Persians from expanding their empire to Europe. Specifically, he
gave the following strategic advice to Xerxes, who was preparing
to invade Greece:8
Do you see how God does not allow the bigger animals
to become insolently visible, as it is them that He strikes
7. In the following translations, italics are mine. The first example is
from The Holy Qur’an: Arabic Text and English Translation, ed. and
trans. Maulawi Sher Ali (Islamabad: Islam International, 2004), 412.
The second and third examples are from A. J. Arberry, The Koran Interpreted: A Translation (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), 199
and 284.
8. Herodotus, Histories, 7.10e.
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with his lightning rather than the smaller ones that never
insult Him? Do you also see how He throws his bolts always against the tallest buildings and the tallest trees?
Because God likes to draw back anything that stands out.
Likewise even a mighty army may be discomfited by a
small army, whenever God in His wrath exposes the former to fear[feelings of terror] or storm [natural disasters]
through which they perish in a way unworthy of them.
Because God allows no one to consider himself great,
except Himself.
(Horais ta huperechonta zōia hōs keraunoi ho theos oude
eai phantazesthai, ta de smikra ouden min knizei· horais
de hōs es oikēmata ta megista aiei kai dendrea ta toiauta
aposkēptei ta belea· phileei gar ho theos ta huperechonta
panta kolouein. houtō de kai stratos pollos hypo oligou
diaphtheiretai kata toionde· epean sphi ho theos phthonēsas phobon embalēi ē brontēn, di’ ōn ephtharēsan
anaxiōs heōutōn. ou gar eai phroneein mega ho theos
allon ē heōuton.)
Xerxes made the devastating hubristic mistake of ignoring
Artabanus’s Heraclitean advice, because he was under the spell
of Atē. The typical pairing of hubris and nemesis, which appears
in many tragedies such as Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex, Aeschylus’s
Agamemnon, and Euripides’s Hippolytus, is almost always associated with the Homeric goddess Atē, as epitomized in Sophocles’s choral passage from Antigone, 621–625):
Evil seems good, sooner than later, to him whose mind
God leads on to [mischief under the control of] Atē. And
so he manages only for the briefest time without Atē.
(To kakon dokein pot’ esthlon
tōid’ emmen hotōi phrenas
theos agei pros atan.
prassei d’ oligiston chronon ektos atas.)
In sum, Atē instills confusion in the mind of every subject
of hubristic behavior, and she thus personifies self-destructive
syndromes like defensive avoidance, overvigilance, reactivity,
and denial. These are ruinous states of mind that have led many
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economies, armies, states, and empires to disaster or even to collapse.
2. The Aristotelian mean
In light of the grave consequences of hubris, the critical importance
of defining measure comes to the fore. If measure is not defined
conclusively, then humans may not be able to detect and avoid catastrophic hubristic aberrations from it. The future of every state
would then be precarious, because its leaders would be ignorant
of, or confused about, effective and sustainable policies, which are
conditional on measured behavior and balanced organization.
These considerations haunted Aristotle, who lived during the
decline of classical Greece and the rise of Macedonian hegemony.
Plato, the teacher of Aristotle, had witnessed the collapse of Athenian democracy in the hubristic Peloponnesian war (431–404 BC).
This war among Greek city-states demonstrated that, although the
Greeks had prevailed militarily during the Persian invasions of
490-479BC, the Persians prevailed culturally. During the Persian
wars, the Greeks had been exposed to, and became well acquainted
with, Asian materialistic values and hegemonic aspirations. To the
extent that these values infected Greek society, they ultimately ruined most of Greece. To a great extent, the Persians made up for
their losses on the battlefield by defeating Homer, Heraclitus, and
the tragedians in the political arena of vanity and ambition. After
the Persian wars, victorious Athenians lost their post-Homeric
sense of measure, and consequently lost their touch with reality.
One indication of this is that the Athenians considered their massacre of the inhabitants of Melos in 416 BC as a justifiable act of
strategic pragmatism;9 they had become incapable of viewing their
horrendous, hubristic crime as the act of genocidal barbarism it
was—for which crime they would ultimately suffer the retribution
required by cosmic Justice (Nemesis), as prescribed by Heraclitus.
9. Thucydides, Histories, 5.84–111, which recounts the dialogue between the Athenians and the besieged Melians. The Athenians asserted
the so-called right of the strongest, which they associated with pragmatism as follows (5.89):
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At the time, it must have been obvious to Aristotle that Greece
started its self-destructive decline of going beyond measure as soon
as the independent city-states formed interdependentt confederations and expansionary alliances that battled one another over a
hubristic and unrealistic prize—politico-economic dominance over
all of Greece and even beyond. This was clearly an emulation of
the Asian paradigm. It is quite characteristic of the classical period
that the Parthenon was built with the worst of intentions: Pericles
wanted to project the cultural and material power of a hegemonic
Athens. It was only through the artistic genius of Phidias that
Athens erected a wonderous, diachronic manifestation of measure
(that is, of beauty, balance and harmony) instead of a monstrous
monument to vanity and ambition.
In an attempt to check the demise of classical Greek civilzation, Aristotle tried to make clear philosophically the basic attributes, the moral qualities, and the political principles that are
symbolized by the architecture and sculpture of the Parthenon. He
was actually trying to revive the Apollonian spirit of the Battle of
Marathon, where two opposite value systems collided for the first
time in history—the materialistic value system of Asia and the idealistic value system of pre-classical Greece, the former aiming at
power, the latter at virtue. This conflict of values is in the epigram
at the battlefield of Marathon, said to be by Simonides of Ceos (ca.
556–468 BC):10
The Athenians, fighting as the vanguard of all Greece,
deprived the gold-bearing Persians of their power.
(Hellēnōn promachountes Athēnaioi Marathōni, chrusophorōn Mēdōn estoresan dunamin.)
Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in
power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer
what they must.
(Dikaia men en to anthrōpeiōi logōi apo tēs isēs anankēs krinetai, dunata de hoi prouchontes prassousi kai hoi astheneis
xunchōrousin.)
10. John H. Molyneux, Simonides: A Historical Study (Wauconda, Illinois: Bolchazy–Caducci, 1992), 150.
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Aristotle’s difficulty pertained to the materialism of his time.
The Greeks, corrupted by Asian influences, had lost their sense
of measure, and were carried away by the desire for affluence
and power. The loss of an intuitive sense cannot be easily restituted. So Aristotle attempted to call the Greeks back to measure
and hubris by appealing to the mind rather than the soul, through
reasoning rather than intuition—that is, through logic rather than
aesthetics. More specifically, Aristotle did not approach measure
merely as a self-evident condition that presents itself openly in
natural beauty. For example, he did not argue that the massacre
at Melos was a hubristic act because it was savagely messy and
unnaturally ugly. Instead he tried to define measure and hubris
explicitly and thus demonstrate to the Greeks that every act of
barbarism is hubristic because it is extremely beyond measure.
To Aristotle, extreme actions are temporary and self-destructive,
while measured activities are sustainable and constructive. In that
context, Aristotle’s rational approach to measure tried to appeal
to the Greeks’ instinct of self-preservation, rather than to their
degraded sense of aesthetics.
Aristotle’s logical approach to measure was ingenious and
realistic in the post-Socratic era of cultural decline, when Greeks
were increasingly flirting with extremes like ostentatious consumption, abusive power, and the persecution—or even execution—of men of virtue. But Aristotle faced a conceptual problem.
A non-controversial, logically defined concept of measure in
human affairs may well be an impossibility. One indication of
this is the fact that the golden ratio φ is an irrational number that
defies mathematical precision:
What is the ratio of [the temple’s] width to its height? I
can tell you exactly what it is, but not in numbers. I can
also tell it to you in numbers, but not exactly. It is approximately 61.8 units wide and 38.2 units high. That
will get you in the ballpark and your eye will then adjust
it to make the ratio exact, but it can be proven that no
pair of numbers, to any finite precision, can accurately
express this ratio, which is that formed by cutting a line
so that the whole has to its larger part the same ratio that
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the larger part has to the smaller. We know many things
by measuring, and our usual way of measuring is with
numbers, but in this case numbers are too crude an instrument by which to know something our eyes know at
a glance.11
And if measure in quantitative geometric dimensions defies
mathematical precision, then how much more difficult is the task
of devising an accurate definition of measure in qualitative
human affairs?
Aristotle wisely did not conceive of a comprehensive definition of measure, nor did he attempt to define measured behavior
in human affairs, because an imprecise definition would be controversial, and thus of limited practical use in policy making. In
contrast to Plato’s idealistic quest for an absolute value system, Aristotle formulated a pragmatic and relative definition of measure.
He approached the concept of measure through successive logical
approximations that involved real-life examples, metaphors, and
implicit analogies.
Aristotle conceived of measure as a subjective mean between
two opposite extremes, one of deficiency (elleipsis) and the other
of excess (hyperbolē) with respect to a desired goal. For example,
courage (andreia) holds a mean position between one’s own feelings of fear (phobos) and overconfidence (tharsos). Such a mean
is usually closer to one extreme than the other, depending on internal trend (idiosyncrasy) and external circumstances (environment), and consequently is not one and the same for everyone:12
Therefore of everything that is continuous and divisible,
it is possible to take the larger part, or the smaller part,
or an equal part, and these parts may be larger, smaller,
and equal either with respect to the object itself or relative to us; the equal part being a mean between excess
and deficiency. By the mean of the object I denote a point
11. Sachs, “Measure, Moderation, and the Mean,” 7-8.
12. Nicomachean Ethics 1106a25–35. Translations of the Ethics are by
W. D. Ross (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908) and H. Rackham (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1934) and edited by the author.
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87
equally distant from either extreme, which is one and the
same for everybody; by the mean relative to us, that
amount which is neither too much nor too little, and this
is not one and the same for everybody. For example, if
10 is considered many and 2 few, then 6 is considered
the mean with respect to the object, because it exceeds
and is exceeded by an equal amount and is the intermediate according to arithmetical proportion. But we cannot
derive the mean relative to us by this [arithmetical]
method.
(En panti dē sunechei kai diairetōi esti labein to men
pleion to d’ elatton to d’ ison, kai tauta ē kat’ auto to
pragma ē pros hēmas:to d’ ison meson ti huperbolēs kai
elleipseōs. Legō de tou men pragmatos meson to ison
apechon aph’ hekaterou tōn akrōn, hoper estin hen kai
to auto pasin, pros hēmas de ho mēte pleonaei mēte
elleipei: touto d’ ouch hen, oude tauton pasin. Hoion ei
ta deka polla ta de duo oliga, ta hex mesa lambanousi
kata to pragma: isōi gar huperechei te kai huperchetai:
touto de meson esti kata tēn arithmētikēn analogian. To
de pros hēmas ouch houtō lēpteon.)
Aristotle here sets out two distinct types of mean, a lesser
and a greater. The lesser type, the mean with respect to the object,
is like a mere arithmetic average, static and objective. The greater
type, the mean relative to us, which is really the sort of measure
that applies to human thought and action, is dynamic and fluctuating. It is rarely midway between opposing extremes. Nor is it
the same for different people, because it is perceived subjectively.
Nor does it remain the same, because it can evolve with changes
of interal states and external conditions.
One example of this fluctuation might be the changing measure of courage required by the Greeks in the Persian and Peloponnesian wars. The Greeks needed an exceptionally high degree
of courage—that is, extreme fearlessness—when they were fighting for their very existence against the Persian invaders. In the
Peloponnesian War, however, a less intense degree of courage—
much closer to fearfulness—might have served them better, because it might have prevented them from waging that civil war
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in the first place, or, at least, might have induced them to put an
end to the madness of that war earlier than they finally did. This
shows that an adequate definition of measure in human affairs
must be subjective at an individual level, cultural at a macro-social level, and always relative to changing external circumstances. Such a definition would have to be dynamic rather than
static, as Aristotle himself hinted by the reference to continuity
and divisibility at the opening of the above passage.
3. Sustainability
According to Aristotle, policies that are effective at present,
and thus seem to be implemented according to measure, should
still be considered hubristic if their desired effects are unsustainable in the foreseeable future. In this context, Aristotle uses the
metaphor of the lifetime of a single individual, as shown in the
following passages from the Ethics:
For [happiness] requires, as we said, not only complete
virtue but also a complete lifetime. Indeed, many
changes and vicissitudes of all sorts occur in one’s lifetime, and the most prosperous man may fall into great
misfortunes in old age, as is told of Priam in the Trojan
epic; and no one calls happy a man who has experienced
such misfortunes and has passed away miserably
(1100a4-9).
(Dei gar, hōsper eipomen, kai aretēs teleias kai biou
teleiou. Pollai gar metabolai ginontai kai pantoiai tuchai
kata ton bion, kai endechetai ton malist’ euthēnounta
megalais sumphorais peripesein epi gērōs, kathaper en
tois Trōikois peri Priamou mutheuetai: ton de toiautais
chrēsamenon tuchais kai teleutēsanta athliōs oudeis eudaimonizei.)
Therefore what would prohibit us from saying that he is
happy who is active in accordance with complete virtue
and is sufficiently equipped with external goods, not for
some chance period but throughout his complete lifetime? Or must we add “and who is destined to live thus
and die accordingly”? Because the future is hidden from
us, and we consider happiness as a teleological goal,
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89
something utterly and absolutely complete. And if this is
so, we shall pronounce happy those among the living in
whom these conditions are, and are to be, fulfilled—and
[we’ll call them] happy human beings (1101a14-20).
(Ti oun kōluei legein eudaimona ton kat’ aretēn teleian
energounta kai tois ektos agathois hikanōs kechorēgēmenon mē ton tuchonta chronon alla teleion bion; ē prostheteon kai biōsomenon houtō kai teleutēsonta kata
logon; epeidē to mellon aphanes hēmis estin, tēn eudaimonian de telos kai teleion tithemen pantēi pantōs. ei d’
houtō, makarious eroumen tōn zōntōn hios huparchei kai
huparxei ta lechthenta, makarious d’ anthrōpous.)
The implied analogy is obvious: The lifetime of an individual
may span three to four generations (say, 60–80 years), while the
historical course of a city-state normally spans many more generations (say, several centuries). A man should be considered
happy only if he lives a measured life during his entire lifetime,
away from the pitfalls of extreme misfortune and misery. Likewise a city-state should be considered successful only if it applies
measured policies with effects that are sustainable in an intergenerational historical period.
On the basis of this analogy, a definition of measure in individual behavior and political organization must satisfy the axiom
of sustainability, which is the criterion for discerning between
actual measure, which is sustainable, and illusory measure,
which is unsustainable. For example, the shared confusion of
Fig. 2: Unsustainable Aesthetic Mess in Contemporary Athens
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contemporary Greeks about the difference between real development and illusory development is manifested by the city they
have built all around the Parthenon in the post-WWII era: Athens
is one of the ugliest and most polluted capital cities in Europe
(Fig. 2). Of course, there are many terribly polluted cities in the
world, but Athens is unique. The city surrounds the Parthenon
chaotically, as if the surrealistic pandemonium of the former
threatens to engulf the Apollonian harmony of the latter. For six
consecutive decades (1949–2009), while the contemporary
Greeks were building their grotesque city, they thought they were
developing their economy in accordance with measure. After all,
they did provide work and housing for millions of Greek peasants
who emigrated from their villages to the new, “modern” Athens.
During that period, under the spell of Atē, most Greeks were incapable of seeing what was obvious to sight—namely, the visual
actuality that their city is a heap of aesthetic hubris lying all
around the Parthenon. As a consequence, they were unable to
take corrective action in time. Only recently, under the specter
of Nemesis, did the Greeks start to re-evaluate their perception
of progress. Now at last, Athenians can see that their city, and the
hubristic model of economic development that underlies it, have
been unsustainable all along.13
This manifestation of Athenian hubris around the Parthenon
is symptomatic of the world’s industrial hubris in regard to planet
earth. Contemporary Athens was built as a gargantuan labor city
that would allegedly provide an ample supply of cheap labor to
heavy industry nearby, at Eleusis, the former site of the Eleusinian Mysteries. At a global level, unbounded materialistic expansion has crowded out the Apollonian tradition. The echo of the
idealistic values of the victors in the Battle of Marathon is becoming increasingly attenuated in the era of so-called globalization. Unlimited economic growth on a planet with limited
13. Nicos Souliotis, “Cultural Economy, Sovereign Debt Crisis and the Importance of Local Contexts: The Case of Athens,” CITIES: The International
Journal of Urban Policy and Planning 33 (2013): 61–68.
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91
resources is not merely unsustainable. It is irrational.
It is too late for the Athenians, because their aesthetic blindness has already brought upon them the current retribution of
socio-economic Nemesis. The pressing question now is whether
it is too late for humanity as well, in view of the climatic Nemesis
that seems is appearing on the horizon. Aberrations from measure
cannot survive the forces of nature for long. Nemesis always intervenes, sooner or later, to restore beauty, harmony and balance,
which are all associated with sustainability.14
Even in judicial practice and strategic analysis, the concepts
of measure and justice are sometimes associated with the notion
of sustainability.15 For example, akin to the concept of measure
is the legal principle of reciprocity or lex talionis (legal equivalence, as in “equivalent retaliation”), as well as the popular saying “tit for tat.” They trace their origins to the Biblical scripture
“an eye for an eye”16 and the Babylonian legal code, enacted in
1772 BC by Hammurabi, the sixth king of Babylon. Hammurabi’s code included no provision for extenuating circumstances to modify a prescribed punishment. According to
Aristotle though, proportionate reciprocity with qualification that
takes account of circumstances, that is, retribution with measure,
14. Patricia Grant, “An Aristotelian Approach to Sustainable Business,”
Corporate Governance 11.1 (2008): 4–14.
15. Stefan Baumgärtner and Martin Quaas, “What is Sustainability Economics?” University of Lüneburg Working Paper Series in Economics,
138 (2009): 3, available at http://hdl.handle.net/10419/30222: “The vision of sustainability aims at justice in the domain of human-nature relationships and in view of the long-term and inherently uncertain future.
This includes three specific relationships . . . : (i) justice between humans of different generations (intergenerational justice), (ii) justice between different humans of the present generation (intragenerational”
justice), and (iii) justice between humans and nature (physiocentric
ethics).”
16. The Biblical commandment “an eye for an eye” is literally “an eye
under an eye” (Leviticus 24:19–21; Exodus 21:22–25; Deuteronomy
19:16–21).
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is the sort of justice that safeguards the sustainability of the citystate (Ethics, 1132b33-35):
this sort of justice does hold men together: reciprocity in
accordance with a proportion and not on the basis of precisely equal return. For it is by proportionate requital that
the city-state holds together.
(Sunechei to toiouton dikaion, to antipeponthos kat’
analogian kai mē kat’ hisotēta. Tōi antipoiein gar analogon summenei hē polis.)
The principle of just retribution is the conceptual basis of
measured response, which is a highly effective strategy in game
theory in the iterated prisoner’s dilemma.17 But under extraordinary circumstances, a policy of reciprocity may be too rigid and
ineffective if it does not satisfy the axiom of sustainability. For
instance, the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 imposed war reparations
beyond measure upon Germany after World War I. Those retributive payments were unsustainable. As consequence, the German
economy was soon ruined, and ultimately its political system collapsed in 1933. After the war, during the military occupation of
Germany (1945-1949), retaliative justice was of little use to the
Allies when they had to decide how to respond sustainably to the
Holocaust. The proper response could not be to visit another
Holocaust on the Germans. Instead, sustainability took center
stage in shaping U.S. policies with respect to Germany, as shown
in the fifth paragraph of the Joint Chiefs of Staff directive 1067,
issued to General Eisenhower in April 1945: “The principal Allied objective is to prevent Germany from ever again becoming
a threat to the peace of the world [italics mine].”
In particular, German reparations to the Allies were rather
moderate and non-monetary, such as technology transfers from
Germany to the U.S. and Russia,18 or capital equipment transfers
17. Anatol Rappoport and Albert M. Chammah, Prisoner’s Dilemma
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1965).
18. John Gimbel, Science, Technology, and Reparations: Exploitation
and Plunder in Postwar Germany (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1990), 171.
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93
to France and Russia—primarily from dismantled German military factories and heavy industry.19 Aiming at sustainability, the
Western Allies implemented an imaginative mix of policies, including: immediate apprehension of war criminals for punishment, control over German education, disarmament and
demilitarization, a federal form of government for post-WWII
Germany, now to be called the Federal Republic of Germany
(FRG), participation of the FRG in supranational organizations,
like OEEC and later OECD, integration of the German economy
into an orderly and prosperous Europe, generous restructuring of
the foreign debt of the FRG by about 50% in 1953,20 a reparations
agreement between the FRG and Israel with respect to the Holocaust, internationalization of the FRG’s entire Armed Forces
under NATO command, and ever-continuing stationing of units
of the U.S. Armed Forces in Germany as forward enablers.
With respect to sustainability, the treatment of defeated Germany by the Allies was a measured policy, and because of this it
has endured and has served the cause of peace in Europe for
many decades. In the wake of the tragedy of World War II, the
greatest war in human history, moderation and sustainability
were the two principles that guided Europe safely, in measure,
on the path of Aristotelian catharsis.21
4. Conclusion
For millennia, from the age of Homer to the present, philosophy
has failed to provide a comprehensive definition of measure with
19. Norman M. Naimark, The Russians in Germany: A history of the
Soviet Zone of occupation 1945-1949. (Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, 1995), 206.
20. Timothy W. Guinnane, “Financial Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung: The
1953 London Debt Agreement,” Yale University Economic Growth
Center Research Paper Series 880 (New Haven: Yale University, 2004),
22 and 24–25. Available at http://ssrn.com/ abstract=493802
21. As first noted by Aristotle (Poetics, 1449b28), the characteristic attribute of tragedy in the theater is that “through pity and fear it effects
relief (catharsis) to these and similar emotions” (di’ eleou kai phobou
perainousa tēn tōn toioutōn pathēmatōn katharsin).
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respect to human behavior. If measure is “due proportion,” then
what exactly is “due”? And if it is a “subjective mean” between
two extremes, one of deficiency and the other of excess, closer
to one extreme than the other, then how much closer? So far, no
magic number (like φ) or undisputed formula has been conceived
for defining measure in human behavior and economics .
This indeterminacy in the concept of measure, coupled with
the human impulsive tendency to excess, has made many individuals, societies, and states prone to hubristic aberrations from
measure. And as soon as people lose their sense of measure, they
also lose their touch with reality.22 But even if they lose that
sense, they might still be able to detect such aberrations by using
the criterion of sustainability.
In this respect, rational analysis of sustainability is a secondbest and time-consuming methodological tool when compared to
instantaneous aesthetic appraisal of human activity with respect
to beauty, balance, and harmony. The Nazis would not have
needed a rational analysis of their genocidal hubris if they only
could have seen the ugliness, the monstrosity, and the barbarity
of their concentration camps. They might then have returned to
their senses by themselves, in time. Similarly, open-minded residents of Athens, Detroit, or Shanghai, might not have needed an
elaborate analysis of sustainability if they could have seen for
themselves what is instantly clear to the eye, namely, the dead
end of hubristic economic development.
But for those who are short-sighted or blind with regard to
measure, the Aristotelian criterion of sustainability might well be
enlightening.23
22. Do humans really have a sense of measure? The answer to this question is a part of a discussion that includes the question of the best human
life. This inquiry demands philosophic reflection, but such reflection
would not be possible if one could not, in the first place, simply see its
form (Sachs, “Measure, Moderation, and the Mean,” 22).
23. Indicators and measures of sustainability derived from the Canadian
Report of the Alberta Round Table on Environment and Economy (1993)
are listed at www.iisd.org/educate/learn/measures.htm.
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Platonic Theōria
Mark Shiffman
Plato’s dialogues incite us to think about both the words we use
and the phenomena we are trying to understand by means of
those words. In some cases the relationship between word and
phenomena provides the explicit theme of the dialogue, as in the
case of justice (dikaiosunē) in the Republic or knowledge
(epistēmē) in the Theaetetus. There are other themes, however,
that remain implicit and revolve around words that require us to
think more generally about the relationship of words and phenomena—for example, speech (logos) or wonder (thaumazein).
The latter class would include theōria, which we tend to translate
as “contemplation” and which seems to suggest a more direct,
less word-bound relationship to the phenomena, a kind of insight
the dialogues seek to foster but cannot encapsulate in words.
But of course theōria is a word, and a peculiar one. Do we
understand this word, and do we understand the phenomena it
bespeaks? Let us ask a question the dialogues never directly raise:
What is theōria? To what does the word refer, or toward what
does it gesture? To reflect on this question, we must reflect on
how the word theōria is used in the dialogues. When we do, we
will notice several things: 1) the language of theōria (including
the related verb theōrein and noun theōros) has meanings in
Greek before Plato, and the dialogues use these words in ways
related to but departing from their previous uses; 2) there is no
simply identifiable single meaning of theōria in the dialogues;
3) outside of the Laws, in which Socrates does not appear, the
only character who uses “theoric” language in these innovatively
varied ways is (with a single exception) Socrates; and 4) his use
of this language varies in relation to the demands of the particular
Mark Shiffman is Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities
at Villanova University.
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interlocutor and conversation. The question then becomes: How
should we understand what Plato depicts Socrates as doing by
means of the language of theōria?
I: The Range of “Theoric” Terms
In a century in which the meanings of theōria and theōrein become quite flexible, they reach their maximum flexibility in the
Platonic dialogues. In the attested uses we have from the 540’s
to the 420’s (from Theognis, Aeschylus, and Herodotus to Aristophanes, Euripides, and Lysias) we find a group of meanings for
words of the theōr- root which we may call “traditional,” in the
sense that they are clearly distinguishable in the early authors and
continue in a relatively ossified use through later ones:
1. theōros: a delegate to consult the Oracle
(later: theōria as a delegation and theōrein as
participating in a delegation)
2. theōria: a sacred festival involving games or performances
theōrein: attending or being a spectator at such festivals
(later: theōros as festival-delegate, theōria as festival-delegation)
3. theōros: observer of an unusual spectacle
theōria: the spectacle or its observation (usually as “sightseeing”)
theōrein: observing such a spectacle
These ordinary denotations of the words share certain characteristics: the viewer travels away from his customary setting and
enters into an attentiveness that differs from his everyday attitude
toward familiar beings.
From the 420s to the 320s, in Thucydides, Xenophon, Plato,
Isocrates, and Aristotle, these words receive metaphorical extensions of meaning that differ with each author, but share a common
character.1 By evoking physical and psychic displacement and
1. Thucydides 3.23.4.4 and 4.93.1.5. Xenophon, Anabasis 1.2.16 and
2.4.25–6; Hellenica 4.5.6; Cyropaideia 4.3.3; Memorabilia 4.8.7; Symposium 7.3. Isocrates Busiris 46, To Nicocles 35.6, Antidosis 277.1–4, Evagoras
29.3, 73.9, 76.5, and Epistle 6.12.10, On the Peace 74.5, Nicocles or the
Cyprians 17.5–7, and Panathenaicus 21.7, 39.2–40.4 and 222.6.
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the absorbing spectacles constitutive of traditional theōria, each
author highlights experiences in which we are drawn out of our
everyday mode of attentiveness into the presence of something
exceptional. The story of Aristotle’s innovations in theoric language (besides requiring a prior account of Plato’s) is vast and
complex. Whereas the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae gives roughly
125 instances up to the fourth century of words with the theōrroot in authors other than Aristotle (54 of which occur in Plato),
in the Aristotelian corpus it locates nearly 700, only a handful of
which bear traditional senses. What we can say is that theōria in
the sense of attention to noetic objects and Aristotle’s coinage of
the adjective theōrētikos (especially as used to describe a way of
life) achieved remarkable success in subsequent philosophical
usage and became new ossified terms. After Aristotle, innovation
in theoric language effectively comes to an end.2
Plato exhibits the greatest variety of innovative denotations
of theoric terms. 22 instances bear traditional senses. In the other
32 cases we find extensions beyond the traditional circle of meanings that we may classify according to the following benchmarks:
1. Adaptation of traditional sense to imagined social/political
context (Laws 12, 950d–952d)
2. Traditional theoric settings, nontraditional acts of attention
(Laws 650a7, 815b4; Lysis 206e9)
3. Observation of other persons for the sake of judging them (Laws
772a1, 781c4; Gorgias 523e4)
4. Observation of nonhuman entities for the sake of judging them
(Laws 663c4; Philebus 42b3; Theaetetus 177e2)
5. Observation of particulars for the sake of recognizing a general
pattern (Laws 695c6; Philebus 53d9; Phaedo 99d6)
6. Beholding beautiful/noble things without (apparent) ulterior end
(Symposium 210d4; Gorgias 474d8–9; Phaedrus 276b4, 276d5;
2. Subtle and interesting changes take place in the Greek Church
Fathers’ writings about the relationship between prayer and knowledge, but these are best understood as modifications of the specifically Aristotelian sense of the words.
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Republic 529b3, 601a2 and a7, 606b1, 607d1)
7. Beholding transcendent beings or forms
(Phaedrus 247c1, d4; Republic 486a8, 511c6, 517d5;
Phaedo 65e2, 109e8 [ambiguously])
All these varied extensions of the range of theoric language in
Plato involve attention to particular beings, whether identified as
specifically as certain individual persons or as generically as “just
things,” “beautiful/noble things,” or “pleasures and pains.” The
beholding of transcendent beings that comes to be associated with
the philosophic sense of the words constitutes a quite deliberate
extension of meaning, always used in relation to other senses of
the words theōria and theōrein in the same dialogues.
This “contemplative” sense, then, is only one of a broad
spectrum of senses in Plato, by no means more common than others (6 or 7 instances out of 54), and not the only distinctly Platonic extension of the meaning of these words (since headings 4
through 6 above are distinctly Platonic innovations as well). With
this in mind, let us examine the three dialogues–Phaedrus,
Phaedo, and Republic–in which these words seem to denote or
suggest transcendent vision of eternal truth, which is both the
maximum metaphorical extension of their traditional sense and
the sense of the word most distinctively associated with Plato and
his characterization of the philosophic experience.
II: The Phaedrus
In Phaedrus, a dialogue which concerns artful composition, innovative senses of the verb theōrein appear in two nearly symmetric pairs (247c1, d4 and 276b4, d5). The first two cases occur
within the Palinode’s description of the soul’s journey to the outer
cosmos and the region of the true beings. The word theōrein is
not, however, predicated of human souls, but only of those of the
gods. Since the horses of their chariots are well-behaved, the gods
(or their souls) can stand erect at the edge of the heavens and
gaze untroubled at the truth beyond (247b6–d4). The soul of the
man capable of following the gods to the limit is troubled by its
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horses and at best only able to scarcely have a look (248a4).3 This
whole festive procession of the gods going to a remarkable spectacle with their clients in train recalls the festival-going type of
traditional theōrein.4 Socrates appropriately applies this word to
the gods in contradistinction to the human souls because of their
focused attention given to the thing seen, a dimension of traditional theōrein carried over into all the innovative uses. The gods
gaze steadily, while the human souls look only with a divided attention, most of it elsewhere.5 Transcendent theōrein is beyond
the power of the human soul even in the proximity to eternal beings imagined in the Palinode, and thus a fortiori to the embodied
soul in this life.
The other two instances of theōrein in this dialogue, by contrast, have as their objects beautiful but ephemeral products of
human artifice. In discussing the appropriate way to engage in
writing, Socrates likens the author to a farmer. The latter is serious about the crop from which he derives sustenance and profit;
he would not plant these seeds in a forcing garden for the pleasure
of ephemeral gazing, but would only engage in such planting in
play or for the sake of a festival (276b1–5). So too, the writer
who is serious about the just, beautiful, and good will write only
as a recreation, delightedly gazing on his delicate productions
without expecting anything else to come of them, unless a spur
to memory in old age, and perhaps an aid to those pursuing the
same paths of inquiry (276d1–5).
3. While 247d2-4 seems to leave open the possibility that a human soul,
“insofar as it has a care for receiving what befits it,” can also experience
theōria, the strong contrast of gods and humans at 248a1 appears to minimize if not eliminate this possibility.
4. At the City Dionysia, for example, Athenians were divided into tribes
while proceeding to and sitting in the theater, and each tribe was represented by one general pouring libations and one judge of the competitions (see Sara Monoson Plato’s Democratic Entanglements: Athenian
Politics and the Practice of Philosophy [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000], 92–96).
5. Accordingly, at 278c Socrates insists that only a god could be wise,
while men can at best be lovers of wisdom.
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The key to understanding the relationship between these two
pairs of instances lies in the character of Phaedrus, whose world
is bounded by his love of speeches. At the outset of the dialogue,
Socrates finds Phaedrus on his way out of the city to commit to
memory a speech of Lysias that has particularly impressed him.
The lewd insinuation of Socrates’s reference to the scroll of
Lysias’s speech Phaedrus clutches in his left hand under his cloak
(228d6–7) suggests the fruitlessness of his love of the written
word. This suggestion associates him both with the farmer who
puts his efforts into non-nourishing hothouse plants and with the
intemperate lovers of the Palinode, whose bodily gratification of
eros prevents the nourishing stream of beauty from flowing to
the wings of the soul that, if grown, would lift them up to their
true heavenly nourishment (251a–b).
The implicit critique of Phaedrus as one distracted from true
nourishment by love of speeches receives its most pointed expression immediately after the Palinode. In the face of Socrates’s
lyrical account of true beauty and its benefits to the soul, Phaedrus distinctly manifests his fixation on artificial beauty by professing his admiration for the beauty of the speech only insofar
as it raises a formidable challenge to the skills of Lysias (257c2);
he is impervious to the inspiration of its imaginative content as
it applies to his own soul. Socrates responds to Phaedrus’s impassibility by implicitly comparing him to the cicadas, who were
once men who became so mad for music that they ceased to care
about food and drink. Plato has Socrates warn Phaedrus (and the
reader) not to be bewitched by literary artistry into a self-oblivious aestheticism that would distract us from caring about our own
souls in relation to the truth–or in Socrates’s words, about where
we are coming from and where we are going (227a1) and whether
our soul is monstrous or not (230a).6
Socrates, by contrast, professes himself a lover of the living
speech of dialectic (266b3–4). Thus, in the agricultural analogy,
6. The initial indication of Phaedrus’ self–oblivion is that, entranced by
the prospect of conning Lysias’s speech, he in fact does not know where
he is coming from or going to. He claims to be coming from Lysias, when
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he stands parallel to the farmer who plants a serious crop. In the
same breath, he claims that when he finds a man naturally able
to make dialectical divisions and groupings, he follows him like
a god (266b5–7). Thus, in the realm of speeches, he is the equivalent of the Palinode’s true lover, whose reverence for the godlike
beloved enables him to follow in the train of the god in the circuits of the heavens (251a1–7) and thus to attain in small measure
the true nourishment of the soul. Like the vision of the beautiful
beloved chastely endured, the practice of dialectic helps the soul
regain something of the nourishing vision of the intelligibles.
It seems then that in each half of the dialogue Socrates uses
theōrein to denote the highest kind of delight: in the cosmos of
the Palinode, this is the delight of unperturbed gazing on the fullness of truth and being; in Phaedrus’s world, the same place is
occupied by the undisturbed delight in masterful speeches. The
reversal of its valence from the first pair of instances to the second–from lyrically celebrated height of the soul’s destiny to critically exposed squandering of the soul’s best labors–emphasizes
the opposite tendencies of Phaedrus’s hedonistic and effete love
of speeches and Socrates’s love of dialectic. Socrates first uses
theōrein to express the ideal, however unreachable by humans,
that may be imagined as polestar and spur to the philosophic enterprise. He then uses it to express the idle and fruitless delight
in beautiful speeches that makes an idol of man’s power to produce beauty, and so obscures the natural connection between
beauty and truth.
At the same time, Plato also dramatizes the problematic character of dialectic, which occupies an ambiguous status between
these two poles of theōrein. If dialectic is a process of grouping
and dividing according to classes, and these classes are necessarily delineated by man, what can guarantee that they bring us in
the direction of the divine theōrein, if the reference point of that
divine experience itself, as a steady vision of all truth, is beyond
he is in fact being spiritually drawn to him by his love for his speechwriting prowess; and the countryside walk he is heading toward on the advice
of his physician friend is in fact a flight from the threat of ill health (227a).
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the sure reach of man? May these delineations not turn into bewitching and calcified products of our speech? That is a phenomenon dialectic must continually confront and seek to overcome,
supported by partial intuitions of the natural and intelligible
whole but without sure and final knowledge of it.
III: The Phaedo
In Plato’s Phaedo, we find theoric language again associated with
the aims and practice of dialectic and the problem of self-oblivion. The words theōria and theōrein occur in the dialogue three
times each: theōria thrice in the traditional sense of an official
delegation to Delos (in the conversation between Phaedo and
Echecrates that frames the narrated dialogue), and theōrein in untraditional senses within the dialogue itself, in response to the
unfolding of the philosophical drama.
Socrates’s interlocutors, Simmias and Cebes, are associates
of the Pythagorean Philolaus (61d), who prioritizes the mathematical, musical and cosmological aspects of Pythagorean teaching over its “religious” (cultic and ritual) aspects.7 Accordingly,
Simmias and Cebes are devoted to investigation of nature, and
treat the question of the soul’s immortality with skepticism, professing uncertainty regarding the rationale for the Pythagorean
prohibition of suicide.
Socrates develops his explanation of philosophy as preparation for death by conversing with the two Pythagoreans in the
cultic idiom underemphasized in their branch of the tradition. He
speaks of philosophy as a kind of purification of the soul from
the influence of the body, thus suggesting a strong dualism of the
kind necessarily implied by the Pythagorean claim that bodies
and souls are two different things that can be sundered and rejoined in reincarnation.
In the context of this explanation the verb theōrein first occurs, when Socrates introduces the question of the “just itself,”
7. See Walter Burkert, Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), pp.176–208, 277,
298, 480.
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(along with the beautiful and good, greatness, health and
strength). He asks:
Is that which is truest in them seen [theōreitai]
through the body, or is it like this: whoever of us best
and most precisely prepares himself to think about
each thing he investigates will come closest to knowing each thing? (65e1-4)
At first reading, the question might seem to be, “Do we theōrein
these things through the body, or rather through thinking?”
Strictly speaking, however, the verb theōrein applies only (and
interrogatively) to the hypothetical sense-activity of the body.
The weight of Pythagorean doctrine might however lead one to
construe it as applying also to the activity of the intellect in which
the purifying preparation culminates–especially as Socrates invokes the language of purification characteristic of the Orphic
mysteries, with their revelations of extraordinary knowledge to
the initiates (65e6, 69d).8 Socrates’s grammatical ellipsis thus
suggests (without itself necessarily reproducing) the Pythagorean
tendency to understand soul and its phenomena by analogy to
body, as a body-like, localizable and separable thing. It is left for
the reader to wonder whether the proper cognition of what is
truest is best characterized as theōrein.
The Pythagorean and Orphic cultic mysteries explicitly profess that the purification of the soul is accompanied by a privileged and salvific knowledge. Soul is understood above all as
pure intellect, while passions, which perturb the purity of the intellect, are understood as bodily. This perspective governs the entire first half of the dialogue; the first three “proofs” of
immortality depend upon the identification of soul with pure intellect. Only in the second half of the dialogue does the soul as
principle of life enter into the reasoning.
This implicit cultic-Pythagorean identification of soul as pure
intellect, unrelated to but entangled with body, is reproduced in
an obscured form in rationalist Pythagoreanism, insofar as the
latter is wholly devoted to pure intellectual attainments. Thus
while the older Pythagorean tradition occupies its adherents with
8. “Orphism and Pythagoreanism were almost inextricably intertwined
in the fifth century” (Burkert 1972, 39).
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transformation of the soul in a self-attentive discipline of life, the
newer strand, devoted to scientific knowledge, leaves in obscurity
the concrete interplay of soul and body in the passions, engendering forgetfulness of the soul and lack of self-knowledge.
Socrates’s turn to the discussion of misology that occupies
the second half of the dialogue seems incited (at least in part) by
his recognition that Cebes is afflicted by this self-oblivion. When
Socrates addresses the relationship between types of soul and the
lives and destinies belonging to them (81e–84b), Cebes, hitherto
so quick to follow Socrates’s meaning, has difficulty understanding at almost every turn. His hesitations suggest the following
deficiencies of awareness: he has not thought about the variety
of kinds of soul (81e); he has no sense of the relative happiness
of virtuous, nonintellectual citizens (82b); he has no definite conception of that from which philosophy offers the soul liberation
(82d); he has paid little attention to the drama of the soul’s passions in response to the freedom offered by philosophy, especially
the influence passions have on the intellect (83c); and he has no
concrete notion of the dynamics by which the soul becomes riveted to the influence of the body (83d). In short, he understands
soul only in schematic terms of the opposition of body and intellect, and not through firsthand attentiveness to the complexity of
its real possibilities for order and disorder.
After some silent reflections (perhaps on these shortcomings
of Cebes), Socrates brings into the foreground the influence of
passions on thought, in three ways.
First, in rejecting the common interpretation of the swan’s
song as a lament, Socrates appeals to the regularity of natural
phenomena–observing that no other bird sings when it is anxious
or fearful–in a way that is surely welcome to his hearers. But he
also points out that the intellectual failure of humans to note this
regularity and apply it to the swan is due to a passion, namely
fear of death, which they mistakenly project onto the swan (84e–
85a).
Second, sensing the depressing effect on the hearers of the
objections by Simmias and Cebes to the immortality thesis,
Socrates warns against misology (89d–90d). Misology arises
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when one has the repeated experience of accepting the truth of
arguments uncritically and then seeing them fall prey to criticism—probably an experience familiar to these rationalist
Pythagoreans, especially with regard to the school’s doctrines regarding the soul, and especially to Cebes, the more obstinate
critic.9 Socrates warns that we are prone to grow disillusioned
with argument as such, rather than blame our own weakness as
arguers. He shows himself a keen observer of souls, one who understands their aspirations and disappointments and how these
influence their interpretation of reason itself.
Third, Socrates offers himself as an example of the influence
of passion on the soul’s engagement in reasoning (91a). He
claims to be worried that, under the influence of fear of death, he
is approaching the argument about immortality in the spirit of
those who merely want to win a case. He confesses to pleonexia
and philonikia, grasping after more than his due and infatuation
with victory, and thus exhibits the critical self-knowledge he
seeks to engender.
By articulating these pitfalls of the intellect brought about by
passions, Socrates makes manifest a middle ground upon which
the two influence one another, the true ground on which purification of the soul must take place. What he exemplifies is not an
objectivity of pure intellection insulating itself from all that is
foreign to its purity, but rather a self-critical awareness of the mutual influence of reason and passion that will allow a proper vigilance of the soul’s activity in pursuit of understanding, both in
oneself and in others. In this understanding, passion does not belong entirely to the body or to the soul; but the understanding of
passion and its relationship to thought belongs integrally to the
soul’s self-understanding. Soul is not a being like other beings of
9. Simmias shows himself willing to be convinced of doctrines he already
believes by the first argument that offers itself, though he is always happy to
hear more (73b). The suicide prohibition, which is connected with the whole
complex of Pythagorean doctrines about the soul, had been communicated
to Simmias and Cebes by Philolaus and others (presumably Pythagoreans),
but apparently without sufficient supporting argumentation (61e).
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which we render account, first because it is the soul that must
render that account, and second because we can only render account of soul itself by means of self-knowledge. This difference
is not dualistic, like that between two comparable beings we
might account for in the world known by soul, but is a difference
that keeps the relationship between such different modes of being
as puzzling as it ought to be.
As a result of his inattention to the phenomena of soul, Cebes
fails both to attain self-knowledge and to distinguish the soul
from other kinds of being. His last argument against immortality
compares body and soul to a man and a cloak (88a-b). Even if a
soul outlasts a body, might it not eventually wear down through
successive incarnations? Thus soul appears as something affected
the way bodies are in its dealings with bodies. Beings are all on
one level; what appears as a body-soul dualism is really a kind
of monism of the ontological imagination. The attempt to account
for all beings in the same terms (in the case of Pythagoreans,
through number) leads to the overzealous hopes that end in misology.
Thus, in his attempt to counter the threat of misology,
Socrates proposes what he calls his “second sailing,” a discipline
of conversation that allows the eidetic determination of a thing
to appear in its distinctness.10 As eidetic, it is distinct in status
from its embodiments; as a determination, it is distinct from other
eidetic determinations. In this context Socrates uses the verb
theōrein (99d6) once again in relation to those things he “never
stops saying, both at other times and in the earlier speech”
10. To be precise, the second sailing seems to refer to one or more of several things. The first, on the procedural level, is the so–called “method of
hypothesis.” The second is the result of Socrates’s applying that procedure
to the problem of the aitios, namely the resort to “participation in forms”
as the best explanation for why things are as they are. Cebes and Simmias
assent to this result (102a1), and it, rather than the procedural principle,
informs the subsequent discussion. It may also refer to the implied turn to
“the human things,” to the soul’s self–understanding as the necessary starting point for all philosophizing. It is beyond the scope of this essay to attempt to clarify the relationship among these three meanings.
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(100b1–2), namely that the beautiful and good and great themselves with respect to themselves “are something.”11 That is, he
refers explicitly back to the very discussion in which he previously used the verb theōrein.
In that earlier discussion, it seemed that, in keeping with the
mystery-structure, the process of purification by “looking at each
thing with thought alone” served as preparation for seeing the
“itself with respect to itself” as a culmination. Here, however, the
reverse is clearly the case. Socrates finds it safest to begin from
these things (100b5) if he is to think properly about them so as
to make progress toward the truth. It is the identification of what
belongs to the thing discussed wholly with respect to its own determination that provides Socrates and his interlocutor with an
initial clarity of communication, upon which basis they can proceed to further clarification of the question at hand.12 They are
not likely to arrive at a grand cosmic vision as Socrates had once
hoped, and as the earlier discussion of the “in-itself,” also pursued in the spirit of the “first sailing,” may have suggested.
Accordingly, Socrates here uses theōrein to refer, not to the
culmination of the soul’s journey of inquiry, but rather to a wholly
natural, though out of the ordinary, kind of seeing. He speaks of
those “looking at (theōrountes) and investigating (skopoumenoi)
the eclipsing sun,” which he compares to investigating the causes
of natural things by looking at the natural things themselves. The
result of both is a kind of blindness. By contrast, when he speaks
of seeking the truth of beings in speeches, he talks only of “investigating” (skopein, 99e5–6); and to reinforce this implicit con11. Ti einai, here as also at 65d5.
12. This, for Gadamer, is the crucial difference between the Socratic approach to philosophizing and what is typically desired by the interlocutors
(including the readers): “In the final analysis, our wanting to think of the
participation of existent things in being as a relationship of existent things
to each other always involves us in a false concretion. Instead we would
do better to acknowledge from the start that this participation is the point
of departure for all meaningful talk of the idea and of the universal” (“The
Proofs of Immortality in Plato’s Phaedo,” in Dialogue and Dialectic: Eight
hermeneutical Studies of Plato, tr. P. Christopher Smith (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1986), pp.124-5 (emphasis mine).
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trast, he immediately and emphatically rejects a too strict analogy
between his visual image and the phenomena of investigation in
speeches (99e6–100a3). Theōrein here names an activity of the
bodily senses that quite clearly should not serve as a model for
the activity of the inquiring mind.
Socrates delivers this account, which rejects understanding
natural things in terms of generation, in response to Cebes’s naturalistic notion of the dissolution of soul—a problem which, according to Socrates, would require “a thorough examination of
the cause of generation and destruction” (95e9). Socrates implicitly warns Cebes that his mode of inquiry will produce only blindness and disappointment. By means of the second sailing,
Socrates and Cebes make some progress in clarifying the question starting out from agreement about what is strictly proper to
soul. Ultimately, however, Cebes fails to adhere to this discipline.
He makes the mistake, which Socrates does not explicitly correct,
of deducing the soul’s inability to suffer corruption from its
deathlessness (106d).
As Socrates implies in his somewhat evasive response to
Cebes’s confident assertion, one might properly say that soul is
deathless by virtue of its eidetic determination, since the presence
of soul in a thing necessarily entails the presence of life. Soul as
an object of the intellect can also be strictly considered not liable
to corruption by virtue of its eidetic status as such, to which the
question of corruption would be simply irrelevant. Neither premise enables us to conclude anything about the perdurance of actual living souls.
In applying a determination of the eidos of soul as such to
the level of instantiation (i.e. equating deathlessness of soul as
soul with incorruptibility of any given soul), Cebes exhibits what
Aristotle will later identify as a characteristic flaw of Pythagorean
metaphysics: By making number the being of things, Pythagoreanism fails to distinguish numbers, as intelligibles without qualities, from the sensible entities they are supposed to compose.13
13. Metaphysics 1090a31–b2. Compare Gadamer, p.112: “Plato . . . is not
simply Pythagorean. On the contrary, he explicitly distinguishes the noetic
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Thus, even within the structure of the cosmos apprehended by
soul, Pythagoreanism fails to discern the eidetic determinations
through which alone the soul can attempt an adequate grasp of
beings.14
In the face of the recalcitrance of this basic Pythagorean principle, Socrates turns to a myth, in which he uses theōrein for the
last time. He acknowledges the argument’s inconclusiveness and
encourages Simmias and Cebes to push the dialectical inquiry
further back, to examine more clearly the primary hypotheses in
spite of their inclination to trust in them. Only if they do this sufficiently will they follow the logos as much as humanly possible
(107b). The myth, that is to say, enters on the heels of an acknowledgment that the dialectic has been inadequately achieved
because of the ultimate hypotheses from which Simmias and
Cebes seem unable to break free, and it seems intended to address
this state of affairs.
In this most thoroughly corporeal of Socrates’s eschatological myths, the “higher world” is not an eidetic world or a place
of souls, but a literally higher and more perfect region of the
earth, whose stones are less liable to corruption and whose people
live longer (by both of which Cebes has characterized soul).15
These purer and higher regions are imaginable precisely through
world of numbers and mathematical relationships from what is given in the
reality of concrete appearances.” (Thus also Burkert, pp. 31 and 480.) Moreover, the Pythagoreans load numbers with all sorts of noetic determinations, without recognizing that the noetic forms must provide the
ontological ground for these distinctions, such that number cannot be
the most fundamental determination of beings (unless they are seen as
more fundamental determinants of the ideas themselves, as may be the
case in the Platonic “unwritten doctrines”). Thus the Pythagoreans occlude the distinction between the aesthetic and the noetic.
14. If the question remains open whether the soul’s requirement of eidetic determinations for understanding the world is to be attributed to
the soul or to the world, this is only to say that the Socratic approach
keeps the relationship of soul to world as puzzling as it ought to be as
well.
15. Stones: 110e2–5. People: 111b1–3.
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proportionality: as air is to water in visual clarity and purity, so
the ether in the upper regions is to air (if not more so), and the
senses and wisdom of the inhabitants exceed ours in the same
ratio (111b). There the geometrically structured beauties of nature, the precious stones, are in plain sight, not hidden under the
rough ground as here (11a1–2). This higher world seems to body
forth the main features of the Pythagorean ontological imagination of reality.
In this context Socrates speaks of the hypothetical case of
someone from our impure part of the earth rising up to catch sight
of the outer, purer surface. If his nature were up to the task of
holding himself aloft gazing (theōrousa), he would see the true
heaven and light and earth (109e5–8). Here theōrein (in a fairly
traditional sense of traveling afar to see extraordinary sights) does
express an image of the goal of Pythagorean inquiry, namely the
vision of the purified natural and visible things. The suggestion
that one might achieve this by growing wings (109e3) reminds
us of the Palinode of the Phaedrus, but thereby reinforces the
contrast that here we are speaking emphatically of an imagined
bodily journey. That the geographical context of the image suggests flight above the Mediterranean (especially in light of the
pervasive imagery of the Theseus story in the dialogue16) also
calls to mind Icarus, a fitting image of the calamitous misology
attendant upon the excessive hopes of Pythagorean rationalism.
The crucial detail for understanding the role of the myth in
relation to the underlying concerns of the dialogue would seem
to be the remark that among those dead vouchsafed transport to
the higher regions (who seem to meet their fates in their bodily
condition), only the ones purified by philosophy go on to live
without bodies in even higher dwelling places whose beauty it is
“not easy to make manifest” (114c5). The true philosophical purification, the art of dialectic conducted in light of the soul’s pursuit of self-knowledge, is not visible or discernible through
proportion; it can only be distinctly known from the inside. The
intermediately higher world seems to translate the dangers of the
Pythagorean aspiration into spatial terms and to put it into perspective in relation to the indescribable fate of the philosopher.
16. Cf. Jacob Klein, “Plato’s Phaedo,” in Lectures and Essays (Annapolis: St. John’s College Press, 1985), 375-393
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It is not those who make their dwelling in the land of mathematical purity who ascend to fundamental philosophical insight, but
rather the dialectical philosopher who starts out on the rough
ground of our world and aims beyond the vision of a mathematized nature to the eidetic principles of being.
The three instances of theōrein are thus associated with three
kinds of purification. The dualistic approach to philosophy seeks
to purify the mind by ignoring the body, thinking it will culminate
in theōrein of the true beings; but this hypothetical theōrein is
conceived as belonging to a body-like soul on the analogy of bodily perception. The second sailing seeks to purify the logos by
means of fidelity to the eidos in the light of the pursuit of selfknowledge; it distinguishes itself from the blindness-inducing
theōrein of natural phenomena. The monistic myth imagines a
purification of the visible things themselves by placing them in
higher, purer physical conditions, and depicts theōrein of these
perfected natural beings as the inevitably frustrating, misologyinducing goal of Pythagorean thought.
This consistent emphasis on purification harks back to the
uses of theōria in the initial conversation that frames the dialogue.17 In three consecutive sentences (58b2, b5, c1), Phaedo
says the following about the theōria to Delos that delays
Socrates’s execution:
1. It has been performed annually by the Athenians since they
vowed it to Apollo if he should save Theseus.
2. They must remain pure from executions while it is gone, and uncooperative winds sometimes considerably delay its sailing.
3. It begins when the priest of Apollo lays the wreath on the prow
of the ship.
Perhaps the mentions of Apollo in the first and third sentences
about the theōria to Delos provide a key to the parallel. Apollo
is a god of ritual purification and of vision, which correspond re17. As Burkert (p.474) notes, the “significance of 3 in purification ritual
was emphasized by Aristotle” in On the Heavens 268a14.
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spectively to the dualistic and monistic aspects of Pythagoreanism. Moreover, Pythagoras himself seems to have been identified by his early followers with the “Hyperborean Apollo.”18
Whatever we make of these two instances, the central use
here presents a clearer parallel to the central use of theōrein: the
theōria to Delos is delayed by the sort of conditions that might
(but in this case apparently do not) lead one to resort to a “second
sailing.” We learn at the beginning of the narrated conversation
that Socrates, during the period of his confinement that corresponds to this lag, practices his own different kind of devotion
to Apollo, one that combines the soul’s self-knowledge with the
pursuit of communication through eidetic precision: He is not
sure he clearly understood the injunction in his dreams to make
music, fearing that his own passion for philosophy may have led
him to construe the class of “music” too narrowly (60e–61b).
Though superficially an abandonment of philosophy, the purification he carries out through poetry reflects the purification of
the second sailing and of Socratic self-knowledge: it too is chosen
as the “safer” course (61a8, 100d8).
IV: The Republic
In the Phaedrus, theōrein denotes, first, a steady attention to the
vision of complete and eternal truth available to gods alone and,
second, a non-serious delight in products of man’s art. In the
Phaedo, it flirts with expressing a human vision of eternal truth,
but then suggests that this excessive expectation is characteristic
of a false philosophy. It becomes all the more striking, then, to
find theōria used twice in the Republic to refer explicitly to a
kind of intellectual vision of eternal and divine truth available to
human beings. In Book VI, Socrates describes the philosopher
as enjoying theōria “of all time and all being” (486a8).19 In the
allegory of ascent from the cave to the sunlit regions, he remarks
that it should be no surprise if the philosopher, coming into the
darkness from “divine contemplations” (apo theiōn theōriōn,
517d4–5), cuts a ridiculous figure when forced to deal with shad18. Alternatively, he was thought to be the son of Apollo (Burkert,
pp.141–146, 149, 168).
19. Quotations are from Allan Bloom’s translation of The Republic
(New York: Basic Books, 1968), unless otherwise noted.
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owy human affairs.
If we look to Socrates’s relationship to his interlocutors to
explain this anomaly, we note that, of the twelve instances of theoric language in the Republic, all but one appear in conversation
with Glaucon, even though he is Socrates’s explicit interlocutor
in only a little over half the conversation.20 We note as well that
Glaucon exhibits the single use of theōrein in the whole corpus
by any character other than Socrates or the Athenian Stranger
(517d5).
The association of theoric language with Glaucon begins, in
fact, in the opening scene: he and Socrates go together to the Piraeus to see the festival of Bendis, and when they have attended
and watched (theōrēsantes), they start back to town (327b1). Although Socrates applies the participle to both himself and Glaucon, the motives he identifies are only his own: he wanted to see
how they would conduct the novel festival (327a2–3). Socrates’s
judgment, that both Athenians and Thracians conducted themselves with equal propriety (a4–5), reveals a philosophic motivation of his theōrein that will be a central facet of his discussion
of the best city: a desire to see how different peoples with different laws and educations conduct themselves, especially toward
the gods. The motives of Glaucon remain a question for us. Plato
thus invites us to pay attention to two phenomena in relation to
one another: the motives of theōrein and the psychology of Glaucon.
The dramatic intervention of Glaucon also provokes the first
instance of theōrein within the conversation. Mocking the city of
rustic simplicity Socrates has described to Adeimantus as a city
fit only for pigs, Glaucon insists that a city fit for men requires
refinements, adornments and relishes. Socrates responds: “Now
the true city is in my opinion the one we just described–a healthy
city, as it were. But, if you want to, let’s look at [theōrēsōmen] a
feverish city, too” (372e8). The feverish city becomes an object
20. The exception is in the discussion of regimes in Book Eight
(556c10), where Socrates speaks of rich and poor citizens of an oligarchy mixing together at festivals (kata theōrias) or on campaigns.
This sole use of theoric language in speech addressed to Adeimantus is
a strictly traditional use, which underscores the nontraditional uses in
Socrates’s exchanges with Glaucon.
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of attention when Glaucon’s unexamined passions introduce a
new dimension of motivation into the inquiry. The question of
justice began with Socrates’s perplexity about what exactly it is,
a perplexity arising from a specific contradiction: according to
Cephalus’s conception of justice, certain actions appear to be
both just and not just (331c). With the intervention of Thrasymachus, the focus shifts from the resolution of perplexity to controversy over the choiceworthiness of justice and of different
ways of life. The theōrein of the feverish city must satisfy not
only the practical need to choose a way of life and the intellectual
need to resolve perplexity, but also the demands of certain unquestioned appetites.
The subsequent instances of theoric language fall into three
types, corresponding to these intertwined dimensions of the motivation of the inquiry. In the discussion of the auxiliaries’ early
education, theōrein is used within the framework of pursuing a
chosen way of life. In the discussion of the philosophical nature
and its education, Socrates gradually disentangles the philosopher’s motive to resolve perplexity from the ruler’s motive to
maintain a certain way of life for himself and his city. In the discussion of imitation and dramatic poetry in Book Ten, Socrates
reveals the hidden action of unacknowledged appetites in the
theōrein of the spectator of dramatic poetry. This gradual process
of disentanglement reveals both the advantages and limitations
of Glaucon as an interlocutor in this inquiry.
1. Practical/Productive Theōrein. The next two instances of
theōrein occur within the discussion of whether the children of
the city destined for the warrior class should watch the older warriors conducting battle. Socrates, arguing that they should, speaks
of an analogous need of potters’ apprenticed sons to learn the art
by watching their fathers at work (467a4, c2).
This kind of theōrein has four moments: 1) the projection of
a possibility for oneself of being and doing; 2) the desire to appropriate a characteristic (power, skill, virtue) needed to fulfill
that possibility; 3) observation of that characteristic in action in
order to grasp its archē; 4) the emergence into view of the archē.
The watching for and seeing the emergence of the archē that is
theōrein proper is guided by a projection of one’s potential self
toward which one’s aspirations are directed, which is to say by
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the desirability of a way of life. The paradigm to which one’s attention is directed is an acting human being.21
2. Theōria and Philosophical Perplexity. When the noun theōria
appears for the first time (486a8), in the context of the fitness of
the philosopher for rule, it too, like practical/productive theōrein,
results in a principle that informs action. Because of the philosopher’s contemplation of all time and being, he will think little of
human life and not fear death: he will be neither petty nor cowardly. Again, an activity of attention leads to the attainment of a
virtue.
In the philosopher’s case, however, the principle of action is
not the thing looked for in the contemplation, but an incidental
result of it. His theōria leads to virtue not as a result of emulating
another philosopher, but because all his love is directed to the
objects of his attention rather than to objects that incite vice (cf.
500b-c). The education of the philosopher-king requires such absence of emulation, since he will only be fit to rule if he does not
aspire to rule. The more detailed discussion of this education,
however, brings to light a divergence between the motivational
structure of the philosopher as king and of the philosopher as
philosopher.
The philosopher’s desire to know is initially aroused by a
perplexity arising from contradictory appearances (523a–524d).
He is drawn toward theōria for the sake of resolving this perplexity. As the allegory of the cave dramatizes, however, the prisoner
released from the power of opinion does not know where he is
going; only as he progresses stage by stage can he have any notion of the condition into which he is being drawn (515c–516b).
Perplexity comes upon us, and we do not know where it will lead
us, or whether its resolution will provide us with anything of instrumental or edifying use. Perplexity of the sort that motivated
Socrates’s initial question about justice in Book One is brought
to light in Book Seven as a motivation internally distinct from
that of practical/productive appropriation, and as distinctly philosophical.
The city attempts to bring it about, by means of planned perplexity, that the philosopher approaches the “true forms” as an
21. This, incidentally, is the case for every use of theōrein by Isocrates.
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appropriating artist, so as to return to the city to reproduce images
of them. The preference for “divine theōria” over human affairs,
however, initially the philosopher’s qualification for office, soon
appears as a source of his awkwardness in dealing with the phantoms of the shadowy world to which other men’s attention is confined (517d5). This shift of theōria from a source of harmony
between the philosopher-king’s two roles to a source of conflict
is highlighted by Glaucon’s dramatic objection to the requirement
that the philosophers, for whom “a better life is possible” (519d),
leave their divine theōria and return to the cave to rule. A closer
look at his understanding of why this contemplative life is better
(and his singular use of the verb theōrein) reveals his promise
and limitations as interlocutor.
3. The Ascent and Peripeteia of Glaucon. The course of the discussion of poetic censorship reveals that Glaucon is much more
sensitive than Adeimantus to the subtle effects on the soul of the
productions of the Muses. Adeimantus treats poetry as a source
of overt lessons and maxims, questioning what effect the opinions about justice enunciated by characters or narrators will have
on the opinions of those who hear them and are persuaded of their
truth; he is thus a fitting interlocutor while Socrates focuses on
explicit opinions communicated about gods (377e–383c). When
the focus shifts to effects of the less conscious process of imitation, Adeimantus is out of his depth (392d), and even more when
it comes to the influence of music on the soul. At this point Glaucon, who has had a musical education (398e) and shows a clear
understanding of how different musical modes communicate different dispositions of soul (399a–b) and can insinuate grace into
it (401b–d), takes over as interlocutor.22
Theōrein, in both its earlier practical/productive and its later
dramatic/poetic uses in the dialogue, expresses just the sort of
aesthetic internalization to which Glaucon is especially attuned.
One observes attractive features of another soul or its artful products, so as to incorporate them into one’s own soul and make it
similarly fine. Accordingly, Glaucon understands all lovers of
spectacles—that is, all who engage in theōrein in the traditional
sense in which it is used in the opening scene of the dialogue—
22. As Socrates remarks, Glaucon remembers this discussion quite precisely much later in the dialogue (522a).
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | SHIFFMAN
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to be lovers of learning (475d). If he expresses some contempt
for those who show themselves especially eager for such learning, it is not because of their understanding of what learning is,
but because of their lack of discrimination in the objects of their
attention and internalization. It is in response to this understanding of observing-as-learning that Socrates first introduces the visual characterization of philosophical learning (475e), and not
long after that he begins to speak of philosophical theōria (486a).
Socrates thus begins where Glaucon begins: with a conception of learning as internalization of the finest things through observation, so as to produce a soul as fine as a fine statue.23 By
supposing that the philosopher actually achieves theōria of things
finer than any Glaucon had imagined in his feverish city, Socrates
is able to use theoric language as a stepping stone from aesthetic
education to the understanding of philosophy as knowledge of
ignorance. By presenting the motivational structure of philosophical theōria as different from that of the theōrein of appropriation,
Socrates opens a path toward a distinctly philosophical understanding of education as dialectical questioning, determined by
the relationship of perplexity between the philosopher and the
thing to be known, and modest about the possibility of attaining
definitive knowledge. In the course of following that path, Glaucon the lover of dramatic poetry is caught in a classic plot of illusion of good fortune followed by reversal of fortune.
Glaucon’s recapitulation of the Divided Line at the end of
Book Six (511c–d), which Socrates pronounces “most adequate”
(511d), appears to represent one of the great successes of Socratic
teaching in Plato’s dialogues. Socrates has apparently succeeded
in communicating to a non-philosopher the structure of being and
intelligibility that orients the philosophical pursuit of knowledge.
Following in the footsteps of Socrates’s use of theōria to describe
the philosopher’s apprehension of the objects of his attention,
Glaucon sums up:
23. Glaucon imagines the fine soul on the analogy of a finely sculpted
statue (540c). When Socrates wants him to imagine the superior excellence of the philosophic soul, he claims that the soul as we experience it is as disfigured by foreign accretions as Glaucus–statues
(611d–612a). To “see” it in its purity requires engaging in philosophy
and experiencing in oneself the soul’s attempt to liken itself to the
knowable (611e).
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
I understand . . . that you wish to distinguish that part of
what is and is intelligible contemplated by the knowledge
of dialectic [tēs tou dialegesthai epistēmēs . . . theōroumenon] as being clearer than that part contemplated by
what are called the arts. (511c)
In the educational drama, Glaucon here and in the Allegory of
the Cave seems to have reached the high point of his fortunes. In
Book Seven, however, Glaucon and the language of theōrein suffer a revealing fall.
After the explanation of the Cave allegory and the recognition by Glaucon that the life of the liberated philosopher is a better one than the political life, the remainder of Book Seven is
devoted to the discussion between Socrates and Glaucon about
how such philosophers “will come into being and how one will
lead them up to the light” (521c). The would-be philosopher must
be assigned studies that “summon the intellect to the activity of
investigation” (523b). Since, however, these philosophers are
also warriors, their studies must also be useful for the conduct of
war (521d). The mathematical disciplines are chosen to fulfill
this double imperative of practical utility and intellectual awakening; but as the argument progresses, the tension within this duality brings to light an impediment to Glaucon’s grasp of the
activity of the philosopher.
Through the discussion of several branches of mathematics,
Glaucon remains intent on detailing their practical benefits for
the warrior (526d). After Socrates several times insists on their
importance for turning the soul toward “what is always” (526d–
527b), Glaucon tries to make amends:
And on the basis of the reproach you just made me
for my vulgar praise of astronomy, Socrates, now I
shall praise it in the way that you approach it. In my
opinion it’s plain to everyone that astronomy compels
the soul to see [horān] what’s above and leads it there
away from the things here. (528e6–529a2)
This time, Socrates responds with obvious sarcasm:
In my opinion . . . it’s no ignoble [ouk agennōs] conception you have for yourself of what the study of the things
above is. Even if a man were to learn something by tilting
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | SHIFFMAN
119
his head back and looking [theōmenos] at decorations on
a ceiling, you would probably believe he contemplates
[theōrein] with his intellect and not his eyes. . . . I, for
my part, am unable to hold that any study makes a soul
look upward other than the one that concerns what is and
is invisible. (529a9–b5)
The implication that Glaucon fails to distinguish properly between visual and intellectual attentiveness seems odd given that
Glaucon admitted and followed the initial distinction in the divided line between visible and intelligible objects (507b11), and
affirmed Socrates’s inclusion of the heavens in the visible
(509d5), and thus casts doubt on how well he understood what
he was saying. Socrates’s response suggests further that Glaucon
mistakenly thinks that his standard of praise is the same as that
of Socrates. For Socrates, the contrast between higher and lower
is one between what unchangingly and invisibly is and what partakes of change and is sensible; this corresponds to the difference
between perfect and imperfect intelligibility. The dignity of the
object of attention (and hence the act of contemplation corresponding to it) depends on how intelligible it is.
For Glaucon, on the other hand, the dignity of the object of
attention seems to depend on the magnificence it imparts to the
soul. Glaucon seems to want above all to hold Socrates to his
original promise that the philosophic preoccupation will produce
virtues. The consideration of the stars, like Socrates’s “theōria
of all time and being,” may suggest to him a noble unconcern
for the petty cares that consume men, revealing an aristocratic
dimension of Glaucon’s understanding of paideia as the cultivation of a soul superior to vulgar and frivolous concerns. He
can only appreciate from the outside the excellent soul of the
virtuous philosopher-king, or the superior existence of the
philosopher freed from vulgar opinion and ignorance because
he has taken possession of the most exalted objects of sight.
Thus the irony in Socrates’s rebuke is complex: when he says
Glaucon’s conception is “not ignoble” (ouk agennōs, literally
“not non-wellborn” [529a9]), he is backhandedly pointing to its
aristocratic weakness. The aristocrat may have contempt for the
ethics of the marketplace, but he still expects a payoff from his
leisurely pursuits in some acquisition recognizable by and valuable to others of his kind.
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Glaucon accepts the justice of Socrates’s rebuke, but now
finds himself somewhat at a loss to specify what their study aims
at; he asks vaguely how astronomy should be studied “in a way
that’s helpful for what we are talking about” (ōphelimōs pros ha
legomen) (529c). He has to acknowledge that he needs to be led
by Socrates to alter his understanding of education to encompass
what Socrates means by “the invisible and intelligible” (530b).
He is no longer the passionate hero fulfilling his ambition to encompass all the best and highest things in his theōrein. Emblematic of this change in fortune is the immediately ensuing
discussion of music, in which the study so dear to Glaucon,
whose highest task had been engendering the graceful soul, now
serves to lead the student up to problems and inquiry into causes
(531c). The pursuit of the perfectly formed soul has unobtrusively
given way to the cultivation of a dialectical way of being; but at
the end of the discussion of dialectic, when Socrates lays down
the need for a synoptic integration of earlier studies, to Glaucon’s
mind the benefit of this is still that they will stick fast as an acquisition, whereas Socrates is primarily concerned with revealing
who is dialectical (537c).
Having revealed the impediments in Glaucon’s soul to the
achievement of this philosophical transformation, and after an
extensive elucidation of the varieties of disordered souls in Books
Eight and Nine, Socrates returns to the dangers of poetry in Book
Ten. There he brings to light certain harmful effects of poetic internalization that Glaucon needs to understand if he is to attend
adequately to his own soul.
4. Dramatic/Poetic Theōrein. While the practical/productive
theōrein in Book Five involves a conscious self-projection, in
Book Ten the theōrein that belongs to the enjoyment of poetry
seems at first to be something engaged in simply for its own sake.
Socrates, however, reveals that it involves an unconscious selfprojection, one that may be at odds with one’s conscious choice
of proper objects of imitation and aspiration.
In this discussion, Socrates uses theōrein four times. In each
case it refers to an attentiveness to works of art that constitutes a
distraction from true knowledge. Socrates first assaults the traditional aura of grandeur belonging to the poet by arguing his impotence to lead men to truth, and then argues that the poet tends
to corrupt the soul precisely through his power to fascinate us.
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | SHIFFMAN
121
The poet claims to be an interpreter of the divine, but
Socrates places a middleman between the poet and the god,
namely, the craftsman who makes imitations of the god-made
form, which are in turn imitated by the poet. If we look to the
idea that governed the craftsman’s production, we can look in the
direction of the idea produced by the god. The poet, on the other
hand, enchants us with words. Just as absorption (theōrein) in
colors and shapes leads to being easily fooled by paintings
(601a1–2), so an analogous absorption (theōrein) in words and
speech leads to taking the poet’s falsehoods for truth (601a7–9).
The contemplation the poet offers us is not a theophany but a
screen between us and the divine.
Next, Socrates exposes the danger of a seemingly innocent
absorption in the passions of others that poetry represents:
What is by nature best in us . . . relaxes its guard over
this mournful part because it sees [theōroun] another’s
sufferings, and it isn’t shameful for it, if some other
man who claims to be good laments out of season, to
praise and pity him; rather it believes that it gains the
pleasure and wouldn’t permit itself to be deprived of
it by despising the whole poem. (606a7–b5)
The theōrein encouraged by the poets is not merely deceptive; it
generates disorder in the soul, along with a deceptive self-oblivion on the part of the one disordered by them. Insofar as it leads
to this unrecognized dissonance, poetry is the foe of philosophy,
which seeks self-knowledge and preservation of the right order
in oneself.
In the final instance of theōrein in the dialogue, Socrates invites Glaucon to admit that he himself is subject to the witchcraft
of the poets:
“Aren’t you too, my friend, charmed by [poetry], especially when you contemplate [theōrēs] it through
the medium of Homer?”
“Very much so.”(607c8–d2)
Glaucon depends on images for understanding.24 His unnecessary
desires for fine living are responsible for introducing the poets
24. 533a; cf. 440d, 506d.
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
into the city in speech (372a–373c). His narrative of Gyges
(359d–360d), his tragic description of the terrible fate of the just
man who seems unjust (361e–362a), and his epic threat of the attack Socrates will be liable to for insisting on the rule of philosophers (473e–474a) all reveal a dramatic imagination, and suggest
that the poets have insinuated their magic into his soul—a magic
that smuggles into the soul a subconscious proto-tyrannical selfprojection by reinforcing and legitimating the unlawful desires
normally repressed in pursuit of one’s conscious self-projection.
Socrates reveals that the contest between the tyrant and the
philosopher, which Glaucon judged as an external question in
Book Nine, exists within Glaucon’s own soul, and the souls of
all who enjoy poetry. He has revealed hidden motives in Glaucon’s love of poetry and spectacle, culminating a process that
began with the first use of theōrein in the dialogue’s opening
scene, and may thereby have opened for Glaucon a much-needed
path to self-knowledge.
In the Republic, then, theōrein in its “nonphilosophical” uses
refers primarily to two ways in which we form our souls through
observation of others and imitation of them. While we consciously imitate the conduct of those who exhibit characteristics
we would like to possess, we often unconsciously allow poets to
lodge within our souls the desire to imitate the figures presented
to us in poetry. In both cases we internalize models of conduct
and understandings of what it is to be human that shape our souls.
In order to make the “examined life” available and attractive
as an alternative, Socrates has to compete with the images of man
fostered by the city and the poets by presenting a fictional image
of man, the philosopher king, who fulfills the dearest ambitions
of both civic action and education in the finest things. He is, as
it were, the theoric conduit that channels civic and aesthetic aspirations into the philosophic desire to understand. But he and
his theōria are only capable of engendering the more humble activity of dialectical inquiry if they are recognized as an exaggerated version of it.
V: Theōria, Self-knowledge, and Dialectic
In each of these three dialogues, Socrates at some point uses theoric
language to put forward a fantasy version of the telos of philosophy
tailored to the shortcomings of his interlocutors with respect to their
capacity to practice philosophy as Socrates understands it. This prac-
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | SHIFFMAN
123
tice involves: 1) a sense of dissatisfaction with ignorance, 2) a desire
to transcend it and reach for truth, and 3) a moderation of one’s expectations of success. Phaedrus, absorbed in the beauty of human
verbal artifice, requires a vision that, while promising benefits to the
practice of rhetoric, points him beyond his satisfaction with beautiful
speeches to a need for truth. Glaucon, in his quest for beauty and
grace of soul, already harbors potential seeds of dissatisfaction, but
the objects with which he seeks to furnish his soul do not lead him
to adequate knowledge of his ignorance; Socrates has to offer him
higher objects for internalization and deeper self-knowledge in order
to direct his longings toward philosophy. Simmias and Cebes already
long for wisdom of a mathematical-naturalistic sort, but their excessive hopes for attaining it lead to despair and misology, and must be
moderated by the “second sailing” and the exposure of their erroneous notion of knowledge.
Finally, though it is unclear to what extent Socrates succeeds
in moving any of these characters in the direction of philosophy as
he understands it, the more important thing is that the reader see the
direction he is trying to go. When we compare the three dialogues,
we see that the direction is substantially the same. Dialectical inquiry presupposes a certain background trust in a natural eidetic
distinctness of things that it can neither demonstrate nor definitively
grasp. The ambition for such a definitive grasp in theōria is quite
human, but its complete fulfillment is beyond human power. At the
same time, it would be rash to reject the intimation that there is some
natural eidetic structure to things which orients our efforts to understand, draw proper distinctions, come to agreement, and uncover
first principles. Dialectic, whether understood as classing and distinguishing, as examining the cogency of ideas and hypotheses, or
as penetrating to more fundamental levels of hypothesis, is always
incomplete and on the way, but also always (and ever anew) making
headway. The closer Socrates comes in the dialogue to forthrightly
presenting his philosophical practice in this modest way, the less
heavily he relies on the language of theōria to express the achievement of philosophy.
Theōria and theōrein, then, are not technical, precise or static
terms for Plato, but words addressed to the various conditions of
specific interlocutors. If they offer a key to his understanding of the
philosophical experience and the fruits of philosophy, it is only by
marking moments in a dialectical transcendence of false starts in that
direction.
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Two Villanelles
Kemmer Anderson
The Socratic Dilemma
What is the news? Has the ship come from Delos,
at the arrival of which I am to die?—Socrates to Crito
The ship from Delos will always arrive
with news from the gods that juggle your fate.
Who decides if you are dead or alive?
When the sailors land, how can you survive
the execution prepared on this date?
Cargo ships from Delos sometimes arrive
with prophecies from Apollo to drive
away the judgment of a court’s mandate
whose law decides who is dead or alive.
From what source do politicians derive
their hate to turn the truth that guides our state?
You think the ship from Delos will arrive
on time? But let us through reason revive
your legal case and find a delegate
to sway the city to leave you alive
for now and permit our learning to thrive,
though your words make some citizens irate.
The ship from Delos will always arrive
With that grave choice to be dead or alive.
R. Kemmer Anderson has taught at the McCallie School in Chattenooga, Tennesee for over three decades.
�POEMS | ANDERSON
125
Palamedes’s Ghost
Then I suppose that you have only heard of the rhetoric of Nestor and
Odysseus, which they composed in their leisure hours when at Troy,
and never of the rhetoric of Palamedes?—Socrates to Phaedrus
I would teach Andromache how to write
Her flesh, a record of her eyes and ears
To leave behind a mirror of this sight.
The alphabet of blood seen in signs might
Cut a path through the mind stained by her tears
After Andromache learns how to write.
The vowel screams from these war wounds would bite
Like flames and burn the heart with countless biers
Of piled dead through mirrors from this sight.
Consonants of bruised sounds, broken bones right
In front of a reader’s eyes print our fears
When I teach Andromache how to write
Lettered memories of her city’s fright.
When armies rip through lines of sons with spears
Leaving mirrors of grief strewn on site,
Words remain, picked clean from decaying light
That casts nations into long rotting years
Of death when women have not learned to write
A breathing mirror loomed and thread from sight.
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Two Poems
Elliott Zuckerman
Not Twins
We’ll never have enough rehearsal time.
Someone who looks a little bit like me
and I are playing twins. We’re asked to shout
some words, one to the other, but
no one will tell us which one shouts which words.
No doubt the overseer, who seems distracted,
is thinking of something else, perhaps
another pair of twins.
We sit at matching windows while the players,
tolerably in time, proceed from door
to door. Nearby the Playhouse is
already showing posters of the play.
People are lining up.
The stagehands are preparing.
I’m glad it isn’t to be called
The Shouting Twins.
I wish they’d chosen someone else
to play my counterpart. It’s hard for him
to look like me, for me to look
like him. His ears lack lobes.
Nor is there kinship in our eyes
or in our souls. We hardly
think alike. Perhaps we could succeed
if there were more rehearsal time.
Elliott Zuckerman is tutor emeritus at St. John’s College in Annapolis.
�POEMS | ZUCKERMAN
Carrying Cordelia
I am assigned to carry in Cordelia.
The old and mobled king
is weakened by the recent incidents.
I have the arms and gravitas for what they call
a gracious act.
Right now we’re covered in heavy sheets
of thunder, wind and rain.
There’s ranting and expostulation.
The lightning doesn’t seem to work, but it is
silent anyway. A lactic hiss
now drowns out any other sound.
Hey, ho.
I still have time, but I must rush
to dip my paddle in the flood
and get to the king in my hurra-canoe.
127
�
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Pastille, William
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Zuckerman, Elliott
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The St. John’s Review
Volume 56.2 (Spring 2015)
Editor
William Pastille
Editorial Board
Eva T. H. Brann
Frank Hunt
Joe Sachs
John Van Doren
Robert B. Williamson
Elliott Zuckerman
Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant
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��Contents
Essays & Lectures
Momentary Morality and Extended Ethics ..................................1
Eva Brann
Reinventing Love: An Introduction to Plato’s Phaedrus..................14
John F. Cornell
In the Heaven of Knowing: Dante’s Paradiso..................................36
Peter Kalkavage
Knowing and Ground:
A Reading of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit ...............................57
Matthew Linck
Poem
Tercet ................................................................................................75
Elliott Zuckerman
Review
Liberalism and Tragedy
A Review of Jonathan N. Badger’s Sophocles and
the Politics of Tragedy: Cities and Transcendence....................76
Paul Ludwig
��Momentary Morality
and Extended Ethics
Eva Brann
You have been reading and talking about virtue for quite a while
now; therefore, that is what your teachers asked me to talk about
to you. So I drew a hot bath (since the mind is freest when the body
is floating) and thought what might be most to the point, most helpful to you.
Should I review some theories about virtue, perhaps give you
my interpretation of Socrates’s or Aristotle's notions of virtue, perhaps dwell on whether from reading Platonic dialogues we can tell
if Socrates and Plato thought the same and if Aristotle responds to
either of them? Or should I introduce you to Kantian morality, a
world apart from the ancients? Should I distinguish for you a vision
of virtue that looks to an ideal heaven beyond and longs for perfection from one that pays regard to the world right here and goes
for moderation? Should I explain to you that the Greek philosophers tends toward ethics, toward developing personal qualities of
excellence, while the Judeo-Christian tradition tends toward morality, willingness to obey the laws of God and nature? Should I list
for you different doctrines of doing right, such as eudaemonism,
the teaching that happiness is the aim of virtue, or deontology, the
account of virtue as duty and the obligation to obey commands, of
which Kant is the most extreme representative? For while Socrates,
Plato, and Aristotle, whatever their differences, think that ethics
involves some sort of rightness in our feelings, emotions, and passions, Kant is clear that morality at its purest is a matter of reason
alone. Reason is in its essence universal: to think rationally is to
think unexceptionably, comprehensively. So to obey the commands
of reason is to suppress all merely natural inclinations, all purely
Eva Brann is a tutor and former Dean at St. John’s College in Annapolis,
Maryland. This lecture was delivered at the “Windows on the Good Life”
Course at Carlton College on 16 April 2014.
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idiosyncratic desires, and to intend only such actions as we would
want to be intended by everyone—or even to be seen as commanded by a law of nature. This is the notorious “categorical imperative”: “imperative” means “command” and “categorical”
means “without ifs and buts” (as when someone says to you “that's
a categorical no!”). You'll see in a moment why I've brought Kantian morality into this talk.
One last thing I might be speaking about, and which in fact I
will talk of in a moment, is the word “virtue.” I'll argue that this
translation of the word the Greeks use, aretē, has its virtues, but
we should probably give it up, or at least use it with raised eyebrows.
I now want to say why none of the above, except the last, appealed to me. I will tell you what seems to me the biggest trouble
with academic study, and so with most of our eduction. I call it
the problem of lost immediacy. This is what I mean: There are
books—and if your teachers chose well, they will be great ones—
that are full of substance. Then there are books and articles and
lectures about books. The great books (or texts of any sort) contain
opinions. The next level of books and articles also contain opinions, but they are opinions about the original opinions, because
whoever interprets a primary text adds a perspective to it. Then
here we are, your teachers, and we’ve absorbed some of these
original opinions, as well as some of the opinions about them—
and we’ve acquired some opinions of our own on top of that. All
those levels of learning on our part can smother, drown out, your
immediate relation to the book. But even a powerful, first-rate
book—perhaps especially such a book—can also stand between
you and yourself. It intervenes in your thinking and can capture
it, so that you are content to think its thoughts and co-feel its feelings, rather than being immediately present to yourself. Or worse,
it can put you off its possibly life-changing content because you
see no direct entrance to it.
Now I hasten to say that I pity people who have never been
taken over by a book or even by a teacher in that way—if, that is,
the being-taken-over is the beginning of an effort, a struggle, that
issues in a gradual emergence or a tumultuous bursting out of a
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3
discovery that is truly your own. And I pity even more students
who have been turned off by a life-enhancing text because no one
helped them to make a direct connection with it.
A witty outside observer of my college used to tell the world
that our students arrive knowing nothing and leave knowing that
they know nothing. I hope it’s true, provided you keep in mind that
to know that you know nothing is knowing a lot. What he meant,
though, was that they had absorbed so many contradictory opinions
from reading so many deep books that they were in a state of ultimate and utterconfusion. But in that he was surely mistaken. Such
riches may be oppressive and discombobulating for a while, but
that’s a state you work yourself out of into some clarity—clarity
about “who you are,” which is a formulaic way of saying “what
your thinking can accept and your feelings can embrace.”
Therefore I think that the second-best thing we teachers can
do for our students is to show how books can be, in a fancy term,
“appropriated,” made one’s own—and not just a few books of the
same sort, but many books of different sorts, different in genre,
different in opinion. The very best thing we can do, of course, is
to get students to read them well and talk about them to each other.
Doesn’t that broad appropriation, you might ask, imply eclecticism, which is a sort of intellectual cherry-picking that disregards
the generality of a well thought-out theory, and—especially if it’s
an ethical or moral theory—its integration into a comprehensive
view of the ways things are? Well, yes, if ecleticism means indiscriminately collecting low-hanging fruit from here and there, it will
be cherry-picking, extracting now contextless bits and pieces. But
no, if eclecticism has a basis in the very nature of things. In a moment I’ll explain this oracular pronouncement.
But first, there’s the word “virtue,” the supposed subject of my
talk. Let everyone talk as they wish, as long as they know what
they’re saying; but I wish we wouldn't use “virtue” as a translation
of that Greek word aretē—or at least that we would use it mostly
with raised eyebrows. To be sure, it has a nice argument in its
favor: “virtue” is related both to the Latin vis, force, and vir, man.
Virtue is the energy of a being that holds it together, and gives it
power, as when they say in stories: “All the virtue went out of
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him.” Now as it happens, aretē is related to a Greek prefix ari-,
meaning “very much, forcefully so”; thus aretē is the potency in a
person or thing to be what it is supposed to be. (Some Greeks seem
to have seen a relation between aretē and Ares, the powerful warrior-god.) Moreover, the moral virtue most highly regarded by Aristotle, courage, is literally called “manliness” (andreia) in Greek.
So it all fits together. On the other hand, “virtue,” in a use that goes
back to Shakespearean times and into the nineteenth century, was
a woman’s particular kind of manliness, namely, well-girded
chastity, her bodily and psychic inviolability. We have nothing left
but a smile for such passionless purity. More recently, the adjective
“virtual,” in its meaning of “inactual,” has come front-and-center
as an attribute of cyberspace: “virtual reality,” that is to say, “unreal
reality.” We ought to have a background awareness of the sphere
of connotations of our words, including their history. But, as far as
the contemporary connotations of the adjectival form of “virtue”
is concerned, I don’t think we want to go there.
This means, however, that for the moment I’m left without a
word for my subject. And this lack raises two really interesting
questions: Can we have a thought without a name? and Can we
think without words? Powerful contemporary writers claim that it
is impossible for two reasons: There can be no external proof that
thinking is going on without someone saying something thoughtful: a furrowed brow is no evidence. In fact even our claim to be
thinking doesn’t prove that we are thinking. And more important,
to think is really to marshall meanings, and meanings are drifting
vapours unless they are attached to a word or given structure in a
sentence.
Here I beg to differ with these contemporary writers. I think
we all experience that sense of a disembodied meaning, of pre-verbal thinking, that moves in our mind, sometimes like a gentle aromatic breeze over the mental plain, sometimes like a powerful push
of air pressure against a mental wall, rousing us to seek the right
term to catch it, the accurate language to describe it, the suitable
words to embody it.
So then, what is this mental presence that is called virtue, effectiveness, excellence, dutifulness, goodness? I am supposing
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN
5
here that to have too many words is equivalent to having no cogent
idea. But that may be a mistake. The reason why there are numerous translations for the Greek word you’ve thought about under
the term “virtue” may be that in fact it encompasses a number of
ways of being what is called broadly, and so a little bluntly, “good”;
there are many terms because there really are different ways of
being humanly good. This possibility of earthly variety kicks the
meaning they share, “goodness,” way upstairs, so to speak—up
into the highest reaches of thought. In the Republic, Socrates says
to the two very intelligent young men he is speaking with that he
can’t explain this Good to them in the brief space of one evening.
So I feel excused from even trying in this short hour.
On the other hand, I do want to make use of the notion that
there might be more than one way of being good—an idea that will
probably underwhelm you. It would not even have shocked people
who lived before the First World War, like your great-great-grand
parents—though for different reasons. Nowadays many people,
certainly among them the most articulate ones, believe that as long
as we are socially right-minded and we don’t discriminate among
our fellow humans for being what nature made them, we can be
fairly forgiving of a loose personal morality. So there is public and
private morality, one rigorous, the other relaxed. (Of course, these
are generalizations, which are never true of those in whose hearing
they are made.) Your ancestors, on the other hand, would have
tended to believe what Socrates sets out in the Republic, namely,
that members of different castes or classes belonging to one political community have different characteristic excellences. Moreover, they knew quite well that, even within their class,
people—especially well-off men—lived quite comfortably within
a double moral framework. For example, men could maintain a respectable but loveless marriage to one woman whom they publicly
honored, while at the same time engaging in a passionate but disreputable attachment to a mistress who had only private privileges.
My own uncle lived that way. When he and his wife fled Germany
from the Nazis in 1939, his mistress was on the same train in a separate compartment.
Here is what I want to do now, killing two birds with one stone
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(though I’m not so much for killing birds, especially not en masse).
My first aim is to take off on my own, so that my primary point
will not be so much to explain a theory found in a book—though,
as you’ll see, I’ll have to do that too in order to achieve my second
purpose. And that second purpose is to show how one might be
eclectic without being incoherent, how we might engage in picking-out parts of theories of goodness without producing a mere
self-pleasing miscellany, a tasty thought-goulash.
This second purpose might be of real use to you if you’re feeling a little snowed by all the deep and sometimes difficult theories
you’ve studied this year. I mean to show that you can fashion an
opinion to live by through combining the most disparate conceptions. My first aim, however, is to think out something for myself
and articulate it before a sympathetic audience.
So now to it. One human being may indeed live with two
moralities, one public, one private, and this duplicity is not always
hypocritical; it may simply make life livable and prevent it from
becoming worse. Or, looking at it another way, there is a saying
that hypocrisy is the respect vice pays to virtue: I think it’s better
all around that there should be such respect, once humanly understandable and inevitable wrong-doing is on the scene. Again, coming to our day, some people quite comfortably cheat on their taxes
and tell you that it’s a form of civic virtue to short-change a wasteful government, but they observe strict correctness when it comes
to matters of social justice. They too live in a dual moral frame.
But I want to introduce another, I think more fundamental, duality: the pacing of time, or, more accurately, of psychic motion. If
you watch the stream of cars coming toward you on the opposite
side of a highway, and there is a good deal of traffic, you’ll notice
that the cars bunch up; they practically tailgate each other until the
density dissolves into long stretches of lighter flow. The world is
like that, and so are our lives; it and we are in sync. There’s an
earthquake, a tsunami, a storm, an eruption all at once after years
of nothing. A dreary winter has lasted for ever, suddenly it’s spring,
the forsythia is in bloom, the trees are bursting into leaf, and it’s
time for outdoor-idling, but there are summer jobs to be lined up,
final exams, parties, last-moment bonding, packing, all at once.
That’s outside, but it’s similar inside: There are undistinguished
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN
7
times marked, very unremarkably, by routine and repetition; life
flows away and is canceled, collapses into one-and-any-day’s
schedule. Then suddenly time develops densities; all the momentous moments happen together, for better or for worse. When it
rains, it pours, as the saying goes.
I should remind you here that the exhilarating heights and tearful depths of time, or rather of eventfulness, separated by expanses
of flat dailiness—these closings-up and drawings-apart of happenings—are a Western way of seeing the world and living in it. There
are teachings of the East that make a virtue of unbunching time, of
letting life flow evenly—every moment as charged with presence
as any other. Thus when I called this talk “Momentary Morality
and Extended Ethics,” I was thinking only of our half of the world.
So now I’ll explain what I mean by momentary morality. I’ve
been describing an experience of time and events that includes moments of crisis, either imposed on us by nature or manufactured
by us from sheer cussed, willful Westernness. Although krisis is a
Greek word meaning “separation” or “decision,” and so might just
betoken any branching in the flow of events, we generally don’t
mean something good by it. A crisis, as we use the word, is not so
much a branching as a stanching of the flow of events that makes
its elements pile up and then burst out, often in a kind of relieving
demolition of the status quo. Certainly the living pace we share,
consisting of stretches of eventless, quiet desperation or contentment, as the case may be, which are interspersed with somewhat
frantic eventfulness, practically guarantees that every high will be
at the expense of a low, as a hill is paid for by a hollow. I think that
I’ve told things the way they really are, but that I’ve left two questions (at least) quite unanswered: Are the highs higher than the
lows are low, that is, are there more great moments than sorry
ones? and What is the logic, or better, the ontology of these eventpairings of high and low? Why is natural and human life subject
to these oppositions? By “ontology,” which signifies an “account
of being,” I mean the most fundamental explanation we can find
for the way things are, including psychology in the non-medical
sense: an account of the human soul.
But I want to use this notion of bunched time, of high moments
we may hope for and low ones we can expect, of events shaped in
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time like wave packets connected by a flat line—unexamined
though the image be—to speak about the type of morality which I
call “momentary morality.” I mean those critical moments when
you’re up against the wall, when it’s too late to think things out,
when you need to be ready with an inner command to tell you what
to do—what you must do—at that very moment. The human condition being what it is, what you must do will tend to be something
you don’t want to do, or rather, something you will want with every
fiber of your feelings not to do. If at that moment you waffle about
what you ought to do, or if you fail to do as you ought, you’ll never
forget that you were unprepared in a moral emergency or unsteadfast in doing your duty. You will be diminished in your self-respect.
I’ve seen it written and heard it said that such moments of extremity reveal who a person really is. I don’t believe it. I think what
you do day-by-blessedly-ordinary-day is more apt to reveal, even
while it is shaping, who you are. But I do know that moral failure
in a crisis sticks with you: I know it from myself, I know it from a
tale one day told me, almost in passing, by a man I admired, and I
know it from fiction, especially Joseph Conrad’s novel Lord Jim
and Ernest Hemingway’s short story “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.”
There is a theory of morality that seems to me tailored for moments of crisis and, consequently, inept in daily use. It is the Kantian theory of the categorical imperative I mentioned earlier on. It
is, in the compass of my reading, the most powerful, coherent, ingenious and, not incidentally, the most earnestly extremist theory
of human goodness ever devised. Like all great specific theory it
is embedded in a grand grounding of human consciousness. Kant
would turn, nay, whirl in his grave to hear me assign it to so particular a use, so momentary an occasion. But since I am convinced
that it is not possible to live well through the flats of life on Kantian
morality (though I lack time in this talk to explain why) and find
that even his own applications sometimes have repellent results, I
feel less abashed at saving the pieces, so to speak. Let me explain
as simply and briefly as I can how this morality might work in an
emergency, and that explanation itself will go a little ways toward
showing why one can’t live that way through extended time.
We have, Kant says, a faculty for freedom, namely, our will,
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN
9
our free will. To be free means to take orders from no one but oneself. Thus the free will commands itself. It gives itself its own law.
There must be law, Kant thinks, because if the will were lawless it
would be the opposite of free—call it capricious, wanton. Now the
will, Kant also thinks, is an aspect of reason, which has two sides.
One side is theoretical reason. This reason gives nature its laws
and then recognizes them as necessary. I will set this activity of
reason aside here—it’s what I mean by ripping his moral theory
out of the grand whole. The other side is practical reason; it gives
itself its laws and so knows itself as free. You can see that it is identical with the free will. The will—really myself as a free person—
should, of course, obey the command of its self-given law, its
imperative. As I said earlier, this imperative permits no ifs and buts,
admits no special cases, allows no individual exceptions, because
it is addressed to reason, and reason does not contradict its own
universal judgment, for then it would be self-contradictory. Above
all, it avoids the necessities, the unfree determinism, of lawful nature. We human beings are in part natural, namely, in our inclinations and desires. Our free will, our practical reason, has no truck
with the emotions and feelings that drive us. It chooses a course
entirely because it is right and not in the least because we feel good
about it; in fact, the more it hurts the better we know we are doing
our duty, doing purely as we ought. And we have a test to tell us
whether our decision is right, a test that expresses the essence of
reason: If I can universalize my particular motive for choosing an
action so as to turn it into a general law of human action or a conceivable law of nature, then I am choosing as I ought. I am preserving the purity of reason, namely its universality and its
avoidance of self-contradiction by exception-making.
Let me give a famous example by Kant himself. Suppose a
persecutor comes to my door and asks if his intended victim is
within. All my inclination is to deny it, to protect the fugitive. But
if I generalize my motive it assumes this form: Under humanitarian
pressure anyone may tell a lie. And then all trust in anyone’s declarations collapses, for anyone can construe an exception. So you
must tell the truth, and you will have done your duty, come hell or
highwater or the murder of a fugitive. I’ve told this example be-
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cause it seems to me to show how Kantian purity can turn into
moral catastrophe when life is fraught with daily danger. Just imagine that you’re harboring a fugitive dissident in some totalitarian
state, and, as you well know they might, the secret police come
knocking at your door. Will you tell them the truth for the sake of
the self-consistency of reason? No, you will have recourse—if you
think you need it—to the very paralogical, paradoxical principle of
the white lie. And, in general, I think that this absolutist morality is
not only too inhumane, but also too joyless to be livable day by day.
But let there be that one life-changing moment when, torn from
the usually peaceful flux of ordinary life, you suddenly must decide. The occasion might be a temptation to commit a minor transgression in the world’s eyes, but one weighing heavily on your
conscience. Or it could be an unexpected call on your courage, unwelcome but unavoidable, perhaps never patent to the world but
well enough known to yourself.
These are, I think, Kantian moments, spots of time when a
morality is wanted that disparages our inclinations and prompts us
to duty, that provides an effective on-the-spot test of what ought
to be done, to wit: What if everyone did what it has just crossed
my mind to do? That decisive moment’s morality is the kind which
commands without hedging.
But for most of us in this country these excruciating moments
that, when they do come, tend, to be sure, to come in multiples,
are blessedly sparse. The rational points on a mathematical line are
said to be dense, meaning that they leave no empty interval and
yet do not form a continuum (since the irrational points are missing). Such is the incident-line, the event-time of our ordinary daily
life, in which every little station has its happening; but though they
are all discrete, they are so closely packed together that they are
scarcely discernible. Our day has 86,400 seconds and our week
604,800 seconds, and we can calculate the number of seconds in
our month, our year, our decade, our lifetime. This flattish life-line
of instants, with the peaks and troughs it occasionally develops,
surely requires a different notion of goodness from the one that is
marked by excruciating, disruptive moments. As I called the latter
“momentary morality,” so I will call the former “extended ethics.”
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11
Morality, remember, requires command-issuing universal law;
ethics, on the other hand, demands natural and acquired personal
qualities. Of the possible English alternatives to the term “virtue,”
I think that “excellence” best expresses the connotations the ancient users of the word aretē seem to have had in mind, even before
the philosophers got to discerning a comprehensive meaning.
Let me list those connotations of aretē, understood as excellence, that I can think of: 1. effectiveness; 2. competition; 3. happiness; 4. enumerability; 5. habituation. They all have to do with
the long runs of life, the flat stretches that may buckle into peaks
and valleys of glory and misery; they have little or nothing to do
with the up-against-the-wall decisions of a life fractured by a moral
emergency.
I’ve spoken of the notion of aretē as an effective, potent way
of being that betokens a soul honed to a fine edge, just as a wellsharpened pruning knife is an efficient and perhaps somewhat dangerous object. There is a competitive tone to aretē, just as to be
excellent means literally “to rise above,” as we say, “to be outstanding.” The possessor of aretē glories in it, vaunts and flaunts
it, as do the Homeric heroes. A hero is high in self-esteem, in current language. Furthermore, the aretai, the excellences that everyone recognizes, can be counted off. Socrates regularly refers to
four cardinal ones: wisdom, justice, courage, and sound-mindedness. These excellences require the right sort of body and soul—
physical and psychic talent as we would say—but also practice,
habituation. It is in this last element that the difference between
Kantian morality and ethics, as I have delineated it, shows up most.
Personal qualities are confirmed in habituation, in being habitually
practiced, but the free will, the self-legislation of morality is essentially at odds with habituation. For habit puts the natural laws
of psychology to work, and these are deterministic mechanisms.
In fact, habit as a mechanism is an inhibition on spontaneousness,
on freedom. What’s more, for Kant the will’s intention trumps
practical execution.
Indeed, all the points of the ethics of individual qualities are
contrasted with law-morality. The categorical imperative has, to
be sure, several forms, but it is basically one, a super-command-
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ment that the free will issues and obeys, while the human excellences are enumerably multiple. For although excellence as excellence may be one super-quality, it needs to assume various
specifications, and these may even be at odds with each other. For
instance, courage and sound-mindedness (whose Greek term,
sophrosyne, is often translated as “moderation”) may pull in opposite directions. Certainly the competitive glorying of excellence
is unthinkable in a dutiful moralist, and the sharp-set potency and
effectiveness which goes with any excellence is absolutely out of
play for the moral mode. Once more, in Kant’s great works of
moral philosophy, the issue of execution, of how the passage from
decision to effective action is accomplished, which is so crucial a
juncture in ethics, is almost completely suppressed. Ethics is a way
of being objectively good in the world; the doing is almost everything. Kantian morality is primarily concerned with being right
with oneself, subjectively good; the intention is everything, though
hard actions may, indeed should, follow. As Kant famously says:
There is nothing unqualifiedly good except a good will. Note that
he does not say “a good deed.”
It is with respect to my middle point, happiness, that the difference is greatest and that ethics seems to me a far more livable,
day-by-day useful theory. It is essential to moral intention that no
hint of nature-bound desire should taint the purity of duty done for
its own sake, meaning for the sake of self-rule; no psychic pleasure-seeking mechanism should confuse the clarity of a command
obeyed for the sake of one's rational integrity, one’s rational consistency. Ethics, on the other hand, cooperates with nature; although it distinguishes between sound and corrupt pleasure,
between excess and moderation, it nevertheless regards pleasure,
in Aristotle’s words, as the bloom on our activity, and considers
happiness, whatever its definition, as the proper, indeed self-evident, human aim.
Recall that I have spoken about “extended ethics” as opposed
to “momentary morality” and distinguished the two theories of
human goodness by their relation to time, or rather, to eventuation.
Morality was for intense, abrupt, exigent, emergent moments of
up-against-the-wall decision making; ethics was for a looser,
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13
smoother, less urgent, more subdued tenor of life. And indeed,
everything I’ve observed about ethics seems to me to fit this latter
temporal mode better: our natural longing for accessible daily
pleasure and sustainable long-term happiness in the world; our innocent, or not-so-innocent, human-all-too-human eagerness for
admiration; our comfort in a being buoyed up by a tradition of
recognizably articulated excellencies; our time-consuming growth
into profitable habits and productive routines.
Above I calculated our line of life in myriads of instants almost too brief for detection (as distinct from discernible moments). Yet each had to be occupied and vacated, lived in and
through, for better or for worse. It seemed to me that this analogy
of life to a line, at once dense and pointillistic, recommended to
us a theory of goodness which allowed us to be all there as natural
beings, driven at every point of temporal existence by desire, fastening on some moments for fulfillment, developing excellence
and glorying in it, engaging with the world in action and with ourselves in thinking. But it also seemed that there were moments of
heightened urgency when we must oppose our pleasure-seeking
and happiness-enjoying nature and forget all the flourishing excellence promotes in order to obey the harsh self-command of
“you ought”—no ifs and buts.
My overarching purpose, however, was to persuade you that
your studies of ways to be humanly good can be appropriated
by you to fashion a way of your own, that they need not add up
to mutual canceling-out of theories and all-round confusion of
soul. In fact, I’m paying you a major compliment: I’m supposing
that you’re taking your learning seriously, not just, as the phrase
goes, “academically”—that you take your studies to heart as lifeshaping.
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Reinventing Love:
An Introduction to Plato’s Phaedrus
John F. Cornell
The English playwright Tom Stoppard has a dazzlingly erudite
play called “The Invention of Love.” It is not one of his more
popular works for the stage, partly because of its arcane references to classical philology, including substantial quotations from
the ancient poets in Greek and Latin and some stunning observations on the critical role of the comma. The play centers on the
nineteenth-century Oxford classicist and poet A. E. Housman as
he dramatically reviews his life in the Underworld among the
ghosts from his past. The title “Invention of Love” seems to derive from the debate, recalled in passing, about which Roman
poet invented the love elegy: Housman wittily decides it in favor
of Gallus, on the basis of his one surviving line. Yet the title turns
out to be less academic when the drama takes up the hero’s alleged homosexuality. Housman invokes the shade of his contemporary, the flamboyant Oscar Wilde, who enters reading – or
rather mocking – Housman’s poem about a youth who took his
life for sexual shame.
Shot? So quick, so clean an ending?
Oh, that was right, lad, that was brave:
Yours was not an ill for mending,
T’was best to take it to the grave.
To Wilde, Housman had tried to make art out of a newspaper
stereotype, a cliché. But art – like love – is always personal,
imaginative, and drastically original. Referring to his notorious
John F. Cornell is a tutor at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico,
where an earlier version of this essay was delivered as a lecture on April
2011. The author wishes to express his gratitude to Maryanne HoeffnerCornell, Keven Schnadig, and Joshua Renfro for the responses and discussions that contributed to the development of the present essay.
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | CORNELL
15
affair with Lord Alfred Douglas (nicknamed Bosie), Wilde declares:
Before Plato could describe love, the loved one had to
be invented. We would never love anyone if we could
see past our invention. Bosie is my creation, my poem.
In the mirror of invention, love discovered itself.
By which he seems to mean that all love is a species of art, and
that neither love nor love poetry would exist if people inquired
too critically into these ferments of imagination. Thus Stoppard
presents Housman the ascetic and Wilde the aesthete: the emotionally conflicted scholar, whose life was “not short enough for
[him] not to do the things [he] wanted not to do”; and the creator
of modern gay identity, whose “blaze of immolation threw its light
into every corner where uncounted young men sat each in his own
darkness”1 – now freed, presumably, from thoughts of suicide.
I cite this provocative drama because its two themes, homoeroticism and the invention of love, would certainly have intrigued Plato. For to “describe love” (Wilde’s understatement) Plato
places Socrates in a similar theatrical dialogue and shows him, like
Housman, curious about the poets’ innovation. Though neither
Wilde nor Housman seem aware of it, in the Phaedrus Socrates identifies the poets as the cultural promulgators of pederasty – Greek
man-boy love – and he undertakes to reinvent it. He reinvents it as
initiation into the love of wisdom. Perpendicular to the modern
polarity that Stoppard stages, of dejected self-repression versus
exuberant self-assertion, Plato stages the polarity of common versus philosophic love of the beautiful. His hypothesis sounds at
least as preposterous in our time as it must have sounded in his:
the higher meaning of homoeroticism is companionship in the
quest for being.
Plato’s reinvention of love turns on a central question in his writings, namely, how philosophy is erotic. Philosophy is erotic not just
in the sense that wisdom is someone’s all-consuming passion. It is
1. Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love (New York: Grove Press, 1997),
92-96.
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erotic in that the pursuit of wisdom draws on the excess of sexual
desire felt in the intimate relation between lover and beloved,
which in the Greek polis centers on the courtship of a youth by
an adult citizen. The philosopher is master of his desire for his
beloved because he understands their attachment as a joint path
of enlightenment. His love of wisdom puts his physical desire at
the disposal of a dialogical friendship, reversing the usual tendency of love to subjugate the soul to the body. From this lover’s
abstention derives the popular term “Platonic love,” used nowadays to describe any friendship that is sexless and might have
been otherwise. But this popular idea of Platonic love misrepresents Plato’s idea insofar as its original source – the Phaedrus –
is concerned with a particular, sexually charged bond, that of an
older guide and his follower.
No one can deny that there is a great deal to learn about romantic love from Plato’s great dialogue. However, the modern reader’s
impression that Plato must disapprove of physical relations between all couples confuses the issue.2 For Plato there is indeed in
love a theme that overreaches bodily passion; eros is a broader
and more powerful force than the sexual drive. But the original
aporia concerned how this overreach expressed itself in pederasty.
Though it may appear to moderns as a settled institution,3 the
Greek sexual relationship between men and boys was actually
controversial in the polis because of its asymmetry. If we take sexual pederasty simply to be an ancient norm, and then universalize
Plato’s sublimation of this desire, we run the risk of missing his
2. E.g., Glenn W. Most, “Six Remarks on Platonic Eros,” in Erotikon:
Essays on Eros, Ancient and Modern, ed. Shadi Bartsch and Thomas
Bartscherer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 42. “Plato
does not downplay, neglect, or minimize the bodily erotic drive but instead evokes, intensifies, and even demonizes it – only to then explain
it away as a misunderstanding or as a metaphor and to turn it against
the body itself. In all this one is struck by a kind of Puritanism.”
3. Cf. James Davidson, The Greeks and Greek Love (New York: Random House, 2007), xxvi,; and Andrew Lear and Eva Cantarella, Images
of Ancient Greek Pederasty (New York: Routledge, 2008), 18.
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point. It is the questionable naturalness of pederasty, the transgressive character of this relationship that is at issue in the Phaedrus (251a). If we ignore the possibility that this sexual liaison is
existential pedagogy manqué, we obscure the dialogue’s insight
into the connection between eros and philosophy. For Socrates the
same-sex eros that sidelines procreation points dramatically to
philosophy.4 He would bring this immoderate desire to its proper
climax. It is as if there is a hidden purpose in the havoc it wreaks,
as if it is only deceptively about friction of flesh. This explains
the peculiar intensity in the original Platonic relationship, which
the philosopher further intensifies through restraint – quite the opposite of repression. Mistrusting this drive toward his sexual like,
the philosophic lover heightens his conscious urge toward being.
How he does so is what the Phaedrus is about.
I shall attempt here to look at how the dialogue prepares us to
appreciate the new, philosophical pederasty (249a). I shall focus
on the exchanges and speeches that come before Socrates’s famous speech, the great palinode where he describes the divine
madness and the soul as charioteer driving mismatched steeds
with broken wings. Now for many readers the parts of the dialogue that precede the palinode have two strikes against them.
First, they are confusing. Second, they are not the palinode. That
is, we tend to take them as “preliminary material,” not worth much
trouble compared to Socrates’s spectacular discourse on love.
After all, doesn’t Socrates himself repudiate the speeches that precede the palinode? While we may find the first parts of the dialogue hard to take seriously, we should be surprised if every joke
and gesture of Socrates does not conceal some deeper meaning. I
propose that the first sections of the Phaedrus dramatize an essential part of Socrates’s wisdom about eros and that the only way
to glean this wisdom is to interrogate his dialogical tactics.
To start with the question I have already raised about invention:
invention is a topic in rhetoric. The Greek term euresis refers to
4. Cf. Leo Strauss, On Plato’s Symposium, ed. Seth Benardete (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2001), 50.
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the originality of the argument or rhetorical strategy in a speech.
It can also mean “discovery.” (My quotation of Stoppard’s Wilde
also invoked this duality.) Socrates uses the term when discussing
his approach in his first speech, building on Lysias’s thesis of the
superiority of the non-lover to the lover. As usual, Socrates is
ironic: in discussing “invention” he leads us to believe that he
could say nothing very original, except perhaps on inessential
points. (236a). Thus under the cover of a rhetorical contest he
conceals his bold innovation in Greek love.
Socrates’s radical views are – as is to be expected in Plato –
set in contrast to the teaching of the poets who had long shaped
the Greek experience of love. Indeed the English term “invention” (as a translation of euresis) may apply more to the poets,
while the term “discovery” may better suit the philosopher who
inquires into the nature of things. The poets (according to the
term poiēsis) are makers and creators. They are not primarily interested in the truth about human affairs, nor about the cosmic
order on which Socrates, by contrast, would ground the subject
of eros. The poets, he says, have not sung nor will they ever sing
adequately about the place beyond the heavens. They may presume to mediate between gods and men; but the philosopher gets
nearer to the “essence of being itself.” (247c).5 The poets could
therefore only give us love as an artifice – they helped and help
us invent it. The philosopher tries to reveal love as it is by nature,
as it might be discovered by the reflective mind.
Now this difference comes up near the beginning of the dialogue in a striking way. Before beginning his speech in the match
with Lysias, Socrates makes a point of saying how shallow the
rhetorician is on the topic of love (235b). He prefers the original
writers, like the poets Sappho and Anacreon, who at least knew
5. Translations from Greek are adapted, literally and sometimes loosely,
from Plato in Twelve Volumes, Greek text of Phaedrus, Harold N.
Fowler translation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982),
vol. 1; and Plato’s Phaedrus, translation, notes, appendices, introduction, and interpretive essay by Stephen Scully (Newburyport, Mass.:
Focus Publishing, 2003).
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what needed to be said on the subject. He does not mean that the
poets spoke or knew the whole truth; he brings them into this
conversation because of their cultural influence. He says he could
never have invented the original talk about love (ouden autōn ennenoēka, 235c). The poets poured it into his ears like a foreign
stream – “foreign” (allotriōn) implying that this current was not
native to him or perhaps to anybody else. Lysias may be the occasion of this impromptu contest of speeches, but for Socrates the
real challengers are the poets.
Notice Phaedrus’s reaction to Socrates’s genealogy of Greek
love. “Don’t tell me, Socrates, even if I beg you, how or from
whom you heard such talk” (235d). I suspect that here Plato is
underscoring the antipathy between a shallow type of aesthetic
experience and philosophy. Phaedrus is expressing resistance to
having knowledge about the psychology of his pleasure. Pleasure
is immediacy and knowledge would interfere with his passive
enjoyment, supplanting it with the beginnings of self-consciousness about his response. Just as Oscar Wilde argues in Stoppard’s
play, a certain self-deception facilitates both erotic attachment and
poetic invention. So the question of origins carries a disturbing
potential from which Phaedrus protects himself. It might force
upon his attention the arbitrariness of cultural forms, and the
power poets have over us beyond our own immediate experience.
Subjection to love may be one with subjection to the rhetoric of
its poetry insofar as our feelings may have capricious causes.
Obviously in our interpersonal experience, love and rhetoric
are intertwined. The passions that engage us intimately also induce us to wear masks or play rhetorical games in order to give
safe expression to our feelings. At the beginning of the dialogue
both Socrates and Phaedrus profess to be lovers of speeches, susceptible to the beauties of language. But they don’t mean quite
the same thing by this pleasure, and they engage in a good deal
of horsing around before they settle on their shared business.
Each conceals his desire in a different way. Phaedrus hides his
need to recite Lysias’s speech, to impersonate him before another,
as if he could make Lysias’s powers his own (228a). He is even
concealing the scroll of Lysias’s discourse, which he has with
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him. Socrates will quickly expose the deception. By contrast,
Socrates pretends weakness. He pretends to be sick with the love
of hearing discourses, when (as we shall see) he is angling for a
chance to expound his own views. So the difference is that Phaedrus is deceiving himself when he tries to hide his desire, whereas
Socrates hides his desire with full awareness by pretending to be
susceptible to a more common appetite. He pretends to be dependent on Phaedrus to hear any speeches, such that Phaedrus
could easily lead him all around Attica. Though Phaedrus senses
that Socrates is teasing him on this score, he does not appreciate
how the quest for wisdom motivates Socrates. Thus Plato introduces us immediately to the difference that self-knowledge
makes in desire’s need to be concealed and sustained. Ordinary
desire conceals itself out of emotional self-interest. Philosophical
desire, the interest in philosophy, conceals itself by imitating ordinary desire (cf. 227c-d). This is the irony of Socrates’s seduction in the Phaedrus. He has his own Lysian strategy but in
reverse: the philosophical non-lover posing as common lover.
Keenly aware of the role-playing, Socrates calls attention to
it. He hopes that they might drop their masks and that Phaedrus
might just recite or read Lysias’s speech. To shatter the fiction,
he describes their encounter as third persons.
O Phaedrus! If I don’t know Phaedrus, I have forgotten myself. But since neither of these things is true, I know very
well that when listening to Lysias he did not hear once only,
but often urged him to repeat; and he gladly obeyed. Yet even
that was not enough for Phaedrus, but at last he borrowed
the book and read what he especially wished. Then . . . he
went for a walk with the speech, as I believe, . . . learned [it]
by heart. . . . And he was going outside the wall to practice
it. And meeting the man who is sick with the love of discourse, he was glad when he saw him, because he would
have someone to share his revel, and told him to lead on. But
when the lover of discourse asked him to speak, he feigned
coyness, as if he did not yearn to speak; at last, however,
even if no one would listen willingly, he was bound to speak
whether or no. So, Phaedrus, ask him to do now what he will
presently do anyway (228a-c).
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Unfortunately, it is not so easy to dispense with the disguises.
When Phaedrus proves excessively enamored of Lysias’s speech,
Socrates dons a mask even more ironic than that of the speechlover: he covers himself with his cloak. Expected to denounce
the lover in behalf of the non-lover (according to Lysias’s model),
he lets Phaedrus believe that he hides out of embarrassment for
seeking Phaedrus’s admiration (237a). This misleads not only
Phaedrus but also many readers. In fact, Socrates is speaking for
himself as a philosopher, but is concealing it while he performs
as Lysias’s rival. His concern for Phaedrus requires him to give
counsel under cover, philosophical advice (237b-c). Now philosophical advice presupposes inquiry into the nature of things. He
will define the nature of love, based on the inner workings of the
soul, as clarification of these principles fosters unanimity of mind
and whole-hearted decision. Similarly, his speech will denounce
the bad lover for keeping his beloved from “divine philosophy,”
lest the beloved become wise to him (239b). In short, Socrates is
not representing a lecherous non-lover unfettered by love in the
manner of Lysias. He is performing his own species of dispassion, the non-love of the philosopher who is nonetheless interested in his listener’s welfare. In his view, the irrational lovers
are Lysias and all his kind, whatever they may pretend. A complex irony: while Socrates prevented Phaedrus from speaking as
Lysias, with “Lysias” concealed in the scroll under his cloak
(228e), Socrates contrives to speak as if he were a new Lysias,
except under his cloak he has concealed himself and philosophy.
In scripting Lysias and Socrates as protrusions under cloaks,
Plato suggests the symbolism of the talking phallus – each man’s
desire determining his speech. In this contest of rhetoric we witness not Socrates’s shame but his satyr play mocking Phaedrus’s
infatuation.
In keeping with his exposé of Lysias, Socrates’s account reduces eros to force. Eros tops a sequence of exorbitant desires.
First he mentions the overmastering passion for food called gluttony, then the tyrannizing passion for wine; we seek a name for
the amorous desire akin to these.
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It’s relatively clear already, I suppose, why all this has
been said, but things are altogether clearer if the reason
is spelled out rather than left unstated: when passion
without reason [overcomes] straight-minded opinion and
is itself driven toward the pleasure of beauty, and further,
when this passion is violently moved by kindred desires
toward the beauty of the body and is victorious, it takes
its name from that very force (rhōmē) and is called love
(erōs). (238b-c; italics added.)
Socrates’s definition of eros here is a picture of transgression
and excess. Passion overcomes opinion concerning what is correct, epi to orthon, or (as Scully’s translation has it) it overcomes
“straight-minded” opinion. The joke about pederasty seems to
work in Greek as it does in English. In any event it underscores
the rupture of conventional boundaries. But what are we to make
of eros concluding a list of nutritional excesses? Gluttony, drunkenness, and . . . love! The implication is that what most people
call “love” comes down to sexual appetite, the desire, as they say,
to devour or snack on somebody. (Socrates would probably see
the modern literature of vampires as suggesting our ambivalence
about a sexuality enacted on the nutritional model.) All this seems
a comic way of depicting an eros whose “naturalness” consists
mainly of predation. He brings his whole speech to a close with
the ditty: “Just as the wolf loves the lamb, so the lover adores his
beloved!” (241d.)
But the talk of erotic rapacity conceals a psychological theme,
the theme of master and slave. We saw earlier how the passions
Socrates and Phaedrus have for speeches made them vulnerable
to each other’s manipulations; it is so much more the case with
the desire to possess the idealized beloved, especially outside
marriage or the friendship of equals. Here is where force
emerges, in the disordered soul as well as between the lovers who
vie for control. How does one get what one wants from another
who is himself a free center of desire? The paradoxes of this
struggle, which Hegel’s analysis of Spirit described as the master-slave dialectics, are hardly foreign to Plato. In fact, I would
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propose that the struggle to be the master is what makes Lysias’s
speech of genuine interest. What draws Phaedrus to this speech,
whereby a man recommends himself as a non-lover in order to
seduce a youth? Readers of the dialogue often take the speaker
of Lysias’s speech (whom I call Lysias for short) for a clever
scoundrel – a seducer whose only distinction is a weird strategy
that touts his lack of passion. This cannot be the whole story. If
Lysias has merely devised a new way to secure some recreational
sex, then Phaedrus is a fool and Plato is giving Socrates a slight
pretext for expounding his thinking about eros. The problem is
to understand what makes Lysias’s position significant both for
Phaedrus as candidate of his solicitations and, in a different way,
for Socrates.
First of all, one should note how Lysias has attempted to create
legitimacy and respectability for a controversial liaison. He has
made the love of boys into something sensible that will pass
under public gaze without criticism. Thanks to his professed lack
of passion, the older friend will provide the youth with reliable
social benefits and meanwhile not be tempted to make any careless disclosures. The flaw in this solution to the problem of illicit
love is not simply its deceitfulness or even its self-deception. The
flaw is that, while Lysias has removed one of the obstacles to this
passion, he has simultaneously removed one of its hidden motivations. He cannot remove the defiance of respectability – the
pose of superiority to decent opinion – without removing some
of the allure of the liaison.
Thus Lysias has to inject it with a new power, the unconventional idea of the attraction of non-love. What Lysias’s novel seduction brings to the fore is the power of indifference and
impassivity. The obstacles to Greek love that he removed in a social sense he recreates in a more seductive psychological one.
Anyone who has ever played or watched the game of “hard-toget” might wonder if it doesn’t touch on something paradoxical
in desire itself. In Lysias’s case, it is easy to see how the older
person might capitalize on the youth’s attraction to him. As nonlover, he makes the youth into the lover and himself the prize.
He is no slave of love; he need not surrender any ego-pride. He
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simply denies love, denies his capacity to be captivated in that
way. We are speaking, after all, about the orator whose interest
is his superior ability to move others – someone whose erotic victory is inseparable from the rhetorical one. Meanwhile, Lysias’s
listener, the younger person like Phaedrus, will have an idol to
worship. For there can be little doubt about Phaedrus’s need for
a hero. Why else would he insist three times on the definitiveness
of Lysias’s speech? (236b.) And why offer, even in jest, to erect
a statue of the winner of the speech competition? (236b.) It is
Lysias’s turning of the tables on the beloved that supplies the special element of fascination. For Phaedrus, Lysias functions as the
erotic unmoved mover.
Socrates cannot fail to be struck by the distorted semblance
of the philosopher in Lysias’s idea, the sublime aloofness of one
who keeps his head in love. Even his criticism of the orator’s
harping on this theme might indicate his interest (235a). And
notice: when Phaedrus asks Socrates to give his own speech, a
better and “quite different” one (mē elattō hetera, 235d),
Socrates craftily avoids doing so. Let me make this clear:
Socrates could easily now give, after Phaedrus’s recitation and
at his request, what many take to be the “true” speech about
eros as Divine Madness, the renowned palinode. But at this
point he resists the invitation. To paraphrase, he tells Phaedrus:
We needn’t go there. Lysias has not failed in every respect. Plus,
you mustn’t imagine that feeble-minded Socrates could compose a discourse with brand new arguments! (235e.) Socrates
pretends that he is required to adopt Lysias’s topic of non-love,
and he distracts attention from this pretense with a questionbegging maneuver. “Take the subject of Lysias’s speech,” he
says. “What person arguing that the non-lover ought to be more
favored than the lover, could omit praise of the non-lover’s calm
sense and blame of the lover’s unreason? These are necessary
points.” (235e-236a.) Thus, while indicating what might be attractive about non-love, and using Lysias’s thesis as his alibi,
Socrates submits to a non-existent rule of adopting the anti-love
theme for his first speech. For his own reasons, the philosopher
is intent on delivering a discourse against Greek love. He sim-
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ply wants it to appear as if he adopts the topic from Lysias at
Phaedrus’s behest (236bB).
Of course, Socrates has to unpack what’s going on in Lysias’s
head to bring out the fraud in his rhetorical game. Lysias wants
the beloved’s sexual favors as much as any lover; he only manifests in an exceptional way the lover’s desire to keep control.
Thus, one of the things that Socrates’s counter-speech will do is
to make explicit how an older lover (like Lysias) feels compelled
to master the beloved, master his soul quite as much as his body.
The bad lover seeks a boy who will bear witness to the lover’s
superiority, who can be kept dependent and will never surpass
him. This master denies the beloved’s needs as he excels in pursuing his own. His denial of the beloved’s individual humanity –
Lysias’s speech purports to cover all cases – ensures that the
beloved will pay all the psychological costs. Socrates, speaking
as the true and wise non-lover, would protect his youthful addressee from such abuse. In fact, the wisdom in his speech is
aimed at the real-life Phaedrus. There is a moment when he interrupts himself, “seeming” (so he says) to have lost control of
his mind to the nymphs or Muses; he wishes to avert the attack
(238d). But the immediate context gives Socrates’s wish another
sense, too; for he insists that Phaedrus, the object of his enthusiasm, pay special attention. One attack that Socrates means to
avert is that of an orator like Lysias.
Thus Socrates continues his speech, pursuing his counter-attack not only on the bad lover, the “slave to pleasure” (238e) who
preys on youth, but also on any professed non-lover (again like
Lysias) with sexual designs. He proposes to describe the “advantage or harm coming from the lover or the non-lover to the youth
who grants him his favors” (238e). Phaedrus misses the innuendo. When Socrates has finished his speech retailing the repulsive features of such seducers, Phaedrus expects to hear the other
half of the declamation, the praise of the non-lover. Socrates pretends such an elaboration is superfluous: one could simply reverse the situation and attribute to the non-lover the advantages
that parallel the disadvantages of the lover. But he hints that such
a positive speech would be grand. He is already speaking in hexa-
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meter! “If I begin to praise the non-lover, what kind of hymn do
you suppose I shall raise?” (241e.) If we suspect that Socrates
has his second speech up his sleeve, the palinode praising the divine madness, we might wonder if it might not be the very praise
of the non-lover that Phaedrus is missing. It is significant (though
it is rarely noticed) that, to introduce his second speech, Socrates
continues to speak as the chaste critic of Greek love. He continues his stance as the advisor of the unwary youth. “Where’s the
boy with whom I was just speaking?” he begins. “He must hear
this speech, too, and not be in a rush to grant favors to the nonlover before he has heard me out” (243e;, italics added). In other
words, Phaedrus must hear Socrates’s second speech, the palinode, in order to learn not to grant favors even to a non-lover. For
the palinode will celebrate the true non-lover, who resists Greek
love as a sexual practice; but it will also celebrate the true lover,
who reinvents this love as an art of higher inspiration. The contraries love / non-love are reconciled in the superior idea of
courtship expressed in philosophy.
What I am proposing – as the upshot of these machinations –
is that Socrates is committed to the first speech no less than to
the second, and that the two are artfully connected. They have
striking internal consistencies. Socrates is always Socrates. He
says what he thinks is true, but his irony both hides and hints at
his meaning. It is up to the reader to work out the implications
and resolve the ambiguities. Such interpretive demands make the
Phaedrus a confusing experience for the inexperienced reader,
who runs for shelter in the palinode. But the idea that only the
palinode represents Socrates’s essential teaching – an error made
even by scholarly interpreters – is not compatible with his maneuvering both speeches into place. Socrates himself suggests
the idea that the two speeches are intended to form a whole in
the analytical discussion that follows them. (265a-266a). He proposes, for instance, that they are like right and left in an object
with mirror-symmetry. Love and non-love harmonize in the two
speeches because they are two sides of one thing. It would not
be hard to show that the ideas of madness (265a), the accounts
of the desire for beauty (238a), the sense of the mind’s rightful
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rule (237e-238a), even the design to “capture” a boy (253c) – all
agree in the two speeches as well. It is as if Socrates describes a
single, expansive and indifferent force – called eros – only from
two opposite points of view (cf. 263d). The difficulty is to understand why he dramatizes the movement from one perspective
to the other as a personal religious crisis.
Let us see how Socrates has plotted his rhetorical performance.
If his two speeches are intended to form a whole (265c), then we
have to entertain the notion that he planned them from some point
early on in the dialogue – perhaps when he heard Phaedrus’s vehement defense of Lysias. If Socrates has taken up the guidance
of his young friend from the start (cf. 261c, 265c), then certain
confusing moments in his behavior are clarified. A couple of examples will suffice.
First, is Socrates’s resistance to entering into competition with
Lysias at all convincing? It is not just that Socrates wants to
speak; he wants to make Phaedrus make him speak (cf. 237a10).
Socrates has baited Phaedrus with the idea that he, Socrates,
could give a better speech than Lysias, but then turns around and
acts surprised when Phaedrus takes his jest in earnest and presses
him to make good on his boast. How could anyone compete with
the ingenious Lysias? (236b-c.) Phaedrus rises to the bait. He
imagines that he now has a “fair hold” on Socrates and can also
get him back for exposing his (Phaedrus’s) wish to impersonate
Lysias. Phaedrus will use the tactic Socrates used on him: “if I
don’t know Socrates I have forgotten myself,” “he yearned to
speak, but feigned coyness,” and so on (236b). Phaedrus is enjoying his game of one-upmanship over Socrates. The real joke
is that Socrates provoked Phaedrus’s entreaty so that he can
blame him later for the first speech criticizing lovers and love.
This, as we’ll see, allows him to include Phaedrus in the theological drama of its recantation.
He sets up his second speech, the palinode, in an even more
elaborate way.
Phaedrus has bought Socrates’s excuse that there is no need
for him to praise the non-lover; he also buys Socrates’s threat to
go away before Phaedrus can exert any more power over him.
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Phaedrus, however, wants him to stay, specifically to talk over
what’s already been said. In other words, once again Phaedrus
would have accepted skipping the next part of the actual conversation, the palinode in this case, in favor of pursuing the dialogue
that follows the speeches. It is Phaedrus, not Socrates, who uses
the verb dialegō here (242a). What? Engage Socrates in dialogue? No way! To prevent his oratorical plan from going off
course, Socrates pretends to misunderstand Phaedrus’s request:
“Phaedrus, you are something divine when it comes to speeches.
Who has been the source of more discourses than you, either
speaking them yourself or compelling others to do so? There you
go again, twisting my arm! Now another speech is coming upon
me, all because of you!” (242a-b, paraphrased.) Notice that Phaedrus is surprised at this unasked-for event. He says, using a Greek
idiom, that “this is good news” (ou polemon ge angelleis).
That’s just the beginning of the intrigue. For Socrates’s announcement of the new discourse that Phaedrus is extorting from
him precedes his declaration of another motivation for it.
Socrates now declares that his daimonion prevented him from
going away in order to correct his sin against the god of love. A
sin against Eros? Socrates has now given Phaedrus one too many
justifications for the palinode to come. We know the one justification is suspect, why should the other be legitimate? Phaedrus’s
interest in more talk might have been enough of a “sign” for
Socrates to conclude that he now has his attention.6 Of course,
that does not explain Socrates’s confession and need to atone.
How are we to take Socrates’s guilt over a sin (the critique of
love) that we observed him commit with malice aforethought?
We observed him cleverly preserve the impious topic in his first
speech. No daimonion troubled him then! Now Socrates has a
scapegoat for his sin, too. At the same time that he beats his
breast, he moans how it was all Phaedrus’s fault (the move we
saw him prepare earlier). “That was a dreadful speech you made
me give, Phaedrus! That first speech was your speech. You spoke
6. Catherine Zuckert, Plato’s Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 311, n. 65.
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it through my mouth, as you bewitched me!” (242e.) More
Socrates theatre. Where Phaedrus had wanted to deliver Lysias’s
speech as if it were his own, now he is made the speaker behind
Socrates’s speech! Again Plato piles up the ironies; for Socrates’s
first speech was Phaedrus’s in the sense that it was perfectly
adapted to the younger man’s frame of mind. But why does
Socrates assign it to his friend as a sort of accusation? Is he mimicking the dishonest recriminations found in the unsatisfying love
that that speech just described? Socrates knows how to make
Phaedrus’s identification with the boldest orator work to his advantage. Phaedrus is now both implicated in and fascinated by
Socrates’s dramatic religious turn.
But what is his conversion driving at? Surely Plato intends that
we the readers see through Socrates’s ruse of repentance. I count
six references to sin when he describes the crime of his first
speech. These, however, fall into two distinct classes: a rhetorical
error on the one hand, and an offense to the god Eros on the other.
He will correct his rhetorical error by recanting the speech, as he
admits to having “sinned with respect to mythology” (243a), i.e.,
speech about the god. But though he dwells on the personal offense to Eros (242c, d, e), he never exactly acknowledges committing it. So to repeat: why the theological melodrama? Why
does Socrates put on a redemption play starring himself, a play
within the play – let us call it “Appeasing the God Eros” – to discredit the first speech and distract us from the contrivance that
makes him responsible for it? Why sever his first speech from
the palinode in such an artificial way?
As mentioned earlier, Socrates hints in the conversation following the oratory that his two speeches are linked in his mind
(262d, 263d, 265c, 266a). These hints come purposely too late.
From the point of view of Phaedrus, and of most readers,7 the
two speeches are to appear incompatible. One speech argued that
eros is harmful to both the lover and the beloved, and the other
showed that eros is the greatest of good things. This is how Phaedrus describes them in retrospect, likening Socrates to a sophist
7. Cf. Scully, Plato’s Phaedrus, 95.
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who has demonstrated contradictory theses (263c). From a philosophical point of view, however, the contradiction represented
by the two speeches may lie deeper. It may lie at the heart of
erotic existence, in every soul’s conflict with itself, which comes
to light especially in the passion for youths. Such conflict can be
finally resolved only by philosophy in its direct confrontation
with eros.
Remember, part of the fascination of Lysias’s speech was its
hypocritical motive: the experienced adult might dissemble his
own love and thus intensify a youth’s devotion to him. It is as if
in every lover the non-lover is always lurking and in desire a desire for something beyond itself. When Socrates thus gives his
“Lysian” (first) speech, he exploits the conflict hidden in sexual
pederasty. He plays up the potential repulsiveness of the sexual
lover in order to elicit not the youth’s preference for the non-lover
(that was Lysias’s strategy) but his mistrust of sexual advances
from older men altogether. But further, he plays up the adult
lover’s alienation from his own passion too. In Lysias’s speech
the inevitable decline in the lover’s interest was merely incidental, an eventual disappointment to the boy. Socrates makes a long
excursus on the lover’s discomfort, describing his emotional turn
away from his beloved when, sooner or later, the lover finds himself a “different person” (241b). Beyond warning the boys against
licentious lovers, Socrates is reminding the amorous men of their
own internal division. The argument of his first speech, its critique of the pursuit of bodies, thus prepares for the vision to come
in the palinode. Ordinarily, lovers ascribe their eventual turn
against their love to the inadequacy of a particular partner.
Socrates is showing that the inadequacy inheres in the desire for
what only apparently extinguishes it. The dissatisfactions of boy
loving, when it is reduced to a merely sexual condition, point to
a realization that this passion is groping beyond sexual pleasure,
groping for something ungraspable in the experience of beauty.
So my explanation of Socrates’s theatrical conversion is that
it prepares Phaedrus for a possible spiritual revolution in terms
that he can comprehend now – the terms of pious reform.
Socrates’s first speech and his dramatic repulsion from bad love
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actually represent an essential phase in erotic self-knowledge.
That is why he only pretends to reject it. This love’s moral “badness” is not the problem. The real problem with the sexual conduct of pederasty is that it constitutes a human aspiration
unfulfilled (cf. 250e-251a). Similarly, if we only heard the edifying palinode, we might entertain a moral opinion about the
goodness of its object, the “spiritual” lovers that who shun mutual
sexual use. But only when the perspectives of both speeches are
held together, like two horses in a double harness, held together
under the rule of mind, can there be erotic self-knowledge. Only
when the psychic energy of repulsion from the “bad” carries one
toward the “good” love does the lover come to know his soul’s
order as a whole, that is, attain the inner certainty of its comingto-be in freedom. This psychic self-generation is advanced, according to the last pages of the dialogue, when the lover-turnedphilosopher learns the practice of “writing on his soul” (276a,
278a).
But Phaedrus is in no position to understand this mystery, how
the good might be the beneficiary of the bad. The transformation
of the negative into the positive eros – of the Lysian will-topower into the Socratic power of self-motion (245c) – is an interior development incomprehensible to the novice. Socrates can
denounce his first speech as expressing “nothing sound or true”
(mēden hugies legonte mēde alēthes, 242e); but even that judgment is grounded in experience beyond Phaedrus’s ken. For the
time being, Socrates has to appeal to Phaedrus’s passions and
imagination to advance his learning in erotics to the next stage.
Socrates receives rhetorical assistance from the imagery of theology. If Love is a god, he says, then he cannot be evil. But that
is what his first speech and Lysias’s supposed (242d-e). Is the
god to authorize the un-health and un-truth of common lust? No,
the god should serve to overcome this error of the mind and ailment of the body. The first two speeches took no account of how
the lover’s banal thinking was determining his erotic experience.
Such discourses are really only good to impress “manikins” – undeveloped and thoughtless people, anthrōpiskoi (243a). Thus,
while the Lysian speeches tell us something about the dark side
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of eros, which Socrates manages by the reins of awareness, he
knows that most people never attain the defining experience of
love, where care for the genuinely beautiful reigns in the soul. If
we are not to remain undeveloped people (anthrōpiskoi), education has to make the difference. Recall the case of Stesichorus,
who slandered Helen, attributing responsibility for the Trojan
War to her rather than to men’s self-deception. He was “inspired
by the Muses” (243a). That is, he was educated 8 so that even
blinded he could see that recanting would retrieve his sight.
Socrates follows suit with a recantation for the sake of Phaedrus’s
instruction.
Earlier in the dialogue Socrates admitted the dividedness of his
own soul. He wondered about whether he was “a monster more
complicated and more furious than Typhon, or a gentler and simpler creature, to whom a divine lot is given as our share in nature”
(230a). Notice that he did not refer to two lots or two fates, between which a soul might choose. Rather he called only the gentle
and simple condition of the soul a destiny, moira. It is ours, potentially, as “our share in nature (phusei metechon).” Ultimately,
the Socratic type of lover does not choose the good over the evil
in his soul as an act of will. Neither is dialectics, the examination
of the truth about souls in general, effective on its own, not as a
first approach. (This is symbolically reserved for the last part of
the Phaedrus.) It is rather a matter of this lover’s being educated
into his contemplative part in the whole, which means engaging
his radical desire, his desire of body and soul as a unity. The passion for youths is an unruly, even mad expression of mind in an
animal that seeks a free relationship with the beautiful. The inner
principle of this freedom and unity is typically submerged in a
confusion of feelings. Socrates’s initial definition of love in fact
described the youth-lover’s typical, if unwitting, mistake. “When
passion without reason . . . is driven toward the pleasure of
beauty, and further, when it is violently moved by kindred desires
toward the beauty of the body . . . , this is called love” (italics
added.). Only an education “inspired by the Muses” (243a) might
8. The Greek term here, mousikos, designates anyone cultured or educated.
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reverse the effects of this error and liberate the passion for beauty
as such from the instinct for sexual pleasure. The art of love in
the palinode can be understood as the method of this reversal.
Phaedrus’s sentimental education will have to liberate his desire from an aestheticism that enflames his fantasies. Only a poetry or rhetoric directed to self-knowledge will serve this end.
Unlike Socrates, Phaedrus cannot rationally manage the tension
between a tyrannical and a liberating eros; at this point he is
barely acquainted with the power of his own mind. His imagination must first be set upon the path to his mind’s realization. This
is the reason for Socrates’s pious performance. He must first free
Phaedrus’s erotic excess from the irrational sexual plane, where
it will never be satisfied, by enlisting his belief in a higher life
yet unknown to him and by associating his eros with some kind
of divine goodness. “My first speech,” Socrates declares, “was
foolish and somewhat impious. What could be more dreadful than
that? . . . Do you not believe that Love is the son of Aphrodite and
is a god? . . . If Love is, as indeed he is, a god or something divine,
he can be nothing evil. . . . I will try to atone by recantation.”
(242d-e, 243b; italics added.)
Socrates would also avoid the fate of being blinded by the god
Eros, who punishes those who speak ill of him (243b). Phaedrus
might take this threat of divine retribution at face value, but
surely Socrates interprets the oracle in a non-physical way: whoever thinks the god simply evil forfeits their capacity for higher
sight (cf. 257a).
But the god has positive sanctions too. By imagining the god’s
benevolence Phaedrus might imagine himself as a finer lover,
happier in love.
If any man of noble and gentle character,9 one who was himself
in love with another of the same sort . . . had happened to hear us
saying that lovers take up violent enmity because of small matters
and are jealously disposed and harmful to the beloved, don’t you
think he would imagine he was listening to people brought up
9. Like Socrates, for example? Notice the kinship of this expression to
that in his earlier puzzle about what kind of creature he was (230a).
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among low sailors, who had never seen a generous love? Would
he not refuse utterly to assent to our censure of the god Love?
(243cC-d; italics added.)
Socrates lets Phaedrus draw his own conclusion. He declines
to specify which way the causal influence might go, between
showing respect for the god and finding a satisfying relationship.
Perhaps it goes both ways: pursuing a noble love may reinforce
belief in the philanthropy of Eros and vice versa. In any case, the
lover of youth will have to make an uncommon effort to partake
in this heavenward dialectic. The god’s help is essential.
The god, of course, is the sublime but still latent power in
Phaedrus’s own psyche. The soul of the lover of youths does not
acquire its higher faculties of perception and guidance without
first participating imaginatively in their development. Participation, metechō, is the word Socrates uses for realizing one’s true
nature, becoming part of the whole (230a). If the passion for
youths is not educated in a way that carries it “up” toward being
as a whole,10 then it is deprived of its raison d’être – the teleological or vital significance that enables such a lover to come into
his own. Socrates knows the instinctual (emphytos, 237d) force
of the drive for pleasure, the impulse that threatens to overwhelm
what’s best in a person’s mind. In behalf of Phaedrus’s development he discourages squandering this force in routines of compulsive gratification by revealing its propulsive potential. To
picture the pederast according to his commonplace appearance
(as in the first speeches), to reduce him to the vulgar images of a
licentious animal: that would be the “sin against mythology”
(243a). As philosopher and teacher, as rhetorician and true poet,
indeed as the lead and “leader of souls” in his own psychagogic
play (261a, 271d), Socrates tips the balance in favor of his pupil’s
highest possibilities.
The new mythos, the palinode preparatory for philosophy, attempts a revolution in Phaedrus’s sensibility. It attempts to initiate
10. Thus the “proof” mounted in the palinode that true love-madness is
divine must be grounded in a myth about soul and self-motion in the
cosmos at large (245c).
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him, first imaginatively, into a liberating experience of love.
Should this effort meet with success, should Phaedrus take up the
practice of philosophic pederasty, he may someday find himself
questioning the myth that commends the god Eros without qualification. Yet even if he comes to regard the god as less gracious
than he once imagined, he will look back upon the erotic path to
self-knowledge as a substantiated good.
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In the Heaven of Knowing:
Dante’s Paradiso
Peter Kalkavage
“For we shall see him as he is.” 1 John 3:2
The focus of my talk this evening is the Paradiso, the culminating and most beautiful part of Dante’s Comedy. The Paradiso has
much to tell us about happiness, the perfection of the intellect,
the nature of true freedom, the flourishing of community, the role
of love in education, and the profound connection that the good
and the true have to beauty.
The Comedy is one of the greatest works on education. It is
the story of Dante’s awakening to the highest and deepest things.
The story begins in a dark wood and ends with a vision of God.
Dante makes a journey to the three regions of the spiritual world:
Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. Each region is defined in terms of
the intellect, the part of us that most reveals what it means to be
made in God’s image. Hell is the place of those “who have lost
the good of intellect” (Inf. 3.18).1 They have distorted God’s
image beyond repair. Purgatory is the mountain “where reason
searches us” (Purg. 3.3). It is the place where repentant souls –
through purifying torment, reflection, and prayer – undo the distortions of sin. In Paradise souls rejoice in the intellectual vision
of God. They see with their most God-like part the Original
whose image they are.
Dante’s poem has special relevance for those who have devoted their lives to teaching. Throughout the poem Dante stresses
the importance of teachers and guides. Indeed, the Comedy may
Peter Kalkavage is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland.
This lecture was first delivered as the O’Donovan Humanities Lecture
at Oakcrest School in McClean, Virginia on 25 April 2014.
1. All translations of the Comedy are from the edition by John D. Sinclair
(Oxford, 1939).
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be regarded as an extended song of gratitude on Dante’s part – a
tribute to all his guides and to guidance itself as the work of
grace. The poem invites us to commemorate those who have
played a guiding role in our own lives: our teachers, friends, and
family members, and in addition the authors, poets, philosophers,
founders, and heroes who hold a special place in our hearts and
nourish us with their wisdom, their beauty, and their example.
Dante gives these personal guides theological meaning. As St.
Augustine knew better than anyone, grace – the central theme of
his Confessions – does not work in a merely general way. It
works at particular times in particular ways through particular
people and events. This is the miraculous particularity that Dante
too confesses.
When we first meet the pilgrim Dante, he is lost in a dark
wood. This no doubt refers to the turbulent period in Dante’s life
shortly before his exile from his native Florence. But it refers
more deeply to his having fallen away from Beatrice, whom he
meets again at the top of Mount Purgatory and who becomes his
guide through Paradise. Beatrice was Dante’s childhood beloved
and personal angel, his link to God. In his first great work, the
New Life, Dante recalls how he fell in love with Beatrice when
she was nine and he was almost ten. After Beatrice died, Dante
came to lose sight of everything she represented. He allowed his
love for her to be eclipsed by other, lesser loves. Beatrice is the
central figure of the Comedy. She is both a real person and a symbol. She is the beautiful appearance of the Good and the True,
and the embodiment of God’s grace. As symbol, she embodies
the City of God or the community of the blessed, the providential
plan of world-history, the perfection of poetry and rhetoric (beautiful speech that moves the soul from darkness to light), theological wisdom, especially as we find it in the writings of St. Thomas
Aquinas, and intellectual perfection as the vision of God. All this
is what the pilgrim Dante has lost sight of by the time we see him
at the beginning of the Comedy.
Heaven responds to Dante’s dark wood. Moved by compassion
for the lost poet, Mary turns to Lucy, the figure of Lux, Light.
Lucy in turn implores Beatrice to take pity on her former lover
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and save him from his impending death. Beatrice responds. She
descends into Hell – into Limbo, the place of virtuous pagans –
to plead with Vergil, the poet of the Aeneid, to serve as Dante’s
teacher and guide (Inf. 2.58 ff.). Thanks to this chain of feminine
mediators, grace reaches down to Hell itself in order to turn the
pilgrim back to the “straight way,” as Dante calls it, the way of
Beatrice.
The journey begins. We follow Dante as he descends into
Hell, climbs Mount Purgatory, and ascends through the heavenly
spheres. And yet the poem is more than the story of an individual’s redemption. Dante is saved from his personal dark wood.
But he also rises to become the author of the Comedy, which he
boldly calls “the sacred poem” (Par. 23.62, 25.1). He is commissioned by Heaven to reveal the whole of Time and Eternity.
Hence the note of Roman triumph that resounds throughout the
poem, especially in its third and most glorious part. Under the
guidance of Vergil and Beatrice, both vehicles of grace, Dante
himself becomes a vehicle, a means of transport for humanity
as a whole. In being saved as a man, he finds his true vocation
as a poet. He becomes – Dante, Poet of the Kingdom.
The hero, or rather heroine, of my talk is the first soul Dante
meets on his entrance into Paradise. It is the soul of Piccarda
Donati, whose family Dante knew very well. One of her brothers, Forese Donati, appears in the Comedy—among the gluttons in Puragtory (23). Piccarda had taken vows as a Poor
Clare but was forced by her brother, Corso, to leave the convent and enter into a marriage that would advance her family’s
political prospects. She died soon after the wedding. For her
broken vows she is relegated to the least degree of Heaven,
symbolized, as we shall see, by the Moon. As we inquire into
Piccarda and her heavenly rank, we must bear in mind that she
is as much a part of Paradise as any other soul there. When
Dante meets Forese in Purgatory and asks him where Piccarda
is, the brother responds with glowing words fit for a goddess:
“My sister, of whom I know not if she was more fair or good,
already triumphs in high Olympus, rejoicing in her crown”
(Purg. 24.13-15).
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I have chosen to focus on Piccarda for several reasons. One is
that she is Dante’s first example of a soul in glory and therefore
functions as the herald of Heaven. Another is that from the wisdom of her relatively low condition she introduces us to the fact
of levels in Paradise. This is a stumbling block for readers who
believe that here in the fullness of bliss we should be beyond all
levels and that God’s grace should shine upon all in equal measure. What would it mean, after all, for souls in Paradise to experience more or less of perfect happiness or, to use one of Dante’s
invented words, for some souls to be more “imparadised” than
others? Finally, I have chosen Piccarda because I stand in her
debt and am fond of her. For many years she has been one of the
most helpful guides in my effort to understand the Paradiso. She
will give us an opportunity to address several key questions. Why
does Paradise have levels? Why does Piccarda merit the lowest
degree of bliss? And what does this level of Paradise reveal about
the condition of the blessed and the community they form?
Let us begin at the beginning, with the opening lines of the
Paradiso. They are appropriately grand and set the tone for
everything that follows:
The glory of Him who moves all things penetrates the
universe and shines in one part more and in another less.
I was in the heaven that most receives His light and I saw
things which he that descends from it has not the knowledge or the power to tell again; for our intellect, drawing
near to its desire, sinks so deep that memory cannot follow. Nevertheless, so much of the holy kingdom as I was
able to treasure in my mind shall now be matter of my
song (1.1-12).
The opening image is that of God as the prime mover of the
universe, an idea Dante gets from Aristotle. God’s glory, symbolized by light, permeates the whole though not in equal measure. Glory shines forth as hierarchy, an order of higher and lower.
This is the first indication in the Paradiso that Heaven, like Hell
and Purgatory, has levels.
Hierarchy has a basis in the New Testament. In a passage perfectly suited to Dante’s fusion of Christian teaching and pagan
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cosmology, St. Paul writes in reference to our resurrected bodies:
“There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon,
and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory”
(1 Corinthians 15:41). Aquinas cites this very passage to support
the view that among the blessed, who see the essence of God, “one
sees more perfectly than another” (Summa Theologiae 1, Q. 12,
art. 6). Jesus too signals the presence of heavenly degrees when
he tells the disciples: “Whoever humbles himself like this child,
he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:4).
To follow the Paradiso we must know a little about Dante’s
scheme of the visible universe. For Dante, the world is not an infinite expanse but an ordered whole in the shape of a sphere –
what the ancient Greeks called a kosmos or adornment. Dante
follows the Ptolemaic astronomy of his day. For Ptolemy, the
Earth sits motionless at the center of a rotating celestial sphere
that makes a complete turn on its axis every twenty-four hours.
The Moon, Sun, and planets move in their respective orbits in
the opposite direction at much lesser speeds. The Moon is the
lowest sphere because it is closest to Earth. Beyond it are Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, in orbits of increasing circumference. Next there is the sphere of the Fixed
Stars, and finally the outer shell of the visible whole. This is the
so-called Crystalline, the first bodily sphere to be touched and
moved by God’s love. Beyond it is the Empyrean or true Heaven.
This is the home of spirits, the non-extended “place” of God, the
angels, and all the blessed. It is the ultimate point to which
Dante ascends and the heaven that most receives God’s light
(28.40-45).
Dante aligns these nine levels of the visible heavens with the
nine grades of bliss contained in the Empyrean. As we discover
along with Dante, the souls among the blessed appear in the visible bodies suited to their rank within the invisible Heaven. The
souls do not live there, as Beatrice hastens to point out, but rather
condescend for Dante’s sake and accommodate themselves to his
as yet imperfect faculties (4.37-60). As Dante rises from sphere
to sphere, Beatrice reveals herself with increasing intensity; she
becomes more and more resplendent, that is, more and more who
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she really is. With every step upward Dante too is changed: he
comes to shed his human imperfections, as his mind is increasingly
imparadised. He approaches the divine and comes to be divine
himself, as all souls do who love God with all their might. Dante
invents a word to capture his transition from earthly to heavenly
experience: trasumanar, to pass beyond the human (1.70). This
passing beyond the human is what we witness, and are invited to
share in through imagination, as we read the Paradiso.
Having sketched the astronomical image of Paradise, I now
proceed to “who goes where,” which spiritual ranks appear at
which corporeal levels. Throughout the Comedy, Dante may be
said to spiritualize place. Place functions as an index and sign of
what a thing is. Where a soul is, is the sign of what it is, the sign
of that soul’s condition or quality. Dante’s spiritualization of place
fits with how we speak. “I’m in a good place right now,” we sometimes say, or “I just don’t know where he is these days,” meaning
“I don’t know what condition his mind or his soul is in.”
As Dante rises from sphere to sphere, he comes to realize more
clearly why Heaven is a hierarchy, why it is a kingdom and not
a commune. The first three spheres – the Moon, Mercury, and
Venus – form a group. They represent three forms of qualified
blessedness. The Moon is the image of faithfulness marred by inconstancy, Mercury of service marred by ambition, and Venus of
love marred by wantonness. How Heaven, the place of perfection, can have any imperfection at all is a problem we shall return
to later.
The next four spheres represent the four cardinal virtues: the
Sun stands for Wisdom, Mars for Courage, Jupiter for Justice,
and Saturn for Temperance. The Sun divides the lower from the
upper spheres. It is the home, in image form, of theologians,
prominent among whom is Aquinas. Mars is the realm of the warrior saints who fought on behalf of their faith, especially in the
Crusades. Dante calls this level “higher blessedness” (14.84) because the warrior saint sacrifices his very life and blood. Here
Dante meets his ancestor, Cacciaguida, who tells Dante of his
coming exile from his beloved Florence. Jupiter is the imagerealm of just rulers. It contains, among other souls, that of King
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David, whose sins of adultery and murder have not apparently
kept him from occupying this exalted place. Saturn is the realm
of contemplatives and mystics. They appear momentarily in this
outermost planet in sign of their “cold” distance from all earthly
attachment and their burning desire to focus their minds exclusively on God. The sphere of the fixed stars comes next. Here
Dante experiences a ravishing image of the Church Triumphant.
He sees Mary, the Archangel Gabriel, and the glorified person of
Christ. He also undergoes an examination of his faith by St. Peter,
his hope by St. James, and his love by St. John. In the next higher
sphere, the Crystalline, Dante sees the angels arranged in a hierarchy consisting of nine levels – three sets of three, in imitation
of the Trinity. Finally, Dante rises to the Empyrean. Here he sees
the company of the blessed gathered into one glorious image –
the Celestial Rose. Ultimately, he sees God as the unity of the
human and the divine.
Order is everywhere in the Comedy. It is the permeation of the
universe by divine intelligence and love. It is why the poem is a
comedy. In the tragic view of life, we are not placed in the world
but “thrown.” There is no order, no divine guidance, no proper
place of things, no hope. There is only happening, suffering, and
death. Dante’s poem seeks to defeat this tragic view by fiercely
championing world-order grounded in divine goodness and wisdom. His term for this order is monarchia – monarchy or rule of
the One. Order is precise. It must be so in order to be order. This
precision is a source of joy. World-order, for Dante, is like a beautiful piece of music, a work by Palestrina or Bach, in which everything has been so perfectly adjusted that it is impossible to change
a single note without ruining the whole. The comic victory over
the tragic view of life – the triumph, one might say, of music – is
signaled in all sorts of ways as we reach higher regions of Paradise. At one point the universe itself appears to smile (27.4-5).
Dante’s faith in world-order is not blind to the disasters that
would tempt anyone to doubt the workings of divine providence.
At crucial moments in his ascent, Dante hears from heavenly
souls how the realms of Church and State have gone horribly
astray. He hears from St. Peter, for example, how the Church on
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earth suffers under a corrupt Pope, Boniface VIII, who meddled
in the politics of Florence to the neglect of his spiritual obligations. In the face of many discouragements, notably his own
exile, Dante continues to hope for a deliverer, a guide who will
bring the Kingdom on Earth into greater alignment with the
Kingdom of Heaven.
Let us now return to the opening cantos and Dante’s entrance
into Paradise. Dante is disoriented in the extreme as he leaves the
earth (the top of Mount Purgatory, to be exact) and flies off into
the sky with Beatrice. His confusion is understandable since
everything is now inverted. Effort is now non-effort, natural tendency to go down has become natural tendency to go up, and
opaque body has become diaphanous. Another reason for Dante’s
confusion is that the Moon, Sun, and planets are not solid earthlike masses but a refined, heavenly matter that is receptive rather
than resistant. Dante does not set foot on the Moon but rather enters its permeable substance. The Moon, like all the other spheres,
receives and incorporates Dante. This is a playful imitation of the
joyous receptivity of Heaven to newcomers. Dante marvels at his
extraordinary entrance into the Moon, which he calls l’etterna
margarita, “the eternal pearl” (2.34). His wonder at the interpenetration of substance with substance fills him with the desire to
see “how our nature was joined to God.” His desire will be gratified at the end of the poem.
Vergil is Dante’s guide through Hell and Purgatory, Beatrice
through Heaven. How, then, does Beatrice guide? Clearly she
guides, as Vergil did, by her enlightened speech. But she also
guides because Dante is in love with her. She guides by her
adorable aspect. This aspect has its focal point in Beatrice’s eyes.
Throughout the Paradiso Dante lays special emphasis on the eyes
of Beatrice. Her eyes are an image of the intellect in its highest
capacity. They represent insight or the immediate apprehension
of truth. This is the intuitive knowledge that angels have. We are
not told what the eyes physically look like – their color, shape,
and so forth. What is important is that they are firmly fixed, like
the eye of an eagle, on God and on that point of the highest
Heaven from which Beatrice has descended. Her gaze leads her
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lover not by a return gaze but by directing his gaze upward and
beyond Beatrice herself. The ray of his vision must coalesce with
hers. As Beatrice at one point tells Dante: “Not only in my eyes
is Paradise” (18.21). The eyes of Beatrice are a corrective to the
potentially obsessive character of romantic love. Such love can
lead its devotees to seek Heaven in themselves, to make a heaven
of their private passion. The sad fruit of this kind of love is evident in the second circle of Hell, the circle of lust, where the adulterous lovers Paolo and Francesca are whipped around in an
eternal storm. The eyes of Beatrice lead Dante away from this
fate. They give his mind its proper focus and open him up to the
whole of things and to the good of that whole. The eyes of Beatrice are the image of love as education. The image teaches us that
to be “in love” is to be aroused by the presence of God in another
human being, and that the whole point of love is to see more
clearly the source and principle that is the cause of that love.
As we come to discover, Piccarda dwells in the least degree of
Heaven for her broken religious vows. The Moon fits this lowest
degree because it is the heavenly body with the slowest speed
and smallest orbit. Moreover, the Moon is not pure light but has
dark spots or blemishes – a feature well suited to faithfulness
marred by inconstancy. When Dante first enters the Moon, he is
perplexed at the faces that meet his gaze. They appear so pure
and ghostly that “a pearl on a white brow does not come less
quickly to our eyes” (3.14-15). Dante mistakenly thinks that these
are images or mere reflections and turns to see who is casting
them. Beatrice smiles at his “childish thought” and tells him:
“these are real beings that thou seest, assigned here for failure in
their vows” (29-30). Eager to speak with Dante, the souls long
to share their personal stories, condition, and knowledge of Paradise. Dante sees this eagerness and is aroused by it. He is bursting to know the identity of the soul that appears “most desirous
of speech” and addresses her in the most gracious terms: “O spirit
made for bliss, who in the beams of eternal life knowest the
sweetness which, not tasted, never is conceived, it will be a kindness to me if thou satisfy me with thy name and with your lot”
(37-41) – where “your” refers to all who occupy this level.
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Piccarda, “with smiling eyes,” tells Dante that in the world
she was “a virgin sister” and that if he searched his memory he
would remember who she was. She then takes up the second part
of his question:
Our affections, which are kindled only in the pleasure of
the Holy Spirit, rejoice in being conformed to His order,
and this lot which seems so low is given us because our
vows were neglected and in some part void (52-7).
The language of being conformed to an order fits Piccarda’s
vocation as a nun. But it also points out the larger theme of
human affetti, which have been altered in this conformity and in
the ascent to Paradise. So long as we are in mortal bodies and in
a mortal condition, there is a tension between our will and God’s.
In Paradise this tension is gone, not because souls no longer have
a will of their own but because their will is perfectly attuned to
the will of God. Conformity here is not submission to a tyrant or
a matter of mere duty. It is more like the sympathetic vibration
between two plucked strings, or better, like letting God lead while
one is dancing with him. Conformity in Heaven is the joyous
yielding of one’s will to the Being who wills only what is good
and who, to continue my comic simile, knows how to dance with
impeccable grace. In this joyous conformity, the will finds its
freedom of movement. It learns at last how to be eternally unerring and never trip over its own feet.
Dante is at first unable to identify Piccarda because she is suffused by divine light and no longer resembles her former self.
This too has a more general meaning. Dante is learning by direct
experience that Paradise does not preserve us just as we are, or
rather were. On the contrary, to be imparadised is to be transfigured. Heaven preserves but at the same time heightens our personality. In Heaven Piccarda is most herself, and one must learn
to see her as she really is.
Dante then poses a question most of us would no doubt ask if
we were in his place: “But tell me, do you who are happy here
desire a higher place, that you may see more and become more
dear?” (64-6.) The question is a logical one. If a soul loves God,
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shouldn’t that soul desire to see God and be loved in return as
much as possible? But the question also betrays Dante’s all-toohuman perspective and comes close to being an implied criticism
of God’s order. If Piccarda and the other souls in this region did
in fact desire more, they would be unhappy, and Paradise would
be Heaven for some but not for others. Souls lower down in the
hierarchy might even envy the souls in higher ranks who see
more and are closer to God. If that were the case, Paradise would
be like a corrupt city or nation, where those who have less honor
and privilege resent and hate those who deservedly have more,
and where the lust for an equally high place regardless of merit
displaces the love of justice and the common good.
Here we touch on one of the main functions of Dante’s Paradise for us who still live on earth. Paradise is the place of individuals who had faith in Christ and are purged of sin. But it is
also the model of an ideal city, a community that has been purged
of covetousness, envy, partisan strife, and the indiscriminate desire for more. As Dante rises through the heavenly ranks, he experiences that ideal of perfected fellowship so dismally absent in
his native Italy and in the world at large. Later in his journey, he
remarks, not without a touch of bitterness, that he has come “to
the divine from the human, to the eternal from time, and from
Florence to a people sane and just” (31.37-9).
In response to Dante’s question about the desire for more, Piccarda and the other souls “smiled a little.” The phrase “a little,”
un po, highlights Dante’s concision, humor, and lightness of
touch. It points not so much to the degree of the smile as to its
affect. The little smile is a knowing, cat-that-ate-the-canary smile.
Piccarda and company must surely find Dante’s question so unthreatening as to be amusing. They smile no doubt at his touching
innocence when it comes to the heavenly things they know so
well. Piccarda answers the question “with such gladness that she
seemed to burn in the first fire of love.” Dante’s question, in other
words, gives her an occasion to recollect the earthly beginning
of her eternal bliss, the moment she fell in love with God.
Piccarda’s answer is one of the most beautiful moments in the
Comedy. I shall cite it in full:
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Brother, the power of charity quiets our will and makes
us will only what we have and thirst for nothing else. Did
we desire to be more exalted, our desire would be in discord with His will who appoints us here, which thou wilt
see cannot hold in these circles if to be in charity is here
necesse [necessary] and if thou consider well its nature.
Nay, it is the very quality of this blessed state that we keep
ourselves within the divine will, so that our wills are
themselves made one; therefore our rank from height to
height through this kingdom is pleasing to the whole kingdom, as to our King who wills us to His will. And in His
will is our peace. It is that sea to which all things move,
both what it creates and what nature makes (70-87).
The opening “Frate,” “Brother,” is a gesture both affectionate
and gracious. It makes Dante one of the blessed, at least for the
moment. Piccarda’s great theme is will, as we hear in her litany
of will-related words. The repetition is like a musical refrain that
runs through her speech. Charity, she tells Dante, “quiets” the
will of all here by resolving the human dissonance between wanting and having. It is the power (virtù) that by conforming all wills
to the will of the one God also unites them with one another. Piccarda here articulates the very basis of order as monarchia, where
all created wills are united by a common desire and love of the
whole. Dante invents a word to describe this harmonization of
souls: invoglia, “in-wills.” The King “in-wills us to His will.”
The neologism fits what Piccarda is trying to convey to Dante –
that the mixed or tainted submission to God’s will that these souls
experienced in their earthly lives is now gone. Past weakness has
been remedied by an infusion of divine power that purges the will
of all wavering. Piccarda’s reflection on how charity produces a
One-in-Many leads her to the most fondly remembered sentence
in the whole Comedy: “In His will is our peace.” It is a variation
on what Augustine wrote at the beginning of his Confessions:
“Our heart is restless until it rests in Thee.”
Piccarda’s speech combines ardor and intellectual clarity, heat
and light. Piccarda stresses, somewhat comically, the rational aspect of her answer to Dante by using the scholastic Latin term
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necesse, which means logically necessary. Beatrice too often assumes this professorial tone with Dante, when for example she
gives a scientific explanation for the dark spots on the Moon
(2.64 ff.). The marriage of ardor and clarity is characteristic of
the souls in Paradise. Without clarity, ardor would be mere feeling with no anchor in the truth. It would be blind, or at least confused, with respect to the intellectual vision that gives the soul
its reason for being on fire. Without ardor, clarity would be joyless – mind without heart. It would also falsify the truth that is
seen by the mind, since what is seen is in its nature something
meant to arouse love. Clarity without ardor would be like getting
the point of a really good joke but not finding it funny.
Piccarda is suffused with heavenly light, the light of knowledge. We must observe that the knowledge she possesses is not
confined to her level but extends to all of Paradise. This is made
evident when she says that the hierarchical scheme of Heaven “is
pleasing to the whole kingdom.” Piccarda speaks on behalf of
the entire heavenly community, which is made one and harmonious by the will of the one God. Some souls may be limited in
their degree of bliss, but they all have access to God, one another,
and the whole of Paradise. Souls at every level, even the lowest,
enjoy the unity and happiness of the entire kingdom. They are
not spatially confined to their own levels but spiritually connected to all of them. God wills each soul into its proper place,
and each rejoices in being where it is because it sees that where
it is is pleasing to the whole community and to God. This knowledge sweetened by charity lifts the burden of selfish desire and
makes the soul free to love the good of another and of the whole
as one’s own good. Piccarda not only rejoices to be where she is;
she also rejoices that souls higher up are where they are. For this
reason she is not almost but fully imparadised.
Dante gets the point. “It was clear to me then,” he says, “that
everywhere in heaven is Paradise, although the grace of the
Supreme Good does not rain there in one measure” (88-90). Satisfied by one food, as Dante puts it, he is hungry for another. He has
already been told that this level is reserved for those who were
inconstant in their vows and now wants to know how this applies
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to Piccarda. She replies with a reference to St. Clare, founder of
the Franciscan order that Piccarda had entered:
Perfect life and high desert . . . place in a higher heaven a
lady by whose rule in your world below they take the robe
and veil, so that till death they may wake and sleep with
that Bridegroom who accepts every vow that charity conforms to His pleasure. To follow her I fled, a young girl,
from the world and wrapped me in her habit and promised
myself to the way of her order. Then men more used to
evil than to good snatched me away from the sweet cloister. God knows what my life was then (97-108).
The reference to Christ as Bridegroom makes Piccarda’s story
all the more poignant. She had every intention of leaving the
world for the sake of “waking” and “sleeping” with Christ but
was forced to break her vow and enter into an ordinary worldly
marriage. Piccarda discretely covers over the details of her subsequent misery and early death. As if to draw Dante’s attention
back to the high note of eternal bliss she points to “this other
splendor that appears to thee on my right and is kindled with all
the light of our sphere” (3.109-111). It is the imparadised soul of
“the great Constance,” mother of Frederick II – the last head of
the Holy Roman Empire who is punished in Hell for his promulgation of the heretical view that the souls dies with the body (Inferno 10). Like Piccarda, Constance was taken from the convent
against her will, although “she was never loosed from the veil on
the heart” – a fact engraved, as it were, in her very name. With
this deference to the glory of another, a gesture repeated throughout Paradise, Piccarda vanishes while singing the Ave Maria. She
is said to sink rather than ascend, “like a weight through deep
water.” She returns to the source of her joy and her being. The
striking image reminds us that Heaven is a depth as well as a
height, and that souls here are not so much soberly placed as passionately immersed. They are eternally drunk on the wine of their
happiness.
Dante eventually loses sight of Piccarda and turns his gaze
back to Beatrice, “the mark of its greater desire” (126). He is baffled by the story he has just heard, and so are we. If Piccarda was
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forced to leave the convent, how can she be held responsible for
her broken vow? How can she justly appear, in Dante’s poetic
analogy, at the level of the Moon? Beatrice gives Dante a complex, scholastic explanation that has to do with the nature of the
will. According to Beatrice, Piccarda went with the flow of forceful circumstance. Her will, though not sinful, seconded the violence that was being done against her will. She did not freely will
to leave the convent after having taken a vow. But she did nothing
to oppose the violence against her good will. She remained passive.
Beatrice takes a tough stance on this point and argues that Piccarda
and those like her “might have fled back to the holy place” (4.81):
If their will had been unbroken, like that which kept
Lawrence on the grid and made Mucius stern to his own
hand, then, as soon as they were free, it would have
driven them back on the path from which they had been
dragged; but will so firm is rare indeed (4.82-7).
Lawrence suffered on behalf of the Christian Church and Mucius for the sake of pagan Rome. Lawrence famously mocked his
tormentors (“Turn me over, I’m done on this side!”), and Mucius,
in defiance, thrust his own right hand into the fire that his enemies
had prepared for him. As Beatrice poetically observes, an unwavering will is itself like fire, which, no matter how much a strong
wind may wrench this way and that, always affirms its natural
tendency to go up toward the heavens. That is what those who
succumbed to external force failed to do: they failed to fight the
buffeting winds of life with the heavenly fire that was their faith.
It is not sinful under these circumstances to fail in one’s vows. It
is, however, a lack of spiritual strength, a weakness of will.
Weakness of will in the Paradiso is related to the broader
theme of spiritual capacity. Souls were not made equal with respect to any of their capacities. No one human being excels at all
things. Excellence itself in any one thing varies among its possessors in both degree and kind. Among the greatest composers,
for example, one stands out for his beautiful counterpoint, the
musical interweaving of individual vocal lines, another for his
divinely inspired melodies. Creation is fine-tuned: “star differs
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from star in glory.” To insist on egalitarian leveling is to wish
that Creation be undone. Deficiency in the lowest three degrees
of Paradise is therefore different from the deficiency caused by
sin. Sin is a distortion of our nature, whereas grades in Heaven
manifest nature, that is, the specific nature of each individual
among the blessed. Piccarda had only so much lungpower. She
could take in only so much of the Holy Spirit – God’s spiritus or
breath. So it is with each of us. If you offered Piccarda the chance
to be higher up, she would be the first to tell you that this would
destroy rather than increase her happiness. In Heaven she has
perfect self-knowledge. Her very humility is a form of knowledge. She does not merely believe that she is limited but rather
knows and celebrates her limit. She knows, furthermore, that this
limit is bound up with the person God made Piccarda to be. If
there were no limits, there would be no individual natures, no
personality. To want Piccarda to want more is to wish that she
did not exist.
The limits of spiritual lungpower lead us to Beatrice’s disquisition on vows. Her main point is that taking vows is perilous.
The danger is rooted in our tendency to overestimate what we
are capable of. We tend, in the words of Jesus, not to count the
cost before building the tower. Another danger is that of unforeseen consequences. In the heat of the moment we vow to do
something and learn only later that to be true to this vow results
in great evil. Beatrice cites as examples Jephtha and Agamemnon
(5.65-72). In the Book of Judges Jephtha vowed to sacrifice to
the Lord the first person that walked through his doors. This person turned out to be his daughter. Agamemnon was true to his
vow to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia so that the Greek ships
could sail against Troy. Piccarda is imperfect in her faith because
she was passive and inconsistent. Jephtha shows the opposite
problem, that of being stubbornly faithful to a foolish vow. According to Beatrice, he “ought rather to have said ‘I did ill’ than,
keeping faith, to do worse” (5.67-68).
The problem of vows is rooted in the nature of free will. To
take a vow is freely to sacrifice one’s free will, which Beatrice
calls “the greatest gift that God in His bounty made in creation,
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the most conformable to His goodness and the one He accounts
the most precious . . . with which the creatures with intelligence,
and only these, were and are endowed” (5.19-24). Once a vow is
made, this greatest of gifts is given away and cannot be taken
back. Beatrice’s lesson is clear: “Let not mortals take vows
lightly” (64). The lesson is aimed especially at those of Christian
faith: “Be graver, Christians, in your undertakings. Be not like
feathers in every wind, and think not that every water will wash
you clean” (73-75).
Having learned from Piccarda that Paradise is the perfected
community of wills under a good King, Dante moves up to the
next two levels. Here he meets more souls who occupy the lower
triad of Heaven. At the level of service marred by ambition –
symbolized by the planet Mercury – he meets Justinian, the
Roman emperor who codified Roman law and made it simpler
and more unified. It is something of a shock to move from the
gentle unassuming Piccarda to this exalted world-historical figure, although the soul of Constance serves as a sort of transition
and a reminder of the realm of political history. Justinian recapitulates the wisdom of Piccarda regarding the whole in which
all souls rejoice. He uses a musical image to convey why Heaven
needs souls of every level and every kind: “Diverse voices make
sweet music” (6.124). The line itself is music: Diverse voci fanno
dolci note, literally “Diverse voices make sweet notes.” At the
next higher level, that of love marred by wantonness, Dante
meets various souls, among them Folco, the famous Provençal
troubadour and poet who later in life became a Cistercian monk,
and Rahab, the harlot in the Book of Joshua who concealed and
gave aid to the two men Joshua had sent into Jericho as spies.
Folco’s enraptured soul is described as “a fine ruby on which the
sun is striking” (9.69), and Rahab’s as “a sunbeam in clear water”
(114). The wantonness to which these souls yielded in life is of
course no longer present in Paradise. But surely we are meant to
imagine that something of their former temperament remains.
This temperament adds a certain intensity of feeling, an ardor,
which, though certainly different in character from that of Piccarda, is equally necessary to the ensemble of diverse voices in
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Paradise. Heaven welcomes the hot-blooded, just as it shuns the
lukewarm.
Earlier I observed that the three spiritual regions of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise are defined with respect to the intellect. I
also emphasized in my discussion of Piccarda that her being in
accord with God’s will and her contentment with her “place” in
Paradise are firmly grounded in her intellectual vision of the
whole and her clear self-knowledge. The eyes of Beatrice, the
image of love as education, further support the primacy of intellect in the Paradiso and in the entire Comedy. As Dante moves
higher up the heavenly hierarchy and closer to God, the role of
intellect and vision becomes increasingly intense. It is especially
prominent when Dante enters the Crystalline and sees the hierarchy of angels. It is fitting that he begins this canto on angelic
intelligence by calling Beatrice, his personal angel, “she who imparadises my mind” (28.1).
Later in the canto Beatrice utters one of the central teachings
of the whole poem:
And thou must know that all have delight in the measure
of the depth to which their sight penetrates the truth in
which every intellect finds rest; from which it may be
seen that the state of blessedness rests on the act of vision, not on that of love, which follows after, and the
measure of their vision is merit, which grace begets and
right will (109-113).
The immediate context has to do with the angels, who are identified with their keenness of intellectual vision, but the teaching
applies to all the blessed. The “truth in which every intellect finds
rest” is God himself as the First Truth, and it is our highest end
to know this Truth. Beatrice emphasizes that love follows rather
than leads. The reason is that love is both aroused and directed
by the thing seen, the Beloved. If love were primary, it would be
cut off from the truth. It would degenerate into mere feeling and
cease to be educative. The primacy of intellect came home to
Dante in the moment when, a mere boy, he fell in love with a girl
on the streets of Florence. He loved her because he caught sight
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of her and was struck by the light that shone in her person. Even
then, as Dante reports in the New Life, Beatrice was “the Lady
of my mind” (2).
The Comedy ends with Dante’s vision of God, the source of
all Light. As he ascends to the Empyrean, Dante leaves behind
the astronomical image of Heaven and sees Heaven anew in a
River of Light and the Celestial Rose. Dante’s salvation began
with a chain of heavenly women who interceded for him. The
links in this chain now appear in reverse order. Beatrice returns
to her heavenly seat and to her true self. And though she is at this
point far beyond Dante’s mortal gaze, her image reaches her lover
with undiminished clarity (31.70-8). Now under the guidance of
St. Bernard, who replaces Beatrice as Dante’s guide, Dante sees
Lucy, “who sent thy Lady when thou didst bend thy brow downward to destruction” (32.137-8). Then he sees Mary, the ray of
whose eyes leads him to the threshold of his final vision. Bernard
of Clairvaux was the great medieval saint known for his devotion
to Mary. His presence serves to enhance rather than qualify the
distinctly feminine operation of grace. Bernard prays fervently
to Mary that Dante be allowed to see God: “I, who never burned
for my own vision more than do I for his, offer to thee all my
prayers.” He adds: “This too I pray of thee, Queen, who canst
what thou wilt, that thou keep his affections pure after so great a
vision” (33.28-36). Bernard’s reference to affetti recalls Piccarda’s use of the word in answer to Dante’s question about contentment with one’s heavenly lot.
The twofold aspect of Bernard’s prayer is worth noting.
Bernard prays that Dante be granted the highest bliss, the vision
of God. This vision is “the end of all desires” (46). But Bernard
also acknowledges that Dante will not be out of danger when he
returns to his mortal life. He must remain true to the unity of
which Mary is the figure, the unity of clear vision and purity of
heart, which is the precondition for the vision of God (Matthew
5:8). Dante sees the effect of Bernard’s prayer in Mary’s eyes,
which are “beloved and reverenced by God” (40). Her eyes, like
those of Beatrice before her, provide the ray that will direct the
eye of Dante’s mind to the ultimate vision. As the eyes of Mary
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turn to God, Dante’s eyes follow. The poet is now lifted into the
region where sight outstrips speech. Nevertheless he soldiers on,
praying that the power of his tongue “may leave but a gleam of
thy glory to the people yet to come” (71-2).
The final moments of the Comedy are rich in images, as Dante
describes the transformation of his sight and his very being – the
final stage of his “passing beyond the human.” He sees “three
circles of three colors,” a geometric symbol of the Trinity (115
ff.). Each circle, each divine Person, reflects the others, “as rainbow by rainbow.” Dante focuses on the circle that appears to be
“painted with our likeness.” He is drawn to the second Person of
the Trinity, to the human face of God. He strains to see more
clearly how this human aspect is united to the divine and compares himself to a geometer who is trying with all his might to
square the circle. This famous problem, which has haunted
mankind for ages, is that of constructing a square with the same
area as a given circle. It is in effect the problem of grasping the
unity of the straight and the curved – two opposed geometric natures that defy unification. Squaring the circle is more than a geometric problem. It is the symbol and summation of all intellectual
desire. According to Aristotle, all human beings by nature desire
to know. This is true for each individual. But as Dante affirms in
his Monarchia, it is also true of the human species, which in the
course of history seeks the full realization of its intellectual potential (1.3). In comparing himself to one who wants to square
the circle, Dante personifies the whole human race in its relentless desire to know – ultimately to know and experience the nature of God.
In the end Dante’s longing to know is satisfied, but not through
his own efforts. His wings “were not sufficient for that.” Grace
intervenes, this time violently, as Dante’s mind is struck (percossa), as if by a lightning bolt: “Here power failed the high
phantasy, but now my desire and will, like a wheel that spins with
even motion, were revolved by the Love that moves the sun and
the other stars” (142-5). With these lines the Paradiso, and with
it the “sacred poem” as a whole, reaches its end.
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Dante’s vision of God is a flash of insight that cannot be put
into words. But there is something the poet can tell us. He can
report that he reached his longed-for end, and that the fruit of
his vision was a desire and will that were conformed to the
graceful movements of Love. These movements find their image
in the visible heavens, whose quick circular motion resembles
rest. Through the conformity of desire and will, Dante experiences first-hand the truth of what someone told him when he
first entered Paradise: “In His will is our peace.”
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Knowing and Ground: A Reading of
Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit
Matthew Linck
For this is action, this not being sure, this careless
Preparing, sowing the seeds crooked in the furrow,
Making ready to forget, and always coming back
To the mooring of starting out, that day so long ago.
- John Ashbery, from “Soonest Mended”
Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is a difficult book. Sometimes
this seems true in the way that we might say that someone is a
difficult person – unaccommodating, needlessly obscure. Many
aspects of Hegel’s book give the appearance of this kind of difficulty – the unusual structure, the strangeness of the method, the
alien vocabulary, and the sheer density of the writing. While I do
not think reading the Phenomenology can simply be made easy,
I do think that one can make sense of some of these difficulties.
In what follows I will endeavor to show that the structure, method
and principal vocabulary of the book all spring from a single aim,
namely, to understand what it means for us to claim to know
something. As the title of my lecture suggests, this effort will concern itself principally with the grounds of knowing as such. For
Hegel, there is no claim to knowing that does not, at least implicitly, have certain grounds in view.
While it is my goal to give a synoptic view of the Phenomenology, both in terms of its structure and the nature of its parts,
it turns out that doing so from the front of the book to the back is
hard to do in a short space. Instead, we will orient ourselves from
somewhere in the middle, specifically, the section from the chapter on Spirit called “Absolute Freedom and Terror.” Why I have
chosen this as the vantage point to look out over the Phenomenology as a whole can only become clear as we move through
the lecture. But a few questions could be raised already. These
Matthew Linck is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland.
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questions will serve as the guiding threads for what follows. The
questions are: (1) Why is there an analysis concerning the French
Revolution and Terror in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit at all?
(2) Why is this analysis placed at the end of the second of three
main sections in a chapter called Spirit? (3) Why is the chapter
on Spirit preceded by chapters on Consciousness, Self-Consciousness, and Reason and followed by chapters on Religion
and Absolute Knowing? These questions might be generalized
in the following way: why does the Phenomenology contain the
kind of content that it does; why does the book have the structure
it has; how do the content and structure go together? By answering these questions, I hope to provide a sense of the whole of the
Phenomenology and how it attempts to fulfill its principal goal
as an account of knowing. But before attending to these questions
more needs to be said about what this goal is.
The principal goal of the Phenomenology of Spirit as an inquiry about knowing is to find the grounds that will grant truth
to the certainty of our claims of knowing. This goal takes its starting point from what seems to be a rather ordinary human experience. Claiming to know something is always accompanied by
a conviction of certainty about what we are claiming. For if not,
we would not call it knowing. But being certain and having good
grounds for our certainty are two different matters. Hegel’s project is to see which claims of certainty are in fact well grounded.
As an inquiry into knowing, the aim of the Phenomenology is a
traditional one; Hegel’s book stands in a long line of philosophical accounts of knowledge. We can obtain a better initial understanding of the aim of the book by contrasting it with two other
texts about knowledge: Plato’s Theaetetus and Kant’s Critique
of Pure Reason. I will briefly consider some questions and conclusions from these texts and compare them to Hegel’s.
In the Theaetetus, Socrates and Theaetetus endeavor to answer
the question “What is knowledge?” The way in which they do
this is to propose various answers to the question and then scrutinize those answers. In the course of the dialogue, Theaetetus
ventures a few definitions of knowledge and then he and Socrates
think through the implications and coherence of these definitions.
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Two aspects of their conversation are worth noting for our purposes. The first is that, while it is not articulated as such, the investigation carried out by Theaetetus and Socrates cannot help
but ask about the grounds of knowing in asking what knowledge
is. For instance, in testing the idea that knowledge is perception,
perception is tested as a sufficient ground for knowing. In this
way, their search has something in common with the Phenomenology. However, I want to suggest that the way the principal
questions are articulated makes a difference. By asking what the
sufficient grounds for knowing are rather than asking what
knowledge is, Hegel is able to frame a different method for asking about knowledge. This is related to the other notable feature
of Socrates’ conversation with Theaetetus. At a certain point in
the dialogue, Theaetetus remarks upon a troubling feature of the
discussion. In the course of testing the various possible answers
to what knowledge is, he and Socrates have attested to knowing
certain things along the way. In the midst of their inquiry about
the very thing knowledge is, they have availed themselves of
claims of knowing. It seems to Theaetetus that something is out
of place here, but he cannot see how to set it right, for how might
one investigate the what-it-is of something in conversation without laying down some things as known along the way? This problem indicates that there is something uniquely difficult in the
inquiry into what knowledge is. The method of Hegel’s book is
meant to address this difficulty.
Kant attempts to answer fundamental questions about knowledge in the Critique of Pure Reason, and he, too, provides answers to what knowledge is and what the grounds of knowing
are. But here again the specific articulation of the principal question is different. Kant’s question is neither that of the Theaetetus
nor that of the Phenomenology, but is “What can I know?” Kant’s
main goal is to trace out the proper limits of human knowledge.
The method here is not the dialogical testing of answers, but an
inquiry into the conditions of the possibility of experience. Kant
creates a new form of philosophical inquiry with his notion of
the transcendental, and through this inquiry he claims to find
grounds for limiting our knowledge to knowledge of appear-
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ances. Hence, Kant, too, discerns the proper grounds of knowing,
but not directly. His concern with grounds is subordinated to the
critical task of tracing boundaries. One way in which the Kantian
project might be seen as insufficient with respect to the investigation of grounds is the bundle of problems concerning the thingin-itself. In a fundamental but unknowable way, the thing-in-itself
lays at the ground of what is known in experience.
Putting these considerations about the Theaetetus and the Critique of Pure Reason together we can see something important
about Hegel’s book. By focusing directly on the grounds of
knowing Hegel is able to avoid the problem of making knowledge claims in advance of answering the question about its
grounds, and he is also able to avoid having to construct a complex apparatus as Kant has done. How does he avoid these
things? The answer to this question tells us something about why
the book is called a phenomenology. For instead of trying directly
to frame and test answers about the grounds of knowing, Hegel
displays for us a gallery of various knowledge claims and the
(often implicit) grounds that underlie those claims. Hegel’s wager
is this: such claims have been made, and hence have made their
appearance in the world; our work is to discern the internal structure of these claims. We do not have to venture answers to the
question about the grounds of knowing but only observe and
think about the answers that have already been given. In this way,
Hegel proposes to discern the ultimate grounds of knowing without making an argument in the typical sense. The Phenomenology
is not a book that argues on the basis of principles, transcendental
or otherwise; instead, it is a book that orchestrates a certain kind
of experience. The success of the book hinges on whether we are
able to undergo the experience Hegel intends. We will return later
to these issues. Let us now begin to consider the first question
from earlier: Why does Hegel write about the French Revolution
at the close of the middle section of the chapter on Spirit?
The smaller section we will take up is called “Absolute Freedom and Terror,” and it comes at the end of a larger section called
“Spirit alienated from itself: [or] culture.” The larger section presents views onto the late Roman Empire, the courtly world of the
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French monarchies, and the Enlightenment as a struggle with religious faith. “Absolute Freedom and Terror” is the last of these
views onto a historical scene and the form of thought which it
embodies. In one sense, this section of the book can be read as a
description of a historical event. We read here about the political
assertion of the people and their insistence upon recognition as
equals. We also read about the political vacuum created by the
Revolution and its inability to establish a stable locus of authority,
a failure which leads to the actions of the Terror. But there is nothing essentially important about this section of the text as a description of factual events. The focus of Hegel’s writing here is
not on a historical narrative but rather on the cognitive and normative aspects of these events. The most compact way of expressing what Hegel has in view is to say that he is displaying a
particular shape of Spirit. This phrasing, however, is not helpful
for us since it is only by understanding more about the Phenomenology itself that we can understand what “shape” and “Spirit”
mean here.
“Shape of Spirit” is a more particular version of the phrase
“shape of consciousness.” The majority of the text of the Phenomenology of Spirit is devoted to laying bare the structure of
these shapes of consciousness. The smallest subsections of the
book each contain such a presentation. A very general way of
characterizing a shape of consciousness is to say that it is a way
of thinking. If we connect this to what was said earlier about the
aim of Hegel’s book, we can add to this and say that a shape of
consciousness is a way of thinking that is committed to certain
grounds to justify its knowledge claims. Still speaking generally,
we could say that as one reads the Phenomenology one encounters a series of paired commitments: on the one hand each shape
of consciousness attests to knowing something, and on the other
hand it is, at least implicitly, committed to certain reasons for
claiming to know that thing.
The first shape of consciousness encountered in the Phenomenology of Spirit is called Sense-Certainty. Why is this shape
called Sense-Certainty and why does it fall under the heading of
Consciousness? Consciousness as used here has a particular
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meaning for Hegel. He means by it any mode of cognition which
is fully directed at an object other than itself. To be conscious on
these terms is to have some kind regard for things “out there”
while not at the same time regarding one’s own activity of thinking. Furthermore, since Hegel thinks such regard is never a passive awareness but always entails the formation of judgments,
consciousness is always in the business of claiming to know that
there are things out there. Indeed, all knowing for Consciousness
just is knowledge of what is out there.
Sense-Certainty claims to know something because there are
things present to it, right here, right now. Knowing is not complicated for Sense-Certainty: look around, it says, if nothing else
you know that what’s here right now is here right now. SenseCertainty sees every moment of its life in this way, and thinks
that the apparent richness of its sensory experience is made possible by the great variety of the things present to it. No one lives
a life of Sense-Certainty exclusively. But it is an intelligible,
maybe even common, ground upon which to plant one’s feet
when saying, “I know this because …” It is common, perhaps,
because what it appeals to is common, the sense that the spatial
and temporal arrangement of objects in the world is the touchstone for what is true. Is it true that it is raining? Look outside
and live the life of Sense-Certainty.
If this is the case, then what is wrong with such a stance for
justifying knowledge claims? Here we encounter a powerful
force at work in Hegel’s book, one which perhaps looks strange
at first. This force is language and the implicit demand that each
shape of consciousness articulate from its own standpoint why it
is justified in claiming to know something. Sense-Certainty will
fail this test. Sense-Certainty is certain of what is present in the
here and now. It might even feel that the immediate sensuous
richness of the present world is the fullest kind of experience possible. Hegel thinks otherwise, and he thinks so because SenseCertainty is limited to saying, “This, here, now.” And this
restriction on the vocabulary available to Sense-Certainty seems
appropriate since it is because of the thises here and now that
Sense-Certainty thinks it can know. It should not have to say
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more. The ground of its knowing is out there. It is not what it
says that makes the things known. There is a mismatch between
what Sense-Certainty intends to say about its experience and
what it is able to say about it. Sense-Certainty thinks it can account for a particular experience by saying “This here now”; but
what it says is true of any experience and hence cannot be an account of the grounds of what is known in this one.
Absolute Freedom is in some respects just like Sense-Certainty. It is a particular shape of consciousness with its unique
claim of knowing and the text devoted to it is meant to both trace
the contours of this way of thinking as well as expose the contradictions inherent in it.
The initial knowledge claim made by Absolute Freedom is that
the will of every particular self-conscious agent is identical with
the universal will of all like-minded self-conscious agents. That
is to say, the cognitive stance of universal human freedom is one
in which all particular members of the political community see
the truth of their own selves through the mutual recognition of
the equality of all. Furthermore, this cognitive stance is not principally a theoretical view of politics but is a practical stance; willing is a form of cognition. This moment is a high-point of sorts
in the Phenomenology and seeing why will get us some way toward grasping the Phenomenology as a whole. The reason this is
a high-point is because consciousness has, after many other attempts, found a shape in which it has achieved a genuine identity
between the particular and the universal, and does so self-consciously, that is, it knows it has achieved this, and, furthermore,
it does so in a way where its communal life is an essential component of this achievement. Taking these three features in turn
we can get a view of what falls between Sense-Certainty and Absolute Freedom and Terror in the Phenomenology.
We saw already that the relationship between the particular
and the universal was what undid the knowledge claims made by
Sense-Certainty. Sense-Certainty wanted to point to the vast array
of particulars in the world as the solid ground upon which it
would make its knowledge claims. But it was unable in speech
to place those particulars under universal categories without ef-
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facing their particularity. And in so doing Sense-Certainty erased
the very thing that was meant to serve as the index of truth for its
claims. This announces a general problem encountered by the
shapes of consciousness in the Phenomenology of Spirit: the challenge of universalizing particulars without having the particulars
dissolve into the universal. One principal lesson of the sections
on Consciousness, Self-Consciousness, and Reason is that most
particulars simply cannot withstand the dissolving force of the
universal. Any attempt to assert such particulars as themselves
the ground of knowing leads to contradictions and hence to failure. What kinds of particulars are these and why do they fail to
hold together when brought together with the universal? There
are three basic types of such particulars: external things, self-conscious things, and rational individuals. These types of particulars
coincide with the sections on Consciousness, Self-Consciousness, and Reason.
We noted when looking at Sense-Certainty that it based its
knowledge claims on the fact that there are things “out there.”
This continues with the other shapes of Consciousness: Perception and Understanding. Both of these shapes fall under the heading of Consciousness because they too point to something “out
there” to justify their claims of knowing. Perception points to the
properties possessed by ordinary objects and Understanding
points to forces underlying physical phenomena. We cannot retrace here the increasingly intricate contours of these shapes of
consciousness, but might dwell briefly with Understanding to see
what we learn about Consciousness as a whole.
It might strike your ear already as odd to speak of forces as
things that are simply out there in the external world. Rather than
being simply out there, forces are posited by us as being out there,
and then we go about testing whether the forces as posited match
up with the measurable features of observable phenomena. So
while it is important in this process of thought and experiment to
maintain that there is really something out there – that the forces
are not just fictions we have invented – their being out there is
not a simple, immediate presence but is mediated by our own
mindful activity. In a rather elaborate teasing out of the various
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aspects of this mindful relationship to the external world, Hegel
shows how Understanding cannot account for its claims about
force on its own terms. Consciousness is committed to the
grounds of knowing being completely independent of its own activity. It turns out that this is not the case – the grounds of knowing are not simply out there in the world. Understanding pushes
this demand so far that eventually the situation inverts itself and,
as Hegel says at the end of “Force and the Understanding,” when
Consciousness finally tears away the veil separating appearances
from essence, it sees only itself.
The next main section of the book explores the position opposite to Consciousness, namely, Self-Consciousness. Self-Consciousness is opposite in that its basic stance is that it itself is the
whole and sufficient ground of truth. Self-Consciousness is desirous, and what Self-Consciousness desires is to affirm that it is
independent of the things around it. Only through affirming its
total independence can Self-Consciousness make good on its assertion that it is the sole and sufficient ground of knowing. Each
shape of Self-Consciousness fails to be the sole ground of its own
certainty, and we the readers see again and again that Self-Consciousness is dependent on its interactions with the external world
to affirm itself. As with Consciousness, we come to see that SelfConsciousness cannot account for itself on its own terms. We the
readers come to see that only Consciousness and Self-Consciousness together make a whole. To be self-conscious a thing must
be engaged with a world outside of itself; and to be conscious of
an outside world is to be a thing whose own activity is involved
in the conscious presence of that world. Hence there is both identity and difference between the moments of Consciousness and
Self-Consciousness.
So, it turns out that neither external objects nor self-conscious
beings are things that have a universally abiding character. That
is, whatever standing they have in the world is shown to be partial
and dependent. But since there does seem to be some abiding
character to the whole movement of Consciousness and SelfConsciousness taken together, perhaps this whole movement is
the universal ground we have been searching for. This brings us
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to the third type of particular, the rational individual.
What does Hegel mean by a rational individual? Each shape
of consciousness explored in the chapter on Reason shares a basic
stance, one which implicitly takes into itself what the reader
comes to understand about Consciousness and Self-Consciousness, namely that there is an identity between the self and its
world. The shapes of Reason have, Hegel says, an instinct for affirming this identity through some kind of engagement with the
world. These modes of engagement range from observationbased science to the making and testing of laws. And while there
is a gradual emergence of self-awareness on the part of the rational individual in the progression of these shapes, a common
feature throughout is the implicit assertion that the rational individual is able, on its own, to carry through the explicit revelation
of the identity of self and world. In what strikes me as the most
despairing stretch of the book, Reason is seen to fail repeatedly
in this project. While Reason is successful in finding reasonableness in many features of the world, some of its own making, it is
never quite able to achieve a complete identity between itself as
rational and the world as a whole. The complete rationality of the
world turns out to be an ever-vanishing fantasy for the rational
individual. In a moment we will see the meaning of this as it pertains to particulars and universals.
But first let’s note that we are now in a position to understand
why there is a chapter called “Spirit” in the Phenomenology and
why Absolute Freedom and Terror is located in this chapter. In
one respect we can see that if there are no other shapes of consciousness, then the project of finding adequate grounds for our
knowledge must be a failure since none of the shapes observed
thus far have been up to the challenge. Hegel’s implicit assertion
is that there are more shapes of consciousness and that their general character is different from those of Consciousness, Self-Consciousness, and Reason. The shapes of Spirit are those that
address the principal failings of Reason. A few remarks about the
final shapes of Reason will help make sense of what emerges at
the beginning of the chapter on Spirit.
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After failing to directly observe the reasonableness of the
world in nature or the human mind and body, Reason attempts to
make its own activity in the world the source of rationality in the
world. In various ways, these shapes of Reason find that the presence of other rational individuals in the world gets in the way of
their own projects of establishing a reasonable world. Each of
these failures in some way gets parsed out as a failure to reconcile
particularity and universality. The final two shapes of Reason
turn to law as a possible means for establishing a rational world.
It turns out, however, that while Reason can make rational laws
and test the rationality of laws, it cannot through these endeavors
establish a definitive set of laws that adequately ground and guide
the particular actions of individuals. That is, the need of individuals to act cannot be sufficiently determined by any set of rational
ordinances.
Nevertheless, we do act and we do so aware that we are subjected to norms of some kind or another. An initial stab at defining what Hegel means by Spirit might be just this, that rational
human life always finds itself within some set of shared, communal norms and that these norms provide both the structure and
coherence of the community and the principal self-understanding
of the members of the community. In this sense, the realm of
Spirit is prior to that of Reason. Or, as Hegel puts it, Spirit is the
substantial ground that is the real being of human consciousness.
The modes of cognition that fall under the headings of Consciousness, Self-Consciousness, and Reason are abstractions
from this ground. I take this to be the most important claim of
Hegel’s book.
The first shape of Spirit that Hegel presents he calls the “Ethical World,” a vision of the Greek polis seen through the lens of
Sophocles’ Antigone. This vision of the polis depicts a community in which each member has a place and a communal role, and
these places and roles are essentially and immediately identified
with certain normative injunctions. The two fundamental axes
around which the city and its members are organized are the
human and divine laws and the corresponding domains of the
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state and the family. As Hegel sees it, the characters in Sophocles’
play exemplify this immediate identity with the norms that define
their places and roles, Antigone most of all. The Antigone we see
portrayed in the Phenomenology has no reflective distance on her
role as sister and keeper of the unwritten laws. It is simply who
she is. The immediacy that marks Antigone’s ethical stance does
not prevent her from being a conscious, self-conscious, and rational individual; but those modes are not the definitive ones in
her case. In this way we can see how the shapes of Spirit follow
upon those of Consciousness, Self-Consciousness, and Reason
in the dialectical unfolding of the book, even if they possess this
other kind of priority. Antigone exemplifies the fact that there are
shapes of consciousness that do not attempt to ground ethical life
in the rational capacities of the individual, but simply live primarily from within some set of ethical norms.
As is always the case in the Phenomenology, however, the immediacy of Antigone’s selfhood shows itself as unstable, contradictory, and unsustainable. Indeed, I think the force of Hegel’s
presentation is that the apparent repose of the polis as presented
in the first section on the Ethical World is a fiction. The truth of
the beautiful distribution of norms between the gods and man,
and between the home and state, is that it cannot but result in a
conflict that tears the city apart. This is unavoidable because of
action. The initial static view of the city shows everyone parceled
out into their respective domains. But as essentially normative
domains, the individuals that fall within them must be agents.
Ethical life is a life of actions, not of contemplation. The problem
is that as soon as one acts in Antigone’s city, one must transgress
the boundaries that were supposed to define and confine one’s
actions. Antigone’s burial of her brother is at once an upholding
of the divine law and a transgression of the human law. Likewise,
her action, which finds its justification in the duty to family, is a
violation of a state decree.
The instability of this first shape of ethical life announces the
singular challenge for Consciousness in the realm of Spirit: Consciousness must inhabit a way of life in which the normative
structure of self and community can sustain both simultaneously.
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We will have to forgo looking at any of the shapes of Spirit which
fall between Ethical Action and Absolute Freedom, but it should
be roughly apparent how the stance of Absolute Freedom addresses this challenge. The ethical stance taken by the revolutionary consciousness of Absolute Freedom is one that immediately
identifies its own will with the will of all. The division of the
spiritual world into particular and partial domains has been obliterated and replaced with one in which the selfhood of all individuals is to be realized in the common project of a universal
will. We are almost ready to see the dark side of the this shape of
Spirit, but let’s pause to pull together some threads of what we
have seen so far.
The twin goals of grounding knowledge and reconciling the
universal and the particular, and the failures of the attempts at
reconciliation, have been present in all of the shapes of consciousness we have considered. For Sense-Certainty, the possibility of knowing is grounded in the immediate presence of an
external world, but Sense-Certainty fails to find universals that
allow for the preservation of particulars. The shapes of Self-Consciousness all posit the self as the universal ground of knowledge
but are not able to recognize the role of external particularity in
its own self-regard. The rational individual at the end of the chapter on Reason sees its own rational capacities as sufficient
grounds for determining the normative structure of communal
life, but produces nothing but empty tautologies or equally rational but contradictory laws. The individuals who populate the
Ethical World know what their duties are, their selves are
grounded in an immediate identification with these duties, and
in this way their particularity is identical to a universal; but the
need to act on those duties brings them into conflict with the dutiful actions of others and thus the identity of particular and universal is only partial.
We might now want to consider what it means that these individual, largely self-contained shapes of consciousness make up
some kind of whole, come in a particular order, and are grouped
under different headings. In one sense, the phenomenological observer adds nothing to the progression of shapes of conscious-
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ness. The internal shifting, unrest, and development within each
shape always results in a form of consciousness that is in itself
what the next shape of consciousness is for itself. In this way,
there are no gaps between the various shapes of consciousness.
However, each new shape of consciousness takes itself to be immediately what it is. It has no knowledge of being related to prior
shapes. We might say that each new shape is a new start. But this
means that the phenomenologist is not just an observer, but also
an arranger. The putting-in-order of the shapes is done by the
philosopher and is not the work of natural consciousness. Hence
part of our work as readers is to discern not only that the shapes
come in this order, but also to decide whether we agree that they
are properly ordered. This returns us to the first moment, however. Deciding whether the shapes are properly ordered amounts
to deciding whether there are any gaps between the shapes. These
considerations are true not only with respect to the individual
shapes of consciousness, but also to the various kinds that they fall
under: Consciousness, Self-Consciousness, Reason, and so on.
Finally it is time to see what comes after Absolute Freedom.
What comes right on the heels of Absolute Freedom is Terror.
I would be tempted to say that the “and” in “Absolute Freedom
and Terror” should be read as an “is.” Absolute Freedom is Terror. I believe Hegel offers here, in his typically obscure fashion, both a historical/political interpretation and a cognitive/
philosophical one. The historical interpretation, in short, is that
the project of instituting universal human freedom and equality
cannot be achieved simply at the level of the universal will.
That is, if one makes the universal will of the people the immediate ground upon which political freedom rests one must
regard all institutional and procedural aspects of governance
as inessential and distortive. The reality is that institutions and
procedures must be in place for actual governance, but when
viewed from the perspective of Absolute Freedom they cannot
but take on the look of something sinister, retrograde, and evil.
The terminus of this suspicion, the very logic of the Revolution, Hegel suggests, is the pure negating force of the Terror.
Only through the continual erasure of partial and contingent
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actions and positions can the purity of Absolute Freedom be
maintained.
But since the shapes of Spirit are not just collective frames of
mind but always also those of individuals, the Terror lurking in
Absolute Freedom can be viewed at the level of the individual
mind as well. Hegel here seems to suggest that for the individual
Absolute Freedom is terrifying because, for the first time in the
Phenomenology, consciousness has taken on a shape that sees itself explicitly and exclusively as a space of pure negativity. To
be absolutely free is to be determined by nothing outside of oneself. And while this independence of determination was true of
the shapes of Self-Consciousness, only Absolute Freedom sees
itself in the world, with others, in this way. Absolute Freedom
sees itself as radically self-determining without seeing itself as
independent.
The implicit political injunction of these considerations is that
the spiritual community must move past revolution and stake out
some determining and limiting boundaries that will make actual
and sustainable the universal freedom aimed at in the Revolution.
Hegel, however, does not pursue the political side of the story
within the Phenomenology. The fittingness of what comes in the
final section of Spirit is, nevertheless, explicable within the
framework of what I have sketched out so far.
If the dead end reached both by the revolutionary community
and the cognitive shape of Absolute Freedom is that self-determination is without content, then somehow self-determination
must be shown to implicitly contain within itself some kind of
determinate content. From this perspective it makes sense that
the final section of Spirit begins with a shape of consciousness
that resembles Kant’s moral subject. The positioning of this
shape after Absolute Freedom and Terror suggests that the key
to overcoming the terrifying negativity of Absolute Freedom (or
autonomy) is to see that this freedom is also, at the same time,
subjection to a law. If revolutionary consciousness is the first to
posit its own freedom with others as the essential content of itself,
then the Kantian moral subject carries out the recognition that that
freedom is identical to a certain self-legislation. We can perhaps
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make sense of the retreat from the political realm inasmuch as the
moral subject need go no further than himself to find the contours
of this self-legislation.
The advance from Absolute Freedom is clear: the pure negativity of that freedom finds a determining limitation in itself. The
universal moral law is identical with who I essentially am. The
remainder of the chapter on Spirit plays out in the usual way. The
identity of the self and the moral law is too immediate, and once
again the need to act in the world is the grit that irritates what at
first appears to be a beautiful achievement: the universal self
within each of us providing the determining ground for all human
action. In Hegel’s hands, the moral subject is exposed as finite,
partial, and always acting on insufficient grounds. To be a genuine member of a human community, and hence to be a genuine
self, one must risk the inevitable transgression of action. One
must act from within oneself without having all the information
one needs and without knowing all of the ramifications of one’s
action. More crucially, one must act in one’s own interest. Action
is irredeemably selfish. The final pages of the chapter on Spirit
are meant to address this bind that we find ourselves in. Hegel
suggests that only through the mutual recognition of this bind, of
our finitude, and of the inevitably transgressive character of
human action can we finally plant our feet in the world and orient
our minds in such a way that we can both be certain of what we
know and also be justified of this certainty. For only here is the
particular both reconciled with and preserved within the universal. The universal recognition of the necessary partiality of
human existence makes possible the free flourishing of human
action and also makes possible genuine and sustainable human
community. This is the I that is We and the We that is I that was
announced in the chapter on Self-Consciousness.
We might also see that the distinction between thought and action, mind and world, is overcome here. Both are only moments
of a fluid whole. No moment of the field of human action –
whether the deed itself, the conviction of duty that accompanies
the deed, the determination of means to fulfill our ends, or the
judgment of either our own actions or those of others in their par-
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ticularity – what Hegel calls “evil” – none of these has ultimacy.
Only the whole movement is truly actual. I think this is what
Hegel must mean when he says that “The deed is not imperishable; it is taken back by Spirit into itself, and the aspect of individuality present in it . . . straightaway vanishes (§669).”
To borrow a phrase from the American philosopher Wilfred
Sellars, we might say that the ultimate ground of our knowledge
is just the “space of reasons” itself. There are no criteria for
knowledge – moral or otherwise – outside of the space in which
we hold each other and ourselves to account. But this also means
that this is a ground that is self-grounding. Only we ourselves
can constitute this ground by making fully actual the space of
reasons. Hence, the final moments of the chapter on Spirit cannot
be construed as something that has simply come to pass. Rather,
the mutual confession of finitude is the self-given ground of the
ongoing, living present, a present for which we are perpetually
and inescapably responsible. Only in this sense is Spirit Absolute.
The main goal of the Phenomenology as an account of knowing has thus almost been achieved with the appearance of forgiveness and reconciliation. But only almost. The agents of
mutual recognition that end the chapter on Spirit do what they
do knowingly, but they do not know the philosophical significance of their mutual regard. Only we see it, and complete comprehension of its significance requires two more steps. The first
is taken in the chapter on Religion. Two aspects of the role of the
chapter on Religion in the Phenomenology of Spirit seem clear
to me. First, Hegel seems to suggest that the shapes of Spirit as
ways of being in the world are always supplemented by a common and shared discourse. The highest level of this shared discourse, and one that is crucial in knitting the community together,
is the way in which the community talks about the highest things,
or what is absolute. The religion chapter provides a taxonomy of
the historical variants on such discourses regarding the absolute.
Secondly, we phenomenologists need to trace the logical ordering
of these ways of understanding the absolute so as to see that the
terminus of that logical sequence coincides with the relationship
of self and other at the end of Spirit. Only by tracing this out and
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seeing this coincidence are we positioned to take the stance of
Absolute Knowing.
What then is this grand-sounding thing called Absolute Knowing? I think it can best be captured in past participle constructions. Absolute Knowing is having traversed and despaired of the
knowledge claims of all of the shapes of consciousness; it is having worked up to a comprehension of the proper fit between these
shapes and the way in which they make a whole; it is having
come to recognize that only such a traversal and comprehension
is adequate to the philosophical question about what the grounds
of our knowing are. There is no Absolute Knowing outside of the
experience of struggling to and achieving an adequate vision of
the book as a whole. If there is a present tense formulation of Absolute Knowing it seems that is must be progressive. We must
hold the movement of despair of the book in mind in order to
enjoy the satisfaction of the redemption of that despair. But this
means that there is no thing called the Absolute that we can walk
away from the book with. The Absolute is not a thing at all but a
way of knowing and this way of knowing just is the full experience of reading the Phenomenology of Spirit.
�POEMS | ZUCKERMAN
75
Tercet
Elliott Zuckerman
No one is going anywhere,
this is a pure farewell. The men
are due to return within the hour,
expecting never to be surprised.
Sooner or later the women will
surprise themselves.
That is why this ghostly embarcation
this hush and stir of zephyrs
repudiates all kinship
with the enthralled Addios
sung with a catch in the throat
by ardent diva and exalted tenor.
Nor is this death-in-love
for this is not the sound
of real water.
No drowning in these undulating waves
no more than in the regular ebbing
of a Hiroshige print.
The rare rococo masters knew
that fare thee well are words
and music of arrival.
Elliott Zuckerman is tutor emeritus at St. John’s College in Annapolis,
Maryland.
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Liberalism and Tragedy
A Review of Jonathan N. Badger’s Sophocles and the
Politics of Tragedy: Cities and Transcendence. New
York: Routledge, 2013. 252 pages, $140; paper, $42.95.
Paul Ludwig
Jonathan Badger’s Sophocles and the Politics of Tragedy begins
a dialogue between Greek tragedy and modern political thought.
Sophocles best diagnosed a predicament that continues to haunt
us today: human nature has two drives, one that aims at bodily
security and another that aims at transcendence. The two are forever in tension. Tragic protagonists often attempt to realize one
of the two aims, to the detriment of the other. For example, Creon
in the Antigone attempts to base politics on one of the two drives,
bodily security. Badger finds comparably one-sided attempts in
the history of political thought. Christian medieval thought attempted to create a politics of transcendence. Francis Bacon’s
modern project based its new politics on bodily security. Both
were attempts to move beyond, and thus to deny, tragedy. A truly
tragic consciousness lives with the tension rather than trying to
negate one of the poles. In a surprise, John Locke emerges as the
hero of the book for inaugurating liberalism, a politics that holds
these two drives in tension, and thus qualifies as tragic politics
in the best sense.
Tragedy begins with an insight into the transitory nature of all
things, including politics and human relations. Time and change
rule all (8). Unpredictably and unaccountably, everything dissolves (cf. Ajax 646-92). Two opposed responses to this tragic
insight attempt to fix or remedy the situation. One response is the
drive for transcendence. A hero looks beyond the living world to
a world of divine beauty. The other response is the drive for bodily security. Statesmen, especially, use institutions and laws to
Paul Ludwig is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland.
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ensure safety and survival, hoping to shield us from death and
decay. Since perfect justice is one vision of transcendent beauty,
heroes are on a collision course with existing political institutions.
Security entails stability, which is threatened by heroic visions.
This conception of tragedy draws on and subsumes parts of
Aristotle’s, Hegel’s, and Nietzsche’s understandings, among others. Hegel’s clash of right actions, for example, fits together with
the tragic insight that the two drives are equally right (and wrong).
Hegel would like to see the two theses sublate into a higher synthesis. But such a solution, insofar as it disarms the tragic tension,
denies that our predicament is really tragic. According to Badger,
Aristotle’s Poetics places mimesis at the heart of ethical action.
To act ethically is to play a role—an interpretation that sounds
surprisingly postmodern. Philosophy itself emerges from creating
narratives, poetry (26-31). The poeticizing capacity of soul renders our experiences to us as a world of wholes. In place of the
usual “purgation of pity and fear” as a translation of Aristotle’s
account of the effect of tragedy, Badger makes a case for “purification of ruth and horror.” Whereas pity has been overtaken by
democratization, “pure ruth should hold us spellbound, transfixed
in utter sorrow on behalf of another” (28). Whereas fear is overly
broad, dread unspecific, and terror too urgent, horror best captures the threat of destroying the story of one’s life, not merely
ending one’s life. “[O]ne’s life work is destroyed or useless.”
Rather than getting rid of these passions because they cloud
thought, catharsis purifies them into versions serviceable for
learning and understanding. The meaning of this purification
seems to slide from purified passions to pure exemplars of the
characters who feel them, like Antigone and Creon—incarnations
of the drives for transcendence and security, respectively (30-31).
The understandings of tragedy proposed by the major thinkers
fit together only uneasily, as Badger is quick to point out. Solon’s
homely wisdom of the Greeks seems to agree with Nietzsche’s.
To “show how much better it is for a human being to die than to
live” (Herodotus 1) sounds a lot like “best . . . not to be born, not
to be, to be nothing. But the second best for you is—to die soon”
(Birth of Tragedy 17-18, 31). And yet, the Solon story emphasizes
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successes and failures at the end of life: the sons who hitched
themselves to their mother’s cart and Croesus’s ruin. Going out
on top or at one’s peak (perhaps even hastening the end to coincide with the peak) is different from finding individuation itself
to be an illusion, as Nietzsche does. To have a peak, it is necessary to be an individual, and Herodotus does not say that the
sons’ triumph was illusory; he surely knew of despots more fortunate than Croesus. The still greater distance between Nietzsche
and Aristotle does not render the comparison useless; the two are
“compatible” (34; cf. 37-38, Hegel “entirely compatible”), if we
abstract sufficiently. Nietzsche gives us a “vocabulary” for talking about tragedy, though he and Aristotle are using “different
terms.” “Antigone and Creon are in a ‘Hegelian’ collision over
how to respond to the ‘Nietszchean’ insight” (38). But again, if
individuation is an illusion, then the Ajax’s “all things change”
is necessarily a consequence. But if “all things change,” that does
not necessarily mean individuation is an illusion. At any rate,
there is an assumption here that would have to be made evident—
namely, that only eternal things really exist. Does Philoctetes really turn to savagery because the “falseness of the Apollonian
(rational, expedient) community is intolerable” (35)?
Crucial to interpreting both the Philoctetes and the Ajax is the
ambiguous role (or roles) of Odysseus. For Badger, Odysseus is
the Lockean before Locke, the one man at Troy who can fully
appreciate the tragic insight (into the mutability of all things)
without succumbing to either of the two drives—security or transcendence—that attempt to solve it. Instead, Odysseus is strong
and humane enough to hold the two drives in tension. Contrary
to appearances, Odysseus’s role is civic-minded, even self-sacrificing, in the two plays. Friendship is the theme of the Philoctetes,
and Odysseus is instrumental in drawing the exiled hero into a
friendship with young Neoptolemus, a friendship based on their
shared heroic morality. Only their newfound friendship can bring
Philoctetes back to Troy to save the Greek cause. Friendship is
the middle term between the community and the individual;
friendship moderates heroic individualism and provides a reason
to help the community. Odysseus orchestrates this friendship, in
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part by presenting himself as worse than he is, in order to provide
an unheroic contrast (cf. Philoctetes 64-67). “A foiled and hapless
Odysseus in ignoble flight . . . is a queer image. It is not consistent
with the Homeric presentation or with Sophocles’ presentation
of him in the Ajax” (118). Hence the interpretation that Odysseus
probably expected or counted on Neoptolemus’s rebellion against
his plan (120). This is a parting of the ways for interpreters: few
classicists would assume that Odysseus is consistently the same
character in two plays not performed together, nor that Sophocles
felt bound to make either Odysseus consistent with Homer’s. For
instance, Sophocles’s Odysseus would have been more likely to
kill the suitors and serving maids out of cold expedience rather
than suffering the anger and resentment that Homer’s undergoes.
Badger’s Sophocles by contrast provides in each play a further
meditation on the Homeric protagonist. In part, the heroic friendship could only be manipulated into existence because it is not
fully rational (117). Reason and experience do not naturally reveal this “whole” that binds the heroes to the community; to see
it requires a divine perspective or poeticizing. This perspective
is provided by the deus ex machina—the voice or appearance of
Heracles at the end. Badger flirts with but ultimately does not
embrace the thesis that Heracles is Odysseus in disguise (because
the same actor probably played both roles) or that Heracles is in
some other way a final, fiendishly clever piece of the plan
Odysseus was hatching all along.
More telling than being chased off-stage is the scene that reverses Odysseus’s and Neoptolemus’s tutor-student relationship.
When the young man is about to return the bow, Odysseus threatens that the whole host of Greeks, and himself among them, will
stop Neoptolemus. But this claim is laughable since the Greeks
are far away, and the restitution of the bow is imminent. A
spokesman for an army is not the same as an army. Where are
his divisions? In brushing the suggestion aside, Neoptolemus
says: “You were born wise, but what you’re saying is not wise”
(1244). When Odysseus retorts that neither Neoptolemus’s
speech nor his deeds are wise, the issue come to a head. Neoptolemus addresses it forthrightly: “No, but if my [speeches and
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deeds] are just, they are better than wise” (1246). The hero
chooses justice over wisdom, heart over mind. He does so selfconsciously. When Odysseus threatens him with retribution from
the Greek host, Neoptolemus moves to a further claim. With justice on his side, he has nothing to fear from Odysseus (1251). A
just man has nothing to fear. For once, Odysseus resorts to force,
beginning to draw his sword—but he puts it back with farcical
speed when Neoptolemus begins to respond in kind. Neoptolemus now delivers the cutting line that reverses their earlier tutorial relationship. “You have done the prudent thing. And if you
remain thoughtful this way in the future, perhaps you will keep
out of trouble” (1259-60). He is now speaking like an older man
admonishing a younger. Odysseus’s wisdom now looks like immaturity, while Neoptolemus’s justice has conferred upon him a
certain augustness ordinarily reserved for age.
If real (as opposed to feigned) friendship was part of Odysseus’
plan, he apparently failed to anticipate that friendship could draw
the pair away from the community. Philoctetes originally persuades Neoptolemus that the two of them should retire into private
life; he is willing to live with his wound if it spites the Atreidai,
preferring to harm his enemies rather than help himself (cf. 139197). A cure, a new life, the highest fame: his new friend is a crutch
that enables him to avoid all of these goods. Similarly, Neoptolemus is willing to give up his glorious future in order to remain
true to a friend. Back home, Neoptolemus will take care of
Philoctetes and his wound, looking out for him especially during
his seizures. Philoctetes and his invincible bow will prevent
reprisals against the disgraced young man and his land (1404-7).
It is important to note that friendship is now standing in the way
of either friend’s achieving his highest good. All they have is each
other. Intriguingly, the same friendship that contributes to this vicious spiral downwards into privacy also contributes—after a
boost from the gods—to a virtuous spiral upwards. Badger is eloquent on the excellence of friendship and its political use: friendship “has a portion of the intimacy and warmth of family without
the concomitant murkiness and stultification, and it can partake
of worldly action and incentive without the crassness and imper-
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sonality of the larger, public community” (116). It is their friendship which decisively draws the two heroes back to the community where their ambitions may be fulfilled. But the divine
intervention does not change the truth about friendship as revealed in the play up to that point. Friendship can be an aid to
public endeavor, but it can also be a hindrance. Perhaps generally,
or more commonly, it is a hindrance. The play shows that true
friendships have a privatizing propensity as well as a public, civic
propensity. One might be tempted go further: the potentially civic
character of the heroes’ friendship is due more to the ground of
their friendship—admiration of heroic virtue—than to the friendship itself. Only in the larger society can heroic virtue receive the
honors it is due. One can imagine other grounds of friendship
(and other virtues) in which the privatizing propensity predominates. Can the privatized friendship of today contribute to liberal
societies?
The reading of the Ajax delves deeper into Odysseus’s ambiguity, and the reading of the Antigone shows the polarization he
avoids. By permitting the burial of the disgraced hero Ajax,
Odysseus in a sense corrects Creon’s refusal to permit Antigone
to bury her traitorous brother. Odysseus pities his enemy’s insanity because Odysseus sees in Ajax both “himself and the rest of
us” (64, on lines 122-26 of Ajax). Odysseus responds to the tragic
insight that all things are mutable in a way that neither remedies
the fact nor simply resigns itself to it. Instead, he finds a way the
community might abide within the tension (65). Friendship and
civic piety are his ways of abiding: he uses his friendship with
Agamemnon to secure burial and to incorporate the dead hero
(and his drive for transcendence) into the community. Odysseus
consistently claims to act not altruistically but for himself (Ajax
123-24, 1363-67). Badger believes that he overcomes his natural
self, substituting for it a universal self. “Odysseus’s ‘self’ is an
expanded self: the individual and the community are inside
Odysseus” (68). Self-interest and civic responsibility merge.
Odysseus is conscious of tragedy, and his action points toward a
political order that could also be conscious of tragedy—a worldly
life that could nevertheless hold in mind the excellence of the
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hero, whose unrestrained activity would threaten to overturn that
order. He beautifies the city by cultifying the hero (69). One wonders if anything similar to a hero cult, in which transcendence
can be both recognized and tamed, exists in liberal society.
Antigone is heroic because she desires an other-worldly
beauty, a desire that can achieve its aim only in Hades (73). Only
in the underworld can she achieve her perfect love. Hers is a
philia that becomes an eros. This is nicely observed. She seeks
to impose her transcendence on the community by burying
Polyneices. But the latter hardly seems an imposition: here the
modern, civil-disobedience readings would seem in line with
Badger’s. In Lockean liberalism, Antigone would of course have
been allowed to bury her brother. So is her “imposition” of transcendence dependent on the assumptions of the regime in Sophocles’s Thebes? Badger prefers to see Antigone as a danger
analogous to later Christian impositions of transcendent longings.
Antigone is like a philosopher in the way she finds meaning by
poeticizing: she beautifies the contingent parts around her into
wholes, thereby making them meaningful (75). Beauty orders experience. But the philosophical analogy is debatable: philosophers like Epicurus denied the existence of a beautiful cosmos.
Would not philosophers want to know the truth about anything
“naturally ambiguous and imperfect” (76)? Philosophy relies on
poetry only for its first principles (89). But does this ‘first’ mean
‘first’ in the sense of beginnings that govern the conclusions, or
‘first’ in the sense of opinions from which to ascend? Creon, for
his part, reduces philia to civic friendship (86; cf. Antigone 18290). His and her mistakes are equal and opposite: “In looking to
a poeticized Hades, Antigone fails to see any viable wholeness
in bodily life. In seeking bodily security and failing to see the
universal power of erōs and chance, Creon fails to imagine the
human soul” (93). But this makes the desire for transcendence
sound like a mad pursuit we would be better off without—which
can hardly be said of the desire for security. On this view, what
would be wrong with Creon’s position, other than the fact that
he did not provide for anaesthetizing or otherwise dealing with
Antigone’s psychological problem? To say the drive or desire for
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transcendence is innate is not yet to say that it is a good thing.
Until yesterday, it was possible to say that human nature cannot
be changed. Badger confronts the problem in a section entitled
“Life beyond the Human.” Our striving for medical technology
that would ensure immortality (defeating the tragic through fixing
the transitory) raises questions such as “What would it mean to
be a daughter to a living father forever (a father, moreover, who
was in the same stage of life with the daughter?)” (145). He concludes modestly that if Sophocles is correct, the tension between
transcendence and material security will never be eliminated
from human life (147). But will it never be eliminated because
doing so is impossible, or will it never be eliminated from humanity because, when it is eliminated, we will be inhuman, “beyond the human”? The answer seems to be the latter, as the
tension now becomes constitutive: “human beings qua human
beings are what they are owing to this tension.” The tension is at
least required for “soulful life” (195). This opens up the possibility of a post-human future—provided by the technology that
flourishes in liberal polities that, as we have seen, were created
by Locke.
The Christian visions, in which Augustine, Aquinas, and Giles
of Rome impose transcendence on politics, are dealt with somewhat scantily. In four paragraphs, Badger treats these authors and
others, adducing citations in which some of them subordinate
secular power to ecclesiastical power. None of the passages is
explicated. Perhaps their imposition of transcendence is simply
a well known fact? To place Dante in this company, because he
was allegedly Thomas’s student and saw the world as a divine
comedy instead of a tragedy (132-33), is a step too far. Dante’s
Monarchia, for example, argues against subordinating the secular
power to the ecclesiastical.
If the book is uninformative about the Christians, it is wonderfully informative about Bacon’s New Atlantis and a selection of
Bacon’s essays. Bacon explicitly demotes friendship, which
Badger places in the company of transcendence (140). Bacon’s
project is ultimately Creonic because it denies the soul in favor
of the body, which is no different from other non-human “bodies
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in motion” (143-44). Especially noteworthy are “the more violent
instruments that Bacon views as necessary for his humanitarian
goal,” including imperialism and militarism backed by technology (141). The persecution of heretics under Church rule is
reprised in the rational-authoritarian state, this time as the persecution of all transcendence.
“The Tragic Politics of John Locke” serves as a “basis for a
rejuvenated discussion of the status and aims of contemporary
liberalism” (148). Does John Locke’s liberalism permit enough
transcendence to satisfy this polarity of the soul’s craving? As a
supreme court justice vacuously but accurately put it, “At the
heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human
life.” Doing so is protected, so long as it does not prevent anyone
else from doing so, too, and causes no bodily harm to another.
(The continuing debate over abortion tests the limits of the latter
clause.) Increasingly in our times, one’s view of the universe cannot be protected if it causes anyone mental pain, either. This
could seem like no transcendence at all. Badger contributes to
contemporary discussions of liberalism by proposing a reason
why liberalism should not progress too far from of its Lockean
roots. While trying to twist free of the fundamental tension, recent liberalism actually pivots back and forth within a formal
arrangement designed to maintain the tension (172). Dissatisfied
with this formal arrangement, recent liberalism pushes for
“equality as a norm (as opposed to equality as an observation or
postulate)” (171-73). Another of its goals, the eradication of suffering, cannot be the highest human good. Striving to eliminate
suffering that comes from tyranny is fine, but “to strive to eliminate the suffering that comes from erōs and the gods is a symptom of a lack of understanding” (165, 191). Such goals begin to
overwhelm the transcendence side of the polarity in favor of the
material security side.
In Lockean liberalism, the drive for transcendence is privatized: do it yourself. Freedom of religion contrasts with both
Christian imposition and with the institutionalized civil religions
of Bacon and Hobbes. Lockean liberalism does not even promise
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justice but rather the pursuit of and struggle for justice (157, 160).
Badger appears to believe there is something naturally private
about transcendence anyway: heroic principles “have their source
in merely private relations” (99). The hero (or budding hero)
Neoptolemus, for example, has a nature “unalloyed with politics,” and it is this nature that hates the deceit in Odysseus’s plan
(105). “Patriotism is an effect of conditioning,” whereas “heroic
honor may be natural” (111). This seems odd, because if honor
is natural, it comes into its own only in community. Badger relegates saving the Greek “city” besieging Troy to the bodily-security side of the polarity. But surely the Greeks are there for
glory, not security. And glory is a transcendent goal, isn’t it? The
Greeks could always have given up that goal and sailed away, if
they wished to spare their bodies. Perhaps Badger would say
glory is possible only, or mainly, for those who “fight in the front
ranks” to ensure bodily security for weaker members of a community (Iliad, 12.310-328). Certainly the Trojan War begins due
to considerations of honor that are ultimately traceable to household integrity and security. Liberalism offers some real protections for the latter while walking everyone back from, or talking
everyone down from, our high dudgeon about the former.
Badger wrestles with Locke’s notion of self-ownership, but
finds firmer grounding in Locke’s Hobbesian right to life, which
he extends to the right to pursue happiness (154). If we cannot
do otherwise than strive for life and pursue happiness, then we
must have natural rights to do both. The right to practice religion
freely follows from the natural right to pursue happiness (155).
Hence transcendence is built in. A regime that sets itself against
this natural right is irrational and will be unstable. Badger concedes that the liberal regime is morally and spiritually empty—
this is its strength. Lockean liberalism must limit itself to the
procedural; it can never make a judgment about what is good.
When it comes to the most intriguing comparison between
Sophocles’s Odysseus and Locke, Badger recurs to his reading
of Locke’s transcendent “I” that owns its “me.” The “I” is the
same for all men, whereas the “me” is “the contents of consciousness,” the embedded, social, cultural, and bodily self (162, 149-
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54). Odysseus, too, unites the two drives on the basis of a recognition of a transcendent self—a self that includes all men (162;
cf. 182). Sometimes this view of the self seems an ethical direction in which liberalism could go, elsewhere it seems constitutive
for liberalism (194, 198).
Perhaps the biggest difficulty with this vision of liberalism is
that proponents of “transcendence” see it as more than just transcendence. They think their own version not only transcends everyone else’s, but is also true. Does not Locke or Odysseus have to
disagree? Could they ever recognize, or could a society built on
their assumptions recognize, the one true transcendence when it
arrives? Or would it, too, have to join the cacophony of competing
visions? The implication that all transcendences are created equal
is unsatisfying. Asserting transcendent values is difficult to do in
a vacuum. A community is required. The erotic and the divine “are
protected and revered to the degree that they do not become public” (167). Could this lockbox not be a kind of slow strangulation,
placing the erotic and the religious in the path to eventual extinction? Religion in the United States indeed flourishes compared to
the established churches of European nations. But individualism
trickles down from the larger society to the smaller communities.
One pressing problem is that, increasingly, the larger society believes it has an interest in and a right to impose congruence between itself and each club or bowling league: the Jaycees have to
accept women members. Badger gives liberals a reason to think
twice about enforcing this congruence, at least through legal channels: many smaller groups within the liberal state have their own
views of the transcendent. Even when their views seem ugly, forcing them into congruence effectually reduces Locke to Bacon, or
reduces liberal democracy to the rational-authoritarian state. One
might add that the new breed of laws that delve too deeply into
what people think (thought-crime) are equally illiberal. Making
hate a crime, as though it added anything to the murder or harm
to body or property intended in its name, interferes with the transcendent side of the polarity.
Badger’s fear is that tragedy may go the way of the gargoyle,
may be relegated to a status no higher than that of a lawn orna-
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ment. To evaluate post-tragic visions that he regards as post-liberal too, Badger closely examines the thought of Karl Jaspers.
The loss of tragedy would ultimately be the loss of humanity. In
the shorter term, tragedy can help our politics both abroad and
domestically. Recognizing the degree to which China or Iran is
Creonic or Antigonean might enable us to reject their alternatives
with less righteous indignation (195). At home, a similar humanity might inform our visions of our own, and the opposite, political party. Badger says little about the market basis of liberalism,
or about the shocking triumph of capitalism over all other economic alternatives. All progressives now espouse market mechanisms even in their recommendations for developing countries.
Since Locke’s notion of property is so all-inclusive, one wonders
whether the drive for transcendence might not also find expression in some forms of acquisition.
Jonathan Badger has opened up a window on Sophocles
through which we can see the tragedies as both deep and relevant.
The book is full of wonderful insights and new ways of viewing
our politics and ourselves.
�
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Pastille, William
Brann, Eva T. H.
Hunt, Frank
Sachs, Joe
Van Doren, John
Williamson, Robert B.
Zuckerman, Elliott
Trentina, Allison
Sachs, Joe
Cornell, John F.
Kalkavage, Peter
Linck, Matthew
Ludwig, Paul
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The St. John’s Review
Volume 57.1 (Fall 2015)
Editor
William Pastille
Editorial Board
Eva T. H. Brann
Frank Hunt
Joe Sachs
John Van Doren
Robert B. Williamson
Elliott Zuckerman
Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant
Allison Tretina
The St. John’s Review is published by the Office of the Dean,
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Pamela Kraus, Dean. All manuscripts are subject to blind review.
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ISSN 0277-4720
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��Contents
Essays & Lectures
World Without Time ..............................................................1
Eva Brann
Dwelling in the Land of the Confessions..........................................15
Michael Brogan
“In Want of a Wife”—or a Husband—in Pride and Prejudice.........33
Susan Paalman
“Please, Don’t Eat the Swans”: My Revolution in Romania............56
Louis Petrich
Dante’s Beatrice: Between Idolatry and Iconoclasm........................84
Gabriel Pihas
Poem
THE EXTINCTION of SPECIES...................................................117
Marlene Benjamin
Reviews
Education and the Art of Writing
Book Review of Christopher Bruell’s Aristotle as Teacher:
His Introduction to a Philosophic Science ..............................120
James Carey
Book Review of Eva Brann’s Unwilling: An Inquiry into the Rise
of the Will’s Power and an Attempt to Undo It ............................149
Matthew Linck
��ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN
1
World Without Time
Eva Brann
Here is a theory of time. It is neither new to me nor new in the
world. I formulated it for publication in 1999* and had it
formulated for me, so I could make it my own, sixteen hundred
years ago by Augustine in 399 C.E. and some three quarters of a
millennium before that by Aristotle, post-335 B.C.E. There is a
certain advantage in revisiting old thoughts, although they have
become second-nature and have lost the footloose feel of thinking
that is yet on the path to discovery: these long-held notions have
also sloughed off some of their complexity and are more
amenable to summary.
The theory is, first, that time is not a being, a thing, or a
substance in the world, nor does it operate as a power, a force,
or a destiny in our life. It has no external existence, and all speech
attributing reality to it is unwittingly metonymic, meaning that
the word “time” is used by a sort of obtuse poetry for processes
that have better names of their own.
The theory has a second element, namely that it would be a
better world, and we would be better off, if more people thought
that time was unreal and spoke accordingly.
Before closing in on the gist of this theory, I want to
acknowledge an intelligent resistance that a listener might feel
arising within. If you have a notion proposed to you as true and
are immediately told that it is also beneficial, shouldn’t you rear
up and resist as a matter of principle? Don’t we keep ourselves
honest by tinting our glasses grey? Isn’t a truth that comes
Eva Brann is a tutor and former Dean at St. John’s College in Annapolis,
Maryland. This lecture was delivered at the Symposium on Time held
at Belmont University in Nashville, TN on September 23, 2014.
*Eva Brann, What Then Is Time? (Lanham, MD: Rowman and
Littlefield, 1999.
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embellished with utility very suspect? Of course it is, because it
might be nothing but a Pollyannaish optimism, a self-pleasing
thoughtless this-is-the-best-of-all-possible-worlds” optimism.
What I’ll be proposing has behind it a sense that demands more
reflection. I call it “ontological optimism.” Ontology is the
account of being. The very notion of Being requires a
complement: Appearance. The true Being of which true
philosophers strive to give an account comes to our attention as
opposed to what only appears or is merely incidental. The two
greatest philosophers of classical antiquity, Plato and Aristotle,
were ontological optimists. They do not in the least think that
everything within this world is always for the best, but they do
think that its sources, be they at work from beyond or within, are
wonderfully good and therefore attractive to our knowledgehungry souls.
I’ve briefly set out a reason for not foreclosing on a proposed
truth because it is beneficial to believe it – although in the later
history of inquiry into the nature of things there will be those who
make pessimism – a sense that things are as bad as possible – the
test of truthfulness, because the way things are is in truth ugly.
To deal with this split in the human sense of the world requires a
lifetime’s conversation. For now, I’ll posit a guarded optimism.
There is a second misgiving that a canny listener might have:
Does every truth want announcing? Shouldn’t prudent people
suppress some parts of what they feel compelled to believe? I’ll
give an example with major consequences. Our Declaration of
Independence claims that “all men are created equal” in respect
to “certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness.” Just read Lincoln’s speech on the Dred
Scott Decision (1857) for his sense – a true believer’s sense – of
the vulnerability of the document’s basic assertions, assumptions
that have by now become even more questionable for us. For the
Declaration grounds our equality in a common divine Creation,
and that is no longer a faith to be taken for granted. Is the
questionableness of the ultimate equality of human beings, then,
a proper subject for public inquiry? Not on your life – not in
principle and surely even less in fact. Some topics have to be left
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN
3
alone if we’re to live together. When you hear some of my claims
about time you might wonder if time isn’t such a topic.
Of course, I’m speaking tongue-in-cheek, precisely because
I think that a public reflection on the reality of time might lead
to a revision of some current mantras which seem to me humanly
deleterious, whereas the doctrine of equality seems to me
humanly beneficial. And also, in all candor, because the kind of
ontological reflection I mean to put before you is in fact very
unlikely to be of major consequence to the world – though I share
with all speakers at academic symposia a secret desire to be
dangerous.
So I’ll barge on, telling first what time is not, and then what
it is insofar as it is anything, and finally why an affirmation of
its unreality, of a world without time, is advantageous to life.
First, What time is not: Look into the world and try to detect
time. Our environment is full of time-telling, but the thing told
is never in evidence. David Hume’s consequence-laden
observation was that we never actually see a cause, only a
constant conjunction of events. So also with time: We never
observe it, only changes in space. Time is told either by location
in space or by counting in . . . what? Wouldn’t the natural
completion of that phrase be “counting in time?” That’s circular,
to be sure, though in fundamental thinking circularities are often
revealing, because they display ultimate involvements. In this
case how we catch something bears on what it is.
Second, then, What time is: Basically time-instruments are
in the analogue mode. Timaeus, in the Platonic dialogue named
after him, says that what we call time is “a certain movable image
of eternity . . . an eternal image going according to number” (37d
ff.). Time is an “image of,” or is analogous to, eternity because it
is everlasting and has neither beginning nor end. It is a mere
image because it appears as change, and so it doesn’t achieve the
undifferentiated nowness of eternity; it is movable as traversing
circular distances. Its generating and telling instruments are the
visible heavenly bodies. In other words, the heavens both are and
tell the time of the world; they are both cosmic time that goes on
forever and a heavenly clock that needs no rewinding. The
�4
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
watches most of us wear on our wrists are in turn made in the
heavens’ image; they are analogues of the circular motion of the
sun (as it appears to us) or of the earth (as Copernican theory
persuades us). Whether the time-piece is cosmic or miniscule, it
tells time by an indicator, sometimes a heavenly body, sometimes
“a hand” moving over a portion of a circle’s circumference. So
even a little ladies’ watch is an analogue of the cosmos. There
are also in our day digital time-pieces that involve counting and
will open a can of worms. I will speak of them later. One
difference between analogue and digital clocks comes across in
a preference for the round watchface as expressed by a friend of
mine who said: “I want to know what time it is, but I also like to
see what time it isn’t.” Analogue watches tell time in terms of
the everlasting revolutions of the heavens together with the
conventional divisions of the human day.
Aristotle picks up on the “going” of the image “according to
number” – or so it seems, when we read Book 4 (chaps. 10-14)
of his Physics (which contains his account of time) in
juxtaposition with the Timaeus. Probably he clued it out himself.
In any case, he puts motion together with number to spectacular
effect – the first instance I know of in any writing of time being
effectively undone as a something. He doesn’t say: “I’m first; this
is a conceptual revolution.” He would much rather make his
thinking persuasive by presenting it as a tweaking of thoughtful
predecessors. Yet, in brief, he has discovered that time is
incidental to change. And since he thinks that all change is at
bottom locomotion (chap. 7.7), this means that time is attendant
on motion from place to place. Moreover, this motion is
numerable. For although it is continuous, it is divisible into even
measures at any of the points of the trajectory of a mobile object.
Every motion, of course, implies a moving object which
generates, one might say, a path, whose diagram is an open or
closed orbital trajectory. Then time is the counted collection of
all the measured linear units: 12 (EST), for example, is the
counted number of dial-measures in which the sun reaches high
noon, the zenith of its orbit, from a fixed starting point opposite.
Or 13 (years) is the number of the sun’s yearly circuits on the
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN
5
ecliptic, the day after which a young Jew is said to be a man. For
motion to be thus countable, it needs to have a recognizable
“before and after”: here before, here now, here thereafter. Thus
Aristotle defines time in this way: “Time is the number of motion
with respect to before and after.”
Here, we might think, Aristotle has gotten himself into deep
trouble. “Before and after” are, after all, primarily time-words:
past and future divided by a non-time, a span-less, point-like
“now.” Thus rewritten, “Time is the number of motion counted
according to the progress of time” doesn’t sound very helpful.
But Aristotle has a perfect defense: For him every motion that is
not violently unnatural is a development of potentiality from
implicitness to fulfillment. Therefore every motion – sublunar
ones that begin and end and heavenly motions that never cease –
every single motion has discernible phases even before time is
brought in. So “before and after” can indeed be pre-temporal, as
are the implicit stages of a development.
But there is a more serious stumbling block, and I will make
a gift of my book on time to anyone who removes it for me in
Aristotle’s terms. He emphasizes that time is the counted number,
not the counting number (4.2). So if I say “twelve o’clock high”
I mean the twelve counted path-segments of the sun’s motion,
not my counting thereof. But Aristotle is also quite clear about
the fact that there can be no counted number without a counting
consciousness. (Aristotle, of course, says “soul,” and so should
I, though the word is at present proscribed, and “consciousness”
is de rigueur, I think principally because it is from Latin and has
three syllables and seems less naïve than “soul,” which is from
good Old English and has but one.)
So the counted motion, which is time, requires a counting
soul. Here is the problem: The counting soul does not just beat
with a steady pulse: one, one, one. . . . That’s what the digital
watch does, thereby electronically causing a prescribed series of
numbers to appear on a spatially moving dial. The soul actually
recalls the pulses accumulated. Its numbering is ordinal: first,
second, third. It saves bygone pulses in their order and projects
future ones, and it is present, here now, at each moment of
�6
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
counting. But if it is counted motion that is time, then the
counting soul is pre-temporal. What then is the substrate of its
serially ordered activity? Aristotle, in making time external and
incidental, something that is found in nature only as a mere
measure, has also made human counting an enigma. What name
shall we give the psychic development that directs ordered,
ordinal, counting?
One reason why Aristotle has effectively reduced time to
nothing in itself is that it is in its conceptual structure dramatically
unlike its representational analogue, the linear path, the
visualizable trace, of a mobile object. The time-line segment
before the now, called “the past,” is gone, erased; the future time
path is not yet and invisible; the now is analogous to a point
which has, as Euclid says, no parts and “in” which nothing can
exist. If you cast yourself into time, you’re done for; there is no
time span in which to exist – though plenty of spatial extension
in which to move.
Here’s an interesting addendum to the Aristotelian difficulty.
It is taken up and solved more than two millennia later in his own
terms by Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason (1787) – not the
enigma of existence, namely, what span time’s “no-longer” and
“not-yet” leave for us to be in – but time’s particular relation to
counting. Recall that Kant thinks that all our experiences, whatever
appears to us in an eventually apprehensible way, already comes
directly formatted temporally and spatially. But this forming frame
is, so to speak, amorphous and beneath awareness. It needs to be
brought together (in Greek, “synthesized”) with thinking, with the
understanding. Kant assigns to the imagination the mysterious
work of joining intuition and understanding, distinctionless time
and a determinating concept. Kant thinks that this latter is the
concept of quantity, and that when intuited time is made
determinate by quantity, counting is the result. The way I put it to
myself is this: Time makes its appearance in consciousness by a
kind of pulsing that is a now-counting: now1, now2, now3 . . . , or
one, two, three. . . . This analysis seems to me true to experience.
Sheer temporal awareness seems to be a kind of pure enumeration
of beats – it may actually be our heart-beat felt as a pulse, the
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN
7
throbbing of our arteries following the pumping of the heart. What
makes a span of time, time lived through, is having laid up that
cardinal count in memory, where it becomes ordinal: first beat,
second beat, third beat. Thus the mere beating turns into a first,
second, third moment of remembered past.
So Kant solves the problem by bringing time totally within
the consciousness of a “subject,” that is, a thinking I. Time is not
soul-numbered motion entering into the world from outside, but
number itself arises as a conceptualizing of intuitional time
within the subject. But then, so does everything within the reach
of our comprehension arise within me, the subject; this
elucidation of time is bought at the price of near-total subjectivity.
Moreover, the deep origin of time as a form of our sensibility,
though in us as subjects, is not for us as knower: The grounds of
the possibility of our experiential knowledge are not within our
experience. Thus one might say that for Kant, too, aboriginal time
is a non-being, not a knowable something – that inferred ghost
which he calls a noumenon.
Third, What time is insofar as it is anything: So I’ll leap back
through the ages to Augustine, who seems to me the greatest
phenomenologist of time, that is, the finest observer of the
internal experience we have of it, and the first analyst of its
elements.
That is not just my opinion. The most comprehensive and
acute work on time in modernity that I know of, Husserl’s On the
Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness (1893-1917), is
essentially an acknowledged elaboration of Augustine’s own
answer in the Confessions to his famous phrasing of the enigma
of time: “What, then, is time? If nobody asks me, I know; if I
want to explain it to someone who asks, I don’t know” (10.14).
Augustine allows that we all know time as an experience,
sometimes an acutely and deliciously painful one: Here’s
Shakespeare, Augustine’s rival in time-consciousness:
Being your slave, what should I do but tend
Upon the hours and times of your desire?
I have no precious time at all to spend,
Nor services to do till you require.
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Nor dare I chide the world-without-end hour
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour
When you have bid your servant once adieu. (Sonnet 57)
Who among us has not spent a world-without-end hour sitting
by the telephone? Who is not acquainted with the swift “time’s up”
of dense experience, short in felt duration, long in remembrance,
or the dragging “are we done yet?” of bored disengagement, endless
as a happening but miniscule in memory? Or the brute standing still
of time in pain? Or the relative pace of experienced time that
Rosalind describes in Shakespeare’s As You Like It:
Time travels in divers paces with divers persons. I’ll tell
you who Time ambles withal, who Time trots withal,
who Time gallops withal, and who he stands still withal.
(3.2, 299-302).
That’s the experience described – but now to the experience
explained. How does it arise? Here is Augustine’s answer, which
I’ll frame as a diagram for you to envision.
Imagine a horizontal line of indefinite length. It represents
all the world’s simultaneous motions, its goings-on, from the
stars’ revolutions to the mosquitos’ dartings. For Augustine, the
Christian, the line must have a beginning, Creation, and an end,
Judgment Day. In God’s omnisciently comprehensive sight it is
all there at once. But human beings experience it as an extension.
Imagine a second vertical line, best drawn orthogonal to the world
line, and moving along with it. The moving point of crossing is
an “origin.” It represents our mind, existing now, in contact with
the world and borne along by its motion. So it is not really a
mathematical point but a living moment in a moving world. Later
writers, beguiled by Aristotle’s analogy of the temporal now to
the spatial point of no extent, will see the need to call it the
“specious present.” But it is not a specious – that is, pretend –
present, at all, but a real psychic event, albeit a mystery.
Where then in this diagram is past and future? The vertical
line represents, as I said, the mind. And the mind has, as Augustine
puts it, distentio – its lengthening, its existence, its longitude, we
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN
9
might say. Diagrammatically, it extends above and below its
origin, its moment of existence, its contact with the world. The
part of the vertical below the moment of existence in the present
world represents a build-up of memory-moments, deeper and
deeper in the soul, lower and lower on the upright.
Next, all the moments of memory are connectible by parallel
oblique lines to the world line that the mind has traversed. If we
imagine the forward motion of world and human being
progressing toward the right, then the world line to the left of the
origin represents motions and events left behind in the past, and
each of our true memories down on the “distention” of mind
connects to, projects on, a receding point to the left part of the
world’s motion line. Of course, scrambled connections (crossed
projections) and false memories (wandering projections) can
occur. That is how we have a past; the past is a stack of nows
now in our distended minds – and all one now in God’s collected
mind.
Likewise with the future: Think of it as all the plans and
expectations, further and further away from the present, rising
upward on the upper half of the mind’s line and projectible by
parallel-oblique lines onto the future motions of the world.
That there is in fact a past, though for us only partially and
only indirectly recoverable and real only in memory, is common
belief; whether there is in fact a real future and how our plans
and expectations bear on it is a great theological problem – in
fact, the problem of free will. But this much Augustine shows
clearly and, I think, truly. He says that we must speak of “a
present of bygones, a present of presences, a presence of future
things” (11.2), and continues: “For some such there are in the
soul, and I do not see them elsewhere. The present of things gone
is memory, the present of things present is sight, the present of
things future is expectation” (11.20, 28). In my words, time is
entirely the effect of memory and expectation. Insofar as time is
anything, it is a so-called epiphenomenon, an idle, ineffective
affect supervening on the real operations of memory and
expectation.
But no – “idle” is an inadequate word for our potent sense of
�10
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
time, which is to be understood as our sense of our mind’s
longitude, its present lengthening into the before and after of the
now of our existence – and of course that fact underwrites,
overwrites, potently affects our life.
So now I can zero in on a sense of time that seems to me both
spurious and deleterious. It is time not as an internal enlargement
of existence but as an external being or force. Continuous time,
thought of as being in the world, may be conceived as a
continuous stream bearing things along, an absolutely primal,
equable flow (of what? we may ask) that is unaffected by
anything else in the world; this is Newton’s absolute time
(Principia [1686], First Scholium). You may even hear it, as
Shakespeare (once again) makes Hamlet speak of one who “only
got the tune of time,” a hum conveying its “most fond and
winnowed opinions” (5.2, 183). You may figure it as a linear,
open-ended, unbounded mere going-on, or as a closed, everrepetitive, bounded cycle. In these metaphors, the laws of motion
apply indifferently whether time is run forwards or backwards.
Or you may imagine the continuous temporal substrate as
directed by a forward arrow, a principle of unidirectional change
or development that prohibits reversal. This sort of time is not,
one might say, “when-neutral”; you might call it change in the
abstract, or the substrate of embodied change. In all these forms,
some sort of quasi-event or pseudo-motion is imagined as
continuous.
The other metaphor, the second figurative way of imagining
time is, on the other hand, continual: The now, the present,
continually divides the stream of time into gone-by and not-yetarrived, into past and future. Thus time breaks into a lost past and
a not-yet-gained future around a continually new-event-now. This
new-now nullifies the past as living; it leaves the passed-away
past, so to speak, set in stone. It is, quixotically, both hard-andfast and intangible: You can’t change it – or so they say. It is
indeed, often literally, set in stone; for instance, epigraphy is the
discipline of deciphering inscriptions, often found on marbles.
Its watchword is saxa loquuntur, “the stones speak.” But does
that really mean you can’t change it?
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN
11
For consider that these testimonials are not past, not in the
past. They are in the present, and we must make of them what
we can – or will. This curious circumstance, that the past is real
only in the present, might be thought of as the incarnation of the
memory that Augustine calls “the present of things gone.” You
can see that a thoughtful consideration of the past opens a can of
worms. What is memory, the storage house of time-expired
presences? How invulnerable to change is the memorial past?
What about that secondary, often public, memory that is built up
from present testimonials of past events? What is more
changeable than the past – perhaps even transformable into the
present?
But this can of worms is replaced by a bucket of serpents
when it comes to the future. For who would doubt that except for
a God-inspired prophet, no one can have the future in mind? The
future, by the very meaning we attach to it, cannot provide us
with any testimonials; it hasn’t happened. All we have are our
hopeful or fearful expectations, dim intimations of blessings or
harms to come, and uncertain conjectures, projections of our past
experiences embellished with change-vectors, their rates and
directions of change, and, above all, an impetenetrability made
less or more pliable by our weak or resolute will. The will is the
human force whose very name announces future-directedness,
by means of which we take hold in our minds of the yet-to-be
and try to bring it about in the world to our satisfaction. To be
sure, we may make vivid pictures of the future, but closer
examinations will show that they are, depending on our mood,
imaginary recollections from a golden age, or over-the-top
distortions of present trends. But they are not images of originals
that reside over there in the future – for there’s no there there.
Fourth, and finally: World without time: You can probably
tell from my tone, that my desire to cancel time has much to do
with the damage that can be done to us by the notion of a real
future. Let me now enumerate three elements of a theory that
presents time as unreal in the world, as not thing-like, not forcelike – a theory by now surely exposed as part of a program of
resistance to certain ways of life. Then I will complete my talk
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by fleshing out briefly these refusals to cooperate with “time.”
So then, my three recalcitrances: (a) to the past as passed away,
bygone; (b) to the present as mere passage, transition; (c) to the
future as an imperative power.
(a) Insofar as the past is the span of time behind us, if time is
something real, those spans are really dead, and their relics are
mummies, either to be carefully prepared, with ointments of
honey or baths of vinegar, to live the museum life of the
embalmed departed, or to be discarded upon that notorious
rubbish heap of history as no longer “relevant” to our time, the
present. Thus, for those of a venerating temperament, the past
becomes a silent tomb near which they sit rigidly in worship. For
others, whose dispositions long for change, the past is a spent
force, a deadweight on their innovative energy. To neither party
is the past, if it is anything, the time-proof treasury that houses
all our inheritance of thought and imagination, once human
memory has reluctantly let go of what is too delicate, or
cheerfully chucked out what is too trashy, for prolonged life. But
how the past is properly present to us is a tricky and timely
subject for another day. So much can be said in a sentence:
Unless we want to cut ourselves out of humanity’s will and
remove ourselves as beneficiaries of its estate, we had better give
up thinking of the past as having a date of expiration.
(b) Those who feel the past as a march of obsolescence are
in fact consigning their personal present to mere transition. For
the life-principle of obsolescence is innovation, and innovation
is not the heart-stopping or mind-boggling perpetual newness of
an imagination-arousing work or a truth-revealing theory or a
potent device. Newness is ever-fresh and invulnerable to obsolescence, because it is not a mere time-marker, a mere date-stamp,
on the work of art or on the discovery of an explanation, or on
the invention of a contrivance. Newness is rather inherent to these
wonders insofar as they break into the ordinary course of ongoing life and enhance or redirect it. Time cannot stale its infinite
variety.
Innovation, on the other hand, is systematic, intentional novelty,
willful newness. In the innovative mindset (this is a derogatory
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term: fully alive people don’t have mind-sets), small novel
differences often trump great solid worth. People succumb to the
persuasion that “we live in a time of change,” giving to time an
independent power, as if it were an accelerator that puts life in
overdrive without the need of my foot on the figurative pedal –
a vehicle racing through each present to the next, a car in need
of a factory recall. Otherwise put: People accept that they live in
“a time of . . .” and that it is prudent to “get with it,” to clue out
what this time-tyrant commands and to do it – in our case, to
treat each moment of life as just a bridge to the next novelty. But
there is no such time-potentate. There are only people willing to
go along – not, to be sure, with the non-existent times, but with
what each person thinks the others think, or whither his or her
option-dissipated likes weakly tend. What a humanly actual
present – I am tempted to say, a time-less present – might be,
what, in short, it means actually to exist, is, once again, worth a
long conversation.
(c) So then, finally, the future, the chief and least existent
venue of real time. You all know the vocabulary of futurepossessed people. Some say: “The future is here” – really absurd
speech; if it’s here it’s too late. They might have meant: Be
proactive! Clue out what is coming and preempt or prevent it.
The original meaning of “prevent” was “go before,” as in the
Psalm 18, in which David is fearfully imagining: “The sorrows
of death compassed me about: the snares of death prevented me.”
He means “came before me, confronted, me” (18, 5). In that
sense, the anticipation of the future, in literally “foregoing” it,
also “prevents” it; it forecloses the future. Human beings are
surely entitled, even required, to prevent the future in the sense
that by anticipating their version of it they’ll bring it about or
keep it from happening – as long as they understand that they are
going towards something, an “it,” that is not there to meet them.
How we think about our plans makes a great difference: whether
we justify our intentions as accepting, managing, and yes,
serving, what is coming at us in the false, even craven, belief
that there is a real future; or whether we, believing the Future
(capital F) to be a false reification, a confusion between an
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abstraction and a reality, make ourselves think now, in our
present, about what is best and most desirable and also humanly
possible – and then do that.
And, once again, there is endlessly more to say about the
future. But instead of pursuing it, I will end with this observation:
Being future-recalcitrant is the very opposite of being reactionary,
for the non-existence of the future – or at least our ineradicable
ignorance of it – is the very condition of our practical freedom.
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Dwelling in the Land
of the Confessions
Michael Brogan
It’s surprising that a lover of wisdom should lavish as much attention on the particulars of his own life as Augustine does in the
Confessions. While any number of philosophers before him had
sought to live by the maxim inscribed in Apollo’s temple at Delphi—gnōthi seauton, know thyself—none known to me had
taken this as a directive to reflect on the contingencies of his own
biography, let alone publish his thoughts on such intimate matters
as a vexed relationship with his mother, a childish loathing of
school, a troubled sexual history, or an enduring tendency to
overindulge at the dinner table. In the Phaedo, Plato does have
Socrates recount how he lost his youthful enthusiasm for the
study of nature (96a-100a), but in their exclusive attention to the
evolution of his philosophical orientation, these autobiographical
remarks hardly compare with the astonishingly inclusive narrative of a sinner’s wandering path to God that Augustine gives us
in the Confessions. Socrates, his account of his “second sailing”
notwithstanding, lives out the Delphic command not by brooding
over his individual history or unique identity but by enlisting dialogue partners in a collaborative search for the truth of those experiences potentially shared by us all in virtue of our common
humanity. To oversimplify a bit, he’s interested not so much in
who he is as in what he is, not in this individual man called
Socrates but in what it means to be a human being in general.
Even more pronounced is the contrast between Augustine
and Plotinus, the thinker who perhaps exercised a greater influence on him than any other pagan writer. The Neoplatonist’s disregard for merely individual selfhood is memorably captured in
the testimony of his disciple Porphyry, who writes that “Plotinus,
Michael Brogan is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland.
This lecture was first delivered on November 22, 2013.
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the philosopher our contemporary, seemed ashamed of being in
the body. So deeply rooted was this feeling that he could never
be induced to tell of his ancestry, his parentage, or his birthplace.”1 No mere quirk of temperament, this reticence is governed by Plotinus’s overriding ambition to identify completely
with the incorporeal intellect in its capacity for timeless contemplation of the divine One. It’s this aspiration that motivates his
refusal to share even the bare facts surrounding his origins as an
embodied self.
For all that he owes to the self-effacing Platonic sage, however, Augustine himself has no qualms about directing his gaze
and ours to the particular circumstances and events of his unique,
unrepeatable, and still-unfolding life. Quite to the contrary, he
writes in the confident hope, reiterated at several key points in the
Confessions, that by reflecting on that life, seeking out the narrative threads that bind it into a unity, he and his readers might be
drawn ever closer to the eternal, divine truth. But how does a lover
of wisdom—one, moreover, as indebted to Neoplatonism as Augustine acknowledges himself to be—arrive at a hope like this
one? How is it that he comes to see his embodied, time-bound existence as no mere image to be forgotten as quickly as possible in
the ascent to its divine original but as something worthy of the
most serious and sustained attention?
Now, one approach to the question immediately comes to
mind. As an orthodox Christian believer, the author of the Confessions fully accepts the doctrine of the Word made flesh. God
himself, on this account, took on all the characteristic features of
human finitude: he was born of a particular woman at a particular
time and place, spoke a particular language, practiced a particular
religion, lived in relationship to particular human others—we
could extend forever this list of “accidents” that individuate the
incarnate beings that we ourselves are and that Christians believe
God in Jesus became. While some of these properties and rela1. Porphyry, “On the Life of Plotinus and the Arrangement of His
Work,” in Plotinus, The Enneads, trans. Stephen MacKenna (New York:
Penguin, 1991), cii.
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tionships are undoubtedly less important than others, who are we
to scorn the whole lot of them if God himself has deigned to take
them on? Who are we to be “ashamed of being in the body” if the
Creator of all things, of corporeal substances no less than of the
spiritual, saw nothing shameful in becoming incarnate? If the humanity of Jesus Christ, indeed his very flesh and blood, is indispensable to our salvation, shouldn’t we at least have second
thoughts about renouncing our own humanity, or attempting to locate it exclusively in a disembodied intellect that manages to shed
the burdens of finitude?
But of course these are very big “ifs”— too big, I think, for a
community like ours whose conversation appeals to no higher authority than natural reason. While Augustine believes he can find
in the writings of the Neoplatonists themselves the doctrine of the
Word that was with God and that was God, not even he claims to
apprehend the incarnation of that Word on any basis other than
faith. My ambition tonight is to see how far we can go toward
making sense of the intensely personal approach of the Confessions without appealing to postulates drawn from sacred doctrine.
While I suspect that Augustine’s unprecedented way of applying
the Delphic maxim becomes fully intelligible only against the
background of his specifically Christian commitments, we might
nevertheless begin to understand the peculiar strategy he employs
in the Confessions by considering the deficiencies that come to
light there of a philosophy conducted in a wholly impersonal key.
However dazzling a glimpse it may afford of the eternal truth,
Neoplatonic introspection, we shall see, fails to open out onto
what Augustine calls “the way that leads not only to beholding
our blessed fatherland but also to dwelling therein” (7.20.26).2
PART I
Before examining their limitations, however, I want to begin by
briefly considering why the “books of the Platonists” (7.9.13)
2. All Augustine quotations are from The Confessions of St. Augustine,
trans. John K. Ryan (New York: Doubleday, 1960).
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were attractive to Augustine in the first place. His study of them
comes directly on the heels of his disillusionment with the
Manicheism he had been espousing for the better part of a
decade. Disheartened by the moral and intellectual bankruptcy
he has found even among the elite members of that sect, he has
also come to reject their sharply dualistic vision of good and evil
as coeternal principles locked in cosmic combat. Such a view, he
concludes, is irreconcilable with his dawning certainty that God
must be beyond all change, corruption, or violation. Nothing can
harm a divinity worthy of the name, and this means that God
could have no compelling reason to engage in battle with eternal
forces of darkness. In fact, such forces are no more than the figments of an overheated mythic imagination: for together with
being immutable, God is by nature infinite; it makes no sense,
therefore, to posit a reality that would constrain in any way his
power to implement his perfectly good will.
With his Manichean convictions thus in tatters, Augustine
finds himself not so much freed as unmoored, drifting toward a
radical skepticism that, for all its philosophical plausibility, can’t
possibly quiet the clamor of his restless heart. It is in this state
that he becomes newly open to the possibility of reconciling with
the Catholic Christianity in which his mother attempted to raise
him, an orthodox faith which, largely due to Bishop Ambrose’s
brilliant preaching on the allegorical sense of the Old Testament,
he has ceased to disdain as the bastion of simple-minded literalism. He realizes, for example, that our being in God’s image need
not entail that he be confined to a body like ours, as the Manichees
had mocked the Catholics for allegedly believing. At this stage,
however, Augustine finds he can do no better than replace such
anthropomorphism with a less crude but no less materialist notion
of God, now imagined as a subtle body extended throughout infinite space, permeating and exceeding a created world conceived
on the analogy of a sponge submerged in a vast sea (7.5.7). To
think in this way, he realizes, commits him to the absurd view
that an elephant, for example, must contain more of the divine
presence than a sparrow, yet he remains frustratingly unable to
understand God or anything else in nonmaterial terms. He writes:
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“Whatever was not extended over, or diffused throughout, or
compacted into, or projected up to definite measures of space, or
did not or could not receive something of this kind, I thought to
be completely non-existent” (7.1.2).
It’s this crucial error that the books of the Platonists enable
him to overcome, not simply by introducing him to an impressive
theory of incorporeal being but by showing him a path leading
to nothing less than a direct experience of the purely spiritual,
first within his own soul and ultimately in the divine being itself.
Taught to shun the external and direct his gaze inward, he eventually catches sight of what he calls the “unchangeable light”
above the mind. After ascending beyond bodies and the power
to perceive them and onto the soul’s rational faculty of judgment,
he says that in realizing its own mutability, this reasoning power
raised itself up to its own understanding. It removed its
thought from the tyranny of habit, and withdrew itself
from the throngs of contradictory phantasms. In this way
it might find that light by which it was sprinkled, when
it cried out, that beyond all doubt the immutable must be
preferred to the mutable. Hence it might come to know
this immutable being, for unless it could know it in some
way, it could no wise have set it with certainty above the
mutable. Thus in a flash of its trembling sight it came to
that which is. Then indeed I clearly saw your “invisible
things, understood by the things which are made” (7.17.23).
Many of you will no doubt recognize the final sentence here
as a citation from Paul’s Letter to the Romans (1:20). By quoting
Scripture, however, Augustine does not mean to imply any essential difference between the experience he is recounting and
the one described by Plotinus and his disciples. As in the writings
of those philosophers, the inward turn of Confessions 7 corresponds to a movement away from absorbed attention to the particularities of the material world and toward the timeless,
intellectual contemplation of the “unchangeable light” at the
source of all finite things. That eternal light is one and the same
for Plotinus as for Paul, for Augustine as for you or me. If our
highest good is indeed to gaze upon it, it’s understandable that a
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thinker like Plotinus would regard attending to those things that
differentiate us individuals, the temporal accidents of birth and
biography, as at best a distraction from our true calling. In the famous treatise known as “On Beauty,” Plotinus insists that what
we ought to be doing is chipping away like sculptors at everything exterior to the eternal light within us. “Do you see yourself,
abiding within yourself, in pure solitude?” he asks.
Does nothing now remain to shatter that interior unity, nor
anything external cling to your authentic self? Are you entirely that sole true light which is not contained by space,
not confined to any circumscribed form . . . ? Do you see
yourself in this state? Then you have become vision itself.
Be of good heart. Remaining here you have ascended aloft.
You need a guide no longer. Strain and see.3
But what if “straining” isn’t enough? What if “remaining
here” proves too difficult? For all the serene confidence that
marks Plotinus’s writings, even he and his disciples sometimes
seem to acknowledge the impossibility of simply willing the soul
to arrive at and persist in its transcendent vision. Porphyry, for
instance, claims to have had the experience just once, in his sixtyeighth year,4 and while Plotinus says that for him “it has happened often,”5 he also characterizes it as something that comes
“suddenly” (exaiphnēs)6 upon a soul that is all too quickly sent
back down into the comparative dullness of mere discursive reason.7 Now, I suppose it’s possible (thought personally I doubt it)
that if Augustine had experienced nothing worse than this inevitable slide from nous to dianoia, from pure contemplating to
the difficult labor of thinking things through, and if, moreover,
he had found some way to reconcile the suddenness of the introspective vision with Plotinus’s confidence in the sufficiency of
3. Enneads 1.6.9, in The Essential Plotinus, trans. Elmer O’Brien (Indianapolis: Hackett , 1964 ), 43-44.
4. Porphyry, “On the Life of Plotinus,” cxxii.
5. Enneads 4.8.1.
6. Enneads 6.7.34.
7. Enneads 4.8.6.
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effort (“straining”) to bring it about, he just might have remained
content with what the books of the Platonists were able teach
him. But as he recounts in such compelling detail in the Confessions, his rapturous and reassuring vision of the unchangeable
light is followed almost immediately by a plunge back into currents of temptation that prove to be just as irresistible as they had
been before. No transformation of his life ensues, no conversion
or reorientation of his misbegotten aims and ambitions follows
upon the ecstatic experience that liberates his mind. “I was borne
up to you by your beauty,” he confesses, “but soon I was borne
down from you by my own weight, and with groaning, I plunged
into the midst of lower things” (7.17.23). In other words, the
tyranny of habit reasserts itself immediately, and he succumbs to
old patterns of feeling and acting despite seeing them more
clearly than ever as obstacles in the way of his deepest desire.
The good he approves unreservedly in his mind he fails to pursue
with an undivided heart; unable to do what he wants, he does the
very things he hates.
How depressing! Wouldn’t we like to think that even a pale
approximation of a vision like the one Augustine reports would
have a profound effect on the way we live our lives? Wouldn’t it
be easy to love the truth and to do it if we were only certain what
the truth was? But this is just the sort of comforting illusion that
Augustine indulged in until his ecstatic vision deprived him of
what he calls “that former excuse, in which I used to look upon
myself as unable to despise the world and to serve you because
knowledge of the truth was still uncertain to me” (8.5.11). Now,
approaching thirty years of age, he has attained the certainty he’s
long been seeking, and yet he discovers that he is just as enthralled
to his old, enervating habits as he ever was. Able to see the truth,
he still cannot draw near enough to bask in its radiance.
If we are at all persuaded of the authenticity of his testimony—influenced, perhaps, by an uncomfortable awareness of
our own failures to translate insight into action, to do the truth
we know—we have reason to wonder whether any mere vision,
however dazzling, can set us on the sure path to the good. Understanding alone is perhaps not enough to overturn long-settled
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habits of self-indulgence, indolence, and despair, no matter how
irrefutable the evidence becomes that these are precisely what
keeps us from the happiness we seek. To use one of Augustine’s
favorite images, it’s as if we can become enchained to ways of
life we know to be toxic to our souls. He writes:
For in truth lust is made out of a perverse will, and when
lust is served, it becomes habit, and when habit is not
resisted, it becomes necessity. By such links, joined one
to another, as it were—for this reason I have called it a
chain—a harsh bondage held me fast. A new will, which
had begun within me, to wish freely to worship you and
find joy in you, O God, the sole sure delight, was not
yet able to overcome that prior will, grown strong with
age (8.5.10).
Now, we call “habits” those dispositions to feeling and action
that come to be in us as a result of repetition. What we do habitually we do not because nature compels us or reason convinces
us but simply because we have done likewise in similar situations
time and again in the past. Here’s a trivial example. I’m in the
habit of drinking a cup of coffee first thing every morning. I don’t
remember making a deliberate choice to start doing this, but if
ever I did, it must have been a long time ago: at this point in my
life, it’s only a slight exaggeration to say that deliberate choice
of any kind becomes possible for me only after I’ve had that first
cup. I suppose if I were to summon my inner resources I could
manage to break a chain now thousands of links long by choosing
to have tea tomorrow instead. After all, it’s not my nature that
determines me to drink coffee, as it is, say, the stone’s nature that
causes it to fall or the fire’s that makes it rise, but merely my
long-settled habit—a practice become second nature, so to speak.
But might there be situations in which this is a distinction
without any practical difference, occasions when second nature
constrains no less than first and habit takes on the character of
compulsion? For Augustine there were, and we need not have
suffered from any of the conventionally recognized “addictions,”
I think, to identify with his experience of habit as an iron chain
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holding him back from goods he has to come to perceive with
incontestable clarity.
In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle observes that, unlike
those powers that are in us by nature (e.g., sense perception), the
potencies for which precede our exercise of them, the virtues of
character are like physical or technical abilities in that they come
to be in us only after we have been engaged in the activities associated with them (1103a25f). We become capable of courage,
for example, only by repeatedly doing courageous things, meaning those things the already courageous person does, just as we
become harpists by repeatedly practicing the harp under the tutelage of an accomplished player. As we grow more accustomed
to being at work in them, these activities become easier for us,
more pleasant, we could even say, more “natural” to us.
Unfortunately, though, this is at least as true, and probably
more so, of bad actions as it is of good: as Augustine knew all
too well, a past defined by repeated indulgence in any kind of
excess or deficiency can make a future characterized by strength
of will or self-control, let alone full-fledged virtue, appear entirely out of reach. How I conduct myself today seems largely
determined by what I did yesterday, even when the memory of
this recent past fills me with shame and regret over having acted
otherwise than I knew I should.
I want to turn now to Augustine’s analysis of time to see what
light it might shed on this indebtedness or even enslavement of
the present to the past, and also on the shape that a rehabilitated
future might ultimately take. My hope is that doing this will bring
us a step closer to our goal of understanding the significance of
Augustine’s autobiographical turn in the Confessions.
PART II
Though it would take all night (at least) to do justice to his fascinating and intricate meditation, the basic paradox of time Augustine identifies in Book 11 can be expressed in a few words. It
seems, he observes, that the present is the only time that actually
exists, since whatever the future is, it is not yet, and the past is
no longer. Upon scrutiny, however, the present itself turns out to
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look like nothing more than an extension-less boundary between
those two nonentities, the past and the future. “It flies with such
speed from the future into the past,” Augustine says, “that it cannot
be extended by even a trifling amount” (11.15.20). Hemmed in as
it is on both sides by nonbeing, the reality of the duration-less present itself falls under serious suspicion. Here is Augustine again:
[I]f the present were always present, and would not
pass into the past, it would no longer be time, but eternity. Therefore, if the present, so as to be time, must
be so constituted that it passes into the past, how can
we say that it is, since the cause of its being is the fact
that it will cease to be? (1.14.17, emphasis added.)
Thus it appears that neither the future, nor the past, nor even,
now, the present has a sure hold on being: future and past are not,
and the present is only in so far as it ceases to be. But Augustine
is unwilling to conclude from this that time is mere illusion.
Should we decide that it exists only in a secondary or derivative
sense—a kind of moving image of eternity, as the Timaeus has
it—it nevertheless remains too fundamental to our lived experience, and our ways of talking about that experience, simply to
deny its reality altogether. The task is to try to understand what
time is, if not in itself then at least as it is for us. What we can
say for sure, Augustine thinks, is that the past and future depend
for their being on the present; they “do not exist except as present
things” (11.18.23), he says. It seems no less true, however, that
the present itself cannot be apart from the past and the future, for
what else could provide the present the “space” it needs to extend
beyond the length-less and breadth-less instant that exists, if it
exists at all, only by rushing headlong into non-being?
Characteristically, Augustine looks within himself for a way
beyond the impasse. It’s there, in the soul or the mind, that future
and past things acquire a kind of presence (and therefore being),
as correlates of the mind’s acts of expectation and memory, respectively. It’s also there that present things achieve stability by
being held in attention, an act of the mind that articulates itself
beyond the point-like instant by looking back to a beginning and
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forward to an anticipated end. Whereas on initial reflection time
had seemed to vanish into the nothingness of a not-yet-existent
future, a no-longer-existent past, and a perpetually self-destructing
present, its claim to at least relative being can now be redeemed
so long as we’re willing to pay the price of acknowledging its dependence on the mind’s own activity. The three times, Augustine
says, “are in the soul . . . the present of things past is in memory;
the present of things present is in intuition; the present of things
future is in expectation” (11.20.26). Taken as a whole, time can
thus be described as a “distention of the mind” (distentio animi)
(11.26.33), a stretching or swelling of present consciousness
backward into a remembered past and forward into an anticipated future.
While it’s certainly possible to distinguish memory, expectation, and intuition or attention as three separate acts of the mind,
Augustine’s analysis makes clear that to do this would be to engage in a kind of abstraction. For in our lived experience of
things, memory, expectation, and attention form a single, continuous whole. The mind, he says, “looks forward, it considers, it
remembers, so the reality to which it looks forward passes
through what it considers into what it remembers” (11.28.37). To
illustrate this dynamic, he reflects on the experience of reciting
a psalm he knows by heart. Once he’s formed the intention to recite and is about to carry it out, the psalm, or rather, his recitation
of it, is one of the “things future,” which is to say, it exists for
the mind in the mode of expectation. The ray of consciousness is
pointed forward, so to speak, casting its light over the whole
psalm as something to be brought out into the open as an audible
presence. As the recitation proceeds, the stock of expectation decreases in proportion to memory’s increase, until, having reached
his proposed end, the speaker falls silent and the psalm in its entirety exists by way of its resonance in the recollecting minds of
its hearers.
What happens between the beginning and the end of this
process, namely, the ongoing transferal of expectation’s funds
into the account of memory, corresponds to present time in its
more expansive, non-instantaneous conception. The act of the
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mind responsible for this making present Augustine variously
calls “intuition” (contuitus), “attention” (attentio), and “intention” (intentio). Present consciousness, we come to understand,
doesn’t just passively register a now that arises only to perish (or,
more accurately, arises only by perishing); on the contrary, the
attending or, better, the intending mind plays an active part in the
unfolding of temporal events, as both Augustine’s heavy reliance
on words with tendo—stretch out—at their root, as well as his
pregnant choice of the recitation example powerfully suggest.
About that recitation, Augustine writes:
The life of this action of mine is distended into memory
by reason of the part I have spoken and into forethought
(expectatio) by reason of the part I am about to speak. But
attention (attentio) is actually present and that which was
to be is borne along by it so as to become past (11.28.37,
emphasis added).
It’s worth hearing that again: what was to be is “borne along”
by attention into the past. The Latin verb here is traicitur, a passive
form of traicio, which could also be rendered as “transports” or “conveys.” It combines the preposition trans—“across” or “along”—with
the root verb iacio, meaning “throw,” so we might think of attention as the act of throwing an expected future into a recalled past.
The sense of this would be to emphasize how time for Augustine
is not merely something that we suffer but is also, perhaps even
primarily, something that we ourselves do. It’s hard to know how
to say this: the mind constitutes, enacts, unfolds, or perhaps lives
time, in the transitive sense of an expression like “living one’s
life.” But whatever verb we finally settle on, the crucial thing to
grasp is that the soul itself makes an indispensable contribution
to the experience or even the very being of time in shouldering
an expected future and bearing it along into a recalled past.
If the full significance of this activity does not come entirely
to light in Augustine’s psalm example, what he says toward the
end of Book 11 leaves no doubt about the ultimately moral horizon of his analysis. After describing the temporal process by
which the action of reciting the psalm reaches completion, he as-
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serts that “[t]he same thing holds for a man’s entire life, the parts
of which are all the man’s actions” (11.28.38). (In fact, the scope
can be widened even further to take in all of history, the “whole
age of the sons of men,” though I’ll keep our focus for now on
the life of the individual.) Just as I look ahead in expectation to
the psalm I am about to recite, so too do I project a practical or
moral future for myself, setting about in the present on the task
of converting into a happy memory what is now only an aspiration to act in accordance with my conception of the good. In this
way, “that which was to be is borne along” into the past.
Of course, there are many ways for our moral intentions to
misfire. However completely he comes to rely on God’s grace,
Augustine remains sensitive to the constant vigilance, the intense daily effort required of him if he is to fulfill his divinely
reordered aims. Readers of Book 10 of the Confessions know
that his baptism did not render him immune to the temptation of
taking it easy, of allowing himself to be swept up by the rushing
current of the merely instantaneous now instead of rising to the
challenge of actively living time, that is, of anticipating a virtuous future and then undertaking the arduous task of carrying it
through the present and into the past. “I am a burden to myself”
(10.28.39), he writes, vividly evoking his sense of this labor, the
obligation imposed on us imperfect, temporal creatures not to
while away the time but to strive, with God’s help, to close the
gap between what we are now and what we are called to be.
The difficulty of that task, as our discussion of habit has prepared us to see, seems to be directly proportional to the distance
separating what we will to become from what we have already
been. In other words, the more radically the future we project
for ourselves departs from the past we recall, the harder it is to
bear that future successfully into the present. In the hopes of
deepening our understanding of this phenomenon, let’s return
once more to Augustine’s recitation example. Forming the intention to say the whole psalm from beginning to end involves
calling it up to the forefront of his mind from out of what in
Book 10 he had called “the great cave of memory” (10.8.13).
Only because he has already learned it by heart at some point in
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the past can he now look forward to reciting it in the present.
And this suggests, if the example is as paradigmatic of all temporal experience as I believe Augustine means it to be, that anticipation is itself grounded in recollection, in other words, that
the projected future “borne along” by a present intention is first
assembled by the soul from materials drawn from its past. Augustine makes the point more explicitly in Book 10. Within the
memory, he says,
I encounter myself and recall myself, and what, and
when, and where I did some deed, and how I was affected when I did it. There are all those things which I
remember either as experienced by me or as taken on
trust from others. From that same abundant stock, also,
I combine one and another of the likenesses of things,
whether things actually known by experience or those
believed in from those I have experienced, with things
past, and from them I meditate upon future actions,
events, and hopes, and all these again as though they
were actually present. “I will do this or that,” I say to
myself within that vast recess of my mind, filled with
images, so many and so great, and this deed or that then
follows (10.8.14, emphasis added).
What this passage allows us to see, I think, is that temporal
life, or the activity of living time, is marked by a kind of circularity. In proposing a course of action to myself, I cannot but
rely upon the “abundant stock” of past experiences, either my
own or those attested by others and found credible to the extent
that they are consistent with my own. In other words, before the
anticipated future can be borne along into the remembered past,
the past must first be launched forward into the future as the indispensable material out of which the soul shapes its expectation. Now, this is not to say that in acting in the world we only
ever repeat ourselves, or that the wheel of lived time rotates
around a fixed point. Augustine mentions here that as he deliberates he “combine[s] . . . the likenesses of things” drawn up
from memory, thereby suggesting that the soul enjoys at least
some degree of creative freedom in its activity of conceiving for
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itself a future as something other than an exact replica of its past.
But it’s still no use pretending that a path of total novelty is ever
open to us; the future is inescapably indebted to the past, expectation inevitably takes its stand on the ground of memory.
It’s not hard to grasp that this poses a grave threat to the possibility of the deep and abiding transformation the young Augustine came to recognize as his only hope for happiness. For if
my memory teems with images of a life fundamentally inimical
to the good; if the virtuous examples of others seem too remote
from my experience to be plausible or even attractive models
for me; and if the claims of the philosophers to offer an escape
from time and all its woes have proved too good to be true, then
my desire for the happy life, no matter how firmly rooted in a
clear vision of its reality and goodness, seems fated to go unfulfilled. In their essentially timeless character, transcendent moments of insight, like those Augustine attains by way of
Neoplatonic introspection, are essentially cut off from memory
and expectation, mere interruptions of the circuit of lived temporality. As such, they remain no more than isolated points of
light, like individual stars in a vast night sky—beautiful, to be
sure, but virtually powerless to illuminate the ground beneath
our feet as we stumble along in search of the way that leads not
only to beholding but to dwelling in the land of our desire
(7.20.26; 7.21.27).
Augustine opens a window onto the potentially ruinous dependence of expectation on memory in recounting a conversation he had with himself a few years before his final decision to
seek baptism. Approaching the age of thirty, he looks back with
chagrin at all the time that has passed since his teenage reading
of Cicero’s Hortensius first set him on fire with the love of wisdom. The bitter anxieties and disappointments of those dozen
years have left him more convinced than ever of the futility of a
life given over to worldly ambition. His disillusionment with the
rationalist pretensions of the Manichees and his deepening admiration for the philosophically sophisticated preaching of Ambrose have inclined him, as he puts it, to “fix my feet on that
step where my parents placed me as a child” (6.11.18). He’s
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going to do it, he really means it this time, he’s going to put away
what he calls his “vain and empty concerns” by committing himself fully once and for all to the Catholic Church. Just not yet.
“[T]ime passed,” he says,
and still I delayed to be converted to the Lord . . . I loved
the happy life, but I feared to find it in your abode, and I
fled from it, even as I sought it. I thought that I would be
too wretched, if I were kept from a woman’s arms. I did
not believe that the cure for this disease lay in your
mercy, for I had had no experience with that cure. I believed that continence lay within a man’s own powers,
and such powers I was not conscious of within myself
(6.11.20).
Notice what’s holding him back. Though he has long suspected that the cares imposed by married life are for him incompatible with the spiritual freedom he desperately desires, he also
knows himself well enough to realize that he lacks the strength
to live without the comforts afforded by sexual intimacy. In the
terms of his metaphor, he suffers from a “disease” whose symptoms he knows how to treat but whose cure, he has learned, lies
completely outside his own power to effect. Whether or not we
think it makes sense to diagnose as an illness his inability to commit to celibacy, with a little imagination most of us will be able
relate to Augustine’s predicament here. He knows exactly what
it would take for him to be happy, but bitter experience has convinced him that he’s just not up to the task. Nothing he finds in
the spacious caverns of his memory allows him to envision for
himself a life of genuine health, and without the means to palliate
the symptoms of his disease, he fears that taking up residence in
“God’s abode” would serve only to increase his misery. Thus he
shrinks back from the decisive step, without, however, being able
to resign himself to a future as fatalistically determined by the
past as his own seems certain to be.
Perhaps there is little we can reasonably say about the causes
of Augustine’s ultimate escape from this desperate situation, at
least if we want to keep open the possibility that it was indeed
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God’s grace that finally set him free. I think we can conclude,
though, that whatever it was that finally lifted the terrible burden
from his soul in that Milan garden, the experience he describes
as “a peaceful light streaming into my heart” (8.12.29) would
have been every bit as isolated and ineffectual as his Plotinian
visions of the eternal truth turned out to be had it not become
possible for him to discern the underlying continuity of his past
life of unhappy wandering with the baptized future he was finally
empowered to project for himself. For as his analysis of time has
shown us, to the extent that the present remains divorced from
the past that precedes it, it cannot but have the character of the
instant that is only by ceasing to be, the point-like now that suddenly—exaiphnēs—emerges out of nothingness only to vanish
again just as suddenly. From such an instant, however charged
with divine presence it might be, nothing of lasting, practical significance is likely to follow—nothing more consequential, at any
rate, than the sort of wistful memory and infinite, impotent yearning that threatened to consume Augustine in the wake of his disappointing experiments in Neoplatonic ascent.
In concluding, then, I want to suggest that Augustine’s passionately personal reflection on the events leading up to his final
conversion is intended to recall and thereby reinforce the vital
links between the future opened up to him on that momentous
day in Milan and even the darkest periods of his youthful estrangement from himself and from his God. Though his conversion undoubtedly marks a new beginning, even a kind of rebirth,
it succeeds in doing what impersonal introspection had failed to
do because Augustine is enabled to see it as the culmination of a
process that had begun in him long before. The call he finally answers in deciding to seek baptism is the very same call that had
never ceased resounding in his heart, even when he was desperately trying to drown it out in the frantic pursuit of sensual pleasure, emotional and intellectual titillation, and worldly success. In
looking back on his past, he comes to see that in the anxiety, disappointment, and doubt that marred his life of secular striving,
God himself had been calling him home:
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You were always present to aid me, merciful in your
anger, and charging with the greatest bitterness and disgust all my unlawful pleasures, so that I might seek after
pleasure that was free from disgust, to the end that, when
I could find it, it would be in none but you, Lord, in none
but you. For you fashion sorrow into a lesson to us. You
smite so that you may heal. You slay us, so that we may
not die apart from you (2.2.4).
Augustine meditates on his past in the Confessions to learn
again this lesson of sorrow, which is also, paradoxically, a lesson
of great hope. From out of the caves of his memory he no longer
draws up the despair-inducing confirmation of his own weakness
that had paralyzed him as a young man, but the liberating assurance that God had always been with him, even in the depths of
his sin. Recollections of events in which that divine presence now
seems unmistakable nourish his expectations of future assistance,
giving him the strength to stand firm against present temptation
in the confidence that his conversion will turn out to have been
the decisive event of his life, and not a mere prelude to another
aborted attempt or humiliating failure to change his ways.
But as his unsparing assessment of his present condition
vividly demonstrates, he knows that nothing is guaranteed. To be
sure, conversion to the truth for him comes as a gift, but that
gift—perhaps like all gifts—is profoundly difficult for a creature
with a long history of proud self-assertion to receive. Ever present
is the temptation to refuse or return it in the fatal conviction, born
of pride and despair, that there is no genuine good beyond what
we can obtain for ourselves. The books of the Platonists did nothing to disabuse Augustine of this error. “Strain and see,” they told
him, at once puffing him up by preaching the sufficiency of effort, and casting him down by showing him no more than the way
to behold the blessed country when his heart’s desire was to dwell
therein. The way beyond beholding is a way of humility, and Augustine’s searingly honest examination of his life is his attempt
to walk it.
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“In Want of a Wife”—or a Husband—
in Pride and Prejudice
Susan Paalman
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” (51) This
witty opening sentence of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is
justly well known. The high minded tone of “a truth universally
acknowledged” at the beginning sets up the reader for the prosaic
punchline “must be in want of a wife.” The wit lies in the author’s
tacit acceptance of the universality of human self interest and the
power of that interest to skew what people see to fit their own
desires. People take an interest in another person’s fortune, the
implication seems to be, and in trying to get a piece of it for themselves, in this case through marriage. But rather than acknowledging openly this universal desire for wealth, the world seems
determined to reinterpret its own greed as the fulfilling of the rich
man’s need. The single man of fortune thus becomes the putative
prey for some unmarried woman and her family under the guise
of supplying him with that which he lacks: a wife.
The general implications of the opening sentence are made
particular in the rest of chapter one, which introduces us to Mr.
and Mrs. Bennet. The business of Mrs. Bennet’s life, we are told,
is to get her five daughters married. (7) She is unrelentingly determined in this goal, in large part, as we later learn, because her
daughters will inherit very little from their father, due to an entailed will. As the Bennets discuss Mr. Bingley, newly arrived in
the neighborhood and the “single man” in question, it becomes
clear that Mrs. Bennet cares little for whether Mr. Bingley feels
Susan Paalman is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland.
This lecture was first delivered on 17 April 2015.
1. Unless otherwise noted, all quotations and page numbers are taken from
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (New York: Penguin Books, 1996).
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he lacks a wife, and cares much about securing him and his fortune for one of her daughters. She is not the only mother to partake in this type of self interested plotting. We are told that she
and the other mothers in the neighborhood consider Bingley the
“rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.” (5)
Bingley, single and possessing a fortune, is seen as someone
else’s property himself, as the means to the end of worldly prosperity for some daughter or other. Bingley’s money is to be in
large part the source of happiness for the prospective wife.
Witty as the first sentence of the novel is, there is another way
to read it. “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man
in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” (5) If
we take this sentence at face value, it says that everyone understands that the single man’s life is incomplete, that once he has
met his material needs, he must then be looking to meet some
other kind of need, one that can only be filled by a wife. What
sort of a need this might be is left unsaid. In fact, from one perspective, the rest of the novel is an exploration of what the individual lacks, and what each character is looking for in a mate.
We are offered a parade of couples throughout the novel, each
couple having a different basis for formation. They fare better or
worse depending on the wisdom and affections of the people involved.
Both the witty and the direct reading of the opening sentence
fit with the tone of the novel as a whole. On the one hand, Austen
relishes exposing the small-minded follies that often underlie our
lofty aspirations. The humor and economy of word that begin the
novel reappear on every page, often highlighting the ways in
which characters deceive themselves or try to pretend they are
better than they are. On the other hand, Austen gives us some
deeply moving scenes, from Elizabeth’s horrified response to the
knowledge that she has misjudged Darcy and Wickham both, to
Mr. Bennet’s heartfelt plea to Elizabeth not to repeat his own mistake in marrying without esteem, to Darcy’s pure delight when
Elizabeth finally accepts him. The wit and the seriousness succeed one another effortlessly. Perhaps, addressing the question
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of what the individual lacks and what one may desire or need
from a marriage requires both attitudes: both the skewering of
the conceits and follies of human nature and the sincere acknowledgment of our best instincts and our need for one another.
In the main couple of the story, Elizabeth Bennet and Mr.
Bingley’s friend, Fitzwilliam Darcy, Austen depicts characters
who come to know their own weaknesses and find strength
through each other. They endure misunderstanding, miscommunication, and doubt, before finally marrying at the end of the
novel. We are meant to believe that their marriage will be one of
lasting happiness; one in which the needs of each are met, and
met well. Furthermore, we are meant to take joy and pleasure in
the reading of Elizabeth’s and Darcy’s story. But before examining Elizabeth and Darcy any further, let’s take a quick inventory
of some of the other couples in the novel.
The Bennets
Our first view of marriage comes from the Bennets, parents to
Elizabeth Bennet as well as four other girls, including Jane, Elizabeth’s older sister and confidante. The Bennets came to be married, we are told, because of Mr. Bennet’s love of Mrs. Bennet’s
beauty. His desire to live in the presence of physical beauty was
of the first importance to him, and he made the error as a young
man of assuming that her beauty came with a good nature and a
good temper. He was sadly mistaken. Once he realized his mistake, “all his views of domestic happiness were overthrown.”
(198) He was left in a marriage with a foolish and irritable
woman he could not respect, and she was left with a man who
does not love her. Unlike many, Mr. Bennet is wise enough to
avoid the many vices available to unhappy people, but takes
pleasure in his books, in the countryside, and, as depicted in
many scenes in the novel, by teasing his wife almost without
mercy. The more amusement he derives from her gullibility and
lack of understanding, the sillier she gets, until he eventually
grows tired of the game and retreats to his study. The reader too
is amused by their interactions; Austen writes their dialogue with
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a fine ear for the drily comic. As the novel progresses, though, it
becomes clear that there is something perverse about the pleasure
Mr. Bennet takes in his wife’s weakness of mind, and something
frustrating about Mrs. Bennet’s complete inability to understand
him. As a couple, they bring out the worst in each other. Still,
they have five daughters whom both seem to care for. The Bennets have at least found themselves in a stable home with a family, something neither could have produced alone.
The Collinses
The first new marriage in the novel comes after Elizabeth’s closest friend, Charlotte Lucas, becomes engaged to Elizabeth’s
cousin, Mr. Collins, within three days of his having proposed
marriage to, and been rejected by, Elizabeth herself. Elizabeth’s
shock when she learns of Charlotte’s engagement is only exceeded by her dismay at the match. Mr. Collins is a man of the
cloth with a vicarage that is supported by a weathy noble woman,
Lady Catherine. In some ways, he would be considered a very
eligible man. Elizabeth’s rejection of him is based on his character, which is not vicious, but is marked by self serving foolishness. Mr. Collins is “not a sensible man,” (60) we are told, but a
“mixture of pride and obsequiousness, self importance and humility.” (61) Austen plays up his character, detailing a number of
long, pompous, and silly speeches he makes on various occasions, including during his unsuccessful proposal to Elizabeth.
After suffering through and laughing at Mr. Collins and his
speeches, the reader is tempted to agree with Elizabeth that for
Charlotte to link herself to such a man is disgraceful. Elizabeth
is convinced that Charlotte will not be happy in the marriage.
(109) Charlotte, though, sees it differently. She desires “only a
comfortable home,” (108) she says to Elizabeth. Charlotte is
older and less attractive than Elizabeth; her options for a decent
life are limited, she believes. Marriage is the “only honorable
provision for well educated women of small fortune,” and Charlotte sees it as the “pleasantest preservation from want.” (106)
Mr. Collins, as painfully foolish as he is, will give her sustenance
and power in the world, as a man of consequence.
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For his part, Mr. Collins is responding mostly to duty. As a
clergyman with a wealthy and aristocratic patroness, he wishes
to set a good example for his flock, as well as find happiness in
a mate. His rhapsodes on Lady Catherine’s virtues leave no
doubt, though, that his main motive in marrying is to please his
patroness.
In the Collinses, we have a marriage made on social and
worldly grounds: on Charlotte’s side out of her desire for financial independence and on Collins’ out of his duty to his provider.
After their marriage, Elizabeth is forced to admit that both husband and wife are tolerably happy. Collins has married “one of
the very few sensible women who would have accepted him, or
have made him happy if they had,” (152) she says. Charlotte is
intelligent enough to blush at her husband’s foolishness at times,
but knows how to manage him. We are told, “[Charlotte’s] home
and her housekeeping, her parish and her poultry, and all their
dependent concerns, had not yet lost their charms.” (182) Those
are ominous words, perhaps, leading the reader to imagine the
time when the charms have worn off and she is left with such a
husband. We can only hope Charlotte’s children will favor her
more than him, and that she will find whatever companionship
she desires with them.
The Wickhams
The marriage of Mr. George Wickham and Elizabeth’s youngest
sister, Miss Lydia Bennet, comes towards the end of the novel,
after a great deal of suspense. The two had run off together as an
unmarried couple, and taken a lodging together in London. The
crisis of the novel comes when their elopement is discovered and
the Bennets are left to worry while others search out the couple
and persuade them to marry. The persuasion comes in the form
of money and a bought commission in the army for Wickham.
Later, it is revealed that the bribe was financed by Mr. Darcy, out
of several motives, including his own guilt in having covered up
Wickham’s nefarious past. It is interesting that nearly everyone
involved in the matter assumes, on the one hand, that Wickham
and Lydia, once they run off together, must marry; and on the
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other hand, that the marriage will not be a happy one. It was socially unacceptable for a young woman to engage in sexual activity outside the bounds of marriage, and reprehensible for a
young man to seduce such a woman. Once Lydia and Wickham
are assumed to have so engaged, the only course that would retain
their social standing is marriage.
Darcy and Elizabeth, separately, are the only ones to doubt
the wisdom of having Lydia and Wickham marry. Darcy, in fact,
first tries to persuade Lydia not to marry Wickham, and only
works towards their marriage once Lydia convinces him that she
will not leave Wickham. (268) Elizabeth, for her part, expresses
grave misgivings about the match. It is clear to Elizabeth that a
marriage founded upon undisciplined passion will not be a happy
one. Later, the narrator confirms her misgivings by noting the
disarray with which the Wickhams live their lives and the indifference to each other that soon pervades their marriage.
Each of these three marriages was formed with the intention
of addressing some kind of human need or desire: The Bennets’
marriage was formed out of the desire for beauty and fulfilled
the need to procreate; the Collinses looked for financial stability
and social standing and fulfilled social obligations; and the Wickhams married to further Lydia’s desire for importance and to facilitate socially sanctioned sex. With these marriages in mind, let
us turn now to the main drama and involving Mr. Darcy and Miss
Elizabeth Bennet.
Part I: First Encounters and First Impressions
Elizabeth and Darcy do not start off as a likely couple. Their first
encounter is at a neighborhood ball when Darcy, speaking to his
friend Bingley within Elizabeth’s hearing, rejects Elizabeth as a
dance partner, with the stinging and memorable line, “She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me.” (12) Elizabeth
laughs at Darcy to her friends afterwards, repeating the story with
gusto and resolving never to dance with him. Over the next few
weeks, her umbrage at the insult hardens into a profound dislike
based on his proud demeanor. The dislike later turns to something
closer to disgust and hatred when she is told, by the charming
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and attractive Mr. Wickham, that Darcy had denied Wickham his
rightful inheritance from Darcy’s father, out of the ignoble motive
of jealousy.
Darcy, after a brief time of studying Elizabeth for the petty
exercise of emphasizing her imperfections to his friends, soon
begins to find her intriguing. He notices her intelligent expression, graceful and energetic figure, and playful manners. (21-22)
Erotic desire has been ignited: he cannot keep his eyes off her
without an effort. (63) Darcy is not a man to let his passions run
away with him, though. He begins a systematic investigation into
Elizabeth’s character that goes on for several weeks. He starts by
listening in on her conversations with others and continues with
a series of conversations with Elizabeth herself on matters that
range from love poetry, to the duties of friendship, to what it
means for a woman to be accomplished. Darcy, we are told, “had
never been so bewitched by any woman as he was by her.” (46)
Nonetheless, Darcy does not entertain seriously the thought of
marrying Elizabeth at first, because of her relatively low family
connections.
In the response of each to the other, we can discover something of their characters. In Elizabeth’s laughter at Darcy’s insult
to her, we see the value she places on a person’s character above
his worldly status, since she is by no means overawed by Darcy’s
wealth and high social standing. We also, though, see her readiness to laugh at the ridiculous in people, a trait she shares with
her father and one that leads her to have a sharp tongue and something of a sarcastic wit. In her concern for Wickham’s claims
against Darcy, we see her spirited allegiance to justice and kindness. On the other hand, her easy willingness to believe Wickham
without evidence comes from her excessive pride in her ability
to read people: her initial dislike of Darcy is confirmed by Wickham’s accusations and Elizabeth never really doubts that they are
true. We learn later, of course, that Wickham is a liar.
In Darcy, we first see his lack of natural amiability. His refusal to dance when attending a ball and his insulting speech
about Elizabeth, made to Bingley, but clearly within her hearing
and just after he had caught her eye, reveal both a clumsy shyness
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and a prideful disdain for the opinions of others. In his investigation into Elizabeth’s character, though, we see the importance
he places on her substance. Her looks attract him only after he
notices her intelligence and liveliness. The manner and content
of her conversation are what bewitch him. He is very willing to
revise his initial disdainful opinion of her upon further observation. We see Darcy’s pride at work also in his refusal to consider
the possibility of marrying Elizabeth because of her lack of high
social connections. Darcy, as we find out later, was orphaned at
the age of twenty three, and left in charge of fulfilling the Darcy
family’s duties, which are substantial indeed. He takes pride in
his role as the provider of livelihoods, order, and moral example
to the people of Derbyshire.
Darcy reveals his commitment to his family pride in a conversation with Elizabeth, early in the novel. When she comments,
with tongue in cheek, that Darcy must be without any of the usual
follies and nonsense that she is used to laughing at in others,
Darcy responds:
“Perhaps that is not possible for anyone. But it has
been the study of my life to avoid those weaknesses
which often expose a strong understanding to ridicule.”
[Elizabeth replied,] “Such as vanity and pride.”
“Yes, vanity is a weakness indeed. But pride – where
there is real superiority of mind, pride will be always
under good regulation.”
Elizabeth turned away to hide a smile. (50)
Darcy, as we see, has “made it the study of [his] life” to eradicate any weakness of character that would make him appear
ridiculous in the eyes of others. His statement indicates the seriousness of his commitment to upholding the honor of the family
name. It also reveals his focus on maintaining the appearance of
strength in the eyes of the world. The difference between avoiding weakness of character for the sake of living a good life and
avoiding it in order that one does not appear ridiculous might not
sound substantial, but it is this same mistake in understanding
that leads Darcy to deny that pride might be a weakness. Darcy,
in pursuing strength of character for the sake of his pride, has
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blinded himself to the potential pitfalls of that same pride. In his
blindness, he has allowed his pride free rein, so that it has outgrown the bounds of a healthy regard for self and family and become excessive to the point that, as the narrator tells us, he “was
continually giving offense,” wherever he appeared. (16) Elizabeth, with her clear sight for the folly of others, immediately sees
and smiles at Darcy’s own self deception that has fostered his excessive pride.
Later in that same conversation, Darcy confesses that he tends
to be resentful of the faults of others, saying, “My good opinion,
once lost, is lost forever.” Elizabeth agrees, with perhaps too
much enthusiasm, that, “Implacable resentment is a shade in a
character.” Darcy responds:
“There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency
to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even
the best education can overcome.”
“And your defect is a propensity to hate everyone.”
“And yours,” he replied with a smile, “is willfully to
misunderstand them.” (51)
Here we have, in a nutshell, Elizabeth’s and Darcy’s analysis
of each others’ faults. Darcy’s self described resentful temper
grates against Elizabeth’s amiability. Her severe irritation at his
complacency about such a fault comes out in her hyperbole: he
has a propensity to hate everyone, she says. Darcy then immediately identifies Elizabeth’s own characteristic fault: that of willfully misunderstanding people.
Darcy and Elizabeth both are under the illusion that their understanding and intellect have led them to lives of rationality and
virtue. Both are deceiving themselves. Darcy is committed to a
path of upholding the family name, but foolishly allows his pride
to bloat into a sense of superiority, telling himself that he has it
under good “regulation”. Elizabeth sees his mistake clearly, but
doesn’t see properly where his pride comes from. She trusts her
ability to analyze people too completely, and comes to believe
her own hyperbolic statement that Darcy is a hateful man, even
while Darcy is falling in love with her. Darcy sees that Elizabeth
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has misunderstood him, but completely misses the extent of her
dislike for him. He seems incapable of seeing the effect his disdainful manners have on others. Their pride and their prejudice
deceive both characters into forming partly true, partly false images of the other that are dependent on their partly true, partly
false images of their own characters.
Neither Elizabeth nor Darcy has the perspective to see clearly
the extent of his or her own faults and mistakes in judgment. Because their own faults are so tied to their image of each other, the
key to knowledge of their defects of character thus lies in each
seeing the truth about the other. But they will never see each other
more clearly without a closer acquaintance than has yet been possible. Darcy’s passion for Elizabeth provides the means for mutual revelation when he finally proposes marriage to Elizabeth.
Part II: The Proposal
By coincidence, on the day Darcy finally proposes, Elizabeth had
just learned from Darcy’s cousin that Darcy had been the primary
force for separating his friend Mr. Bingley, the single man of
good fortune mentioned in the first chapter of the novel, from
Elizabeth’s sister Jane, who loves Bingley. Elizabeth, who has
been in some anguish over Jane’s loss of her beau, is overcome
with anger and distress that Darcy could have had the temerity
to separate the couple, and the coldness of heart to brag about it
to his cousin. Darcy picks this unhappy moment to visit her and
at last tell her plainly what he thinks of her and propose marriage.
In the struggle between his commitment to his family pride and
his attraction to Elizabeth, attraction has won. Pride has not been
completely defeated, though. He proposes with the clear expectation that Elizabeth will accept him, and amid his protestations
of love, Darcy explains also his sense of the degradation it would
be for him to marry someone with such poor connections as Elizabeth. His sense of his superiority is alive and well.
To Darcy’s shock, Elizabeth rejects his proposal. In the following conversation, charged with the barely controlled anger of
both parties, Elizabeth articulates her dislike of Darcy. She levels
two charges at him, her reasons for rejecting his offer. First, he
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has been the means of separating her beloved sister Jane from
the man Jane loves, Mr. Bingley. Second, Elizabeth repeats the
story she had heard from Mr. Wickham, that Darcy had mistreated Wickham by withholding from him the legacy of Darcy’s
father.
Finally, when Darcy continues to press the matter, Elizabeth
articulates her feelings, and in doing so, levels her third charge
at him: “from the first moment, I may almost say, of my acquaintance with you, your manners impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain for
the feelings of others, were such as to form that groundwork of
disapprobation on which succeeding events have built so immoveable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I
felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever
be prevailed upon to marry.” (164) Darcy, finally understanding
fully her feelings towards him, can only retreat in haste.
Elizabeth cannot tolerate the sort of pride that would consider another human being degraded, simply because of that
person’s station in life. So far, Elizabeth has heard nothing to
change her opinion that Mr. Darcy suffers from this, the “worst
kind of pride.” (159) She still believes that she is right in her
characterization of him and so is ignorant of her own self deception until Mr. Darcy gives her a letter, the next morning,
containing all the things he could not manage to say to Elizabeth in the moment of her rejection of him the day before. It
provides a defense against the charges that he improperly separated Jane and Bingley and that he mistreated Wickham.
(Darcy makes no mention of the third charge Elizabeth leveled
at him, of his chronic disdain for others that laid the groundwork for her dislike of him.) As Elizabeth reads the sordid truth
about Wickham’s mistreatment of Darcy and his attempted seduction of Darcy’s sister, she cannot at first believe it. Eventually, after weighing the evidence, she must admit that Wickham
has lied to her. “Astonishment, apprehension, and even horror
oppressed her,” (173) we are told. The horror must be from
learning how easily Wickham manipulated her, as well as how
thoroughly she has misjudged Darcy. Her extreme reaction re-
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veals just how wedded she is to living a virtuous life. “Till this
moment I never knew myself,” (176) she cries.
Though we don’t hear from the narrator about Darcy’s response to his encounter with Elizabeth and the disastrous proposal, the letter itself gives us a clue. It starts bitterly enough, but
once he starts to write of Wickham, the love Darcy’s father had
for him, Wickham’s profligacy, and his attempted seduction of
Darcy’s sister Georgiana, the writing changes tone to become
more confiding and at times almost tender. Darcy has never revealed this story to anyone who was not involved in the mess already. He shows his bedrock trust of Elizabeth’s character in
giving her this explosive information, but he also shows his continuing care for her. “Here again I shall give you pain,” he writes,
“to what degree only you can tell. But whatever can be the sentiments which Mr. Wickham has created, a suspicion of their nature
shall not prevent me from unfolding his real character. It adds even
another motive.” (169) Darcy believes that Wickham has won
Elizabeth’s heart, at least to some degree. Aside from any jealousy
he may feel, he really does not want her to be taken in by Wickham, as his beloved sister was, almost to her ruin, and as his father
was, until the day of his death. Towards the end of the letter, he
justifies Elizabeth, writing that as she knew neither he nor Wickham before, and as she has a trusting nature, it is understandable
that she would believe Wickham rather than himself. Finally,
Darcy ends the letter with what Elizabeth later calls “charity itself”
(307): “I will only add, God bless you.” (172) Darcy, less than a
day after being humiliated by Elizabeth, is already moving towards forgiveness of her for her unjust accusations. Whether he
is moving towards better self-knowledge remains to be seen.
For Elizabeth, once she comes to terms with the contents of
the letter, she too has changed in her analysis of Darcy. She still
does not approve of Darcy; he has not at all answered her third
charge of his selfish disdain for others. She thinks that he cannot
answer this charge, that his coldness is ingrained in his temperament, and she cannot have any affection for such a man. Still, she
can no longer hate him, and can feel the compliment he has given
her in his love for her.
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Thus, the proposal scene and the letter that follows contain a
strange kind of antagonistic intimacy, as both characters reveal
themselves to the other and experience the shock of encountering
the truth about the other, and thus the truth about their own weaknesses and mistakes. In the context of the spectacular mismatch
of their feelings for each other, they are presented with the choice
of whether to hold on to their incorrect assumptions or to learn
from the encounter.
Darcy, does not simply discount Elizabeth’s rejection as a
sign of her own smallness of mind (as another character, Mr.
Collins, does earlier in the novel, when rejected by Elizabeth).
Rather, he accepts it as the result of a rational woman’s account
of how his character appears to her. Elizabeth, rather than disbelieve Darcy’s account of the Wickham affair in favor of continuing to believe in her judgment of Wickham and Darcy both,
weighs the evidence rationally and comes to decide that Darcy
must have told her the truth. Both Elizabeth and Darcy are at root
honest people; the truth holds more power for them than their
self-regard. Had this been the end of the novel, they would both
have been better off in the increase of their own self-knowledge.
In other words, the solution to the problem of how to see one’s
own faults clearly, while it may require another human being to
interact with, does not seem to require marriage to that person.
Only, in this case at least, a botched proposal.
One can imagine, under other circumstances perhaps, a philosophical friendship developing between Darcy and Elizabeth,
in the way Socrates describes to Callicles in the Gorgias. As
Socrates says, “the person who intends to put his soul to an adequate test, to see whether it lives rightly or not,” must have
“knowledge, good will, and frankness.”2 Socrates expresses
the luck he feels in having found an interlocutor in Callicles
who exhibits these three qualities, since he, Socrates, thinks
Callicles will help him to discover when he has hit upon something true, specifically regarding the best way of life. Though
it is not clear from the dialogue whether Callicles does, in fact,
2. Donald J. Zeyl, Gorgias (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1987), 58.
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have these attributes, it makes some sense that a couple who did
exhibit knowledge, good will, and frankness towards each other
in the pursuit of a better way of life would be in a position to help
each other. As we have seen, both Elizabeth and Darcy have
shown an interest in living rightly. Both have some knowledge
and have proved themselves to be frank with each other. What
would remain is for each to develop good will towards the other.
Such a friendship could be very productive for them. It would
not require marriage, but one could do worse than to marry such
a friend. One could argue that the Bennets, Collinses, and Wickhams all made worse choices than this in their own marriages.
Elizabeth and Darcy do not go this route, though. In fact, it is not
clear at this point in the story whether it would be possible for
them to have such a relationship of knowledge, good will, and
frankness with each other. In the proposal scene, at least, their
frankness was blunt enough to make good will towards each
other difficult to maintain.
Section III: Pemberly
Both Darcy and Elizabeth leave Darcy’s disastrous proposal assuming they will never see each other again. It is not too many
weeks later, though, that Elizabeth finds herself vacationing with
her aunt and uncle in Derbyshire, and touring Darcy’s estate of
Pemberly. As they tour the house, Elizabeth is surprised to hear
the housekeeper’s enthusiastic account of Darcy as sweet tempered and generous hearted since childhood. (206) Elizabeth’s
firmest opinion of Darcy as cold and disdainful is rocked. “Some
people call him proud; but I am sure I never saw anything of it,”
says the servant. “To my fancy, it is only because he doesn’t rattle
away like other young men.” (207)
Elizabeth finds Mr. Darcy’s portrait in the gallery: “she stood
before the canvas on which he was represented, and fixed his
eyes upon herself.” (208) This moment is a turning point for Elizabeth, as she puts herself under the regard of the painted Darcy
with “earnest contemplation.” As his image on the wall smiles
down at her, a smile she remembers its owner to have bestowed
on her more than once, the housekeeper tells her the painting was
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done at the time when his father was still alive. Elizabeth thinks
more clearly about Darcy’s position as master of Pemberly.
Rather than the wealth, beauty, and elegance, she thinks of the
people. She realizes how much power Darcy has to give pleasure
or pain to the many who are dependent upon him, and therefore
how valuable the praise of one of those dependent people is. Elizabeth, with all of her spirited allegiance to justice and kindness,
cannot help but admire someone who does so much good for
those who depend upon him.
The reminder that he was orphaned and given full responsibility of the estate at such a young age, must also give her another
way to account for his previous insulting behavior. Rather than a
man lacking all feeling for others, he is transformed in her mind
into a young man full of feeling, but who has been given all the
weight of Pemberly and the responsibilities of the family name
to bear. Such a man might well fall into the error of excessive
family pride. But such an error can be forgiven, and Elizabeth finally does begin to forgive Darcy his insults to her: “she thought
of his regard with a deeper sentiment of gratitude than it had ever
raised before; she remembered its warmth, and softened its impropriety of expression.” (208)
Further surprises come as Elizabeth and her relatives happen
upon Darcy himself, who has returned from town unexpectedly.
Darcy now has his chance to respond, in action, to Elizabeth’s
third charge against him, the charge that he is full of disdain for
others. He responds well, astonishing her again and again with
his civil behavior, his kind attention to her aunt and uncle, some
of the lowly relatives he spoke so insultingly of in his proposal
to her, and most of all, his lack of pretension towards or grievance against her, after her unfair treatment of him and rejection
of his offer.
Thus begins the renewal of Darcy’s and Elizabeth’s acquaintance, with friendly civility on his side, and astonishment on hers.
Each character has transformed in attitude toward the other. Elizabeth’s state of mind is easier to determine, since we have the
benefit of her point of view in the narrative. She has gone from
hating Darcy towards the beginning of the novel to a cold kind
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of respect since receiving his letter after the proposal. His friendliness towards her at Pemberly leads to something new. “But
above all, above respect and esteem, there was a motive within
her of goodwill that could not be overlooked. It was gratitude.
Gratitude not merely for once having loved her, but for loving
her still well enough to forgive all the petulance and acrimony of
her manner in rejecting him, and all the unjust accusations accompanying her rejection.” (220)
Elizabeth’s gratitude and esteem are the beginning of affection,
as the narrator tells us. (231) This feeling is explicitly distinguished
from the captivation she felt for Wickham at the beginning of the
novel and is marked both by rational accounts to herself of how
well she and Darcy suit each other and by irrational and confused
feelings of repentance and jealousy. (259)
We are given less information about Darcy’s state of mind at
this point. Certainly he has lost his expectation that Elizabeth will
return his feelings, and much of the pride that went along with that
expectation. Whatever he feels for her at this point, it is no longer
opposed to his family pride, but seems to be rooted, as Elizabeth’s
feelings for him are, in gratitude. Later in the novel, Darcy exclaims to Elizabeth, “What do I not owe you!” (308) referring to
the lesson of humiliation she taught him by rejecting his initial
marriage proposal to her. If nothing else, it seems that rather than
looking down on Elizabeth and suffering the pain of his attraction
to her, as he was at the beginning of the novel, he feels in her debt
and is hoping for some return of his affection. This change in perspective must go along with some kind of change in how his desire
for her is oriented.
Esteem, forgiveness, and gratitude are different qualities than
they were starting to possess before their reacquaintance at Pemberly, when their knowledge of virtue and their frankness towards
each other led me to speculate about philosophical friendship. At
this point in the story, their self knowledge has greatly improved,
as has their good will. Their frankness suffers, however: from the
time Elizabeth leaves Pemberly after news of Lydia’s scandalous
elopement reaches her, until nearly the end of the novel, Elizabeth
and Darcy think of each other and wonder about the other’s feel-
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ings, but they do not speak more than a few polite superficialities
to each other. The transformation that leaves Elizabeth wanting
Darcy and leaves Darcy hoping for Elizabeth somehow leaves
them unable to speak to each other.
Section IV: Beyond Education
Let’s go back to Darcy’s comment on temperament from early
in the novel. “There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency
to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best
education can overcome.” (51) We see evidence of defects that
are not overcome throughout the novel: Mr. Bennet’s lack of
moral energy, Mrs. Bennet’s nervousness, Mr. Collins’s servile
pomposity, Mr. Wickham’s deceitful smarminess, Lydia Bennet’s imprudence. When Darcy and Elizabeth encountered the
truth about their own misjudgments, it looked like an improvement for them. At least two of the characters just mentioned,
however, seem to have a good level of self-knowledge. Mr. Bennet comments explicitly and with self conscious irony on his
own ability to avoid facing his obligations, for instance, (249)
and Mr. Wickham is portrayed as wondering how much Elizabeth has been told of his bad behavior. It looks like self-knowledge may not be sufficient to bring about self-improvement.
Darcy’s and Elizabeth’s typical faults, on the other hand,
are nowhere to be seen in the latter part of the novel. Elizabeth,
who suffered from a too quick judgment of others in the service
of her pride and of her enjoyment of laughing at human folly,
does attempt to judge whether Darcy still loves her or not after
she leaves Pemberly. She cannot believe that Darcy, whatever
his feelings, will overcome his scorn of Lydia and his resentment of Wickham enough to engage himself to Elizabeth and
join such a family. She cannot quite stop hoping that her judgment is wrong, though, especially once she hears of his involvement in Lydia’s marriage. (271-272) Her relationship (or lack
of one) to Darcy has become her focus, rather than her ability
to judge people. Her habits of quick decision in the service of
her own pride recede in the face of her care for Darcy and her
pride in him. (272)
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It turns out that Elizabeth’s judgment is wrong in this case. Mr.
Darcy does overcome his admitted resentful nature to the point that
he still wants to marry Elizabeth, though he will become in the
process brother-in-law to Wickham, a man he despises. Wickham’s
outrageous behavior against Darcy and others is apparently no
longer the central focus of Darcy’s attention. Though his opinion
of Wickham has not changed, his attention is rather on how to manage Wickham’s vice in a way that will cause the least amount of
trouble for Elizabeth and her family. Darcy’s transformation is
complete enough that he goes to much trouble, embarrassment,
and expense to find Lydia and Wickham after they elope and persuade them to marry. In other words, Elizabeth’s welfare becomes
central to Darcy and his personal resentment of Wickham is beside
the point.
If Darcy is correct, that “not even the best education” can
overcome temperamental flaws, then something else is at work
in these two characters, something beyond education and more
effective than self-knowledge alone. Whatever is at work, it gives
them a different perspective on what is important, changing their
focus away from their own concerns and towards the welfare of
each other. Though it is clear to the reader that both Elizabeth
and Darcy are willing to commit to a life together after Elizabeth
leaves Pemberly, they are unable or unwilling speak to each other
until almost the very end of the novel. It appears that even when
each character has identified the person who can help him or her
to live a better life they still cannot come together.
Their silence towards each other regarding any issue of importance lasts for several weeks, through the drama of Lydia Bennet’s elopement and engagement to Wickham and through several
visits Darcy makes to Elizabeth’s house once Lydia and Wickham
are safely married and out of town. It is only broken after Darcy’s
aunt, Lady Catherine, interferes by trying to disrupt an engagement that she had mistakenly believed was about to be formed
between them. In attempting to forbid the engagement, she unwittingly gives the two reason to hope that marriage might be
possible. Once hope is kindled, communication and engagement
to marry soon follow.
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In one of the conversations they have after they are finally
engaged to be married, Elizabeth asks Darcy directly why he did
not speak to her when he visited her before their engagement.
“Because you were grave and silent, and gave me no encouragement,” he says. “But I was embarrassed,” she replies. “And so
was I.” (318) At the beginning of the novel, each character suffered from pride to the point that each thought the other was
lower in some way: Elizabeth thought Darcy was devoid of
proper feeling for his fellow man, and Darcy focused on Elizabeth’s socially lower and often foolish family relations. It is one
thing to be playful, angry, or frank with someone who is beneath
you in some way, but quite another to speak plainly to one who
has humbled you, as each does to the other in the proposal scene
and the following letter. The knowledge of their own faults that
they gained from their angry interaction during Darcy’s proposal,
taught them both that they had misjudged and injured the other.
Given the desire each has for the other’s good opinion after their
encounter at Pemberly, neither has the courage to risk the other’s
scorn by speaking openly of his or her feelings. Only once they
have some rational evidence to support their hope for the other’s
regard, via Lady Catherine, do they drum up the courage to speak
plainly to each other.
Once they do reveal their feelings for each other, after Darcy
again asks Elizabeth to marry him and she agrees, their conversation takes an interesting turn. Each of them expresses gratitude
towards the other, confesses having mistreated the other in some
way, and receives forgiveness. Darcy, full of self-recrimination,
declares that he cannot think of his behavior in his first proposal
to Elizabeth “without abhorrence.” “The recollection of . . . my
manners, my expressions during the whole of it is now, and has
been many months, inexpressibly painful to me.” (306) Elizabeth
assures him that she has “long been most heartily ashamed” of
her former words to him. Later, it is Elizabeth’s turn to admit
guilt. “How you must have hated me after that evening?” (308),
that is, after her rejection of his first proposal. The expression is
grammatically worded as an exclamation, but ends with a question mark. Elizabeth is both expressing her conviction of Darcy’s
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justified hatred of her, however short lived, and at the same time
is asking him to reassure her, which he does. In this mutual confession and forgiveness, each accepts the other fully and the past
is oriented and explained in terms of their present relationship.
Once they become engaged to marry, we get a glimpse of
how their relationship will continue to strengthen the virtue of
each. In their final conversation of the novel, Elizabeth playfully
tries to account for why it is that Darcy was ever attracted to her,
and has decided that he loved her for her impertinence, her near
rudeness, to him in their early acquaintance. She says, “Had you
not been really amiable you would have hated me for [my impertinence]; but in spite of the pains you took to disguise yourself,
your feelings were always noble and just.” (317) He made plain
to her in his previous discussions with her that his “abhorrence”
of his own behavior towards Elizabeth weighs on him. In the turn
of one phrase,—“in spite of the pains you took to disguise yourself”—Elizabeth has recast Darcy’s pride and disdain as an attempt at camouflage, as if he were too modest to express his true
noble and generous self. In contrast with this gentle, playful manner of helping him to reconcile himself to his own past, recall her
angry frankness in referring, during his first proposal to her, to
his “arrogance, . . . conceit, and . . . selfish disdain.” (164) She
and he both know that he was prideful to the point of offense,
but now, because of their mutual acceptance, she can use her
own playful manner to show him the way to forgive himself,
through humor, as she has already forgiven him. Unlike her father, who teases Mrs. Bennet almost without mercy, Elizabeth
is using her wit not to undercut Darcy, but to help him let go of
his past mistakes.
In that same conversation, their talk turns to Darcy’s aunt,
Lady Catherine, who had so steadfastly opposed their marriage.
“Shall you ever have the courage to announce to Lady Catherine
what is to befall her?” asks Elizabeth. “I am more likely to want
time than courage, Elizabeth. But it ought to be done, and if you
will give me a sheet of paper, it shall be done directly,” he replies.
(318) In this exchange, Darcy gently refuses to laugh either at
the prospect of Lady Catherine’s dismay over the news of their
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marriage or at the possibility of him lacking the courage to give
her the news. He exhibits the kind of straightforward moral goodness that Elizabeth must have seen so little of in her own parents
and he draws her in to help him by asking her to hand him the
paper he needs to begin. Elizabeth, so used to being the amused
observer of others’ folly is now a partner in the exercise of virtue
in the world. This exercise continues after their marriage, when,
as we are told, they provide better society for Elizabeth’s sister
Kitty, relieve some of the habitual debt that Lydia and Wickham
accrue, educate Darcy’s sister in human relationships, and continue the work of improving the lot of those who depend on the
residents of Pemberly. (321-323)
Like the marriages of the Bennets, Collinses, and Wickhams,
Darcy and Elizabeth’s marriage is formed with social and sexual
union in mind. Unlike for the other marriages, though, Darcy and
Elizabeth do not have a primary motivation, such as social standing or financial stability, for joining with each other. Rather, the
Darcys are re-forming themselves to be better human beings
through their marriage. The self-knowledge they gained after
Darcy’s first proposal to Elizabeth has been joined by the gratitude
and forgiveness felt by each and proclaimed to each other. Within
this relationship of acknowledged acceptance and esteem, they
are able to give each other a new view of how to live well.
What started off bearing some resemblance to a philosophical friendship has turned into something else. As Socrates knew
well, for a relationship of knowledge, good will, and frankness
to exist, each party must be devoted to finding the truth about
the question at hand. As we see depicted in Pride and Prejudice,
though, (and as Socrates doubtless also knew well) people are
rarely if ever fully devoted to finding out the truth on the question of how to live rightly. Pride, passion, and worldly concerns
all get in the way.
In the scene just described, in which Elizabeth playfully recasts Darcy’s former disdainful nature and Darcy invites Elizabeth to help him write to Lady Catherine, each provides the
perspective that the other needs. Rather than frankly declare what
the other ought to be thinking or doing, they demonstrate to each
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other a different way of looking at themselves and the world, simply by being who they are. At the same time, each tacitly invites
the other to join in. In the process, each gains the perspective that
will allow their character defects not to disappear, but to recede
into the background. The gratitude each feels and the forgiveness
each gives make this relationship possible because each values
the perspective of the other more than his or her own pride. Austen
gives us a picture of what marriage can lead to at its best: a transformation of the self into something more and better than what is
possible alone, the result of what “not even the best education”
can give. Elizabeth and Darcy have this sort of marriage.
The Bennets probably could not have reached this kind of intimacy and mutual acceptance, due to the degree of difference in
their temperaments. They might have come closer to it, though,
if Mr. Bennet had not given up on the marriage once he realized
how mistaken he had been in his evaluation of Mrs. Bennet’s
character. The Collinses never desired this kind of relationship:
Mr. Collins is too self important to ever admit anyone else fully
into his thoughts, and Mrs. Collins, Charlotte, is satisfied with
managing him, in return for her social standing as his wife. Their
happiness lies in her ability to manage him without rancor, and
will last as long as Charlotte can continue to tolerate his foolishness with grace. The Wickhams, with their mutual inability
to control their passions, never had a chance at such mutual acceptance, though they were happy for a time with the physical
version of intimacy.
I began this lecture by quoting the sentence that starts the
novel, and considering two interpretations of it: one that rested on
the witty acknowledgement of human greed and self deception
and one that rested on a straightforward recognition of our need
for each other, specifically with respect to marriage. Something
like a synthesis of these two attitudes occurs in the marriage of
Elizabeth and Darcy. Elizabeth, having grown up with Mr. Bennet
as her favorite parent, likes to laugh at human weakness, but has
had little authoritative example in her life of straightforward moral
goodness. Elizabeth benefits from her marriage in having a living
example of steadfast and straightforward goodness in her life.
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Darcy doesn’t laugh at human folly: he shuns it. This became a
problem for him when he himself, because of the folly of his overweening pride, treated the woman he loves with contempt, as he
did in his initial proposal to Elizabeth. He cannot forgive himself
for this behavior without Elizabeth’s example of teaching him to
“be laughed at.” (p. 310) Wit comes in handy when a straightforward understanding of our own failings is overwhelming.
Pride and Prejudice is not a pure social critique, nor a romance, nor a morality tale. It has some resemblance to all of these
genres, though. As we have seen, wit and playfulness, passion,
folly, reason, love of virtue, gratitude and forgiveness are all
deftly woven into the story of Elizabeth and Darcy. In the
process, we are given a glimpse of how one might transcend the
universal faults of self interest, greed, pride, and prejudice, not
by banishing or losing them, which is surely impossible, but by
allowing them to lose their hold over us through intimacy with
another human being who suits us; one we can love, work with,
laugh at and laugh with. It is no surprise that such a possibility,
presented with Austen’s consummate skill and grace, leaves the
reader full of pleasure and joy.
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“Please, Don’t Eat the Swans”:
My Revolution in Romania
Louis Petrich
Even from a simple realistic point of view,
the countries we long for occupy a far larger
place in our actual life, at any given moment, than the country in which we happen
to be. . . . And besides, even from this point
of view, of mere quantity, in our lives the
days are not all equal.
—Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time
In late December of 1989, I attended my first Modern Language
Conference in Washington, D.C. I was a graduate student at the
University of Chicago, Committee on Social Thought, taking my
time trying not to be impertinent in my dissertation on Shakespeare. If I had my doubts of becoming the sort of scholar that
the members of the MLA would want to make an English professor, I had even more doubts that life could be any better than
I knew it as a student. The authors occupying me in Chicago I
thought contained the world. I went to the MLA Conference to
meet the guardians of English letters and to settle my doubts
about my place in their world one way or another.
I spent one free evening not with the literary scholars in the
hosting hotel, but with my good friend, Mark, who possessed no
knowledge of literature. As a journalist, however, he kept himself
well-informed. At that time, the American invasion of Panama
and the bloody revolution in Romania kept Mark busily flipping
the channels of his television set to catch the latest world events.
Meanwhile, during the days, I was performing a similar ritual at
the conference, traversing from room to room to hear the latest
Louis Petrich is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland.
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | PETRICH
57
scholarly developments in my field. That evening, to bring our
two worlds of interest together, I ventured to compare the overthrow of dictatorships happening before his eyes in Panama and
Romania to the overthrow of ethno-phallocentrism taking place
before mine in the Grand Hyatt Hotel. Mark shook his head and
replied that he much preferred to see images of Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife shot to death by firing squad than to hear my
reports about the death of the white male author. Then he grew
more serious: “Perhaps you should look for your colleagues and
career where you won’t have to make things like that up.”
Six months later, in June of 1990, I picked up the phone to
hear Mark’s voice triumphantly announce, “You have just gotten
a Fulbright Scholar Award.” This struck me as very strange, since
I had not applied for one. He, however, had just before called the
United States Information Agency to ask if any “Fulbrights” were
presently available for someone with my credentials. The USIA
told him that all positions had been competitively filled months
earlier from applications duly submitted a year in advance—except one, which remained defiantly empty: a lectureship in American literature at the Alexandru I. Cuza University in Iasi,
Romania, supposed to start that autumn.
“But I don’t do American literature,” I protested, “I do
Shakespeare. And where on earth is Iasi, anyway? Did you say
‘Romania’”?
I shuddered to recall that only a week earlier the Romanian
coal miners were reported by the Chicago Tribune to be storming
the streets of Bucharest, chasing down students, journalists, opposition figures, and all those whose trimmed beards made them
look intellectual, to club them into submission or death. Such images were very dreadful and nauseating to consider that summer
as I turned my mind towards Romania and assembled my Fulbright application for quick processing. Quite unprepared for my
destiny—for so this turn became—I would have to learn by trial
and error whether American literature had any power to free Romanian students from the oppression of having lived their lives
pinned under the weight of a rock, mined for that purpose, toppled
only yesterday, but still hard and cruel in its slowly disintegrating
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character. You can be pretty sure, reader, that I am not making
these things up, which were quotidian for millions of people (who
cares to remember them now?), and which, to all my present days
have left a longing and a pattern.
I set foot in Romania one night in September 1990, at the
Otopeni International Airport in Bucharest, where I was greeted
by several fatigued soldiers below our aircraft, their assault rifles
pointing hospitably down at the ground. These “most fierce descendants of Rome” (an epithet still to be heard) had one arm free
to beg for western cigarettes as they conducted me into the dreary
terminal. The first words I spoke in Romania, to the passport control officer, sitting in his compact wooden booth lit by the standard
forty watt bulb, were to inform him that I had come to teach American literature at the University of Iasi. I recoiled slightly at my
own words, realizing that if he knew I possessed no credentials
to teach this subject, he could have me deported as an imposter.
But the controller, not understanding a syllable of English,
stamped my passport perfunctorily and slid it back to me silently.
I had advisedly placed a carton of Kent cigarettes where it would
be the first item encountered upon opening each piece of my luggage to the customs inspectors. They played their parts perfectly,
and I went on, lightened in load, to award myself to that taxi driver
whose face appeared the least unshaven and sooty. He dropped
me at the stately residence of the American Cultural Affairs Officer, Agatha Kuperman, an attractive, red-haired woman of Hungarian descent, whom even the Romanians (long hostile to
Hungarians) considered highly. She embraced me warmly on the
black street, her little white poodle in constant danger of being
trodden by my uncertain feet, and then she chided me for paying
the driver four dollars: “That’s a week’s salary for most Romanians, my boy.” I slept that night in the spare room of her diplomat’s
mansion, listening to the barking of wild dogs that roamed the
dark streets of Bucharest.
Aggie briefed me the following morning at the consulate section of the U.S. Embassy, whose first floor looked like a nursery.
Dozens of Romanian babies were here undergoing the lengthy
process of adoption by their would-be American parents. Some,
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | PETRICH
59
darker skinned, probable offspring of gypsies (suspected of selling
them), and others, physically handicapped or distressed by their
own cries, were all on offer to be wrapped in American arms, carried away in love, and saved. Aggie, who had only two minutes
to put me on guard against two especial dangers I would face,
seized me by the arm to describe how the Chairman of the English
Department once grabbed my predecessor to draw his ear close
and whisper, “You know I can crush you, Sam, I can destroy you.”
He would not have the nerve to manhandle me, she explained,
since he could no longer assume the backing of the Securitate (Romanian secret police). More likely, he would now try to engage
me to his daughter. “I must warn you, particularly, to stay away
from Romanian women.” She sensed my hesitation, and added,
“They are all become whores.” Then she let me go, suitably impressed, to Iasi.
Horia Holban, an English professor from the Alexandru I.
Cuza University, spotted my searching flashlight on the dark platform of the train station on that rainy September evening I arrived
in Iasi, a city of 265,000 people within a goodly jogging distance
of Gorbachev’s Soviet Union, our better tailored, but still great
enemy. Horia had been sent by the Chairman of the English Department to welcome me, just as he had welcomed my Fulbright
predecessors since 1970, equipped for this purpose by being one
of the ten percent of Romanians who owned a car. His windshield
wipers came unhinged as he drove us to my apartment. “How can
you see the road through all the murk and rain?” I asked, hoping
he would pull over to fix the wipers. “I have driven this way many
times before,” he replied. I made a nervous reference to Bernard
Shaw, whom I had heard from my informants was his specialty.
“Yes, I am the Romanian expert on Shaw,” he stated, as he continued to navigate the darkness. Then he asked me to contribute
an article to a literary quarterly he had just founded, called Ethos.
“This will help you to get recognition in America,” he said, evidently made aware of my unpublished status by his informants.
“Perhaps I can come up with something,” I replied, conscious of
the usefulness of his car. As it turned out, his quarterly went defunct after one issue because the price of printing quadrupled. His
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car, however, he kept on running.
My apartment was located on the eighth floor in a block of
flats that looked, like every other block, orphaned from the earth.
Nothing had changed since Horia escorted the first American lecturer to this apartment twenty years earlier. The elevator still
broke down two or three times a week. “Why repair something
permanently when you can employ a man full-time to fix it regularly?” he commented, as we climbed eight flights of unlit stairs
with luggage. “The people steal the bulbs,” he said, “but you will
memorize your steps everywhere, and then you, too, won’t need
a flashlight.”
My apartment comprised two bedrooms, a living room,
kitchen, bath, and like every apartment in the Workers’ Utopia, a
balcony, where the population retired to smoke and dream. “You
can see for yourself that every article has been stamped and inventoried by the University,” Horia announced, as he began the
tour. The same rusty trash can, missing its lid, stood under the
kitchen sink. The same two plates and cracked pot occupied a cabinet, and the same pair of cutlery lay in a drawer, to serve each
generation of American lecturer. My bedroom—a room with a
double bed—felt forbidden but to drafts. “Most of our lecturers
brought along their wives, who helped them to make this more of
a home,” he said, “but I can ask the Chairman to provide you an
extra blanket.”
The water, he explained, as we entered the bathroom, was supposed to appear for a few hours in the mornings and evenings, hot
only every other day. “But it may not always make it up to the
eighth floor. They give us a bathtub so that we can always have
water.” Thus I kept my bathtub filled, with a bucket nearby for
flushing the toilet, and I boiled water in pots for transfer to the
sink. This gave me the ritual satisfaction of reliving an early triumph of civilization—keeping clean on the outskirts of the
Roman Empire. In February, the hot water did not appear for three
weeks. When it finally came back, like a shooting star, the people
left whatever they were doing to take quick advantage. They
seemed to accept chronic deprivations and momentary windfalls
as among the mysteries of life, whereas I attributed human pur-
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61
poses to them, and I talked to myself a lot in anger, pacing from
room to room, hoping that the listening devices were still in operation for the Securitate to hear my accusations of evil.
“A woman named Luminitsa will clean your apartment once a
week,” Horia said, “paid by the university, but you can pay her
more to do extra chores.” Luminitsa was a sweet and sturdy old
woman, who managed to locate an ancient washing machine, missing several pieces, which she employed to make my clothes clean,
but increasingly misshapen. She proved especially helpful in obtaining milk, sold to lines of people as the sun rose. (I never could
abide the practice of standing in lines as if mortality did not matter,
and I would have paid her to stand forever, for me.) In the winter,
Luminitsa stood before my open lit oven, preferring to hold, rather
than to drink the hot tea I offered her. She happened to be present
the morning that the bombing of Iraq began in January of 1991,
and she kept making the sign of the cross three times and mumbling prayers as she went about her lifelong, inalienable work.
His tour finished, Horia handed me a roll of toilet paper, warning me that I would find this item missing from public places and
only sporadically available in the shops. “So carry some around
with you, eat lightly, and use the paper sparingly.” With these
words and a wan smile to indicate he would have liked to be joking, the Romanian expert on Shaw bid me goodnight. I sat at the
table gone crooked on the concrete floor of the living room. I felt
alone, ignorant, hungry, cold, and I was beginning to sense across
the table the company of failure. I thought about supplicating God,
Orthodox fashion, to help me survive in this dark, backstage world
deprived of props, but the Romanians had been doing that for
years. I felt tired, too, and so I let my body take precedence over
the soul’s fears and carry me clothed to bed, where I discovered,
to my surprise, that I slid quickly into a good, long sleep.
Late next morning, after bread and tea, I took a taxi to the
Alexandru I. Cuza University1 to meet with the redoubtable
1. Founded in 1861, the University offered bachelor degrees and doctorates in the natural sciences, mathematics, history, philosophy, geography,
economics, law, and philology. The schools of engineering, medicine,
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Chairman of my department. He looked tussled in his grey suit
and tie, not formidable, not brutish, as his grey eyes, on the lookout everywhere, probed intermittently into mine. He liked to finish my sentences in perfect British English, as if to show that he
knew my thoughts and how to speak them properly. He conducted me to the American reading room, where I would teach
five classes a week of American literature, lasting two hours
each, to first or second-year students in groups of ten to twelve.
I would also supervise the growing collection of books that the
Americans and British had donated or loaned to the department
over the years. “You must be sure to restrict the use of the reading room to students in our department and the English teachers
of Iasi,” he emphasized several times, as if this were the crux of
my assignment. A cubicle adjacent to the reading room would
become my little office. The Securitate used to keep equipment
there to monitor the foreign teachers and students throughout
the building. He gave me the key to a locked cabinet, where I
would store the precious Norton Anthologies of American Literature, the television and video player, and some British and
American movies on video tape. “I keep the majority of video
tapes at home,” he explained, “so that you will not be tempted
to loan them to people who will copy them illegally to sell.” I
was often to discover that Romanian homes secretly contained
little pieces of public property that made their possessors feel a
little less poor, a little less equal.
The Chairman then invited me to his office, where he poured
us some plum brandy and began to drink. He had a story to tell
me, and it would take some time and some help. He spoke of his
imprisonment in the 1950’s for an anti-Soviet remark, and of the
Romanian prejudice against him for being half-Hungarian. He
overcame these adversities to master the English language by
reading Dickens, whose linguistic varieties he knew as an expert,
and Conrad, whose sociological studies of character helped him
and agronomy had separate locations in the city. 20,000 students were
enrolled overall, making Iasi one of the four centers of higher education
in Romania, along with Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, and Timisoara.
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | PETRICH
63
to achieve his present position. He had a twenty-three year old
daughter who studied medicine and loved to speak English. He
felt joy when the revolution finally came, freeing him from the
harassments of the Securitate and bringing hope to everyone for
reconcilement with the West. He wanted me to know that he was
a decent man, whose membership in the Romanian Communist
Party had been a necessary concession to his persecutors, and
whose true self, finding it safe to appear only recently, should be
allowed broad margins of deformity. “The worst thing about
communism,” he confessed, “is that it brings out the evil in people.” He poured me some more brandy, but it spilled over my full
glass, for I had not learned to drink at midday with relish. I knew
to be very firm with this man, so I declared my intent to open the
American reading room to the public. The Chairman straightened
his back, narrowed his grey eyes, and said, “If you do that you
will become my enemy. Don’t you know that even the quality of
paper in there is enough to make the people steal the books!” “I
would prefer not to become your enemy,” I said, “but the books
and videos and magazines will be recalled by the American Embassy if you insist.” This was a bluff, but its tone of conviction
succeeded, and he changed the subject by extending an invitation
to dine with him and his wife and daughter some evening at his
home. I accepted the invitation several months later, curious to
find out if Aggie was right about him and his engaging daughter.
She was, alas, right. Wisely, I was prepared to persuade them that
my loneliness was not so dire as they interpreted.
The American reading room had the misfortune to overlook
an athletic field. The steady thuds of soccer balls and the shouts
of all-weathered players made the English of my students sound
as timid as the communists might have wished from the mouths
of their English enemy. Once in a while, the errant ball came
crashing through a window, causing my students, almost all of
them women, to duck and scream, though only for a second or
two. I insisted that the windows be fixed to keep the temperature
of the room above freezing. Nevertheless, during the winter I had
to teach in my overcoat to students shivering in theirs. They
smiled at my wishful handling of the radiators each morning, like
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a witch doctor trying to summon up a ghost. At various times in
the day, a crew of carpenters operated terrifically roaring power
saws in their workshop directly beneath us, and the millions of
powdery shavings that they generated got sucked up into air ducts
that blew them right outside our apt-to-be-broken windows. Our
classes then came to a halt, as a kind of reminder to everyone of
the rights of real work to fill consciousness with its sound and
fury. “All our priorities thus come to dust,” I thought, indulging
a poetic melancholy that seemed better than this grim reality.
The dimness of light in the reading room, to which I also objected, caused the students to marvel again at my notions of normalcy. “Fluorescent bulbs for the ceilings are not to be found
anywhere in the country,” they said, but still I made an official,
stamped request. Two weeks later, someone knocked on the reading room door, timidly stuck her head in, and seeing the students
beckon, approached my side and silently produced from her
apron pocket an incandescent light bulb of the once maximum
forty watts. “But this is not the type I ordered!” I exclaimed. The
students laughed as the poor woman made her noiseless escape,
and I stared at the economical bulb, ever more grateful for those
windows that let in the light and all the world outside not made
to order by man.
It surprised me to learn later that my remark to the cleaning
woman was adopted by the students as a new motto. Henceforth,
whenever life handed them another revolutionary dose of futility,
they would laughingly say, “But this is not the type I ordered.” I
counted this my first success as a teacher of American values, or
rather, my first achievement in an impossible environment of a
common ground of enlightened foolishness.
I asked a student named Dana to act as my assistant in managing the reading room. Industrious, trustworthy, and book-loving, Dana put the shelves in order and maintained the old pretense
of keeping up-to-date records. She was not good-looking, but I
did not want beauty in a woman whose company I hoped would
keep me from becoming lonely. To that end she possessed irrepressible good spirits, which had earned her the nicknames of
“giggles” and “chatterbox.” She somehow got me to join her in
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | PETRICH
65
frequently singing the refrain from a Bob Marley song: “Woman
no cry—everything’s gonna be all right.” Her colleagues generously approved of our unmusical duet, perhaps thinking that a
professor from a society one hundred years ahead must know
whether everything was going to be all right or not.
Dana helped me to decorate the walls of the reading room
with black and white photographs of British contributions to civilization and color pictures of American getaways suitable for a
travel agency. The impression these created reinforced the common Romanian prejudice that the British have culture while the
Americans have fun. The students all acquired a British accent,
while convinced that the Americans were the ones who would
acquire the world, once the Soviets were finished. Why else did
the American flags that we hung on the door of the reading room
keep disappearing? At first I thought that the Arab students tore
them down in hatred (for this was during the first Gulf War), until
several of my students shyly confessed: “We steal them for home
display, to feel less lonely under the weight of liberty.” And so I
obtained more flags from the U.S. Embassy to present to my
thieving learners of the Queen’s English
Thus did I learn to permit some ridiculous activities to occur.
One man, named Serban, visited the reading room every Thursday
to inspect the magazines that the Embassy saw fit to send me:
Time, Newsweek, Cosmopolitan, and Vanity Fair. He had a speech
impediment and wore thick glasses that made him look oafish, yet
he manifested the concentration of a surgeon as he turned the
pages from cover to cover, pausing to copy the addresses he found
for subscriptions, books, merchandise, and especially Caribbean
travel destinations. Some students wanted me to inform Serban
that these advertisements were not meant for someone without
hard currency and a visa. But it struck me that these students were
like this man in being poor and stranded. They, too, visited the
American reading room and turned the pages of books not intended for them in order to find some hope and relief from the
calamity of their birth. He dreamt alone over glossy and scented
photo spreads, and they dreamt with me over the extravagances
of poetry and plays. Besides, among the authors we read there
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were debunkers enough and shipwrecked characters aplenty, but
I shall come to our reading of them soon enough.
Another frequent visitor to the reading room, Nick, age forty,
had somehow earned a black belt in karate in defiance of Ceausescu’s prohibition of the martial arts. He sought books on antiquity. “Your presence here is a sign that Rome has returned to
Romania at last, “ he said, “for America is the one country today
like Rome, the pacifier and lawgiver of nations.” Nick named his
son “Romulus” and chose his middle name to begin with “A,”
so that he would identify himself with the founder of Rome and
the Egyptian sun god, “RA.” By such means he sought to counteract the degrading forces that enslaved people from an early
age by dictating: “You like flowers, don’t you? So dig.”
The American reading room, now supplied with posters of
art and travel, songs and laughter, fragrant fashion magazines,
and impossible dreams, did become an exceptional place. But I
did not realize how original my students must have found it until
I visited a typical Romanian high school, at the invitation of an
English teacher named Nicoleta.
Her pupils rose in unison and saluted me in well-rehearsed
English when I entered their classroom. Then they sat down on
stools beside shared wooden desks whose lowness kept them
hunched over all day, while the blank walls made looking to the
right or left an impertinence. They questioned me about how I
had spent my high school years. “Did you get paid for doing
homework?” a boy asked. I paused at his sincerity, then replied
that I did expect to get paid “in the long run.” They looked at
Nicoleta with satisfaction, as if to say, “We told you so.” “Will
jobs be available for us in America?” another boy asked. Again,
I paused at this candid disclosure of their everyday despair, before answering that jobs of some kind were usually available, but
getting to America would be the difficult part. They nodded their
heads knowingly. They asked me for English books, and I invited
them to the reading room, where they could borrow some. “Our
books are still poisonous,” they said. Nicoleta showed me a textbook of English which included quotations from Hobbes, Locke,
Mill, Dickens, Shaw, and other greats, each followed by Ceaus-
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | PETRICH
67
escu’s words of interpretation. “Same ink, same font, same paper,
and therefore,” she said, grimacing, “same genius.” The frontispiece to the book showed Ceausescu’s smiling portrait and his
message to the pupil:
To be a patriot means to spare nothing in order to carry
out the policy of the Communist Party which fully corresponds to the vital interests of the whole nation. This
is amply demonstrated by the economic and social development programme of the Romanian Communist
Party, which derives from a philosophy governed by constant concern for the welfare of man.
His message went on and on in the same pitch—all lies possessing no interest or meaning whatsoever. A physical education instructor cut short my stupefaction by inviting me to a volleyball
exhibition that she had organized on the spur of the moment to
honor my presence in the school. (I felt like a rock star or movie
actor, fawned upon for deeds of nothing.) She put her best boys on
the court, while the rest of the pupils, mostly girls, lined the perimeter of the small gym to watch the match and my reactions to it. The
boys pounded the ball so hard that it flew repeatedly into the girls,
who had no choice but to duck and scream. I recognized, with a
kind of dismay, that my students were once those girls. I clapped
anyway and thanked everyone for a fine performance, at which they
all cheered and looked elated.
As I was about to leave the high school, Nicoleta drew me aside
to an empty room where she unburdened her soul of much worry:
All my pupils know of life is that it gets worse, and all
they have been told of death is that it brings no rewards
or punishments. They will not work for future goods,
since they believe there are none, or for the sake of work
itself, since that would make them the dupes of communism. They want to be happy now, so they dream about
going to America, where they believe happiness is possible. But to get to America they must have dollars, and
the dollar is worth more than our Romanian lei every day.
Where will all this end? Already some of them believe
that they can buy their own souls.
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I tried to recall some brave words that might allay her fears,
yet I was afraid to sound hypocritical, with a pocket full of dollars, backed by God and the United States, in which to trust. I
thought about that Bob Marley song, whose refrain has a distinguished pedigree that includes some lines by a grumpy poet who
knew a lot about souls caught between hope and despair. So I recited them to this sorrowing teacher of English, offering no interpretation, just the citation:
Sin is Behovely, but
All shall be well, and
All manner of thing shall be well.
—T. S. Eliot, “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets
For the present, however, my students had many reasons to
duck and scream. They were not the children of glorious Rome,
of whose ruins on the Black Sea they boasted, but of Nicolae
Ceausescu, communist tyrant from before they were born. They
attended thirty-six hours of class per week. (A gap in the schedule
would teach them to skip classes and take to the streets, it was
feared.) The margins had disappeared from their essays (paper
was that precious) as surely as the breadth had gone from their
daily lives. Five of them occupied a dormitory room that would
have housed one or two in America. They put boards across their
laps to serve there as desks. Bread was served them days old.
They slept fitfully to the splattering of bottles tossed from dormitory windows by the disdainful foreign students, and to the
fugitive laughter of Romanian girls who prostituted themselves
to these students to obtain colorful African beads or Arabian
scarves. No residence staff stood on call to help them; no professional counselors guided their development; no student organizations received funding to entertain them. Gypsy fortune tellers
were always on hand for many dubious purposes, but their layers
of colorful dress stank from going unwashed. Students marching
for better conditions on the first anniversary of the revolution
were jeered by envious workers for their “dissipation” and told
to get back to classes. For it was considered a great honor to be
accepted to the Alexandru I. Cuza University. Some students had
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | PETRICH
69
taken the entrance exam for English five years in a row before
passing. They had worked in factories in the meantime.
What could I expect students, suffering these conditions, to
achieve intellectually? When I asked them the meaning of a literary passage, a few whispered to each other in Romanian about
the meaninglessness of so bare a question (devoid of the familiar
theoretical cues that implied the correct theoretical answer), while
most stared down in their laps. Who knows what spiritual
changes gradually occur from looking down all the time? I encouraged them to leap over themselves in boldness of thought,
but they had no practice overcoming themselves, only their conditions. Perhaps I could get them to look up, at least, with the
help of America’s most upward-looking authors, the ones who in
fact had inspired me to study literature for a living.
Ralph Waldo Emerson would provide a logical starting point,
I thought, for the reformation of the neck and spinal posture. But
when I assigned them their first essay on the question, “Why trust
yourself?” I received in writing an apology signed by the whole
class:
We are frightened because it is the first time when an
American teacher hears words spoken by ourselves. This
note is a kind of message we want to send to you, because it has been clearly revealed that we have different
ideas about literature, America, the world, and life. We
should want you to understand our low level of comprehension, concerning various aspects of these things.
Please tell us again, if you don’t mind, what you want us
to write.
I decided at once to read Emerson aloud with them, to manifest the felt meanings of his words, before pressing them again
to write what they felt. I modeled his inspiration vocally, and then
I let them try to partake similarly of it. I heard in their voices,
however, not the tone of empowerment, but alien sounds of discontinuity. These sounds were not, I had to admit, unrelated to
Emerson’s style. Contrary to the spirit of this aphoristic sage, I
condescended to offer them a similar apology about my own low
level of comprehension concerning all aspects of Romanian so-
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ciety, which I found altogether different and a little frightening.
Interpreting my apology in material terms, they offered me their
assistance in performing the ordinary tasks of life, and I gratefully
accepted the offer. Thereafter, I never lacked for help in meeting
the necessities of the body. As for the soul, I made them promise
never to accept in our classes the old pedagogical procedure,
whereby students pretended to learn, professors pretended to
teach, and neither side dared to expose the other as a fraud. “We
shall dare to be true to each other,” we pledged, “taking that as
our way to seek truth.” So once a week, in keeping with the promise, someone in class would summon the courage to ask me,
“What do you think of us, honestly, Mr. Petrich?” And I would
tell them, whatever struck me most at the time. I, in turn, would
ask them what they thought of the American writers I offered
them. And they, in turn, told me what struck them most about
these writers, America, and me.
They told me that Walt Whitman, whom I had hoped would
lengthen their spines with a feeling of democratic power more
pleasingly articulated than Emerson’s, reminded them of their
former communist leaders, who loudly gesticulated on behalf of
the people, listing their accomplishments in fields and factories,
on and on and on.
“How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the
reading of a book,” I quoted from Henry Thoreau. “I am one such
man,” I professed to them. Perhaps my students, in the aftermath
of their revolution and by my example, would find in Walden additional incentives to loosen their ties to collective dejection. But
the first chapter, “Economy,” did not overwhelm the Romanians
as it once did me. They did not know what to make of an American author who had solved the problem of life by reducing it to
its lowest terms and living very simply, like a Spartan. “Isn’t that
how we live now, meanly and miserably?” They did, however,
find much to admire in a man who lived alone and wrote such
things as this: “Society is commonly too cheap. We live thick and
are in each other’s way, and stumble over one another, and I think
that we thus lose some respect for one another.” They expected
the chapter called “Brute Neighbors” to develop this favorite,
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71
anti-social theme, but were disappointed to discover that in it
Thoreau lauds the heroic self-sacrifices of warring red and black
ants. A writer who cultivates poverty and extols the most communistic of animals made them suspicious of his American credentials and economic wisdom.
Surely, I thought, Thoreau’s great essay, “Civil Disobedience,” would inspire their esteem for the power of a propertyless
individual to take on the slaveholding and war-making collective.
But they were not impressed with Thoreau’s leonine showdown
with the bullying American state. On the contrary, they were impressed by the limits of the American state in punishing him. For
upon his release after one night in jail for not paying his tax,
Thoreau went “giddily to pick huckleberries…and then the State
was nowhere to be seen.” A student named Alina, with silky
blond hair and deep, dark eyes, pointed out that some Romanians
had also spent a short time in prison for political reasons, but after
their release they developed terminal cancer. I learned later that
her brother was among those who thus died, and that only then
was the state nowhere to be seen. “We believe they were irradiated there,” she said. “That way Romania kept fewer political
prisoners in the eyes of the world.” Alina invited me to her home
to meet her father, a poet, and mother, who operated a small bar.
Their son also wrote poetry, which apparently had gotten him in
trouble with the Party. The father read some of their poetry to me
in Romanian and Alina translated, her moist eyes locked to mine
for confirmation of her act of translation in me. They carried their
heavy burden of love with the intoxicating help of verse and
drink. On this occasion, they also had me to help, as I felt my
life’s course dip into their well. How many a man, unburdened
of years or grief, an easy sleeper, has let himself fall into the watery eyes of disconsolate poetry, there to see and embrace an ancient, bitter truth about life. Tragedy, as I now saw it enacted
before me, would have to be given its finest American say to
Alina and her colleagues, in keeping of our promise to be true to
each other.
Among the excerpts from approved American authors that
my students had read in high school were bits of dialogue from
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Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. These excerpts were supposed to demonstrate, of course, the cruelties of capitalism. We
read the whole play. The students were surprised to discover that
the young Willy Loman could have escaped from his unnatural
conditions by following his brother Ben to Alaska in search of
diamonds. “People in America move and start over all the time,”
I told them. “So why doesn’t Willy Loman move to Alaska and
start over?” A serious silence ensued, followed by a few whispers.
Then one of my quietest students from across the hated Soviet
border, a Bessarabian boy of stout physique, deep intonation, and
rudimentary English named Dragos, cited a song then popular in
the Soviet Union. I later witnessed the patrons of a Leningrad
restaurant dance triumphantly to its refrain: “Don’t be foolish
America! Return to us Alaska now!” “Russians believe Alaska
belong to them,” said Dragos, “because true Russians never sell
Motherland.” He asked his colleagues for help with English, who
explained that Alaska cannot be part of the American dream because it is geographically and culturally part of Siberia—rich in
oil and minerals, very beautiful, but awfully hard and far away.
“That why Stalin put Gulag there,” Dragos added. The better part
of the class agreed with him: “Better to die like an American in
an automobile [as Willy does] than like a Russian in the Gulag.”
“So what claims of truth does tragedy have among a mobile
and escapist people?” I asked. “Salesmen and their customers are
mobile and escapist by definition.” I had to explain this because
they did not know what salesmen and customers were. Shopkeepers in Romania, working for the State, did not care whether they
sold anything, and their “customers,” having no choice, had no
care over what to buy. True salesmen, I explained, offer their customers a steady supply of newer and finer objects and projects
as the means to live always better than before. But death will not
find it any more difficult than before to rip from the world people
who secure themselves to more and more new things. So true
peace and happiness are not to be found in the economic activities
of the American nation—at least according to Arthur Miller and
Eugene O’Neill (whose tragedy, The Iceman Cometh, that of a
salesman, we also read)—only a kind of continual distraction
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ending in death of the soul and body. “But do they let you do serious work in America, in the midst of all that buying and selling?” asked a handsome student named Constantine. “They hate
people with brains or talents here. I don’t know how much longer
we can hold out.” He, and others whose ambitions resembled his,
had long been smugglers of their own interdicted souls. (The
black market, as I came to understand, dealt not in cigarettes primarily.) “If only there were real salesmen in Romania,” said Constantine, “to distract us from wanting to jump off a cliff. For forty
years we secretly depended on the West for our vision of the future. And now we are supposed to believe these playwrights that
suicide is better than buying and selling?”
A student named Olivia, whose candid, harmonious face
made me look her way many a time, asked me if I really believed
in the truth of tragedy. I evaded the question, not the face, by saying that the text, whether tragic or comic, creates conviction in
itself. She had long ceased to believe the rhetoric of a professor,
and she knew the power of her face to compel confessions from
a man, so she asked me another question: “Why did you come to
Romania, or was it just a stroke of bad luck?” My grandparents,
I told her and the rest, had come to America from Eastern Europe
at the turn of the twentieth-century. They saw the Statue of Liberty upon arrival, whose picture faced us fixedly in the reading
room. I did not have to explain why they had left their homelands.
But as to why I had come back to live in their country, I said that
the people of Bucharest, in the name of liberty, had recently toppled a seventy foot statue of Lenin, who still exists in storage,
and I wanted to study him there, in safety, and to learn to blow
his mass all to pieces.
The students begged me to suspend the lessons of fine American tragedy. While there was still time to learn from each other,
they wanted me to show them how ordinary Americans, like my
own middle class, mid-western family, experienced the culture
of a proud, free country. Movies, television shows, pop music,
and grocery store magazines would become, apropos of their request, subject to study and discussion in class. This approach felt
like an abomination to a reader of the great books from the Uni-
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versity of Chicago, but I owed it to them to give the most popular
products of American culture a showing and hearing. They were
part of the truth. So to this stage of our learning, I let enter our
presence, comedy—not of the literary kind.
I showed to public audiences in the reading room John
Belushi and Dan Ackroyd in The Blues Brothers. This movie contains the longest car chases on record through the streets of
Chicago and the nine, acne-faced, marching Nazis of the Village
of Skokie (where I grew up). The audience enjoyed the leaps of
dance and musical soul-power, but wondered aloud whether evil
could be laughed and sung away. My first real job, I explained,
was with the traffic engineering department of the Village. It was
my task to help devise a traffic plan that would allow those Nazis
to march on certain public streets, according to their First Amendment right, while minimizing civic disruption and the pain to
Skokie’s many Jews and Holocaust survivors. “My own nextdoor neighbor bore a tattoo on his arm from Auschwitz,” I mentioned. “Did you support their right to march?” they asked.2
“Yes,” I answered, simply. We began a discussion about the comedian’s faith in the power of ridicule, for which exposure is required. “These young men were exposed as idiots by their very
right to public access, and they quickly disappeared afterward,”
I said. “Does that mean that rights and comedy go together?”
someone asked. I had not thought about rights in that way before,
but with premature enthusiasm, I said, “Yes, they do.” Then I
added, more cautiously, “So long as the public audience has the
clear-eyed intelligence to recognize the ridiculous and the strong
hearts to laugh it all the way to scorn.”
I showed the Romanians a “Dirty Harry” detective movie
with introductory remarks by a former American cop. He was
2. Romania had been an enthusiastic ally of Hitler, at first. A serious
pogrom occurred in Iasi in 1941, without German assistance. The Romanian Communist Party always insisted that the persecutions of the
Jews were entirely the responsibility of the previous regime. So my students did not grow up with any kind of Holocaust study beyond the
mere blaming of others.
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then a Fulbright Scholar doing research on the fifteenth-century
Wallachian Prince, Vlad II Dracul, heroic impaler of infidel
Turks.3 “Police in America are not like yours in Romania,” he
said, “because we go after the bad guys—like Prince Vlad II did.”
One woman asked me if I could hear the guns firing away in
Chicago. I showed them Dracula in one of the modern film versions, because “this is all most Americans know about Romania.” The women in the audience felt puzzled to find Count
Dracula, a vampire, portrayed as preferable to the normal men
in the film as a mate. (Their puzzlement was a clue to something
that I should have paid more attention to, as we shall see shortly.)
The movie Reds made the audience feel uneasy by its soft treatment of Bolshevism. Corinna, one of my most sarcastic students,
asked: “So is that what intelligent and hearty Americans in 1920
did with their lives—they ran off to Russia to fight for communism?” Rain Man, however, gave them back the typical Hollywood version of their beloved American dream: sexy women,
fast cars, easy money, and to make them feel warm inside, love
for autistic savants.
The movie Glory, with its stirring depiction of the first black
regiment to fight in the American Civil War, made a deep impression on the Romanians. One man thanked me in tears for
showing it, saying, “You are a lucky country to win that war. The
good side does not have to win, you know.” A doctor in the audience found the movie flawed because the black soldiers were
“on the other side already, too much like the white soldiers.” I
prodded her to say more on this subject. “The movie assumes
what it is supposed to prove, that blacks and whites are equal,”
she said. “Maybe they are equal, but I would like more proof.”
Others in the audience agreed with her. “600,000 Americans died
in the American Civil War over the question of equality,” I
replied. “President Lincoln seemed to think that the magnitude
of carnage in our great civil war was proof—and penance—
enough.” I then summoned the courage to ask them something
3. “Dracul” means “Order of the Dragon.” Vlad II has become known
to us as the vampire, “Dracula.”
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that had been nagging me for a long time. “Why do you think
that 1200 dead on behalf of your own liberation is too much?
Maybe, to prove that you deserve freedom, it is not enough. What
does it take for slaves, black or white, to get to the other side?”
Someone replied that the death toll would have been higher in
Romania had the revolution not been stolen by apparatchiks. “It
is a pity,” I said, “that the suspicion that adheres to former slaves
requires extreme measures to be overcome.” I marveled that they
agreed without reluctance to this terrible conclusion.
The selections from current American television that my parents sent me appeared to my students like scenes from a distant
galaxy. We watched Oprah Winfrey interview fat people who
complained they were victims of size discrimination. My students
memorized the patterns in Cosmopolitan and Vanity Fair, so they
were very discriminating themselves, and having stood for hours
in milk and egg lines, they were not sympathetic to “size oppression.” I also showed them Joan Rivers interviewing the fourteen
personalities of a schizophrenic, all sitting still in one chair, followed by a man who believed he was a woman but had not yet
undergone the operation to make him one. “How do you feel
when you look at yourself naked in the mirror?” asked Joan.
“Very uneasy and distracted,” said the man. Thus did my students
glimpse what ordinary Americans, my own dear family, watched
on TV or at the movies to fulfill their comic destinies.
Since my students wanted to know all about my native city,
which I felt all too eager to show off, I decided to direct them in
a comedy by David Mamet, a favorite Chicago playwright, called
Sexual Perversity in Chicago (1974). I chose this play because,
like most people in theatre, I felt tempted to challenge (what I
perceived to be) the unsatisfactory status quo in Romanian society. Though Mamet’s play is physically innocent (not even a kiss
is exchanged), its language admirably fulfills the promise of the
title. I hoped that the racy words, substituting for romantic and
sexual action, would retain their original picturesqueness to a Romanian audience and teach them something about the powers of
language. I wanted to expand for them the possibilities of their
own becoming human under the new dispensation of freedom.
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On such grounds as the above, suitably rendered in academic
jargon, I defended the merits of the play before my up-to-datemongering colleagues. “Sexual Perversity in Chicago,” I said,
“is about the construction of society by self-referential language,
the gender-determining parameters of language, and the circulation of diverse social energies through language.” Thus I got the
better portion of my colleagues to overlook the titular theme of
the play, for a while.
One morning the Chairman of the English Department interrupted my class, escorted me into the hall (my students left staring), and began to address me. “Louis, our university is a place
for free inquiry and discussion, and I would support your efforts
to do anything to these purposes, but I read the play and, well,
let me say that we expected something more elevating from a
person as serious as yourself. I can’t agree that this play is worth
doing.” I explained my serious intentions, but he continued to
address me thus: “Between men like us bedroom relations are
normal to discuss, but you have women to think about and your
reputation among the students, who I’m afraid might misconstrue
your purposes.” I admitted that this was a concern of mine, but
that the nature of theatre is self-exposure and risk, and I promised
to conduct myself in a professional manner at all times. Still, he
continued: “I expect that sometime in the future this play could
be done here successfully, for we are not a puritanical people, but
the sexual content is . . . well . . . we’ve only recently had a revolution, and we are not like Americans with sex, we prefer to
keep it private.” I said that my purpose was to show people a certain comic face of America, not to recommend imitation. The
play discourages that. Nonetheless, he continued: “I will not
stand in your way, as you are free to do as you please on your
own time, but I expected you to consult with me as Chairman.
Students are hesitant to offend you, but my position authorizes
me to say that this play is not appropriate for Romania at this
time. Have you thought of other worthy options?” I promised that
I would distribute a program preparing the audience for the content. Then they would be free not to attend or to leave at any time
during the performance—for I was determined to direct the play
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unless my actors proved unable. With that declaration firmly understood, he left me, and I returned to my anxious students to test
whether or not they were ready to undertake Sexual Perversity
in Chicago.
I asked them first what they thought of the pornographic photos that had begun to appear on the front pages of their daily
newspapers. Someone said that as a newly free society, Romania
was obliged to include images of naked women in its newspapers.
Others joked that this phenomena was not pornography, but a
new style of photo-impressionism, since the quality of print was
so poor that the female parts could be discerned only with a
trained eye. The abolition of human distinctions and standards of
taste under communism made me ask them next how the two
sexes in Romania managed to pair off. What were the criteria of
choice? They assured me that although it was very difficult to
conduct a romance without the benefits of leisure and privacy,
the job of mating did get done more romantically than not. The
ugly uniformity of things made female beauty seem a heroic
achievement, all the more alluring and satisfying to possess for
oneself alone. Naturally, I asked them what they thought of the
condoms appearing for the first time in stores. (Ceausescu had
forbidden birth control and abortion, because it was claimed he
wanted more workers.) They replied that a free people should
have condoms available for purchase, but they did not think that
they needed to use them as urgently as the generous donations
from the West implied. Unless referring to gypsies, the students
saw no reason to join the two concepts, “unwed” and “mother.”
Nor did they expect to practice cohabitation before marriage.
There was simply no room for shacking up, and there were no
Romanian role models to exhibit all the smiling ways to sexual
liberation. How, then, would I audition these students to find four
who possessed the colorful vocabularies and wild imaginations
necessary to impersonate sexually liberated, sophisticated, urban
Americans? The Fulbright Scholar who was formerly a cop and
becoming an expert on Romania’s infamous impaler, suggested
that I show a pornographic film to my potential actors: whoever
could provide a voice-over for the action belonged in the play.
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My best female candidate, Sandina, who possessed the kind
of looks appropriate for motorcycles, dropped into a ten second
coma upon reading the title. So I took back the script and handed
it to Carmen. Always a game girl in discussion, she read the first
three short scenes and stated peremptorily: “There are three
scenes I cannot do.” “But there’s no doing involved, just talking,”
I replied. “That’s what I meant,” she said. Roxana, whose tall
boots and angularity made me offer her the part of a brittle feminist, bravely spit out the scripted words—“premature ejaculation”—as an example of the unspeakable. The play was like a
gun filled with blanks to me, but to her the words were real bullets. These women seemed in tacit agreement with Plato’s notion
that the consent to hear or say vulgar words creates an aptitude
to witness or perform vulgar deeds. I began to feel ashamed to
tamper with modesty so deeply felt. I saw that against a background of officially sponsored animality, discrete romantic love
seemed the only civilizing agent left in Romania. To abandon it,
even in play, was to offer universal sway to barbarism, and these
women knew instinctively not to do that. Their innocence appeared a precious achievement in that corrupt and filthy world.
But their unequivocal rejection of the play bothered me all the
same, for what cannot be said also would not be thought, and this
seemed to me a formula for the disappearance of the life of the
mind. To be the virtuous allies of intellectual dullness was to put
themselves in league with my chief enemies.
What finally killed the production was the combination of the
modesty of women with the politics of men. Mihai, my irreplaceable lead actor, withdrew from the play because his father, once
an important figure in the Party, did not want him acting “decadent.” So I decided to direct the students in scenes from Othello
and Romeo and Juliet instead. Shakespeare’s elevated poetry and
aspiring thoughts made even the most prurient and immoral sentiments seem highly delectable to the students, the Chairman, my
colleagues, and the public.
Of all the writers we studied, the students liked Tennessee
Williams the best. Like Shakespeare, he is poetic with his perversities. Moreover, they easily recognized in him their own in-
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herited sense of defeat, along with a perilous attraction to the
victors. I gave them a brief account of Williams’s life, which included the fact of his homosexuality. This caught their attention.
“We were taught that homosexuals sprung up in the decadent
West, like weeds, but that they did not exist in socialist Romania.
Of course we don’t believe much of anything we were taught.”
They were amazed to read Broadway plays written by Williams
forty years earlier that were sympathetic to homosexuality,
fetishism, masturbation, and rape, when only a year ago a Romanian author would have been put in prison for writing one
such play.
We read A Streetcar Named Desire and watched the movie
version starring Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski. Some
women let themselves go in appreciation of Brando’s naked,
sweaty torso: “Would that someone with arms like his might
carry us away, sickness and all, master of this thing called ‘life.’”
Most were disgusted by Stanley’s crudeness, for in Romania
men still greeted women with a bow and a kiss on the hand.
“Why couldn’t Stella have married both a true gentleman and a
one-hundred percent American?” they asked. I tried to explain
that these were incompatible categories to Williams. He believed
in the predestined defeat in America of poetry, refinement, and
old world breeding by the forces of prosaic realism, animal
strength, and new world technology. On this belief his tragicomic vision depended.
Still, some of the women thought they had found their ideal
man, a combination of old and new world types, in Jim O’Conner, the Gentleman Caller from The Glass Menagerie. He is the
long awaited “something,” says Williams, which defeated people
must hope for to go on living. At the same time, and in contrast
with his fantastical role, he is “an emissary from the world of
reality” who brings news of modernity to Laura Wingfield, crippled and deeply secluded in her past. Let me remind the reader
of what happens to Jim and Laura, for as my year in Romania
drew to a close, and the students and I drew ever closer to each
other, I saw in the relationship of these characters a true image
of our own.
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Jim approaches Laura carrying a lit candelabrum and wine, superficially romantic but quite unaware of being the “climax of her
secret life.” She has always loved her image of him, and now she
faces the insupportable reality. Jim wonders what Laura has done
over the years, not knowing the depth of forlorn hope that could keep
her occupied waiting for him. Her problem, he concludes, is an “inferiority complex,” and to effect her cure he offers himself as a
model. This believer in self-improvement, determined to find some
way to get everyone looking up and going somewhere up, prepares
Laura for the future of capitalist democracy by teaching her to dance.
In the process they topple and break her favorite ornament, a unicorn,
but for the moment she accepts the loss as a “blessing in disguise,”
a sign of her return to normalcy. Then he kisses her on the lips to
demonstrate that her attractive powers are real. This startles him. He
realizes that to save Laura from her inferiority complex, he would
have to husband her away from her present circumstances. (For the
paranoia surrounding her nostalgic mother has sealed Laura inside
herself.) Luckily, he is already engaged, so he escapes the love he
evoked in her and the new life he promised. She gives him the hornless unicorn as a symbolic souvenir. It is the consequence of his
clumsy efforts—like those of a tourist—to separate her unique attractions from her hobbling infirmity.
Several of my Romanian “Lauras,” after a year of intense conversations about “literature, America, the world, and life,” bravely
took to telling me how exceptional a man I was to prefer their imperfect English to the pleading beauty of their perfectly painted eyes.
I owed them a return for the love they kept for me all those years,
and in final desperation they let me know how much.
Christiana, a woman of half-looks and whispers in class, invited
me to a student party at her sister’s apartment in May. I attended and
danced with her and the other women, felt her cling to me, let myself
enjoy their uplifted hearts differently, and smelt the residue of a thousand cigarettes in the proximity of their lips. The next day I discovered in a letter that I was Christiana’s only hope of happiness:
I feel more and more that I can’t breathe. Anytime a “decree” can appear in order to destroy, to put off my life.
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Sometimes, when I free myself from this asphyxia, I understand that I have the right to live and to experience
the mystery—the first source of superiority—that I can
breathe stealthily a kind of hidden air. You breathed that
air into me. A bird who flies smack into concrete whenever she tries to rise—that is me, I fear, when you leave.
Others are just under vain illusions, for there’s no laughter at the end of our slope, but stupid death, and there’s
no triumph and no understanding. All is weird, but also
dull and senseless here. It is the season of Goths and lunatics, that’s all. I ask you for help as I shout my love
without fear or shame, my soul defeated and caressed.
I gave Christiana some of my books when I left for home that
summer. She was supposed to become a teacher of English, but
I do not know if that came to pass, or if she is doing well, yet.
She has preferred only my books to keep the contact, I may suppose. A book, as we all should say of the good ones, is a fine
thing to keep in the space between two people who are inclining
to be engaged as one. A book makes it possible to cross that space
and that time in which two people diverge along their courses of
life. I always prefer to keep a good book between us.
Stopping in Vienna on my way back to America, I visited the
Schönbrunn Palace, once the summer residence of the Hapsburg
monarchs. While walking among the splendid gardens and fountains, I encountered a bold sign that read: “Please, Don’t Eat the
Swans.” The words were in Romanian. I remembered the previous summer, as I prepared my Fulbright application while reading
news reports about the Romanian miners sacking the capital.
“Yes,” I thought, “I did have to drag a cane behind me on the
streets at night to puzzle the abandoned dogs who were forming
packs again, learning to act like wolves.” But that is not the main
thing I felt as I beheld those swans and the sign. That year I spent
in Iasi felt even then like an oasis in my mind, and I have often
gone there since to refresh myself. There, in my mind’s eye, I
wonder long at how strangely happy I was to be teaching so awkwardly, freely, bravely even, with the wolves still close at heel
and all my familiar props far distant, to students just learning to
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fly, who let me see into the beauty of their fledgling souls, and
who made me see into mine. My old friend, Mark, the newsman
to whom, in a way, I owe my oasis, is trying to get me to go
abroad again—this time without leaving America—to teach the
poor masses by internet technology all at once, filling their empty
heads with information, entertaining and useful items, and getting
for my pains multitudinous fees. Something in me wants to erect
for us a sign. For the sake of the wonder at living human faces,
composed of the love of the infinite, the profound, beheld in those
faces, I would raise a sign in bold English, the language of America and nearly all the world on the make, to say: “Please, Let Us
Not Eat the Swans Again.”
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Dante’s Beatrice: Between Idolatry
and Iconoclasm
Gabriel Pihas
1. A Response to Two Objections to Beatrice1
Some readers have taken issue with Dante’s bringing together
eros and agape in the character of Beatrice. I will try to show
how concern about the erotic element in his poetry is connected
to other worries about iconoclasm that take shape in the centuries
after Dante. I will first outline the connection between these issues, and then try to defend Dante on both points.
Famously, the protestant theologian Anders Nygren attacked
Medieval Catholicism and formulated a deep separation between
eros and Christian love.2 His reservation about eros has to do with
its self-interested character. That is, his separation of eros from
agape is motivated by a desire to separate our self-love from
agape, and our human nature from God’s nature. According to
Nygren, the new, unique love that Christ taught had nothing to
do with any other love that lets human beings ascend to God; it
had nothing to do, for example with Socrates’s eros in the Symposium. For Nygren, the uniqueness of Christianity lies in the insight that we are not justified by the law and deserve nothing for
Gabriel Pihas teaches at St. Mary’s College of California. This essay
was first given as a lecture at St. John’s College in Annapolis on 2
December 2011.
1. I want to express my gratitude for what this article owes to an NEH
study group on agape and philia in which I participated in 2009 at St.
John’s College, Annapolis. I am indebted both to the group’s discussions
and to the lecture “Agape” that Paul Ludwig delivered at Annapolis
after leading that group, on 9 April 2010.
2. Anders Nygren, Agape and Eros, trans. Philip Watson (London:
SPCK, 1953). The word agape is commonly translated as “charity” and
I will use the words charity and agape interchangeably.
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our own virtue. 3 We are wretched sinners infinitely distant from
God, and no effort of our own can explain God’s condescension
to us. On our side there is only selfish eros, while agape is an incomprehensible miracle. For Nygren, this unmotivated condescension is the whole of Christian love.4 Some have raised
reasonable difficulties with this position. First, its excessive
harshness makes election too irrational. It leaves an enormous
gap between an unbelievably unmotivated agape and what we
clearly and fundamentally are, namely, desiring beings seeking
happiness.5 His view makes it difficult to understand the many
passages in the bible that seem to suggest our involvement in salvation, like “as many as received him, He gave them power”
(John 1:12). And second, equally importantly, one might add that
this doctrine leaves us swallowed up by God.6 We clearly lose
the dignity of our person at least in this condescension, and perhaps lose our person altogether.
I would like to draw a parallel to this separation of our eros
and agape in what at first might seem a distant sphere, namely,
iconoclasm, or the rejection of sacred art as idolatry. From the
idolatry issue arises a second, and related, objection to Beatrice.
Let me first explain what iconoclasm is, and then come back to
drawing the parallel with eros and agape. Fundamentally, there
are two very reasonable theological concerns behind iconoclasm.7
3. Nygren, 67-9.
4. Ibid., 75-6.
5. In “Agape,” Paul Ludwig argued that over-emphasis on the purely
miraculous nature of agape is one of the major problems with postLutheran accounts of it. Through a reading of New Testament uses of
agape, he argues that Nygren’s claim of a radical divide between classical philosophical strands in medieval caritas and New Testament
agape is exaggerated.
6. For some of these objections see D’Arcy, M.C. The Mind and the
Heart of Love (New York: Meridian Books, 1956), 352-5.
7. There are, of course, also political motivations in iconoclasm. For
example, destruction of religious art can express opposition to the political institution of the Church through the objects it claims to safeguard and which are understood to maintain its power and its special
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First, it implies an intention to protect God from our theoretical
misconstruals of his ineffable nature and his unity, and to enhance
our inward respect for God by keeping him above anything down
here that might represent him. Second, it implies a desire to defend popular religion from superstitious religious practice. Interest in images is often connected to popular belief in magic
powers, even those latent in the very materials of the image, the
wood, paint, and stone. So there is something very thoughtful
and pious in iconoclasm. Also, there are certainly many scriptural
authorities for iconoclasm, above all, the second commandment
against graven images. But there is often also a risk of incoherence in iconoclasm. It suggests separating religion from any particular religious practice or institution. This is emphatically the
case for Christian iconoclasm, which is what I want to focus on
in this essay. For Christians, there is more latitude with images
than in other forms of monotheism. The Incarnation itself—the
idea that God became a particular human being in the womb of
a particular human woman, that He suffered and died and is
risen—almost naturally suggests making images of God. The
continual retelling of Christ’s story in pictures for the illiterate is
fundamental to the possibility of transmitting the story. This, in
fact, was part of the very earliest Christian defense of images.
But there is even more than such practical necessity to recommend images. The theology around the Incarnation suggests
a terrestrial reality preserved in transcendence. In the Incarnation
God became flesh, visible flesh. We can draw pictures of the God
who became flesh even if we can’t draw the invisible God. Part
of what is at stake in Christian iconoclastic debates is a concern
stature. The holiness of the icon is a kind of symbol for the holiness of
the Church itself, hence doubts about the sacred nature of the one takes
away political power from the other. This thesis was explored by David
Freeberg in Iconoclasts and their Motives (Montclair, N.J.: A. Schram,
1985). Similar claims about the political significance of iconoclasm in
ancient Israel were made by Joseph Guttman, “Deuteronomy: Religious
Reformation or Iconoclastic Revolution?” in The Image and the Word:
Confrontations in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (New York: Scholars
Press for the American Academy of Religion, 1977), 5-10.
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about representing human nature in the image of God. A picture
of Christ presents our humanity to us. It places God’s uncircumscribed nature in the visible, circumscribed human image. Most
importantly, the image is essential to Christianity because it is an
image in the depths of God himself, since Christ is an image of
God the Father.
Some Christians, like John of Damascus, who defended art
during the Byzantine iconoclastic controversy of the eighth century, saw the artistic image as a sacramentally valuable, low-level
emanation from God. He suggested a chain or ladder of images
of God. On this ladder of emanations we find, at the top, Christ
the image of the Father; then the image of Christ in the Virgin
Mary, then in the saints, and then in man, who is made in the
image of God. Finally, at the bottom are painted images.8 He argued that we should revere the image of Christ as if it were Christ
himself because we mean by the word “image” not the physical
materials of which an art object is made, but rather the original
that the image depicts and participates in—namely, in this case,
Christ’s humanity, something worthy of the highest kind of worship.9 This argument was used many times the Middle Ages, as,
for example, by Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologica.
Images were an important element in the early Christian debates about Christ’s human nature. With the very first Christians,
Christ was only ever represented symbolically (for example, as
a fish or a lamb), and never in sculptures, but only in paintings.
These early Christians had reservations about images, even
though objects like the Eucharist and the relic already suggest
8. John Damascene, Apologia of St. John Damascene Against Those
Who Decry Holy Images, trans. Mary H. Allies (London: Thomas
Baker, 1898). This ladder of images is described at length in the final
chapter of the trestise, “How Many Kinds of Images There Are.”
9. John compares the question about the image of God to the ordinary
use of images of the king, and to the importance accorded a king’s representatives. The representatives and the images get the same respect
the king gets. This argument was frequently reused in later debates to
defend the “iconodule,” or anti-iconoclast, position.
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Incarnational alternatives to the magic powers of pagan idols that
pave the way for later defenses of Christian art.10 I suggest that
the initial reservations about images might derive from a hostile
social context, and were not expressions of the mature faith: some
of its reservations derived from inherited Jewish practices, some
from a desire to distinguish Christianity from the pagan practice
surrounding them in Rome. Many reservations about images of
Christ derived merely from a need to maintain secrecy so as to
avoid persecution.11 Slightly later, when the persecution of Christians was no longer an issue, images of Christ most often appeared in group scenes telling stories from the New Testament
for the illiterate. But images of Christ appearing by himself, and
not symbolically, begin to become more common after paganism
vanished in Rome in the middle of the fifth century. These images
were often produced to affirm the doctrinal importance of the Incarnation against other heretical understandings of Christ’s nature. At that time a number of heresies circulated, such as the
claim that Christ’s human nature was erased in his divine nature,
or the opposed claim that Christ was merely a human instrument
of God. According to such views, it would not make any sense
to venerate the human image. In contrast, the act of veneration
10. I take this point from Marc Fumaroli, “The Christian Critique of
Idolatry” in Idol Anxiety, ed. Josh Ellenbogen and Aaron Tugendhaft,
trans. Benjamin Storey (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), 3241. As he points out, in the Eucharist and the relic we find the real presence, not just reminders of God. These new objects will oppose the
pagan demons previously thought to be present within statues and
amulets.
11. My suggestion implies that the way the apostles worshipped was
not always the best way. The iconoclastic Calvin took offense at such a
suggestion (Institutes 1.2.13) . But we see such limitations attributed to
the apostles explicitly in the gospels themselves, especially with regard
to this issue of seeing the image of the invisible God. For example,
when Phillip asks Christ to show him the Father (John 14:8), he is still
in the mode of waiting for the fulfillment of the prophets, and unaware
of what he has before him. (I owe this point to a private conversation
with Marsaura Shukla.)
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of the images of Christ as a man emphasizes that all of his divinity is present along with his visible humanity. Such veneration of
images is thus a way of affirming both natures. This non-symbolic human image was thought to be so important that the symbolic presentation of Christ as a lamb was even expressly banned
in the 600s, and the representation of Christ as a man became not
a possibility but a requirement.12 Opposition to the images was
never simply about the limits of art, or even about religious practice. It involved much more fundamental questions about the nature of the divine. Hence iconoclasm in all of its historical
appearances always involved opposition not merely to the depiction of Christ, but to the adoration of Mary and the saints, in or
out of pictures. Just as Byzantine and Protestant iconoclasts were
suspicious of images, they were also suspicious, for similar reasons, of the adoration of the saints and Mary. This broader context of communion with Mary and the saints is, as we shall see,
directly relevant to Beatrice.
Now I can finally establish the parallel I want to draw with
eros and agape. Unease about an image of Christ’s humanity
and Christ’s humanity itself is similar to the unease felt by the
separators of eros and agape, who don’t want to find self-regard
mixed up with agape. The fear of contaminating agape with eros
is another form of the fear of contaminating the infinite God with
our finite humanity in the images we make. The fear that our
own ascent through eros diminishes God’s condescension in
agape is similar to the fear that any work of our hands diminishes the honor we give to God. Both fears are understandable,
but are generally problematic attempts to eliminate our self-regard in finding our good. Both imply an idea of the supernatural
12. See Edward James Martin, A History of the Iconoclast Controversy
(London: Church Historical Society, 1930; reprinted 1978), 20-21. The
prohibition on the image of the lamb appears in the Quinsext Council,
Canon #82. The claim in that canon is that the human image reminded
us better than the lamb image of the “humiliation of the word of God”
and “his conversation in the flesh, passion…death…and redemption.”
This document is from 692 A.D.
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that wholly effaces our human nature. Both can verge on hatred
of our humanity. Dante offers an alternative Christian view that
does not eliminate self-regard, but attempts to include it, and
that does not simply efface our human nature. According to Nygren’s view, Dante is one of the most representative of all offenders in confusing eros and agape.13 For Dante, the ascent of
eros can complement the descent of agape. Both movements
may even be united in the same soul at the same time, and transformed eros can proportionately reflect agape. So, I will try to
show how different Dante’s literary works are from the more
modern view in respect to the way he brings eros and agape together.
Dante’s writing is also provocative in the context of the
idolatry issue. Like the seventh-century prohibition on the
merely symbolic images of Christ, his work demands a new
level of realism and historical detail. His inclusion of Virgil and
the classical world in combination with his rehabilitation of the
city of man suggest a new dignity in our humanity, unthinkable
in many earlier Christian writers. In fact, one of Dante’s central
aims in writing the Commedia is to take temporal power away
from the Church and establish the dignity of worldly government. But this political innovation is merely the flip side of
Dante’s theological-erotic innovation. The great novelty of
Dante’s political doctrines went hand in hand with the novelty
of making the beloved lady of courtly love poetry into a figure
of religious awe. The beautiful image of Beatrice pointed Dante
toward God, both during her life and after her death. Remarkably, her earthly reality is always preserved in her transcen13. For Nygren’s attack on Dante, see Agape and Eros, 616-620. His
claim is simply that Dante has too many Neo-Platonic and Aristotelian
philosophical elements for him to be Christian. Nygren tries to make
his argument against Dante merely by identifying such elements in
Dante’s thought. Here is not the place to discuss in detail the parts of
Nygren’s book unrelated to Dante, but the radical and problematic contention that Christianity cannot involve any such classical philosophical
elements is central to his broader argument.
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dence, as Christ’s is in the Incarnation.14 This paradox distinguishes Dante’s ideal woman from much more common symbolic or allegorical ideal women. As he himself said, by placing
Beatrice in heaven gazing upon God, he praised her in a way that
no poet had ever praised any woman.15
In fact, no one had ever done it before because it is a very
odd thing to do. With what right could Dante make a beautiful
woman a mediatrix to God? Is he worshipping her as an idol?
Some have said Yes. In the wake of Reformation, Protestant
iconoclasm, and the Index of Forbidden Books, we find a
Catholic editor in Italy, Bartolomeo Sermartelli, who worried
that Dante’s love was simply theologically offensive. In 1576,
about two hundred and fifty years after Dante’s death, in the
first printed edition of his early book, the Vita Nuova, the love
theology was heavily censored.16 All Dante’s scriptural citations
were removed. Passages attributing divine qualities to Beatrice
were deleted or cleaned up. For example, where the text said
that Beatrice offers him salute (salvation), we find instead the
more banal word saluto (salutation). And where Dante says she
generates beatitudine (blessedness), we find the word changed
to felicitá (happiness). The chapter where she is most explicitly
identified with Christ (Chapter 24) was simply deleted. This
censorship was founded on the separation between eros and
agape. This separation underlies the whole history of the ideal
woman in Renaissance literature in this period, from Ariosto’s
14. This well-worn point is familiar to most through Erich Auerbach’s
writings on Dante. See Erich Auerbach, Dante: Poet of the Secular
World, trans.,Ralph Manheim (New York: New York Review of
Books, 2007 and Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western
Literature (Princeton: Princton University Press, 2003). The idea originated, for Auerbach and his generation at least, with Hegel. See Auerbach, Mimesis, 191.
15. Dante, Vita Nuova, chap. 42.
16. See Brian Richardson, Print Culture in Renaissance Italy: The Editor and the Vernacular Text, 1470-1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 20040, 173.
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Angelica, to Cervantes’s Dulcinea, and later to Milton’s Eve.
Although some of these authors would not see themselves as
fundamentally motivated by theological concerns, nonetheless
they were all impressed by the idea that the beloved of the
chivalric tradition was idolatrous. Just as the iconoclast reformers sought to destroy the sacred images, so also certain poets
and novelists at the same time attacked the chivalric view of
love. But they did not limit themselves to this renunciation of
erotic idolatry. They attacked the chivalric view of both love
and arms, that is, they attacked both the ideal women and the
ideals of worldly honor. While we have become used to thinking of such attacks as obvious, Dante opposed them. He affirmed both the transcendence of the ideal woman as well as
the integrity of honor and the worldly political order, when part
of a Christian life. Hence Dante’s adapatation of literary realism
was not a reaction against theology, but an extension of his theological bent.
Unlike Dante’s literary realism, the new literary realism that
some of these later authors pursued, and which became the
foundation for modern realism, was founded on the incompatibility of our terrestrial reality and the manifestation of God.17
These authors begin from the hiddenness of God and of his
providence, rather than with the sacramental idea of nature.
Hence the theological issues that are involved in my defense of
Dante and his challenge to iconoclasm have a relevance that extends to modern literature as well as political and aesthetic theory. I will now present Beatrice as an alternative to this early
modern theology.
2. Beatrice as Christ in Vita Nuova
In the thirteenth century, poets explored the conflict between
17. The other element that distinguishes the two camps is their differing
attitude to pagan poetry. The new realism attempts to end the ancient
epic, which it regards as an ongoing tradition, while Dante is attempting
to revive an epic tradition that per lunga silenzio parea fioco (from long
silence seemed hoarse. (Inferno 1.63.)
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courtly love and religion from a few different angles.18 Guittone
d’Arezzo renounced love poetry and became a monk, writing religious poems against the courtly tradition. He stressed the moral opposition between divine love and the poet’s human lust. Two other
poets who were extremely close to Dante, Guido Cavalcanti and
Guido Guinizelli, although less ascetic and less pious than Guittone,
expressed similar concerns. Cavalcanti worried about the excessive
focus on one’s own, and on the private possession of the beloved,
which were obstacles to the universality of philosophical truth, and
to our good according to reason. He thought that being overwhelmed
by the passion of love divides the soul and implies forgetting that at
which reason aims. Guido Guinizelli’s poetry playfully suggested
that the earthly lady who was object of love and praise was more
than metaphorically divine, and hence was in sinful competition with
God. He saw that the implicit religious elements in the courtly love
tradition, and in poetry itself, were clearly idolatrous. But he never
took the problem very seriously and never sought a resolution to this
problem. In the story of Paolo and Francesca in Inferno 5, Dante
gives his own account of Guinizelli’s problem. But long before writing that canto, the young Dante already writes the Vita Nuova, a book
dedicated to Guido Cavalcanti that addresses all these various objections. As we will see, the Vita Nuova is a miniature of the major
action of the Divine Comedy.
Dante’s love for Beatrice in the Vita Nuova is unusual in that it
is not at all libidinal. Beatrice’s beauty is inseparably bound up with
her moral virtue, and beyond any lust that might make Dante forget
about his highest aims.
“It happened that her image, which was always with me,
gave boldness to Love to rule over [me], but was of such noble
virtue that it never let Love rule me without the faithful counsel
of reason.”19
18. For a thoughtful account of the tradition of vernacular love poetry and
the question of heresy, see Pamela Williams Through Human Love to God
(Leicester: Troubadour Publishing, 2007), especially 9-11, and 76-77.
19. Vita Nuova, chapter 2. E avvenga che la sua imagine, la quale continuatamente meco stave, fosse baldanza d’Amore a segnoreggiare me,
tuttavia era di sì nobilissima vertù, che nulla volta sofferse che Amore
mi reggesse sanza lo fedele consiglio de la ragione.
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So, contrary to Cavalcanti’s objection, Dante is never
blinded or even distracted by physical passion, and never ceases
thinking about God when looking on Beatrice. Dante’s experience of eros begins from the already religiously-infused courtly
love tradition. It is this tradition that explains part of Dante’s simultaneous interest in Beatrice as a beautiful woman and the
non-libidinal character of that interest. From the beginning Beatrice is the courtly domina, his “lady” in the sense of the feminine
form of “lord.” But as we will see, Dante goes further. Exactly
insofar as her image causes Love to overcome his faculties, he
becomes free of libido. Dante addresses Guinizelli’s concerns
by taking the religious element in the courtly tradition and radicalizing it in a most daring way.20 Beatrice is introduced as the
“glorious lady of my mind” (gloriosa donna de la mia mente)
and a young angel. The title of the book, New Life, recalls Paul’s
phrase (Romans 6:3-4) about giving up the old life of sin and
entering into the new life of grace. His meeting with Beatrice is
nothing less than the experience of God’s grace, now in the intimate world of his memory that the book records. Her beauty
is miraculous, and is rooted in the Trinity. The Vita Nuova is frequently compared to contemporary accounts of saint’s lives.
That is the genre to which it belongs. Beatrice’s appearance on
earth is a unique and miraculous event that Dante claims to have
witnessed, and he transcribes it from the book of his memory to
share with those who never saw her.
At the opening of the Vita Nuova, Dante describes his vision
of Beatrice as a beatific vision: “As she passed through a street,
she turned her eyes to where I stood very fearful, and with her
ineffable courtesy, which is today rewarded in eternal life, she
greeted me with great virtue, so much that I seemed to see all the
limits of blessedness.”21
20. For the uniqueness of Dante’s gesture, see John A. Scott, Understanding Dante (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press,
2004) 16-17.
21. Vita Nuova, chapter 3. [P]assando per una via, volse li occhi verso
quella parte ov’io era molto pauroso, e per la sua ineffabile cortesia, la
quale è oggi meritata nel grande secolo, mi salutoe molto virtuosamente,
tanto che me parve allora vedere tutti li termini de la beatitudine.
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It is difficult to imagine passing a woman in the street and
taking it for beatitude. Dante must have seen the inner meaning
of her beauty as an effect of the Creator, not merely as the beauty
of the creature for its own sake. The beauty appears as an emanation of God much as Neo-Platonic thinkers like Pseudo-Dionysius and John of Damascus might have suggested. Scholars have
focused on a number of more historically proximate potential
sources who followed exactly such theological theories about the
vision of beauty, including Bernard of Clairvaux, Richard of St.
Victor, and Bonaventure.22
Beatrice makes others who see her more like herself, just as
in greeting Dante she will transform him into Love itself. Beatrice has this effect on all who are noble enough to be able to see
her. This is the most unusual thing about Dante’s love for Beatrice. It is the aspect of courtly love that is most obvious from its
name, but least often taken seriously because it is so distant from
us: Dante’s love is shared, public erotic love, not private love.
Dante is the beloved for all Florentine gentlemen. His act of charity lies in his sharing of Beatrice through his poetry with those
non-Florentines, and non-contemporaries, who never saw her
when she was alive. Love of Beatrice becomes universal.
Dante’s love blends eros and charity. In one passage he focuses on the effect on himself of Beatrice’s greeting in the street.
Much of the experience of love in the Vita Nuova is condensed
in this rightly famous passage. In this greeting she presumably
22. See Francesco Mazzoni, Il canto XXXI del Purgatorio (Florence: F.
Le Monnier, 1965). Of course, Aquinas, among many others, also took
up the widespread Neoplatonic doctrines that described creatures as
preexisting in a higher form in God. Other traditional theological avenues for explaining the role of Beatrice might be analogy (see Warren
Ginsberg, Dante’s Aesthetics of Being [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999] 8-13), deificatio (Rosetta Migliorini-Fissi, “La nozione
di ‘deificatio’ nel Paradiso.” Letture classensi. 9-10 [1982]: 39-72), or
we might simply see her as a special revelation, like the phantasms and
sensibles offered to prophets. (See Aquinas, Summa Theologica, q. 12,
a.13: “sometimes phantasms in the imagination . . . and sometimes sensible things are divinely formed.”)
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said salve, which in Italian is the same as the now outmoded English phrase, “save you,” short for “May God save you.” It is a
blessing, it “makes blessed,” just as Beatrice’s name means “she
who makes blessed.” Here is Dante’s description in Chapter 11
of the Vita Nuova of the effect on himself of this greeting or
blessing:
Whenever she appeared anywhere, because of the hope
of her miraculous greeting [mirabile salute] I had no
enemy in the world, instead a flame of charity came to
me that made me pardon whoever had offended me. If
anyone had asked me anything, my answer would be
only, “Love,” with a face dressed in humility. And whenever she was about to greet me, a spirit of love, destroying all the other sensitive spirits, drove out the feeble
spirits of vision, telling them “Go and honor your lady,”
and it remained in their place. And anyone who wanted
to know love could have done so by looking at the trembling of my eyes. And when this most gentle one greeted
me with this greeting, not only was Love not a mediator
that could obscure from me the overwhelming blessedness, but through an excess of sweetness, he became such
that my body which was wholly under Love’s control,
moved like an inanimate mass. So that it appears manifestly that in her greeting dwelt my beatitude, which
greatly exceeded and surpassed my capacities.23
In this important passage, Beatrice’s beauty promises beatitude for Dante in her miraculous greeting. But the charity he
feels is not for her, but for anyone. This is mysterious. In this
23. Vita Nuova, Chapter 11: Dico che quando ella apparia da parte alcuna, per la speranza de la mirabile salute nullo nemico mi rimanea,
anzi mi giugnea una fiamma di caritade, la quale mi facea perdonare
a chiunque m’avesse offeso; e chi allora m’avesse domandato di cosa
alcuna, la mia risponsione sarebbe stata solamente —Amore—, con
viso vestito d’umilitade. E quando ella fosse alquanto propinqua al salutare, uno spirito d’amore, distruggendo tutti li altri spririti sensitive,
pingea fuori li deboletti spiriti del viso, e dicea loro: “Andate a onorare
la donna vostra”; ed elli si rimanea nel luogo loro. E chi avesse voluto
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way Dante makes an implicit distinction between eros for
Beatrice and charity for others. The key to the passage is to understand the relation between hope and charity in the first sentence. The promise of the salute (“greeting”/”salvation”) from
the beautiful creates a hope that is so strong it generates charity. To understand it we have to think that Beatrice’s greeting,
in which she said “be saved,” is so overwhelmingly pleasant
that Dante focuses completely on her and forgets himself. The
self-forgetting is represented as love destroying and expelling
his spirits, here understood as the Galenic spirits that make his
body function. The confidence of this hope elicits generosity
for others. When his hope is this great, he exists beyond himself and can afford to become all charity and humility. He runs
no risk of loss in his charity, because it grows naturally from
his desire for his own good. As Aquinas puts it, charity, or love
of God for His own sake, is the perfection of the imperfect love
that begins in hope for one’s own good.24 This imperfect love
that becomes charity we would call eros. We might also make
this point theologically rather than psychologically, by recalling Virgil’s comment in Purgatorio that love is a good that one
has more of when one shares it (Purgatorio 15.55-7). Dante
wishes to give to others, while also getting for himself. Both
occur when he is taken over by love, becoming more than himself, even at the level of his eyes and his body. It makes his
body and libido wholly inactive, with all his activity focused
in the eyes.
conoscere Amore, fare lo potea, mirando lo tremare de li occhi miei. E
quando questa gentilissima salute salutava, non che Amore fosse tal
mezzo che potesse obumbrare a me la intollerabile beatitudine, ma elli
quasi per soverchio di dolcezza divenia tale, che lo mio corpo, lo quale
era tutto allora sotto lo suo reggimento, molte volte si movea come cosa
grave inanimata. Sì che appare manifestamente che ne le sue salute
abitava la mia beatitudine, la quale molte volte passava e redundava
la mia capacitade.
24. Aquinas, Summa Theologica II-II q. 17, a.8: “[Charity] adheres to
God for His own sake; . . . he that hopes [on the other hand], intends to
obtain possession of something for himself.”
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Note in this passage that he becomes charitable toward others
in a way that repeats or extends Beatrice’s charity for him. She
blesses him with this greeting not out of eros, but out of charity.
In contrast, he erotically and selfishly desires her greeting, while
loving others charitably. The charity and the eros operate together
in him without conflict. They have different objects. Eros is for
something he yearns after and contemplates that is above him.
Charity is an effect of his hope for that same object of contemplation, but it is aimed at people at his level or below.25 At this
point we have given an incomplete description of Dante’s account of eros and agape. So far we only have the two loves in
the same soul, provoked by one object, but aimed at different
people. We still have to come to see how the two loves are not
merely non-contradictory, but also more closely intertwined. I
will complete this articulation of eros and agape at the end of
this essay, in connection with Dante’s definition of agape in Paradiso.
Dante’s great discovery in the middle of the Vita Nuova,
which he arrives at with the help of Guido Gunizelli, is that he
must praise Beatrice, not merely describe her effect on him. His
poetry must be about her, not about himself. His blessedness is
no longer in her greeting as it was in the previous passage. His
poetic apprenticeship takes him beyond this. Instead his salvation
is now in his own charitable poetry, in praise of his lady. This
new direction generates the middle section of the Vita Nuova,
which contains many of the greatest poems of the collection. And
yet, it is important that Dante himself saw this apparently selfeffacing attitude of praise as actually self-regarding in a positive
sense. Dante says elsewhere that praising someone who is far
25. Compare Gregory the Great’s account of Jacob’s ladder in the Pastoral Rule, Book 2, Chapter 5. We both ascend and descend on this ladder, ascending in contemplation, and descending to those we minister
to through charity. This division between upward and downward loves
is implicit in the Vita Nuova passage, and frames the treatment of the
contemplative ladder in Paradiso 21-22. Canto 21 deals with upward
movement on the ladder, Canto 22, with downward movement on the
ladder.
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greater than yourself is always a self-interested act, since praise
implies friendship, and friendship implies likeness. Hence to
praise the great is to assert that you are like the great in some
way. (Convivio 3.1.4) The same goes, he suggests, for friendship
with God.
After Beatrice dies, years pass, and he begins to forget her
for a new noblewoman, whom he identifies in the Convivio as a
symbol for philosophy. At the end of the Vita Nuova he repents
this philosophical betrayal, and turns again to the memory of
Beatrice in the final chapters, rising up to heaven where Beatrice
dwells. The sequence in the final few paragraphs of the Vita
Nuova about repenting his abandonment of Beatrice, followed
by ascent to God—this is a tiny draft to be rewritten and expanded in the Commedia. At the end of the Vita Nuova, Beatrice
is described as the object of his soul’s pilgrimage, like the shroud
on which Christ left his features, which pilgrims visit in Rome,
known as the Veronica or True Icon. Dante suggests that the pilgrimage to Rome and his local pilgrimage to Beatrice are ultimately the same. The famous shroud in Rome has power, but,
actually, the local miracle of Beatrice, a woman who is a mirror
of God for the Florentines, is just as good as the shroud. “Christ
comes alive for Dante in Beatrice.”26 Her image transports him
to the good that can fulfill him. As a creature gone to her Creator,
her beauty is an exemplar that is more perfect in God, just as the
features in the shroud are more perfect in the seemingly absent
original face that they let us see. But further, Dante’s poetry itself
has the power to make others feel Beatrice’s beauty without ever
seeing her. His words are as good as sacred relics, like the shroud
with Christ’s features. His poem, like Beatrice, is mediator to
God, not a competitor. At the same time, his writings about her
are in fact even better than the historical Beatrice and even better
than the famous shroud at Rome, in that the writings can be
shared with all who read them anywhere and forever.
26. Christopher Ryan, “The Theology of Dante” in The Cambridge
Companion to Dante, ed. Rachel Jackoff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 146.
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3. Beatrice as Mirror of God in Purgatorio
In the Commedia, Dante gives an account of how all of
human life should be understood in the light of eternal reality and
revelation. How could so much have come out of a vision of
Beatrice? Again, why isn’t this idolatry? On a number of occasions, Dante distinguishes what he is doing from idolatry. I will
mention only one.27 In Purgatorio 19, Dante has a dream of the
Siren, who Virgil will later tell him is the symbol for excessive
desire for earthly pleasures:
When geomancers see their Fortuna Major rise in the east
before dawn, rising by a way that stays dark for little
time, a stuttering woman came to me in a dream, crosseyed, and crooked on her feet, with her hands deformed
and pallid in color. I gazed at her; and as the sun comforts
the cold members that the night weighs down, so my
glance made ready her speech, and quickly straightened
her, and the distorted face it colored as love would want
it. Then with her speaking unshackled, she began to sing,
so that with difficulty might I turn my attention away
from her. “I am” she sang, “I am the sweet siren that misleads sailors in the middle of the sea, so pleasant is it to
hear me! I turned Ulysses, eager for his road, to my song.
And whoever gets used to staying with me rarely departs;
so completely do I fulfill him!” 28
The time is indicated by reference to a gnostic astrological
tradition called geomancy. This practice involved connecting pat27. Other prominent treatments of idolatry in the Commedia are Paolo
and Francesca’s idolatry of Amor (Inferno 5), the idolatry of Federick
II by the poet Pier delle Vigne (Inferno 13), and the idolatry of the simoniac popes (Inferno 19). Canto 19 in all three canticles is dedicated
to the idolatry issue in connection with the Church and the pope.
28. Purgatorio 19.1-24. [Q]uando i geomanti lor Maggior Fortuna /
veggiono in orïente, innanzi all’ alba, / surger per via che poco le sta
bruna: / mi venne in sogno una femmina balba, / ne li occhi guercia, e
sovra i piè distorta, / con le man monche, e di colore scialba. / Io la
mirava; e come ’l sol confortale / fredde membra che la notte aggrava,
/ così lo sguardo mio le facea scorta / la lingua, e poscia tutta la driz-
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terns drawn on the earth to constellations in the heavens. So the
setting suggests a kind of superstitious mistaking of earthly and
heavenly. At first the siren is ugly and stuttering, but then Dante’s
gaze makes her articulate and beautiful. We are invited to hear
her initial stuttering in line 19, as well as the balanced fluidity he
projects on her by line 21 (Io son . . . io son, dolce serena / che
marinari in mezzo mar dismago/ tanto son di piacer’ a sentir
piena!). As others have suggested, the power of his gaze to reshape her is an allegory for the power of his imagination to reshape the earthly and make it heavenly, that is, it is an allegory
for the act of idol-making.29 The parallel with Inferno 19 suggests
that the Siren is another development of the whore with seven
heads (lines 108-109), a conflation of images in Revelations that
suggests Rome. Here, as in Inferno 19, the idolatry of the pope
is of special interest. Later in Purgatorio 19, we encounter a concrete historical example of the damage the allegorical Siren can
do in pope Adrian V, who is now purging his own avarice. He
tells Dante that he had at first made the earthly political power
of Church offices the aim of his ascent (19.103-108). Then, when
he rose to its peak and became pope, he finally came to recognize
that no earthly position, no ambition, would satisfy him (109-11).
zava / in poco d’ora, e lo smarrito volto, / com’ amor vuol, così le colorava. / Poi ch’ell’ avea ’l parlar così disciolto, / cominciava a cantar
sì, che con pena / da lei avrei mio intento rivolto. / “Io son”, cantava,
“io son dolce serena, / che i marinari in mezzo mar dismago; / tanto
son di piacere a sentir piena! / Io volsi Ulisse del suo cammin vago / al
canto mio; e qual meco s’ausa, / rado sen parte; sì tutto l’appago!
29. See Giuseppe Mazzotta, Dante’s Vision and the Circle of Knowledge
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 140-41. The allegory is
a precise response to Virgil’s account of the soul’s perception of and inclination to desirable objects in the previous canto (18. 43ff.). In his account, the imagination takes in outer experience and presents it to us.
Our role in the imaginative presentation of objects in the soul is what
Dante has allegorized with the Siren in Canto 19. The doctrine on counsel and consent that Dante is following here is that of Summa Theologica I-II, qq. 14-15. Aquinas in turn takes it from Augustine’s account of
the imagination in On the Trinity, Books 11-12.
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His mistaken attempt to ascend to the earthly, as if the earth were
above him rather than below, resembles the geomancer’s identification of his earthly image with the heavenly reality at the beginning of the canto. Realizing his error, he quits his post. He is
finally saved, though he must spend time in purgatory weeping
over his attachment to the earth. With his face and body stuck in
earthly mire, he suffers while longing for heaven. Adrian’s tears,
which “mature” his soul in preparation for ascent, atone for his
fascination with the earth, which prevented him from ascending.
His fascination with the earth parallels the hypnosis of the Siren’s
song, which paralyzes sailors in the sea. The hymn Adrian sings
together with the others in this part of purgatory also expresses
this hypnosis as being stuck or adhering, but now with a new
sense: Adhaesit pavimento anima mea! I will suggest at the end
of this essay that, although Dante’s poetry often brings into relief
the transcendent possibilities for terrestrial beauty, Adrian’s tears
for heaven and his hatred for the stasis of purely earthly pursuits
are intended by Dante as emblems of how we should live on earth.
Although in passages like Canto 19 Dante reflects on the dangers of idolatry, in the Purgatorio, rather than backing away from
the Vita Nuova, he explicitly reaffirms it. Dante’s encounter with
Beatrice at the top of purgatory is a clear parallel with the idolatry
of the Siren and raises all of Nygren’s questions about Dante’s
mix of eros and agape. The preparation for Beatrice’s arrival is
perhaps the most daring of all of Dante’s gestures of praise. When
Dante arrives at the Garden of Eden in Purgatorio 28 he sees a
variety of mystical symbols paraded before his eyes. Seven candlesticks lead a procession (the seven gifts of the spirit that illuminate human life). Following these are the books of the Old
Testament, represented by twenty-four elders. Then comes a
Chariot (the Church) pulled by Christ as the Griffin.30 On either
30. I follow the traditional reading of the Griffin, against recent attempts
to interpret it otherwise. For such attempts see Peter Armour, “Dante’s
Processional Vision” in Lectura Dantis: Purgatorio, A Canto-by-Canto
Commentary, ed. Allen Mandelbaum, Anthony Oldcorn, and Charles
Ross. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 336-340.
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side of the chariot are virtues represented as nymphs, while behind the chariot are various men representing the books of the
New Testament. More concisely then, the procession means that
the spirit of God illuminates revelation and the history of scripture, all of which centers on the transcendent moment of Christ’s
coming to earth and leading his Church, uniting the books in the
epochs before and after him. The whole procession is in the form
of a cross, with the two-natured symbol of Christ at the center.
This elaborate procession contains a set of images mostly from
Revelation, which refers the whole scene to the last judgment.
As Charles Singleton emphasized, Dante is witnessing a last
judgment. Even fairly uneducated medieval readers would be immediately aware of this.31
Singleton argued that what makes Dante’s procession different
from the ordinary medieval understanding of the last judgment is
the person who appears in the chariot when the procession stops.
Dante introduces this person as Christ, but it will be someone else.
One of the representatives of the Old Testament sings the phrase
Veni sponsa de Libano (Come, bride of Lebanon), from the Song
of Songs, three times. Then everyone in the procession sings in
31. Many medieval churches decorated with exactly such images of the
last judgment, would have taught Dante’s ordinary readers about the last
judgment in terms of these symbols, and perhaps inspired Dante’s canto.
Most iconographically similar of all to Dante’s procession are the mosaics
in the churches of Santi Cosma e Damiano and the identical ones in the
church of Santa Prassede, both in Rome, where in each case a series of successive arches in the church contain these symbols (the heavenly Jerusalem,
the twenty four elders, the seven candlesticks, the evangelists, etc.). To one
who traverses the space, even merely with one’s glance, the succession of
arches creates the visual effect of a procession in motion towards the end
of the church, where Christ appears in the vault descending to the judgment
seat. Coincidentally, the mosaics of S. Prassede are of particular relevance
for the question of iconoclasm in medieval art. They were done at the end
of the 700s by artists fleeing iconoclast persecution in Byzantium and commemorate the relocation of the remains of martyrs and saints from the catacombs. Byzantine iconoclasts were opposed to the devotion to martyrs as
well as to images. Like Dante’s Purgatorio, the mosaics stress the value of
human beings as mediators.
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response Benedictus qui venit! (Blessed is He who comes!). In its
original context, this phrase “Blessed is He who comes” describes
Christ entering Jerusalem. The Old Testament erotic longing for
the Bride of Lebanon is now to be satisfied with the phrase announcing Christ from the New Testament. Since his readers know
this New Testament verse, and know the iconography of the procession, then it is very clear that these angels are welcoming the
returning Christ, who is arriving at his judgment seat so as to decide who can be received into the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of
God. If we attune ourselves to the force of the scriptural citations
as the last century of scholarship has helped us to do, then we recognize that nothing could have prepared a Medieval reader for
what happened next. The angels quote a verse from Virgil’s
Aeneid, Manibus o date lilia plenis (Give hands full of lilies).32
Anchises voices this phrase at one of the most melancholy moments of Vergil’s poem, “even though it is of no use, let me throw
these lilies over the shade of the dead soul.” All this is overturned
in Purgatorio 30 when angels shower the chariot with lilies, and
in the midst of a delicate rain of flowers, Beatrice appears. Of
course Christ, the “He” in “Blessed is He who comes,” it turns
out, is a she.
Now, including a line from Virgil as a part of the last Judgment is already stretching the bounds of theological propriety,
and it embraces the pagan world in a new way. It transforms and
completes our worldly dignity and our wholly natural desires
rather than effacing them in the moment of revelation. But surprising as it is, this is not the most striking thing about the scene.
If we accept the idea that the ancient inability to redeem death
has been overcome by Christ’s sacrifice, and that it is natural for
Dante to use a bit of pagan poetry to express this thought, then
Virgil’s melancholy has itself been uplifted and transformed into
a moment of grace. His conversation with Statius about his role
in the conversion in Purgatorio 22 might have already prepared
us for that. Rather, it is the appearance of Beatrice that makes
this passage so complicated.
32. Aeneid 6.883-86; Purgatorio 30.21.
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As I said, the procession suggests that the figure who emerges
should be Christ coming down to the judgment seat. Dante has
done everything to make us think this. And of course, only
Christ’s grace could surpass the ancient melancholy and redeem
us from death. But in Singleton’s words, we witness here the Advent of Beatrice.33 In Dante’s case, the person who pronounces
the decision about whether he is received in the heavenly city is
Beatrice. She is at the center of this heavenly procession; she is
the representative of the Judge in this personal last judgment. She
will make Dante confess his sin, and she will be an instrument
of his forgiveness. She appears to him in Christ’s place.34 While
Purgatory was structured by three-part examples from an ancient
source, from the Old Testament, and from the New Testament,
Beatrice’s appearance takes us into a realm beyond the three citations that announce her. She is the revelation at the center of
history.
The Griffin that pulls the chariot is a symbolic presentation
of Christ that leaves Christ a mystery. A similar tactic is found in
33. See Singleton, “The Advent of Beatrice” in Journey to Beatrice.
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), 72-85. In the preceding couple of pages I have been trying to re-enact Singleton’s understanding of Beatrice as a Christ figure in such a way as to
represent the theological boldness of the gesture.
34. There is a traditional model for the procession that Dante may
have had in mind. The translator John Sinclair saw Beatrice of the
chariot in purgatory as an image of the Eucharist (for which see the
commentary accompanying his translation of Purgatorio 30 in
Dante: The Divine Comedy, Purgatorio [New York: Oxford University Press, 1939]). In the middle ages, the Eucharist was paraded
through the streets in a chariot in the feast of Corpus Christi at Modena, and Dante might be expecting his readers to think of that. If
Sinclair was right, the poem can be seen as a public procession of
his private vision with a Eucharistic value. The living Beatrice, as I
said earlier, was a public love, a miracle for all the Florentines. And
the Beatrice of Dante’s writings is less private still. The aim of
Dante’s work is to make Beatrice a universal figure available to all
his readers.
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iconoclastic Hebrew illuminated manuscripts in Germany in the
1200s. By making holy people into mythical animals or giving
them animal heads, artists avoided giving a false impression with
a non-fictional, non-arbitrary representation.35 So the use of the
Griffin can be understood as a careful, humble avoidance of idolatry here. But unfortunately Dante doesn’t leave it at that, but
looks at the Griffin in Beatrice’s eyes. Again, Christ appears to
Dante, comes to life for Dante, in the beautiful eyes of Beatrice.
The two natures of the Griffin are mysteriously fused, but in her
eyes he sees alternately one or the other. He says:
Mille disiri piú che fiamma caldi
strinsermi li occhi alli occhi rilucenti,
che pur sopra ’l grifone stavan saldi.
Come in lo specchio il sol, non altrimenti
la doppia fiera dentro vi raggiava,
or con altri, or con altri reggimenti.
Pensa, lettor, s’io mi maravigliava,
quando vedea la cosa in sé star queta,
e ne l’idolo suo si trasmutava.36
In the soul of Beatrice, Dante can see an image either of
Christ’s humanity or of his divinity, but never both at once. Why
does Dante see the Griffin through the eyes of a woman at all?
We might try to evade the problem—as many critics do—and
make Beatrice herself a mere symbol. But our knowledge of the
details of Beatrice’s real existence as a contemporary of Dante
in the Vita Nuova (for instance, her life and death, her family relations) makes such a reading inadequate. Even when she is dead,
35. See Bezalel Narkiss and Evelyn Cohen, “Illuminated Manuscripts,
Hebrew” in Encyclopedia Judaica, ed. Michael Berenbaum and Fred
Skolnik, 2nd ed., Vol. 9. (Detroit: Macmillan Reference, 2007), 726-735.
36. Purgatorio 31.124-6, “A thousand desires hotter than flame bound
my eyes to the eyes reflecting, that upon the Griffin stayed firm. As in a
mirror the sun, not otherwise the double beast within rayed out, now with
one now with the other nature. Think, reader, if I marveled when I saw
that the thing in itself remained unchanged but in its image changed.”
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her eyes have the flash that distinguishes living, conscious human
beings from dead ones and from statues. In Beatrice the eternal
meaning is reflected in the eyes of a contemporary human being.
She is not just a beautiful object or a symbol, because she is a
subject who loves the Beautiful Itself, just as Dante does. He falls
in love with God through his beloved, who is herself in love with
God. In fact, he falls in love with her precisely insofar as she is
a lover. In being moved by love she reflects the love that moves
her. The reflection of Christ in her loving eyes makes others, like
Dante, into lovers of Christ. (Compare Plato’s Phaedrus, especially 255c-d, where the beloved is seduced by his own deified
reflection in the eyes of the lover.) Beatrice’s role as a lover removes the idolatry from Dante’s love of her. And the reader is
supposed to participate in this same reflection between lover and
beloved by looking at Dante’s love for Beatrice.
To understand why the mirroring of Christ in Beatrice’s eyes
is not idolatrous, we must recall the tradition of the speculum
Dei, the mirror of God. To see God in a mirror is to see God in
an imperfect and limited way, not as he is. The alternation between the two natures of Christ in the appearance of Beatrice emphasizes her limited ability to reflect him. It is all we on earth
can do, as the King James translation of St. Paul puts it, to “see
through a glass darkly” (1 Corinthians 13:12). This passage from
Paul was cited as an explanation for the vision of Christ in Beatrice’s eyes by the earliest commentators.37 This idea had been
previously deployed in a number of debates. This phrase “mirror
of God” was sometimes applied to the martyrs and saints. Saint
Francis, for example, visibly reflected Christ in the stigmata, and
mirrored his suffering in the sorrow within his soul as well.38
Beatrice’s soul is in the same category with such saints. Her
beauty, but also her charity and her humility, reflects God’s, al37. For example, Dante’s son Pietro Alighieri cites it in his commentary
(1359-64) on these lines.
38. See Bonaventure’s “Life of Saint Francis” in Bonaventure: The
Soul’s Journey into God, the Tree of Life, the Life of St. Francis, trans.
Ewert Cousins (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), 305-306.
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though she cannot perfectly express the paradox of the two natures. More generally, any reformed soul is a mirror of God, even
beyond the way in which any human being is made in God’s
image. The importance for Dante’s Commedia of the tradition of
the mirror of God cannot be overstated. As the opening tercet of
the Paradiso puts it, the entire universe is a mirror reflecting
God’s light.
La gloria di colui che tutto move
per l’universo penetra, e risplende
in una parte piú, e meno altrove.39
Moreover, the idea of seeing God through a mirror was part
of the defense of art in the early iconoclastic debates.40 As mentioned earlier, those who staked out positions against images implied opposition to the adoration of saints and martyrs as well as
the Virgin Mary. The idea of the mirror of God that was used to
defend images in the eighth century iconoclastic dispute supplies
a traditional account that explains Beatrice’s role as a saint, and
clarifies how her beauty points to its own pre-existence in God.
And although her reflection of the Divine essence must be qualified, it is nevertheless surpassingly glorious—so much so that
Dante cannot end this canto with a description of her unveiled
reflection of God, but ends instead with the claim that her image
is indescribable (Purgatorio 31.139-145). Beatrice is at the same
time both a defense of images, and a limit to images.
Something similar to Dante’s treatment of Beatrice can be
understood to explain the style of his book as a whole, and it undergirds its literary realism. The eternal meaning of the characters
is presented through attention to personal and historical details,
especially, but not exclusively, in the presentation of Dante’s contemporaries. Rather than provide sterile lexical or philosophical
39. Paradiso 1.1-3: “The glory of him who moves everything penetrates
through all the universe, and reflects in one part more, and less in another.”
40. For the medieval artistic tradition and the speculum Dei, see Emile
Male, “One Hundred Years of Iconoclasm” in Early Churches of Rome,
trans. David Buxton (London: Ernest Bendt, 1960).
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definitions of the sins or virtues of each group of souls, he presents the living stories of souls in their places.41 The concreteness
of such stories challenges the reader with the ambiguities of experience, but they are fruitful ambiguities. The stories suggest
that readers take what is valid in ordinary experience and purify
it, rather than simplifying or disregarding it. We start from where
we are, and ascend dialectically, just as Aristotle does in his
Ethics, arguing his points starting from common opinions and
from experience.
4. Beatrice as Prophet in Paradiso
I will now focus on the limits Dante sets to the vision of God he
can produce through the image of Beatrice and through his poem.
The Paradiso opens with a disclaimer about the limits of Dante’s
poetic powers. Dante says that he cannot express or even recall
much of what he saw in heaven. He alerts the reader that he must
end his journey with a concession to some aspects of the iconoclast’s demands. Although Beatrice’s beauty pre-exists in God,
as an individual she is ultimately merely one part of the Incarnate
God. Only Christ is perfectly “the image of the unseen God”.42
Similarly, Dante’s poem could never perfectly mirror the Incarnation or the Trinity. The sobering distance between Dante and
God in the Paradiso gives the canticle a prophetic character. By
41. It is worth comparing Brunetto Latini’s encyclopedia, the Livres
dou tresor, and his poem, the Tesoretto. Both are extremely similar to
Dante’s work in that they separate out vices and virtues and define them.
Both are works of exile, and both involve narrative accounts of Aristotelian morality and metaphysics. The profound difference is that
Brunetto’s works are purely abstract and allegorical. Their narrative
form is superfluous. They merely offer a lively version of a bird’s eye
view. Nor does Brunetto’s account suffer a genuine transcendent element. The abstract and mundane aspects of Brunetto’s works prompt
Dante to relegate Brunetto to the stale and unfruitful atmosphere surrounding the sodomites of Inferno 15. The key to interpreting most of
the images in that canto is the biblical injunction not to store up one’s
“treasure” on earth, but in heaven (Matthew 6:19-21).
42. Colossians 1:15.
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prophetic I mean looking forward to the fulfillment of justice,
and living in anticipation of contact with a God who is not yet
fully present on earth—that is to say, living in exile.
In order to take on the role of the prophet, Dante must put on
a severity that comports very oddly with love poetry. A prophet
has to live in the desert with nothing more than hope. As Emmanuel Levinas argued, prophecy does not coincide with feminine gentleness in the Old Testament.43 But in the Commedia
Beatrice, a woman, is the source of Dante’s prophecies, beginning in Purgatorio 33 with the chilling condemnation of ecclesiastical corruption in their times. Beatrice is stern and harsh
throughout the Paradiso. Such moments suggest that Beatrice is
not simply an emblem of gentle, generous beauty. Rather, she is
also a figure of anger. She is loved in and for her anger, and her
anger is a sign of her love. For Dante at least, she is, paradoxically, both Church Triumphant and Church Militant at the same
time.
The Paradiso emphasizes the prophetic vein more explicitly
than the other cantiche, and presents us with a number of austere
figures as role models for human life. So, for example, the
paragons of human virtue in Paradiso are monastics like Francis,
whose erotic love of poverty is itself a form of vision.44 Others
are the ascetic contemplatives Peter Damien, Benedict, and the
white-haired Bernard. The non-monastic figures of greatest importance in heaven are either soldiers or kings who sacrificed
themselves for heavenly justice. It may be easy to miss it while
reading the Paradiso, which is filled with beautiful images of
light, refined talk of love, and angelic harmonies, but two of the
highest values in heaven are poverty and spiritual war. Though
the Paradiso rises through the ethereal reaches of heaven, the
Church Militant and the expression of hostility to the earth receive continually greater emphasis. The contemplatives at the
43. See Emmanual Levinas, Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism.
trans. Sean Hand (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997),
30-38.
44. I take this account of Francis from Mazzotta, Dante’s Vision, 240.
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very top of Dante’s celestial hierarchy are defined as those who
love and minister to their fellow men, and, at the same time,
those who least esteemed the earth. From their height they can
look down on earth, as Benedict did from the dizzying heights
of his monastery atop Monte Cassino. So the starkness of the
Paradiso might not seem in accord with the choice of a beautiful
woman as a guide. But, mysteriously, Dante sees the erotic attraction to God in Beatrice’s eyes as implying a severe and unbending focus on the ugly and bad in the world, and on the need
for correction. As Dante’s vision becomes clearer, he and Beatrice ascend farther and farther above the world, and become angrier and angrier about its corruption. Why should erotic desire
be so at one with the austerity and anger of the prophet? Isn’t
anger thumos, not eros?
The answers to these questions lie in recalling Dante’s situation on earth after Beatrice died. In the Vita Nuova, following
Beatrice’s death, Dante initially reacted properly. He began to
despise the earthly life because it had lost its salute (chs. 32-34).
Beatrice, from heaven, offered him consolation. But a year or so
after she died, Dante turned to the Siren. As Beatrice expresses
it in her description of this episode in Purgatorio (31.44-54), love
should have generated anger against the earthly Siren, against
self-induced hypnosis that creates indifference to ascent. Recall
the image of Pope Adrian V with his face in the dirt in Purgatorio
19, tearfully longing for what is beyond the earth. Dante, like
Adrian, should have recognized all earthly things as lesser pleasures than Beatrice’s grace. He should have risen up to heaven in
pursuit of her after her death, when she had become a purer heavenly creature. Like Adrian, Dante must yearn for what has left
him in permanent mourning. Unworldliness is the proper way of
seeking consolation in the more distant but truly higher good,
rather than finding substitutes in the sirens of the here and now.
Anger at the corruption of the earth, and even indignant disgust
with the earth, becomes then a way of maintaining eros for what
is now absent. Eros and thumos work together. They are not two
separate parts of the soul, but two aspects of a single activity of
the soul. Adrian’s face is pressed into the dirt not only as punish-
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ment, but as therapy. Anger and sorrow imply a love of something
toward which earthly things cannot point him. While Beatrice,
before her death, was an earthly beauty pointing beyond the earth,
after her death she is a creature who has reached her Creator. Although she leaves Dante in mourning, she becomes an even more
effective mediatrix for him. Of course, she does not renounce her
earlier function as the earthly miracle who greeted him. But in
heaven she can complete that work.
The other aspect of the role of the prophet that can only with
difficulty be connected to love of a woman is its public nature.
The prophet is a leader of men and a master of rhetoric, as the
Ulysses canto in the Inferno suggests.45 This issue of public
prophecy and private love complete the picture of agape and eros
in the Paradiso, the true finale of the Vita Nuova. In his meeting
with John the Evangelist, Dante presents the paradox of a private
love for something public and universal that can help us understand his love for Beatrice as a young man.
John, like Beatrice, is a complex case. In his gospel, John’s
status as private friend of Christ is contrasted with the universality
of Christ’s relation to humanity. His gospel portrays a number of
scenes that emphasize how, as a particular human being, even
Christ had a special love for certain people, like his mother, and
like his close friend John.46 But the gospel writer suggests that this
in no way interfered with or reduced Christ’s universal charity.
Because of the complexity of this portrayal, a myth arose that John
had special immortality and was taken to heaven bodily. In Par45. Inferno 26 is structured around the division between the true and
the false prophet. Dante suggests that he mistakes Ulysses for Elijah
initially, and verges on becoming a sort of false prophet himself. From
Ulysses’s story he must learn Paul’s well-known dictum in Corinthians
13 that the power of prophecy without love is nothing. See Giuseppe
Mazzotta, Dante, Poet of the Desert: History and Allegory in the Divine
Comedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 66-106.
46. Above all, the comments about John’s special status in relation to
Christ, and the play with Peter about philia (personal love) and agape
(impersonal love) at the end of the gospel (John 21:15-23) raise questions about the role of the ordinary private individual.
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adiso 25, Dante looks for this body and goes blind. In Canto 26,
John questions the blind Dante about love, asking him why he
loves. Dante replies first with a universal argument. He loves because of the authority of scripture and because of philosophical
arguments. But the apostle seems to ask him the same question
again: Are there other cords that pull you to God, or other teeth of
love that bite you? And Dante replies:
Tutti quei morsi
che posson far lo cor volgere a Dio,
a la mia caritate son concorsi:
ché l’essere del mondo e l’esser mio,
la morte ch’el sostenne perch’ io viva,
e quel che spera ogne fedel com’ io,
con la predetta coscenza viva,
tratto m’hanno del mar de l’amor torto,
e del diritto m’han posto a la riva.
Le fronde onde s’infronda tutto l’orto
de l’ortolano etterno, am’ io cotanto
quanto da lui a lor di bene è porto.47
Immediately after receiving this answer, Dante regains his
sight, now made even stronger. Dante has brought the universal
love of God (agape) into harmony with his own individual love
(eros), transforming his love into the universal one. He is moved
by God’s gift of creation as a whole, by God’s gift of salvation,
and forgiveness, as well as by the hope that these imply for him.
He is erotically concerned with his own good, and with the entire
story of his that he presents in the Commedia, as this passage
47. Paradiso 26.55-66, “All those bites that can make the heart turn to
God are in concord in my love. That the being of the world, and my
being, the death that he underwent so that I might live, and that which
every faithful person hopes, as I, together with the aforementioned living knowledge, they have drawn me from the sea of perverse love and
has put me on the shore of the right [love]. The leaves with which are
leafed all the garden of the eternal Gardener, I love as much as the good
given to them by Him.”
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suggests by returning to the beginning, when he was shipwrecked
like Ulysses on the shoals of the mar de l’amor torto in Inferno
1, and then bringing us right up to the present, when he finds himself on the shore of right love in purgatory. The reference to
leaves is an allusion to a passage in John’s gospel in which Christ
describes himself as an eternal vine:
Abide in me, and I in you. . . . I am the vine, you are
the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it
is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do
nothing. . . . If you abide in me, and my words abide in
you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for
you.48
As part of the vine, Dante is now able to love the garden of
the whole creation and all the leaves, that is, all creatures to
which God has granted the gift of the good. This gift from God
is agape. Dante’s individual love is now perfected in becoming
agape for the other parts of the vine, and his love is now proportionate to the agape that comes down into all the leaves from
God. Dante’s love for himself has now somehow cast a wider net
of love around all creatures that partake in God’s grace. He loves
all the blessed he will meet in the celestial rose, and all those who
are yet to arrive there. Christ’s two commands—love God and
love your neihbor as yourself (Mark 12:30-31)—are now one act
for Dante, an act that springs from what was initially his selflove. For the source of all other loves is rightly directed self-love,
as Dante remarked in the Convivio: lo proprio amore di me medesimo . . . è principio di tutti li altri, sì come vede ciascuno.49
We can now see how the public and universal qualities of
Dante’s love in fact have room for his private and erotic love of
Beatrice. Note how very similar this passage is to Dante’s description of the effect of Beatrice’s greeting on him in Chapter 11 of the
Vita Nuova. In both cases, universal charity comes from hope. Dante
48. John 15.4-7.
49. Convivio 3.5. “[P]roper love of myself . . . is the root of all other loves,
as everyone knows”.
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is exhilarated by promise of God’s creation and God’s sacrifice,
which offers him great expectations. This confident private hope
for his own happiness is transformed into charity for all of God’s
garden. And the more secure he feels in his expectation of happiness, the more he is able to give of himself. The same is true of
Dante’s relation with the beauty of Beatrice in the Vita Nuova. His
self-regarding hope for the promise of her greeting brought the
flame of charity to him, and he became Love. Her beauty humbled
him and effaced his self, even if at the same time, on another level,
his self was actively at work achieving the goal of its own self-love.
In this humility before the Good, the human soul transcends the
merely private.
Dante turns to find Beatrice in Paradiso 31, and is surprised to
see her replaced by the third and final guide, a white-haired old
man. The anti-sensual element is emphatic. St. Bernard might be
beautiful, but he could never be called pretty. And yet, Dante emphasizes the continuity: the severity of Beatrice’s prophetic character is succeeded by the austerity of Bernard. Dante will compare
his vision of the old monk to the Veronica, the same shroud bearing
Christ’s features that he once compared to Beatrice at the end of the
Vita Nuova. This reference also recalls the “idolo” of Christ in the
eyes of Beatrice from Purgatorio 31, which was discussed earlier.
In Dante’s final speech to Beatrice (Paradiso 31.79-90) she has
fully transcended herself; she has become a universal figure for the
blessed. In the Vita Nuova, he made an attempt to love the innermost
meaning of her beauty, that is, the meaning of her beauty in God.
This transcendent element in her beauty now reveals itself to be her
place in the celestial rose as a mere part of a larger divine order. Her
innermost individual meaning becomes transcendent when it is not
separate from anything else in God.
At the outset of Canto 33, Bernard asks Mary to help Dante see
God. He tells her that all those who have been saved throughout
history up to the present day, including Beatrice, now pray for
Dante. This is universal agape, akin to Dante’s newfound love for
all the leaves of the garden—only here it is made explicit that it
works in reverse as well. In this moment of communion which
seamlessly combines agape and eros, not only does he love the
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whole garden, but the whole garden loves him in return. Mary, the
more traditional universal symbol of love, does not compete with
Beatrice as the mirror of God; she is now revealed as the completion
of Beatrice, the more perfect mirror. She resembles Christ more
than any other. Mary initiated Beatrice’s rescue of Dante in Inferno,
and now she finishes her task, turning Dante toward the Original
for which she is merely the image. But even this turn to the Original
in the final lines of the poem is not the end of these mirrors of God.
Christ himself is an image of the Father.
And there is a further image of God implicit in the closing lines.
Although Dante cannot misurar lo cerchio (“measure the circle,”
Paradiso 33.134), he finds himself moved by love sí come rota
ch’igualmente é mossa (“like a wheel that is moved in equal measure,” Paradiso 33.144). The attribution of mathematical equality in
the motion with the word igualmente implies that his motion does
in fact precisely measure the Love that moves him. This equality is
the most perfect correspondence of Dante’s desio and velle to God’s
self-understanding and self-love. In this sense, Dante himself becomes an image of God.50
50. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologica I-I q. 93, a.4) enumerates three
forms of the image of God in man: first, that which all have by nature;
second, that which the just have by grace; and, third, that which the
blessed have by glory, the so-called “image of likeness.” In all three
cases, man is in the image of God in that he loves and understands God,
imitating the way in which God’s intellectual nature loves and understands itself. But in the third way, in glory, the blessed have the image
of God in the highest degree, because they love and understand God
more perfectly. Dante’s pair disio and velle achieve this third kind of understanding and love appropriate to those blessed by glory. Thomas’s
reference to God’s self-love and understanding are echoed in Paradiso
33.124-126. This suggests that the three circles of the Trinity are circles
because they represent the self-relation of God’s intellectual nature.
When Dante grasps how the human effigy fits within the circle, he sees
how the human soul can come to resemble God’s self-understanding and
self-love.
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THE EXTINCTION of SPECIES
Marlene Benjamin
To Din
In Memoriam
This is no abstract exercise.
There will be names and places
To tether you, to make you hear and note,
To make you listen and mark.
So mark this:
We live amongst the extinction of species. “Passenger pigeon,
great auk,
Stellar’s sea cow, Schomburgk’s deer, sea mink, antarctic wolf,
Carolina parakeet: all gone.”
I learn this from Quammen’s exhilarating book, which is yet depressingly full of incontrovertible facts,
Called The Song of The Dodo, a great bird also gone extinct.
Quammen was at Oxford with Saul, who was at Brasenose some
15 or so years before you, and who
Recently told me that he had long harbored a desire to meet you
there for High Table fare, a desire
He never satisfied. As for me,
My desire to sit at table with you was satisfied over and over
again across 43 years,
Giving me the singular joy of watching you
Grow from a child to the man you became, whose traits and
habits
Could be traced back to early childish behaviors.
At five, you were insistent on being right, but with a sense of humor
That made your rightness palatable to those who were faced with
Hearing it forcefully directed at their pale and insignificant positions.
“What,” you used to say, “is the point of that?” in mock horror at the
Emptiness of my claims concocted to counter yours.
Marlene Benjamin is Associate Professor Emerita at Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts. Her book, The Catastrophic Self: Essays in Philosophy,
Memoir, and Medical Trauma, will be released in late 2015 or early 2016.
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At six, you kindly said to me, using my own phrasing to illustrate
the foolishness
Of my arguments, “Now Marlene, we don’t want to hear any
more about bloody California.”
You knew this would kill me with laughter, and it did.
At twenty-five, you gently queried my political explanations to
end the conversation by saying
“Now that sounds like an extremely intelligent position.” Long
pause. “Or does it?”
And what, I ask you now, am I to do without your challenges?
Without your presence?
It is as if an entire species has gone extinct with your death,
Leaving a hole in the natural world that cannot be woven closed.
There are too many frayed edges.
And that is only me. For the damage done to the intimate family
is far worse,
Far more savage an attack on the fabric of the world.
How shall they carry on?
Perhaps they have a memory of your last moments to lean on,
A way to conjure up the finality of your departure and thus, paradoxically,
A way to hold you closer than is given to me.
I don’t know; I wasn’t there.
But I have this: I have what the camera captured in the photograph
On the cover of the Order of Service at your funeral, the picture
I have standing on my dresser
Facing me each morning, showing you (in Wales, is it?) surrounded by your girls – Lily and Molly and Bea;
Smiling at what I believe is Sue behind the camera – or perhaps
it is Mag or Jim or Vinny or Simon –
All of whom stand, for me, invisibly behind you, all of you together
In the shadow of the astonishingly full and lovely life you had, it
seemed, so effortlessly, made.
Looking at you like this is to repopulate the world,
My way to argue against the extinction of species.
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119
However tenuous the argument, for a few moments every day, it
works – even as I know,
And love, that you would challenge my saying so. And knowing
this, the hole,
For some few tremulous moments – as if the air is being beaten
by the concerted breathing
Of all the creatures gone from our world – is somewhat, though
evanescently,
Woven closed.
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Education and the Art of Writing:
Christopher Bruell’s Aristotle as Teacher—
His Introduction to a Philosophic Science.
South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2014.
268 pages, $37.50
Book Review by James Carey
In Aristotle as Teacher—His Introduction to a Philosophic Science,
Christopher Bruell advances an interpretation of Aristotle’s Metaphysics
that pays closer attention to the wording of the actual text than does, as
far as I know, any other study of that work since the imposing commentaries of the Middle Ages. It is also much the most original interpretation
of the Metaphysics that I have ever read.
Bruell has written impressive essays on Leo Strauss, and his fine
study of Plato’s shorter dialogues, On the Socratic Education, shows
the influence of Strauss. So one can call him, with some justification, a
Straussian.1 This is not to say that he necessarily agrees with Strauss
about everything, only that he takes seriously certain themes that were
of great importance to Strauss, such as the rival claims of Greek philosophy and the Bible regarding the possibility of revelation, the root
of morality, and, more generally, what constitutes the best human life.
Strauss is well known for having called attention to the fact—and it is
a fact—that the ancient philosophers, their medieval followers, and even
their early modern opponents often wrote in such a way as to disclose
their deepest thoughts only to their most careful readers while at the
same time presenting on the surface of their texts a teaching that was
more in accord with common opinions, especially opinions concerning
James Carey is a tutor and former Dean at St. John’s College in Santa Fe,
New Mexico.
1. Straussians take the intellectual tradition of the West seriously, read the great
books with exemplary care, and think hard about the things that are most worthy
of thinking hard about. Those of us who are not Straussians can profit greatly
by attending to what they have to say, whether or not we are ultimately persuaded by what they have to say.
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the sanctity of law and the existence and nature of the divine. Philosophers wrote this way because they could not forget the example of
Socrates, who in spite of his civic virtue and the caution with which he
conversed was put to death for being a philosopher by the citizens of a
regime that was democratic and, by ancient standards, generally liberal
and tolerant as well. This art of writing is properly called “exoteric”—
not “esoteric”—for the author realized that it would be available to be
read by anyone who was able to read, whatever his ability and whatever
his degree of sympathy or antipathy toward free inquiry.
Though it becomes obvious on close inspection, especially under
the guidance of Strauss, that many books of the philosophers have an
exoteric character, it is not so obvious that Aristotle’s Metaphysics is
one of these books. In fact, it is not so obvious that the Metaphysics
is a book at all, not in the way that, say, the Nicomachean Ethics is.2
Bruell is aware that the Metaphysics looks at first glance, and for most
readers at last glance as well, like a patchwork; and he does not rule
out the possibility that someone other than Aristotle may have been
responsible for the final form of the work (30).3 But he takes it as
heuristic principle that whoever was responsible for the Metaphysics
as it has come down to us from antiquity, whether it was Aristotle
himself or one (or more) of his followers, had sound reasons for organizing it as he did, and that we cannot begin to understand the teaching of the book, much less evaluate it, without paying the closest
possible attention to the stages in which it is presented. If the Metaphysics looks more like an assemblage of notes for lectures delivered
at different times than a through-composed book like Plato’s Laws,
Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed, or Machiavelli’s Prince,4 that
very appearance should be regarded as contributing to the exoteric
character of the work. On Bruell’s interpretation, every chapter, and
virtually every sentence, of the Metaphysics is in its proper place. Bruell slows the reader of the Metaphysics down, way down, and he requires
2. See W. D. Ross, Aristotle’s Metaphysics (Oxford: Clarion Press, 1970),
Vol. 1, xiii-xxxiii.
3. Pagination for citations from Aristotle as Teacher will be given within parentheses. The same practice will be followed for citations from the Metaphysics
and other works by Aristotle. When only the Bekker number is given, it should
be read as referring to the Metaphysics, except when a different work is specified in the text.
4. See Ross, Aristotle’s Metaphysics, xxviii, on the formulations at 1069b35
and 1070a4.
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the reader to pay the closest possible attention to the exact working of
the text. That by itself is one of the many merits of Bruell’s book.
The layout of Aristotle as Teacher is unusual. It does not contain
chapter headings of the kind that one typically finds in an extended
study. Bruell frequently refers to what modern editors of the Greek
text of the Metaphysics say about their editorial decisions, and he explains why he is or is not persuaded by them. But aside from these
references, and a few references to Thomas Aquinas’s commentary,
there is virtually no mention of the secondary literature (see 135).
There are no footnotes or endnotes in Aristotle as Teacher. There is
no bibliography, there is no index of persons, and there is no index of
subjects. In the course of his treatment of the individual chapters of
the fourteen books of the Metaphysics, Bruell makes many references
to passages from other chapters. These references are always interesting. But the reader longs for an index of Aristotelian passages dealt
with in the book, so that he can quickly find out what Bruell says
about a given passage, and what he does not say about it.
Straussians have occasionally suggested that the Metaphysics is
an exoteric work. Those who, like the present reviewer, have found
this claim implausible have wondered what in the world an intelligent
and thorough interpretation of the Metaphysics as an exoteric book
could possibly look like. Bruell’s book, written with a magisterial
command of the text, and in lucid and unaffected prose of a high stylistic order, is that interpretation. It behooves anyone who wants to
know, or who thinks that he already knows, what Aristotle is doing in the
Metaphysics to come to terms with what Bruell has to say about it.5
Before proceeding further, I need to say something about the
translation of some key Aristotelian expressions. One of these is
ousia, which Bruell translates sometimes as “thing” and “sometimes
as “essence,” in keeping with the fact that for Aristotle this word can
signify both an ordinary individual and the intelligible character that
the individual shares with other individuals like it. For the former
signification I prefer “entity,” since this word is broad enough to
cover both things and persons, sub-rational animals in between, and
gods too if they exist. For the latter signification, and often for the
former too, I shall leave ousia untranslated, as Bruell frequently does
5. The reserve with which Bruell communicates his interpretation could lead
one to infer that Aristotle as Teacher is itself an exoteric work. This inference
would be an error. There is no surface to Aristotle as Teacher. It is all depth.
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as well.6 Another expression is to ti ēn einai, which Bruell translates
as “the what it was to be.” Clearly, this expression names something
of capital importance for Aristotle.7 Early in the Metaphysics, in his
restatement of the four causes (983a27-32) that were presented in the
Physics (194b23-195a3), Aristotle names ousia and to ti ēn einai first.
He does not mention eidos here as one of the causes, as he did in the
parallel passage in Physics, where it is the second cause mentioned.8
In Book Lambda, the unmoved mover is said to be to ti ēn einai, indeed the “first” ti ēn einai (1074a35-36), but never “form” (eidos),
not even “pure form.”9 In what follows I shall also leave this expression untranslated.
6. “Beingness” is not unthinkable as a translation for the second signification
of ousia, but it is unthinkable as a translation for the first signification. Aristotle
calls such entities as individual men, horses, and plants, ousiai. It makes no
sense to speak of these entities as “beingnesses.”
7. Since the imperfect ēn can function as durative, I prefer translating it as “is”
rather than “was.” The formulation, “the what it was to be,” has an odd sound to
my ears, as though implying “what it was to be, but no longer is,” or “what it
was meant to be, but didn’t quite turn out to be.” Since the ti is interrogative,
one might translate the expression as “the what is it to be.” But that translation
is not entirely satisfactory either. Something of what Aristotle means by the expression can be gathered from the contexts in which he uses it. When he launches
his inquiry into to ti ēn einai in Book Zeta, ch. 4, of the Metaphysics he uses the
expressions to soi einai, to musikōi einai, to epiphaineiāi einai, to leukōi einai,
etc. (See 994b27: to apeirōi einai; and De Anima 429b11 ff: to megathōi einai
vs. to megathos, to hydati einai vs. to hydōr, to sarki einai vs. to sarks, to euthei
einai vs. to euthy.) These dative of possessors are stronger than genitives and
could be translated respectively as “the being proper to you,” “the being proper
to musical,” “the being proper to surface,” “the being proper to white,” etc. Such
expressions are presented as exemplifications of to ti ēn einai in the sphere of
what is sensible. (See also 1029b21: ho logos tou ti ēn einai; and De Anima
429b20.) When Aristotle is not speaking of this or that particular individual, he
tends to use the longer expression, to ti ēn einai. In the course of his treatment
of sensible ousia, Aristotle often uses to ti ēn einai interchangeably with eidos.
But the former is not a synonym for the latter. Furthermore, though in certain
contexts Aristotle will speak of hylē as ousia, he never to my knowledge speaks
hylē as to ti ēn einai (cf. Metaphysics 1032b14).
8. The presentation of the causes in Book Delta of the Metaphysics (1013b1627) follows the order of the Physics.
9. Eugene Ryan, “Pure Form in Aristotle,” Phronesis, Vol. XVIII, No. 3, 1973,
209-224.
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Bruell says of the formal cause, or the form, that it is “the perceptible or intelligible character of a being, nothing more” (20). The “nothing more” is intriguing, since Aristotle treats the form not only as what
is intelligible about a sensible (or perceptible—aisthētē) entity (ousia)
but, along with matter (or material—hylē), as an actual constituent of a
sensible, and composite, entity (Physics 193b6). It is not only one of
the causes, it is nature (physis) to a higher degree than is matter (ibid.,
193b7; 193b19—taking morphē here as equivalent to eidos: 193b3-5).
Indeed, it is activity, or being at work (energeia—Metaphysics 1050b2;
see 1043a28). If the eidos were not somehow a constituent of an entity,
then it is hard to see how it could be the perceptible or intelligible character of that very entity, or of its nature (Physics, 193b7). Bruell is
hardly unaware of the passages I have just cited. But he has reasons for
not placing as much weight on them as I and others do.
One of the pervasive themes of the Metaphysics is the criticism of
the “Platonic” account of the eidē as what is intelligible regarding sensible entities and, at the same time, as actual causes of these entities,
though separate from them. Bruell detects in the Metaphysics a roughly
parallel, but obliquely communicated, criticism of the “Aristotelian” account of eidē as well, and of the “Aristotelian” account of ousia more
generally (140). Aristotle’s account is certainly not problem-free, one
indication being his employment of the single word eidos to name both
a constituent within, hence bound to, a particular sensible entity, and the
species to which it and entities closely resembling it belong. Aristotle’s
explicit teaching is that the eidos is present in a sensible entity, causing
it to be the very being that it is, and yet also apprehensible, through the
joint operation of sensation, imagination, and the intellect (nous), and
explicable, in terms of genus and specific difference, as the intelligible
character of that entity.10 (See De Anima 431a16; 431b3). This is a demanding construal of the eidos indeed. But it is not nonsensical.
10. Bruell writes, “In concluding this portion of the argument [in Book Zeta
ch. 4], Aristotle does not speak of the form (eidos) but of species (eidē)” (138).
Bruell speaks here as though eidos (singular) does not mean species (singular)
and that when Aristotle wishes to speak of species (singular or plural) he uses
eidē rather than eidos. But Aristotle will use eidos with speaking of species in
the singular. See, for example, Categories 5, 2b7-23, Topics 4, 122b18-123a19.
Nor is his usage of eidos (singular) for species (singular) confined to the logical
writings. See, for example, Metaphysics 1038a25-26. Consider 1023b2. The
hylē of the eidos is intelligible hylē, rather than sensible hylē. It is the genus:
1024b4-10, 1038a3-9, and 1045a33-35.
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When Bruell comes to Aristotle’s treatment of the Platonic understanding of the forms, he writes, “Not even the considerable latitude
that Aristotle avails himself of in speaking of his teacher is sufficient
to permit the mention of Plato in connection with an imperfect grasp of
the formal cause (compare A 7 988a34-b6)” (29). The passage that Bruell refers to here could seem to undermine the point it is supposed to
support. For Aristotle writes there that “concerning to ti ēn einai [which,
in the case of sensible entities, Aristotle closely associates with eidos—
e.g., Physics194b26; Metaphysics 1032b1-2] and the ousia, no one [so,
not even Plato] has clearly introduced (apodedōke) them, though those
posting the forms do speak of them.” With his pointed reference to
988a34-b6, Bruell implies that Plato himself, as distinct from his followers, did not intend to introduce the formal cause clearly, inviting us
to infer that Plato was as aware as was Aristotle of the problematic character of the formal cause.
In his treatment of Book alpha (“little alpha”), Bruell correctly
notes that, for Aristotle “truth is being, as knowable” (31). Since “we
do not know ‘the true’ without the cause” (993b23-24), Bruell is led to
infer, “Truth, then, or nature is being, as caused or in so far as it is
caused.” But he immediately expresses a doubt about this inference,
and rightly so. For the inference can be sustained only by ruling out the
possibility that there could be an instance of truth that is being, not just
as caused, but as cause, that is, that there could be a first uncaused cause
and a first truth. For unless there is a cause that does not depend on a
yet more fundamental cause, and unless there is a truth that does not
owe its intelligibility to a yet more manifest truth, then we are caught
in an infinite regress, both in causes and in truths, with no cause sufficient of itself, nor any number of causes in the series sufficient taken
together, to account for what is caused and no truth evident of itself to
ground other truths (994b16-23; see 1005b5-1006a12). But Aristotle
says that what is most true (alēthestaton) is the cause of subsequent
things’ (tois hysterois) being true (993b26-27).11 He expands his point
11. Thomas Aquinas and others have detected the outline of an argument, from
gradations of being, for the existence of God right here in Book alpha (993b23994a2), an argument quite distinct from the argument from motion in Book
Lambda. This argument is not fleshed out. But if not only to on, but also ousia
as the premier instance of to on, has a pros hen character, which I think is Aristotle’s view (see, for example, 1004a3-5), then the ground has been laid in
Book alpha for an argument that there is an ousia that is in the highest degree
(malista) and is, moreover, the cause, or at least a cause, of other ousiai.
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immediately afterwards by saying that the first principles (archai), not
just of truths, but of eternal beings (to the extent that they have principles distinct from themselves—he likely has in mind the stars here), are
always the most true. Nothing else is the cause of their being. And, he
adds, just as each thing has being so it has truth (993b28-34). If Aristotle
is serious in making these claims, then he cannot mean that truth is
being as caused, period. Being as caused presupposes, in his account,
being as uncaused. Aristotle says that it is clear (dēlon) there is some
first principle (singular), and he expressly rules out an infinite regression of causes, either in a direct line or in type (994a1-2). Bruell does
not deny that there is some first principle or principles, but he asks
whether they are knowable (32). Whether or not they are knowable to
us, however, they would be knowable by nature if they knew themselves, a possibility that Aristotle has already mentioned (983a6; see
also 993b11; 1029b3-5; Posterior Analytics 71b34-35; Physics
1084a19; Nicomachean Ethics 1095b2) and will argue for explicitly in
chapter nine of Book Lambda (1074b15-35). Bruell presumably regards
these passages as exoteric.12
Aristotle begins chapter 2 of Book alpha by arguing that there can
be neither an infinite regress with respect to the hou heneka (the “for the
sake of which,” i.e., the final cause) nor with respect to to ti ēn einai. If
so, then there must be both a first hou heneka that is not for the sake of
anything else (994a8-10; 994b9-16; cf. 1072b1-3) and a first to ti ēn
einai that is not bound up with hylē and is not the einai of anything else
(1074a35-36), but is non-composite or simple (1072a31-34; 1075a5-10;
cf. Physics 266a10-267b20), fully actual and in no sense potential
12. Regarding latter chapters of Book Lambda, Bruell chooses “to depart so
far from [Aristotle’s] injunction (L6 1071b3-5) as to refrain from adding to
them, elliptical though they are” (251). Apparently, Bruell understands these
chapters, and earlier passages in the Metaphysics (e.g., 988b25-26; 1009a3638; 1012b30-31; 1037a10-17; 1037a33-b6; 1040b34-1041a3; 1041a7-9;
1045b23; 1064a33-1064b3: hoper peirasometha deiknunai) that anticipate
them by making mention of entities that are immaterial and separate—separate,
that is, from the perceptible entities with which we are familiar—to be accommodations to readers who would rather be moved (250) than see the truth for
what it is. Prior to the latter chapters of Book Lambda, Aristotle will use locutions such as “immaterial and separate ousiai . . . if they exist.” One can say
that Aristotle is hinting in such passages that immaterial ousiai, in fact, do not
exist. But one can also say, instead, that he is reluctant to positively affirm the
existence of such ousiai prior to advancing a complete argument for their existence, which he does not do until Book Lambda.
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(1071b13-14, 19-22; 1074a36), necessary (1072b10), necessarily eternal
(1071b4), an unmoved mover (1072a25-26: cf. Physics, 260a18-19), and
the principle on which heaven and nature depend (1072b13-14).
Aristotle argues that there are only four species of cause, and that
within none of these species is there procession, or ascent, into infinity.
Bruell is struck by the fact that Aristotle says, without elaboration, that
even in the case of to ti ēn einai, the formal cause, there cannot be a
procession into infinity (33). He speculates that this might be because
the other three causes presuppose the formal cause, and that it is only
on the basis of this presupposition that each of them, too, must have a
first causes—from which we are invited to infer that if there is no first
formal cause, then there is no first final, moving, or material cause either. Aristotle’s point, I think, is simpler. He is not committing himself
here to the existence of an actual sequence or series of formal causes,
but only noting that if one formal cause were the effect of another formal cause, then in this case too there could be no procession into infinity—and, again, he does argue for a first to ti ēn einai later on.13 Bruell
writes “[Aristotle] assumes that there is a beginning to the series [that
he is considering at present in terms of their downward direction], a
first cause, as if the necessity that there be such a beginning had been
shown also for causes in this way, as one might have been led to believe
that it had been shown for causes coincident with their effects in time”
(34). It is not clear that Aristotle is speaking at this point exclusively of
causes antecedent in time to their effects, rather than of causes more
generally (cf. 994b6-9). He does argue elsewhere that temporally antecedent causes—for example, fathers as causes of sons—can regress
backwards in time indefinitely, the world having no beginning in time
and the human species being eternal (Physics 206a24-206b27 cf.
258b10; 266a7.). But, as for causes coincident with their effects, Aristotle does not just lead us to believe that they cannot proceed to infinity
13. 1074a36. In Book Zeta, Aristotle will speak of the specific differences that
are present in the definitions of various species (eidē) as having a formal character that limits the genus, which is in turn the intelligible material (hylē
noetikē) that is also present in the definition (cf. 1023b2; cf. 1036a9-11); see
the passages referred to in footnote 10, supra. At the end of his interpretation
of Book alpha, ch. 2, Bruell notes that an infinite ascent in formal causes would
give rise to a problem for the possibility of science or knowledge (35-36). Such
a thing, however, would not be problem for knowledge alone. It would be a
problem for being itself: there would be no ousiai that are without qualification
(consider 1086b16-19).
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in the ascending direction. As Bruell noted earlier, “[Aristotle] explains
more generally why there must be a first cause, if there is to be any
cause at all” (33). Bruell does not elaborate on this general explanation.
He speaks as though he finds it unpersuasive; and he may think that Aristotle found it unpersuasive as well. Aristotle’s explanation or, rather,
argument is that there cannot be an actual infinite number of anything
(Physics 207b11-12.). Least of all, then, can there be, in a series of
causes coincident with a given effect, an infinite number of them efficacious at an instant. For if, per impossible, there were an infinite number of such causes, each the effect of another cause, then there would
be no cause, or number of causes, higher up in the series capable of producing any other cause or effect further down in the series. And so, “if
there were no first (cause), there would be no cause (properly so called)
at all” (994a18-19). One cannot avoid this conclusion by asserting that
“the whole infinity of causes” produces the given effect, for an infinity
of causes is not a whole. In the case of a series of causes coincident
with their effects, then, there simply must be a cause that is not itself
an effect within the series. Aristotle’s medieval followers, on both sides
of the philosophical-religious divide, held this to be a necessary truth.
Bruell seems to think that Aristotle’s shifting between speaking of
causes that temporally precede their effects and speaking of causes that
are coincident with their effects, and his sometimes treating both together in general statements, are hints that he may not have been altogether serious about his argument for the necessity of a first cause in
the case of causes that are coincident with their effects (see 32-36). It
would have been helpful if Bruell had spelled out exactly what he thinks
Aristotle might have found defective in this argument, which he makes
in his own name. Quite a lot turns on it.
As for causes that temporally precede their effects, it is here that
an infinity of formal causes in particular is ruled out. For though, to return to Aristotle’s example, in natural generation the series of fathers
and sons regresses backwards indefinitely into time past, the formal
cause, to ti ēn einai, in this case to anthropōi einai, is present throughout
the series. If this formal cause itself has a formal cause, which as such
would be temporally coincident with it, then the same argument applies:
there can be no ascent into infinity.
Aristotle announces at the beginning of Book Gamma that there is
a science that considers being qua being (to on hēi on). He says that
being (to on) is said in many ways, though always in relation to one
(pros hen) nature or principle (1003a33-34; 1003b5-6; cf. Categories
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1a12-15). That one nature or principle is ousia (1003b6-10; cf.
1003b17-19; 1028b2-7). Being, then, is not a universal like horse, in
which all the members of the class are equally horses. It is not a genus,
and it cannot be divided into subordinate genera (998b22-26; cf.
1070b1). To be subdivided, specific differences would have to be introduced; and yet these differences, too, are, in some sense of that word.
Aristotle gives two examples of what he means by the special kind of
“universal” that being is. Many things are called “healthy,” but always
with reference to health. Bruell sees a problem with this example:
though we call lots of things “healthy,” we do not call health “healthy”
(65). However, the second example that Aristotle gives is more apt,
namely, “the medical” (or “that which is medical”– to iatrikon –1003b12; cf. 1030b2-3.) A medical knife, a medical procedure, a medical building, a medical degree, etc., are all called “medical” with reference to
some one instance of medical that is medical in the preeminent sense,
and that is the medical art (hē iatrikē). The medical art is rightly called
“medical.” In the same way, ousia is rightly called a being (on), and
ousiai are rightly called beings (onta).14 Bruell, however, has misgivings
about calling Aristotle’s ousiai “beings” (65). For being is always said
in relation to some one nature or principle (1003b6; cf. 1028a 14-15),
and that turns out to be ousia. But ousia is not itself said in relation to
ousia. So it seems that ousia cannot be a being, after all. This, I take it,
is the reasoning behind Bruell’s misgivings. Aristotle, however, says at
once that ousiai are beings: “Some [things] are called beings because
[they are] ousiai,” (1003b6; cf. 1028a 14-15) others because they are
qualities of ousia, and so forth. The color of a horse is a quality of an
ousia; but the horse itself is an ousia. It is, then, in a quite special sense
that a horse is said in relation to ousia: the relation is one of identity,
where something that is really one is thought of as two (1018a4-9; cf.
1021b6-8). Aristotle frequently speaks of ousiai as beings later in the
Metaphysics (e.g., 1071b5), as he does here, and Bruell of course acknowledges this. But he regards this way of speaking as loose (100;
126), for reasons that become clearer later on (e.g., 230-231; 238).
Bruell distinguishes between two models of a philosophical science: “philosophy as originally conceived, on the one hand, and a divine
14. Cf. Physics 192b8-13. Among the onta that Aristotle lists here are animals
and plants, which are incontestably ousiai, if not exactly ousiai in the fullest
sense of the word. Only the separate ousiai of Book Lambda, chs. 6-10—if
they exist—would count for Aristotle as ousiai in the fullest sense of the word,
as I shall argue below.
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science (A2 983a4-11), on the other” (38). By the former, Bruell means
the various attempts at physics that were advanced by the preSocratics.15 He speaks of a need that Aristotle found himself under to
revise these two models. Regarding the model of “a divine science,”
Bruell says that Aristotle “cannot point to the needed revisions so visibly and unambiguously as to jeopardize the survival of a ‘metaphysics’ [Bruell reminds us that ‘metaphysics’ is not Aristotle’s term]
whose attractiveness offers the broad back on which the skeletal form
of a philosophic science might have the prospect of riding into and
through ages even less hospitable to philosophy than his own” (39).
The task that Bruell sets himself in his interpretation is to bring this
skeletal form gradually and cautiously into view, though only for those
who have eyes to see.
Not all readers of the Metaphysics have eyes to see. But Aristotle,
as Bruell interprets him, offers something of value to virtually everyone
who reads through it. When Bruell comes to speak about Book Kappa,
which makes something of a new beginning in the Metaphysics, he distinguishes between, by my count, four different groups of readers. These
readers can be grouped as follows (using numbers in brackets, so as to
reserve numbers in parentheses for Bruell’s pagination): [1] In the first
place are those who have not been “disappointed in the result, or at the
lack of result, of the investigation of ousia in Zeta and Eta, at its failure
to reach its announced goal (Z2 1028b27-31, Z17 1041a6-9).” That failure is “redeemed for them” by “the treatment of potentiality and truth
in Theta [and/or] of ‘the one’ in Iota” (225). For these, the most careful
readers of the Metaphysics, i.e., the readers who are equipped both intellectually and emotionally to apprehend and accept the austere teaching of this work, the inquiry into the science of being qua being is
substantively finished, that is, finished to the extent that it can be finished (1028b3), by the end of Book Iota. The express theology of the
latter chapters of Book Lambda, in particular, is not for them. However,
15. Aristotle does not make a sharp a distinction between these two endeavors.
Cf. infra, footnote 34. Regarding “philosophy as originally conceived,” Bruell
refers us to Book Alpha ch. 3-6, 8-9, and to Book alpha ch. 1-2 (38). Book Alpha
ch. 3-5, 8 (and 7 too) treat physical theories, though not exclusively. But physical
theories per se are not obviously the chief concern of ch. 6 and 9, nor of Book
alpha ch. 1, though they return for consideration in ch. 2 of that book. With his
references, Bruell suggests that “philosophy as originally conceived,” in distinction from “a divine science,” is physics properly understood, i.e., the study
of nature in the deepest sense of the word physis.
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another group of readers have been disappointed by the failure of the
investigation of ousia in Zeta and Eta, and this failure has not been redeemed for them by anything that was said in Books Theta and Iota.
Among these are [2] readers for whom Book Kappa, with its repetitions
of portions of Books Beta, Gamma, and Epsilon, is able to remind of
points already made and thereby to sharpen “their awareness of a problem which they will already have felt and which the sequel will, somehow or other, have to solve” (225).16 Some of these readers are
educable, psychologically as well as intellectually, and there is a
chance that by the end of Book Kappa, or by the end of the first five
chapters of Book Lamba at the latest, they will have come to understand what the first group of readers understood without reading beyond Book Iota. But also among the readers of Kappa are [3] a third
group to whom “the cold light of the intervening books [between
Books Alpha and Kappa] . . . will have proved no avail” (225). Nothing
they will have read prior to Book Lambda will have led them to doubt
that a philosophical science is able to demonstrate the existence of separate, incorporeal, eternal ousiai, and they continue to hope that the argument of the Metaphysics will culminate in this demonstration. However,
even within this group there are [4] some who are “unable to accept
Lambda’s result (its silence [i.e., Book Mu’s silence about Book Lambda’s
result] constituting a tacit acknowledgement of their good judgment in
that regard)” (254). It is largely, though not exclusively, for this fourth
group that Books Mu and Nu are written. For though they were unable
to accept Lambda’s result, “they have retained, whether for good reasons
or bad, an interest in the ideas and the mathematicals.” The good reasons
add up to a genuine theoretical interest in the greater intelligibility of the
ideas and the mathematicals in comparison with the sensible, composite
individuals with which we are familiar (999b1-4). The bad reasons add
up, it is not difficult to surmise, to baseless hopes and a deluded attachment to the idea of eternity (see 264 on “we wish,” and compare De
Anima 432b5-6), from which Aristotle has gently tried to pry his most
mature readers loose. In either case, Books Mu and Nu will hammer the
remaining nails that Aristotle has at his disposal into the coffins of
Pythagoreanism and Platonism. As for those readers who were able to
accept Book Lambda’s result, if they bother to read Books Mu and Nu at
all they will likely regard them only as superfluous and annoying appendices that detract from the comforting theology of Book Lambda.
16. Bruell does not spell out what this problem is here.
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To repeat, this is my count of the different groups of readers that
Bruell indicates. If I have enumerated and distinguished them more or
less correctly, there is surely overlap, and there may be other groups
quite different from these.17 At any event, at this point we have to ask
what it is that the first group of readers, the fully adult readers, have
come to see by the end of Book Iota at the latest. That is to say, what
does Bruell think is the deepest stratum of the teaching in the Metaphysics? It is not easy to be sure about this. If Aristotle expressed his
deepest thoughts in the Metaphysics with such circumspection that only
a very small number of readers, perhaps no more than a handful of them,
have ever read this book adequately, and if they in turn have refrained
from writing down exactly what they have discerned in it, then Bruell
must realize that Aristotle and his most competent readers had good
reasons for their reticence. Times have changed however. The attitude
of the public to philosophy today is less likely to be one of suspicion
and hatred than of indifference and contempt. Contemporary readers of
the Metaphysics underestimate the daring of Aristotle’s thought, and
hence fail to learn from it, because they find the express theology of
17. Working with Bruell’s guiding premise that in the Metaphysics Aristotle
tailors his teaching to different groups of readers, I venture to suggest a fifth
group, distinct from the four noted above. Near the beginning of Book Mu Aristotle says—I quote Bruell’s paraphrase—“‘first’ to be considered are what
the others have said about these questions,” i.e., the questions about the possibility of “some ousia that is without motion and everlasting” (254). Bruell
emphasizes the word “first” (1076a12) because this passage “conveys the impression or suggestion” that the investigation into this possibility “is about to
begin in earnest.” This impression or suggestion would then be an understated
repudiation of the results of Book Lambda. The alternative is that Aristotle is
only announcing a fresh beginning, of which there have already been several
in the Metaphysics: the “first” points to a “second.” That is, Aristotle leads us
to think that, after first treating what others have said about separate ousia, he
will add something further of his own about it. Whether it would depart significantly from Book Lambda or not, there is no way telling since the Metaphysics does not contain a further account of separate ousia or of anything else
after the critical treatment, in Books Mu and Nu, of what others have said.
This fifth group of readers, of whom I am one, infers that Aristotle simply
never got around to writing the sequel to Books Mu and Nu. To this group
Bruell might respond that the absence of the expected sequel should not be explained away so conveniently when it can be interpreted as the tacit response
to an expectation deliberately raised at the beginning of Book Mu only to be
deflated when the reader in this fifth group turns over the last page of Book
Nu and sees nothing there.
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Book Lambda preposterous. Bruell, for all his caution, discloses what
he takes to be the deepest stratum of Aristotle’s teaching in the Metaphysics more candidly than did any previous readers, if there were any,
who interpreted the book along the lines that he does. And so, I do not
think it inappropriate to attempt to state just what Bruell understands
this deepest stratum to be. As far as I can tell, it consists of several interrelated theses, which are not expressed unequivocally but are indicated here and there (again using numbers in brackets).
[1]There are no separate ousiai, which is to say, there is no God
and there are no gods. [2] The harmoniously ordered cosmos is not eternal. It is a transient phase, destined to pass away eventually. [3] The
heavenly bodies are not moved by an unmoved mover (or movers).
Their apparent, circular motion is caused by what they are, including
especially what they are made of, rather than by any mover apart from
them. [4] The articulation of the given world and the distinctions between things is largely the effect of the human intellect, so much so that
one is tempted to infer that the human intellect is the deepest root of
things. But that inference would be problematic since the human intellect is mortal. It is hardly the deepest root of itself. [5] The deepest root
of things is, in fact, matter, not just the “materiality” of the four elements, but something coursing beneath these, eternal, moving, not accessible to perception, and not really accessible to the intellect either.
The existence of this ultimate matter can be much more plausibly inferred than can the existence of separate ousiai, but only as a kind of
limit case of what the human intellect can infer. We know nothing about
it other than that it exists, and that it is some kind of cause. We cannot
even be sure that the claims we venture to make about it are governed
by the principle of non-contradiction.18 Since this eternal, moving, and
imperceptible matter is the deepest root of things, it is the deepest root
of the human intellect too. The human intellect is no more than a possibility, so to speak, that was always latent in this matter. [6]. On the
18. Aristotle claims that the so-called principle of non-contradiction is indemonstrable (1006a5-10). It is known, however, as self-evident, and is
thereby a first principle (archē) for the demonstration of other things (cf. Posterior Analytics 99b15-100b17). It is the most certain of all principles. It is a
principle about which one cannot be mistaken (Metaphysics 1005b8-25),
though one individual might not understand the articulation of this principle,
while another might feign ignorance about it because it cannot be demonstrated
(1011a3-b17) or just prevaricate about it (cf. 1005b 25-26). Bruell is not convinced that Aristotle was as confident of this principle and of its logical equivalent, the principle of excluded middle, as he lets on (67-83; see the full
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other hand, the human intellect, as tossed up by this matter and then
impinged upon by it, constitutes, somehow, a world, an ordered whole
that is more or less knowable, by physics in particular. Physics, and
not metaphysics, is the philosophical science—though only if physics
is properly conducted, that is to say, modestly conducted, without any
pretense of being able to draw the deepest root of things into the sunlight. The given world is the home of man, and it is the region to which
science, including philosophical science, is limited. It is given, not by
God or the gods, but by primordial matter acting upon one of its own
potentialities.
If Bruell’s interpretation is that the Metaphysics is intended to communicate the above theses, or theses resembling them, to its most careful readers, then it must be said at once that this interpretation is, strictly
speaking, irrefutable. Any passages in the Metaphysics that can be marshalled as evidence against it can be consistently interpreted by Bruell
as exoteric accommodations. And there is no way he can be proven
wrong. Still one can raise a few questions about these theses.
[1] The thesis that there are no separate ousiai is not argued for,
much less demonstrated, by Aristotle or by Bruell. It is what certain
passages in the Metaphysics “meant perhaps to suggest” (233). Since
there is no way of actually demonstrating that there are no separate ousiai, a less strident version of this thesis would be simply that there is
nothing in our experience of, and thoughtful reflection on, the given
world that enables us to reasonably infer that separate ousiai exist. This
version may be closer to what Bruell discerns in the Metaphysics.
[2] The thesis that the harmoniously ordered cosmos is not eternal
may be intimated (1074b10-13; see 252, bottom: “many times”), but it
is not argued for either. For this thesis to be taken seriously, some kind
of account needs to be given of how a well-ordered and, especially, intelligible cosmos could emerge out of chaos by chance, rather than
through the agency of something like a divine intellect or a demiurge
(994b8-22; 1060a26-27; 1075b24-27).
paragraph on 83). One thing is clear, however: if this principle, or one logically
equivalent to it, is not self-evidently known, then there can be no demonstration,
hence no genuine science (Posterior Analytics 71b20-34; cf. Republic 533b5c6), philosophical or otherwise, of anything in this world, to say nothing of whatever is above or beneath it. (Compare Strauss, “Freud on Moses and
Monotheism,” in Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity, edited by Kenneth Hart Grene, [Albany, NY: State University of New York, 1997], 285.) And
that would count as a point in favor of belief in revelation, which does not need
to validate its fundamental claims in the same way that philosophy does.
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[3] The thesis that the heavenly bodies move themselves and are
not moved by anything else is at odds with Aristotle’s theory, even his
very definition, of motion (Physics 201a10; a29). It is possible that he
did not intend his theory of motion seriously. But there is no alternative
theory of motion argued for in the Physics. And, as we shall see shortly,
the denial of Aristotle’s theory of motion undercuts a criticism of one
of the moral presuppositions of religious belief.
[4] The thesis that the human intellect is crucially responsible for
the world as we experience it (Anaxagoras’s audacious thought? [26])
cannot be simply dismissed. Among other things, there is textual support for the claim that Aristotle seriously entertained this view.19 But to
argue for it, while at the same time arguing for the possibility of science
as a communicable endeavor, one has to make a distinction between
what is idiosyncratic about this or that human intellect and what is common or pertains to the human intellect as such. Kant and Husserl, in different ways, made this distinction, which is the distinction between
empirical and transcendental subjectivity. And it is not unthinkable that
this distinction was anticipated in Aristotle’s distinction “in the [human]
soul” (en tēi psychēi) between an intellect that “becomes all things,”
the potential (or passive) intellect, and an intellect that “makes [!] all
things” (De Anima 430a13-16), the active intellect. Though the distinction between active and passive intellect would support this particular
thesis, Bruell does not speak to it, whether because he thinks that the
active intellect sounds too much like something divine, which Aristotle
as a philosopher could not take seriously, or because, if it is not divine,
it cannot plausibly be claimed to be deathless and eternal (cf. 250), as
Aristotle says it is (De Anima, 430a22-24), or for some other reason, I
do not know.
[5] The thesis that matter is the deepest root of things is, in my
opinion, much the least plausible of these theses, both on the merits and
as an interpretation of Aristotle. The most interesting textual support
that Bruell adduces for it is a rather obscure sentence near the beginning
of Book Lambda (1069a30-36; Bruell, 246). But, however one interprets this sentence, there are problems with claiming that matter is the
root of all things. For one cannot make good sense of the claim that the
mind is produced by, or is ultimately a property of, matter, given the
intentionality peculiar to the former. In fact, it is difficult to rescue the
claim that matter is the root of all things from the charge of ultimate
19. See Physics 223a22-27; De Anima 426a20-26; Metaphysics, 1036a1-8.
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self-contradiction.20 And even if one could show that something like
Aristotle’s passive intellect can be construed as physically produced by
matter, or as a mysterious and superfluous epiphenomenon of matter,
or as itself just a complex mass of matter—and I think that one cannot
show any of these things—one would be left only with an intellect that
(wondrously) corresponds to the things it apprehends. But on that basis
one would not be able to make a meaningful distinction between true
opinion and knowledge strictly so called. For this distinction one would
need, again, to introduce something like the active intellect, something
that knows it is knowing. Aristotle presents the intellect—the active
and/or divine intellect surely—and matter as radically diverse principles. Neither is reducible to or derivable from the other. One can claim
for whatever combination of reasons that the intellect and the truths that
it knows are occult properties latent in an aboriginal hylē. This claim
is, after all, one of the reigning dogmas of our time. But one cannot
make sense of it without transforming hylē from mere materiality (or
potentiality—dynamis), as we encounter it in the given world, into an
uncaused cause, primordial but also permanently present in its actualizing activity (energeia), and essentially elusive.
[6] Bruell aims in Aristotle as Teacher at showing that the pursuit
of a science of being qua being in the Metaphysics is as much concerned with the possibility of science or knowledge (epistēmē) as it
is with illuminating being. The Metaphysics aims at introducing its
readers to a philosophical science, which precisely as philosophic, requires exposing the problematic character of science, which is in fact
the problem of philosophy itself, to the extent that philosophy aspires
to validate, unequivocally, its claim to be the most choiceworthy way
of life for those who have what it takes to live it. That aspiration is
obviously compromised if philosophy cannot get at the deepest root
of things. For then it cannot know beyond the shadow of a doubt that
the deepest root of things is not much more akin to what its greatest
rival holds as a matter of faith than anything that natural reason can
penetrate to on its own. In that case, “does not science or philosophy
come into fatal contradiction with itself?” (28). If philosophy cannot
know more about the root of all things than that some such root exists,
then it cannot know beyond the shadow of a doubt that this root really
is a blind, deaf, and mute necessity rather than the God who dwells in
20. See Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life (New York: Harper and Row,
1966), 127-134.
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a thick cloud and reveals himself out of the freedom of his own inscrutable will, to those of his own choice, at a time and place of his
own choosing.
We encounter several of the above theses in Kant. For he, too, holds
that the human mind, stimulated by something essentially hidden from
it, constitutes the world, and that there can be a scientific investigation,
a physics, of the world, so constituted, even a metaphysics of nature,
but no metaphysics of whatever it is that lies beneath nature and outside
the constitutive activity of the human intellect. The conspicuous difference between Kant and Aristotle, as I take Bruell to interpret Aristotle,
is that Kant expends enormous effort in arguing for his theses, and he
does so openly and directly, for pages on end. Bruell’s Aristotle does
not clearly advance arguments for any of the theses suggested above.
The arguments may exist, disassembled, their premises partially concealed here and there in the thickets of Books Zeta through Iota. But
Bruell has not reassembled them. Or if he has, I have not been able to
discern them. Bruell’s Aristotle teaches by and large indirectly, by way
of intimations (e.g., 38), divergences from earlier intimations (39),
pointers (83), indications (100), thoughts that he allows himself to express only in conditional form (163), suggestions (101), tacit admissions
(118), tacitly withdrawn suggestions (125), and silence (128).
The preceding paragraph could lead one who knows nothing of
Bruell as a thinker and teacher to infer that his interpretation of the
Metaphysics is just too idiosyncratic to be worth the effort required to
grasp it. That inference would be seriously mistaken. The progressive
deepening of one’s understanding that results from following Bruell
as he thinks his way slowly, patiently, sentence by sentence and word
by word, looking behind and to the side as well as ahead, through the
maze that is the Metaphysics is worth incomparably more than the effort it takes to keep up with him. That Aristotle chose to teach indirectly, with a view to the diverse abilities and needs of his readers,
cannot be ruled out, if only because we know that he had before him
the examples of his teacher and of his teacher’s teacher. And we know
how indirectly they taught.
Though Bruell speaks of the “attractiveness” of “the broad back
on which the skeletal form of a philosophic science might have the
prospect of riding,” he does not describe it. For this reason, it is necessary to restate, if only briefly, the traditional interpretation of the Metaphysics so that it can be compared with the teaching that Bruell finds
indicated beneath the surface. The traditional interpretation takes sev-
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eral forms, and in restating it I can only sketch what I understand to be
its most coherent form. Others would surely sketch the traditional interpretation differently than I do. But all variations of the traditional interpretation have more in common with my sketch of it than they do
with Bruell’s interpretation.
According to the traditional interpretation, the concern of the Metaphysics is being, not the being of any particular entity, but being as such,
or being qua being (1003a20). But, as noted earlier, being is not a genus.
Ousia is the primary instance of being (1028a 14-15), and it is that in
relation to which everything else, such as color, size, position, and so
forth is said, in a derivative sense, to be. The inquiry into being qua being
is then primarily an inquiry into ousia. There is, however, a range of
opinion about what most deserves to be called ousia (1028b8-1029a5).
But since virtually everyone agrees that a sensible entity, which Aristotle
calls a whole (synolon) of eidos (or morphē) and hylē (1029a5-6) or a
composite entity (synthetē ousia—1070a14), is an ousia, and since we
cannot at the early stage of our inquiry be sure that there are any ousiai
that are separate from sensible ousiai, Aristotle begins with a consideration of sensible ousia, with how it is related to to ti ēn einai and how it
is known. Now ousia as the primary instance of being would seem to be
being least mixed with non-being.21 So, if there are imperishable ousiai,
i.e., ousiai that do not come to be and pass away, they would be ousiai
more fully than perishable ousiai are (cf. 1059b12-14; 1060b1-3).22 As
imperishable, and hence not bound up with hylē, which is not itself fully
intelligible, separate ousiai would also be more intelligible than sensible
ousiai, if not initially so to us, still more intelligible by nature, or intrinsically intelligible, or intelligible to themselves. Similarly ousia, as the
primary instance of being would seem to be that which is most actual
and least potential. So if there are unmoved ousiai, they would be more
fully ousiai than are moved ousiai (since what is moved is, to some extent, potential and not entirely actual: Physics 201a11; a30; b33; Metaphysics 1026a15-16 ). Finally, if there are ousiai that are altogether
separate from, and in no way depend on, other ousiai, either as features
21. See Plato, Republic 476e7-478e7.
22. Consider the full implication of 1026a27-32. Even if there are separate ousiai, why wouldn’t physics still be the first science, unless sensible ousiai are
found wanting in something that should pertain to them as ousiai, namely immobility and imperishability? I read the aporia noted at 1086b16-20 as resolvable through an account of separate ousiai that would recapitulate, in its
essentials, the chief claims of Book Lambda, chs. 6-10.
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of those ousiai or predicated of them, then they are ousiai more fully
than dependent ousiai are (1017b23-26; 1029a27-28). In sum, the primary instance of ousia, ousia in the unqualified sense, would be characterized by imperishability, intrinsic intelligibility, complete actuality,
and unqualified independence.
Among the sensible ousiai that inhabit the sublunar sphere, we find
something that, if not actually eternal, is imperishable at least as long
as we can attend to it in thought. And this is the form (eidos) of the sensible, perishable, composite entity, to the extent that its form is identical
to, or inextricable from, the species (also eidos) to which the perishable,
sensible composite “belongs,” as their common name suggests and
which is there for thought long after the composite itself perishes. But
for Aristotle, unlike the Platonists, the form is not separate, except in
logos, from that of which it is the form.23 It does not, so to speak, stand
on its own, as does the perishable, sensible, composite entity of which
the eidos is predicated. The hylē of the sensible composite does not, as
matter, stand on its own either. Matter, taken by itself, is merely potential being (1060a20-21); in this way it exists only in relation to actual
being, to something that, as such, is, not potentially but actually. Moreover, matter as such is not knowable (1036a8-9); we can know a perishable, sensible composite only to the extent that we can apprehend its
eidos (De Anima 429a27-28; 431b3, 27-432a1), apart from its matter
(ibid, 429b22). As potential being, matter can neither actually be nor
be knowable or even perceptible (De Anima 424a18-19). The perishable, sensible composite entity, then, has relative to its eidos the advantage of standing on its own, of being an individual and not something
that is only as predicated of something else. On the other hand, the eidos
has relative to that of which it is the eidos, the advantage of being imperishable to the extent that it continues to be intelligible, as species,
after the composite entity perishes.
The inquiry into sensible ousiai leads to the problematic result that
the features of separability, individuality, and independence, on the one
23. Bruell puts repeated, and wholly justifiable, emphasis on Aristotle’s criticism of the notion of subsistent universals, including any attempt to interpret
his own species and genera as subsistent. There is, however, nothing particularly controversial about this. The criticism is recognized in the traditional interpretation of the Metaphysics, and generally concurred in as well. It has no
adverse bearing at all on—in fact, it reinforces—Aristotle’s account of separate
ousiai in Book Lambda. For these ousiai are not universals. (And the Biblical
God is not a universal either.)
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hand, and immobility and imperishablility on the other, both of which
are characteristic of ousia (see, e.g., 1017b22-28; 1026a10-16), are bifurcated in the sublunar sphere. We cannot find any ousia in this sphere
that bears the features of both sets of characteristics, which is to say
that nothing here is without qualification. As for the superlunar sphere,
the stars are indeed separate individuals (as eidē are not) and they seem
to be imperishable too, for they have been up in the heavens, participating in ceaseless circular motion for as long as people have recorded
what they have seen in the heavens. But motion, including circular motion, requires a mover distinct from and causative of what is moved.
The stars, then, can be inferred to be moved without cessation by something distinct from them, which is itself unmoved (Physics 265a13 ff.;
Metaphysics 1072a19-26).
In Book Zeta, well in advance of the theology he advances in the
second half of Book Lambda, Aristotle makes the following statement.
Even if we had never seen the stars, nonetheless, I suppose, there would be eternal ousiai besides those [ousiai]
we knew; so that also now [i.e., when we have seen the
stars] even if we are not able to know what [these eternal
ousiai] are, still it is equally necessary for there to be some
[eternal ousiai]” (1040b34-1041a2).
I note at once that Aristotle’s statement here is not only elliptical, but
guarded as well. He uses oimai (“I suppose”) in the first main clause;
and in the second main clause he uses isōs, which I have translated as
“equally,” but which one could also translate as “probably” or even
“perhaps,” though doing so would produce something of a clash with
the word anagkaion (“it is necessary”), with which the second main
clause, and the sentence as a whole, concludes. In any case, my point
is not that Aristotle is advancing an actual argument here for the existence of separate ousiai, separate from all sensible ousiai, the stars included. His argument in Book Lambda for the existence of separate
ousiai is a cosmological one. What Aristotle is advancing in the above
quoted passage is, I would say, only an ontological consideration. That
is, if ousia is the premier instance of to on, if there are only sensible
ousiai, and if no sensible ousia is both imperishable and independent,
then there is nothing that is without qualification. And that may well
be exactly how it stands with being: “the nothing” is always present
with and within it. But Aristotle does not leave it at this Heideggerian
conclusion. The inquiry into sensible ousiai has led to the conclusion
that if there is anything that is without qualification, then it is both in-
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dependent and individual, on the one hand, and imperishable on the
other. The stars coming closest to fitting the bill, but their movement
leads Aristotle to think beyond them to the unmoved source of their
movement.
The trajectory of the enquiry into being qua being, which begins
with an inquiry into sensible ousia, leads to the latter chapters of Book
Lambda where Aristotle concludes that there must be an eternal unmoved mover of the fixed stars, a mover that moves by being the object
of desire or imitation, a mover that engages in an eternal act of intellection (noēsis). This unmoved mover is that on which, again, he says
heaven and nature depend. This mover is responsible for the movement
of the sphere of fixed stars. But Aristotle has to invoke a number of
other unmoved movers similar to it in order to account for the circular
motions of other heavenly bodies. Not only are the unmoved movers
intelligent beings, but the heavenly bodies that are moved by them are
intelligent as well. They move because the “sight” they have of the unmoved movers gives rise to an eros, to a desire to imitate, to the extent
possible for a sensible entity, the changeless activity of the unmoved
mover’s self-knowledge.24 This imitation takes the form of perfect circular motion, the motion that is most like immobility: what moves in a
perfect circle is always on its way to where it already is.
The account of the unmoved mover in Book Lambda, and especially the need to invoke a number of them, along with the necessary
presupposition that the heavenly bodies are themselves luminous intelligences, is so foreign to our way of thinking that not only is it hard for
us take it seriously, it is also hard for us to believe that Aristotle could
have taken it seriously. However, the heavenly bodies, the fixed stars
especially so, surely appear to move in circular motion, not just in Aristotle’s time but according to astronomical observations predating those
of the Greeks by centuries. Given the astronomical records available to
Aristotle, together with his own account of what motion is, the cosmological argument he advances in Book Lambda for separate, imperishable, and individual ousiai, is as reasonable an account as anyone at the
time could have come up with to explain the phenomena.25
24. Aristotle is aware that nous was eros were claimed, by Anaxagoras and
Empedocles respectively, to be principles of the whole. Such claims did not
keep him from grouping them among the physicists as distinct from the
mythologists.
25. The problem that Aristotle’s account Lambda gives rise to, and which he
does not address, is how there can be a multiplicity of unmoved movers, given
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Hoping that the above summary, inadequate in more ways than one,
provides something of a depiction of the “broad back” on which “the
skeletal form of a philosophic science” has ridden, all but unnoticed,
across more than two millennia, I turn to a comparison of the latter with
the former. There is a problem with the traditional interpretation of the
Metaphysics, for there are passages that appear to undercut it. I interpret
them, not so much as lapses or “nodding” on Aristotle’s part, but as the
raising and re-raising of aporiai that do not get resolved until the latter
chapters of Book Lambda, or as provisional formulations, or as formulations that are qualified by the context in which they occur—especially
when Aristotle makes certain statements about “all ousiai” in passages
where only sensible ousiai are under consideration.26
The difference between what I have called, with some misgivings,
the “traditional interpretation” of the Metaphysics and the interpretation—if I have it in focus—that Bruell suggests turns on the question
of which is the more plausible. One criterion for the plausibility of an
interpretation of an ancient author is whether it does justice to the boldness of the author’s teaching. If we are to evaluate these two interpretations in terms of which one brings the bolder teaching into view, we
would do well to attend to the following, insufficiently appreciated passage from Strauss’s lecture, “Progress or Return.”
There is a fundamental conflict or disagreement between
the Bible and Greek philosophy. This fundamental conflict
is blurred to a certain extent by the close similarity in
points. There are, for example, certain philosophies which
come seemingly close to the biblical teaching—think of
philosophic [!] teachings which are monotheistic, which
speak of the love of God and man, which even admit
prayer, etc. And so the difference becomes sometimes althat they are not differentiated by matter and that they all seem to be engaged
in the same intellectual act.
26. The following passages are, in my opinion, problematic for the traditional
interpretation, but they are not devastating: 999a4-5; 1030a11-13; 1032a18-19;
1043b21-22; 1059a38-b2; 1060b18-19; 1075a23-24; 1088a29-33. All these passages can be taken as hints by Aristotle (though read as hints, they are not particularly subtle) that there is no separate, individual, imperishable ousia or ti
ēn einai. The traditional interpretation has to regard these passages as not intended to be taken without qualification. But there are passages that Bruell, too,
has to regard as not intended to be taken without qualification. See, supra, footnote 12.
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most invisible. But we recognize the difference immediately if we make this observation. For a philosopher or philosophy there can never be an absolute sacredness of a
particular or contingent event.27
According to Strauss, the existence of God (or of gods), simply as a
first principle, even as an intelligent first principle, of the whole would
not by itself be a problem for philosophy. What would be a problem for
philosophy is an intelligent first principle that could freely reveal itself,
or himself, to man. For revelation, at the initiative of God, in his own
good time, to human beings of his own choosing who may not be
philosophers, would surely be a particular and contingent event, and an
event of absolute sacredness.28 Such a thing would be a problem for
philosophy because the full truth about this first principle would not be
accessible to man as man. That is, it would not be accessible to reason,
since reason can only work with the necessary as distinct from the contingent or accidental.29 And so, Strauss says quite consistently, philosophy must attempt to refute, not the existence of God, but the possibility
of revelation.30
Two divergent ways in which philosophy might refute the possibility of revelation suggest themselves here. One way, of course, would
be by refuting the existence of God. Strauss thought that every argument
purporting to do such a thing either begs the question outright or leads
to a dead end. A quite different way would be by arguing for the existence God but, in so doing, demonstrate that, contrary to what believers
believe, God is not the kind of being who is able to reveal himself to
man. This is the way followed by a kind of rational theology that consists in no small measure of a theological critique of the possibility of
revelation. Strauss is well aware of this kind of rational theology.31 In
27. “Progress and Return” in Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity,
117. Cf. Strauss, Spinoza’s Critique of Religion (New York: Schocken, 1956—
translation of the 1930 German original), 149.
28. Creation would be a contingent event also: hence the effort of philosophers
to demonstrate, not the non-existence of God, but the eternity of the world.
29. Metaphysics 1027a19-21. Posterior Analytics 73a21. See Bruell, 123-125;
193-195.
30. “Reason and Revelation,” (Heinrich Meier, Leo Strauss and the Theological
Political Problem, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 150, 174.
See Bruell, 8-9; 28.
31. See Strauss’s references to “natural theology” in “Reason and Revelation,”
154, and “Progress or Return,” 131. And consider his perhaps surprising state-
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his lecture “Reason and Revelation,” he writes, “Plato’s and Aristotle’s
attempts to demonstrate the existence of God far from proving the religious character of their teachings, actually disprove it.”32
To limit ourselves to Aristotle,33 in the first book of the Metaphysics
Aristotle describes the science being sought as divine science.34 It would
be a divine science on two conditions: if God, most of all, possessed it,
and if it were about divine matters (983a5-8). These formulations are,
to be sure, conditional, for Aristotle has not yet advanced an argument
for the existence of a god, or a separate ousia of any sort, though he
does say that God is believed by all (dokei . . . pasin)—when he could
easily have said, “believed,” simply, if he had wished to quietly disassociate himself from this belief—to be among the causes and a principle
(archē tis). What is most remarkable about this passage, however, is the
ment in Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, that the “Arab philosophers . . . actually
were believers in revelation” (151; cf. 155) in light of the curious expressions,
“selective revelation” and “particular revelation,” which he uses shortly afterwards (155; 157). By these latter two expressions, I understand Strauss to mean
revelation accomplished through God’s free choice, that is, revelation strictly so
called, as distinct from a non-selective and more general “revelation”—though
“disclosure” would be a better name for it—accomplished by philosophers, i.e.,
a “theology” established “on the basis of Aristotelian natural science” and culminating in the setting of “three fundamental theologems beyond all doubt”
(149). Spinoza’s Critique of Religion is an early book by Strauss. But The City
and Man is not (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1964). Note the phrase, “in the ordinary [!] sense of the divine,” in the penultimate sentence of the latter work.
32. “Reason and Revelation,” 146. By “religious” in this sentence I understand
Strauss to mean “revealed.” Rational theology is not religion. It does not rely
on the claims of revelation, and it may attempt to demonstrate the impossibility
of revelation strictly so called —as the demonstrations of the existence of God
in Plato, Aristotle, and the great Muslim philosophers, to say nothing of Spinoza, can be interpreted as doing.
33. Though consider Republic 380d1-6; 381c5-9; 383e6.
34. The expression autēs hē ktēsis at 982b29, the beginning of the passage about
divine science, refers back to hautē (epistēmē) in the preceding sentence, and
thereby further back to the epistēmēn 982b8, including to epistasthai in between
at 982b21. And tēn ktēsin autēs at 983a11-12 refers back to tautēs (epistēmēs)
in the preceding sentence, the conclusion of the passage about divine science.
Book Alpha, ch. 2, could hardly be more explicit in stating that the science we
are seeking (982a3; 983a21) is divine science, which in this chapter is identified
with wisdom (sophia—982a6-19; cf. 981b25-982a2). Bruell speaks only briefly
to this passage. See 10-11, 38.
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conjunction of these two conditions. Aristotle acknowledges the possibility that someone—a human being, given the context—other than God
could come to possess the very knowledge, or science, of divine matters
that God himself possesses (983a9-10).35 God, if he exists, does not
dwell in a thick cloud that is utterly impenetrable by man; nor is he jealous of man’s attempt to know him. Indeed, Aristotle goes so far to say
that it is not possible for God to be jealous (983a2-3). How can Aristotle
be so confident on this point, unless he is already looking toward the argument he will make in Book Lambda? For according to that argument
God does not think, and perhaps because of his very excellence cannot
think, of what is beneath him (1074b18-1075a10). And so he can hardly
be jealous of what is going on beneath him, including the speculative
activity of philosophers. If God exists, according to what Aristotle says
close to the very beginning of the Metaphysics, then he is surely not the
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And he is not one of the gods of
Cephalus, Ion, and Euthyphro either. If God cannot even think of man,
then he cannot freely reveal himself to this man. Moreover, if as Aristotle
argues in Book Lambda, God causes as final cause, as object of desire
and imitation, alone, then he is not a free cause.36 Though he is the cause
on which nature and the heavens depend, he does not create the world
(which is also eternal), freely or otherwise. Whatever access man has to
God is through man’s (speculative) initiative alone, not the reverse. Because God does not even think of what is beneath him, not only does he
not reveal himself, he does not reward and punish human beings for their
moral and immoral choices. And if this were not enough to rule out divine freedom, and thereby the “absolute sacredness of a particular or
contingent event,” Aristotle argues that God is simple and not composed,
pure actuality devoid of potentiality, and necessary. How then can he
freely choose to do anything (cf. 1071b13-22; 1072b7-10)?37
35. Thomas Aquinas, who in his commentaries on Aristotle’s works typically
limits himself to stating only what he thinks Aristotle is saying, softens in his
own name Aristotle’s suggestion that man can come to possess knowledge of
God: this knowledge, he says, is something “borrowed” (mutuatum) from God.
(Sententia Metaphysicae, lib. 1 l. 3 n. 13). That is, for Thomas but not for Aristotle, if we can come to know not just that God exists, but something of what
he is essentially, in himself and to himself, revelation is needed. Note the distinction between preambles to the articles of faith and the articles of faith themselves in Summa Theologiae 1, q. 2, art. 2, ad 1.
36. Compare Summa Theologiae 1 q. 19, art. 3 ad 5; art. 10, corpus.
37. One of the great tasks that the Christian theologians of the Middle Ages set
themselves, arguably their greatest task, was to answer this very question.
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However persuasive or unpersuasive one finds the theology that
Aristotle presents in Book Lambda, it is a rational theology that gives
every appearance of trying to refute the possibility of revelation, of trying to rule out the “absolute sacredness of a particular or contingent
event.” If there is any reason to believe that God exists, then, according
to this book, there is every reason to believe that he is incapable of revealing himself. Aristotle’s Metaphysics throws a challenge into the
face of revealed religion; and it makes no secret about this. Even the
casual reader has to be struck by places where Aristotle dissociates himself from the religious beliefs of the multitude and from the poets who
have, after a fashion, educated them. Sometimes he does this implicitly
and gently (983b33-984a2; 989a9-12; 1023a19-21; 1091b4-8), but
sometimes quite explicitly as well (997b8-12; 1074b3-8), even caustically (983a3-4; 1000a9-19; and, above all, 995a3-8).38
One can object that Aristotle’s argument for the existence of God
depends not only on a whole cosmology but also on an account of how
motion occurs that modern science does not accept. For Aristotle, something in motion depends on a mover distinct from it, sustaining it in motion for as long as it is in motion (which in the case of the stars is
forever), and ultimately on a mover that is not itself in motion. But if,
contrary to what Aristotle teaches, a thing in motion can move itself
without depending on a mover distinct from it, then it sounds as though
something that is potential can actualize itself, or, better, that something
that is actual can actualize one or more of its own potentialities, all by
itself. If that is so, then the argument against radically free choice is
compromised. For radically free choice, whether in the case of God or
in the case of man, means self-determination.39 And though the claim
that things can move themselves without being moved by another is
hardly identical to the claim that a being can freely determine itself to
do this rather than that, the former claim is a giant step in the direction
38. The last passage cited is interesting because it does not occur in the middle
of the Metaphysics, nor in the middle chapter of the book (alpha) in which it
occurs, nor in the middle of that chapter. It is, one might say, “exposed.” The
existence and placement of this passage, and of others cited above, could lead
one to infer that the Metaphysics was never intended to be a book, i.e., a written
work composed for public distribution. If the Metaphysics has an exoteric
teaching, it is hardly a teaching designed to throw theological-political persecutors off track. Bruell acknowledges this (253). In his view, Aristotle’s art of
writing in this book serves a pedagogical function.
39. Consider 1072a26-30.
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of the latter. If man can freely determine himself to do this rather than
that, then a vital component of the critique of the moral presuppositions
of belief in revelation has to be abandoned. Aristotle’s view that whatever is in motion is moved by another, and more generally that whatever
is potential can be actualized only by something already actual, precludes, absent significant qualifications, man from acting freely, hence
from deserving reward or punishment for his actions, in this world or
in another. And to repeat, God, as Aristotle presents him in Book
Lambda, neither rewards nor punishes.
If, as Bruell suggests, Aristotle does not intend his rational theology
seriously, then there is nothing in the Metaphysics that seriously meets
the challenge that the possibility of revelation poses to philosophy. If
the deep teaching of the Metaphysics is that there is no divine being, it
is a teaching that is only intimated. There is no argument advanced by
Aristotle, or by Bruell on Aristotle’s behalf, for this teaching such that
one can confidently identify its premises and assess its logical cogency.
So the question of boldness boils down to which of two interpretations
of the Metaphysics causes more problems for the religious believer: (1)
an implicit teaching that merely denies, without so much as the appearance of a demonstration, that God exists, or (2) an explicit teaching that
attempts to demonstrate that God does exist, but exists in a way that is
incompatible with how religion, whether the religion of the Greeks or
that of the Bible, understands him to exist. Different readers of the
Metaphysics may give different answers to this question.
Nothing I have said about the explicit teaching of the Metaphysics
simply rules out there being a parallel but only implicit teaching, exactly as Bruell interprets it. But if the explicit teaching is as I have described it, and if the implicit teaching is as I understand Bruell to have
interpreted it, then we are left with an oddity. Aristotle would be arguing on the very surface of the book that philosophy in its inquiry into
being qua being can win a decisive victory against its perennial rival,
revealed religion, while effectively indicating beneath the surface of
the book that it cannot do any such thing.40 Would Aristotle not be leaving himself open to the accusation that he is corrupting, not necessarily
the young, but any reader of the Metaphysics who naively takes its surface teaching seriously? What does philosophy gain by promising more
40. One would expect the reverse: a surface teaching understating the challenge
that philosophy poses to revealed religion, and a deep teaching that does not
understate it.
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to the uninitiated than it knows it can deliver? Different readers of the
Metaphysics may give different answers to these questions too.
The incontestable merit of Aristotle as Teacher is that it leads anyone who reads it carefully back to the Metaphysics with an enhanced
appreciation of the problems it explores and open to the possibility that
Aristotle’s thoughts about these problems and how they might be resolved are much more profound than has hitherto been recognized and
stated. Aristotle as Teacher should be read as long as the Metaphysics
is read. If I have given excessive weight to the traditional interpretation
of the Metaphysics in this review, it is not because I find it more congenial to revealed religion than Bruell’s interpretation. The opposite is
true: the rational theology expressly advanced by Aristotle in the Metaphysics, and developed further by the great Muslim philosophers of
the Middle-Ages, constitutes a formidable challenge to the claims of
revelation. If one does not appreciate the magnitude of this challenge,
one is unlikely to appreciate the alternative rational theology developed, without appeal to the claims of revelation, by the great Christian
theologians of the Middle-Ages when they rose to meet it.
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Eva Brann, Un-Willing: An Inquiry into
the Rise of the Will’s Power and an Attempt
to Undo It. Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books,
2014, xi + 367 pages. $35.00
Book Review by Matthew Linck
“Does it add up? Not on your life.” Thus begins the penultimate section
of the concluding chapter of Eva Brann’s book on the will. It is in this
chapter that Brann lays out what she calls the “un-willed life.” Brann has
her reasons for keeping her picture of the un-willed life reserved for the
end of the book. And even though one could skip right to the end, I would
like to try to say why that would be a mistake. In other words, I want to
say how the book makes a whole. Some questions will then be raised.
The book does not, I think, make the kind of whole one might expect. The table of contents is deceptive. Reading the names of the chapters and the section headings, one would think the book to be a study of
the will as understood by many great thinkers in the Western tradition.
One would also think the book to show the will in a variety of modes,
from ego-centered to cosmic in scale, from grand conception to narrow
academic topic. One will expect to learn a lot from reading the book.
And these things are all true. Brann approaches her subject mostly by
careful explication of the texts and arguments of individual thinkers. (A
glance at the table of contents will indicate the principal players, although there are many not-to-be-missed mini-essays on will-conceptions
by others in the endnotes. These are listed at the front of the book following the table of contents.) Furthermore, these expositions are grouped
thematically, although those themes do not always admit of easy summary. And, indeed, one can learn a lot, especially where the subjects are
unfamiliar. For me, this was true especially of the sections on Sartre,
compatibilism and neuroscience.
But one cannot make a whole out of things that do not add up just
by putting them between the same covers. The wholeness of Brann’s
book comes from two other sources. The first is the rhetorical force of
the not-adding-up. This, to me, makes good sense of what might look
like a lopsided book: 243 pages on something that turns out not to be
Matthew Linck is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland.
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
coherent, 21 pages on the alternative. The power of Brann’s concluding
pages comes not so much from an accumulated argument as from the
experience of being bandied about by all these competing conceptions
of the will. One is made receptive to the hope that there is some way out
of this mess. Let me say something about the mess before turning to the
second source of wholeness.
Since Brann herself supplies summaries of the main conceptions of
and approaches to the will at the beginning of her concluding chapter, I
think I can be pretty brief. I will give a rundown of some of the book’s
main thrusts, indicating some corresponding proper names parenthetically.
There was a time in the West when a human being and a human
life were understood without recourse to the idea of a will (Socrates,
Aristotle). And even for those thinkers where a kind of proto-will can
be glimpsed (Lucretius, the Stoics), it does not rise to the level of a fullfledged faculty. This all changes with Augustine. For Augustine, a
human life—his life—cannot be made sense of without a faculty of
willing. As Brann emphasizes, Augustine’s framing of the will is deeply
embedded in his Christianity and the question of sin. Correlatively,
since man is made in the image of God, God too must now be understood as having a will. From here we’re off. Chapters III-V offer visions
of the will from Scholastics, early-moderns and German Idealists
(Thomas, Scotus, Ockham, Hobbes, Locke, Leibniz, Hume, Kant,
Fichte). The range of conceptions run through in these chapters defies
summary (but see the block quotation below). The recent queries and
debates concerning free will and determinism, whether from philosophers or scientists, are already prefigured in these early chapters. Brann
covers these topics in chapters IX-XI. Despite the faint echoes of prior
thinking, these chapters seem to me essential since they speak the language of our own everyday thoughts about the will. Even if one has
never read a philosophical defense of compatibilism or leafed through
the purported findings of neuroscience pertaining to the will, the cast
of mind, the questions asked, and the unexamined prejudices are deeply
familiar. In between these chapters are Brann’s “linguistic interlude”
(chapter VI, a delightful and important aside), conceptions of the will
that exceed the individual person (Rousseau, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche)
and what Brann calls the “will’s last ontologies” (Hegel, Bergson,
Peirce, Heidegger, Sartre). It is all of this that Brann contends doesn’t
add up. The following gives a good sense of the range and likely incompatibility of the notions surveyed.
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[T]he will can be conceived as having the nature of a passion,
a power, a capacity, a faculty, an agency, a decision—or an illusion. It can be conceived as an operation that is an extended
process, a final impulse, a long deliberation, or a momentary
choice. It can be conceived as having its termination in seamless execution or in aborted realization. It can be conceived in
terms of its causality, as rationally connected or radically contingent. It can be conceived as having its finality in an external
end or in itself. It can be conceived with respect to its standing
as the highest human good in its obedience to duty or as a nugatory epiphenomenon in its subjugation to nature. It can be
conceived in scope as a hyper-human force causing universal
suffering, as bestowing individual potency, as a general determination overriding individual choice, or as the very principle
of individuality. It can be conceived, looking to the soul’s salvation, as vulnerable to perversion and sin or as analogous to
binding love. But above all, it can be conceived with regard to
human selfhood as being to some degree free from nature’s determinism, as self-activating and deliberately deciding—or as
altogether determined by natural law working on conditions
fixed from way back. It’s a notional miscellany. (243-4)
For every item on the list above, there is a text, an author, a movement,
or a research program considered by Brann. So, it is a lot of work to
follow her down all of these paths, but one might be ready for something else by the end. Hence the closing pages of the book are fitting
given what comes before.
There is, though, that other source of wholeness in the book,
namely, Brann herself. The mind, voice, and good sense that carry the
book along are not incidental to its substance. Issues that might at first
seem to be to one side—how to read a book, professionalism versus
amateurism, the role of self-examination in sifting philosophical arguments, regard for everyday speech—turn out to be essential. They are
essential because they both argue for and exemplify key features of
the life Brann advocates at the end of the book. Hence the book does
not just argue for this or that, but is an example of the very thing it
means to bring forth.1 Let me mention here the special place that
1. Here is an example (the context is Heidegger’s conception[s] of the will and
his propensity to rely on neologisms [under the guise of the retrieval of original
meanings]): “There is the perfectly sensible Socratic inquiry into the one being,
the eidos, intended by words in common use that have multifarious instantia-
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Thomas Aquinas holds in Brann’s thinking and in the book. Brann is
convinced that Thomas’s account of the will (notwithstanding whether
there is a will) is the best we have. Her conviction is grounded largely
in believing that Thomas’s account is most in accord with experience.
Well, whose experience? Brann is upfront—principally her own experience, but not just. Despite the central place that Brann accords self-examination (and she invites us to do it), she also, carefully, looks for
whatever common ground she can obtain. (Nevertheless, the question
whether there just are different human types is raised more than once in
the book.) So, with a view both introspectively anchored and looking
widely, Brann sees in Thomas’s account a picture of human willing that
is wide enough in scope (many fail by being too narrow) and rightly ordered (others fail in wrong emphasis). Her reliance on Thomas throughout the book, then, is neither an appeal to authority, nor is it a claim that
Thomas simply has the best rational argument. Rather the reliance on
Thomas is a shorthand for reliance on her own criteria, themselves not
narrowly rational. (This would be the place to mention the centrality of
feeling for Brann.) But, one more twist to this: Brann relies on Thomas
for having laid out his picture of the will. Brann recognizes in Thomas’s
account something she can assent to, but she does not say she could have
seen it all without him. Hence she needs the books (and so do we). These
remarks about Thomas were meant to make good on the general claim
above, that Brann’s own thinking is a source of wholeness in the book,
but now with this addition: her manner of thinking is not independent
from the sources she is considering.
Hence the end of the book is also the heart of the book. My task
now is to say what Brann thinks the alternative to willing is and why
we should revoke the will’s license. It is important to note that these
are not the same thing. Brann could have presented us will an alternative
to willing as one possible mode of living among others. Instead, she
has endeavored to persuade us that it is better to be un-willing than willing (or worse, willful). So, first the alternative, then the revoking.
Brann presents Socrates as a model (not the model, not someone
to slavishly imitate) of un-willing. Brann highlights some key features
tions in the world—even in our world—for example the virtues and vices. But
what does it mean to search arduously for the meaning of a word-conceit used
in now-archaic language and then in different significations, words like
Galassenheit and Seyn, entirely without use-context, without living exemplars?” (162) Brann, it seems to me, tries to ground her thinking in “living exemplars” wherever possible.
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of his person. As a man, Socrates obeys above all his inner daimonion
which only stops him from doing this or that—he has no principle of
willful assertion; he is an “ontological optimist,” that is, he believes (or
at least proceeds as if) there is order and intelligibility in the world
grounded in the forms; he calls not on courage, but on his goodness,
thoughtfulness and justice throughout his life. As a thinker, Socrates is
always at the beginning of things and opens his thinking beyond the
tight logic of “rationality.” He has a vision of the human soul without
will, but one in which desire operates throughout. Socrates is committed,
perhaps, to only one maxim, “Virtue is knowledge.” Brann thinks virtue
here should be understood “not [as] a good will enclosed in its subjective
self-sufficiency,” but as “an on-the-brink power, a readiness to pass to
thoughtful doing without intermediate exertion of an executive will.” Finally, she contends that “this unhesitating passage to action . . . comes
from . . . doing deep, affirmative thinking.” (All of the above comes from
pages 248-51.)
With Socrates as a model, we might then ask, as moderns, where
our freedom resides. Brann wants to “relocat[e] freedom away from the
will” (253), to focus our attention not on “freedom of the will but freedom from the will,” and to suggest that “collectedness,” of a person or
a life, is not to be attained by “strenuous inward-drawing,” but by “other
means” (255). The key terms of these other means seem to me loving
attachment, desire as receptivity, the contemplation of beings, and imaginative living. How a life thus constituted issues in freedom, even Brann
is hesitant to say decisively—it remains, in a way, a “mystery” (262).
As for why this un-willed life should be preferred to the willful
one, is it enough to say that Brann thinks the latter is just plain bad for
us? That it diminishes our powers instead of enhancing them? That it
distracts us from what is important, truly worthy of desire and interest?
That it distorts our vision of the whole of things and leads, at its worst,
to genuine horrors? I hope it is not unfair to Brann to leave it at that.
The questions I would like to pose to Un-Willing were elicited
strongly by the book and, I think, are related. The first is whether instead
of endeavoring to revoke the will’s license we should rather think of
our task as overcoming the will. The second question is about how we
should read.
One way to take Brann’s global view is that with Augustine the
West goes astray, and that by thinking in terms of a will-faculty our selfunderstanding becomes perverted. Some subtlety is required here, since
Brann acknowledges that much of what falls under the name “will” is
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
not without sense. There are ways of making sense of all the talk on the
will, as Brann attempts to do throughout Un-Willing. Nevertheless, for
her these ways are neither necessary nor felicitous. But what if our errancy vis-à-vis the will was in some way necessary? What if we both
need the will and need to show its deficiency? Or, in other words, what
if Hegel is right? It would be foolhardy to insert here a lengthy discourse
on Hegel (although maybe necessary), but I want to try to sketch out
the Hegelian picture in which my questions are grounded.
While there are metaphysical aspects to my question springing
from Hegel’s logical writings2 and questions about the need to revise
our understanding of nature occasioned by his Philosophy of Nature,3
it might be enough to limit myself to “spiritual” issues. I could perhaps
locate my concerns with respect to Brann’s discussion of the self/subject in chapter of XI of Un-Willing. Brann seems to me correct to suggest that the ancients did not have a notion of self and that their
understanding of soul is not simply its equivalent. She is also correct,
I think, that questions of will and agency go hand in hand with questions of selfhood. But if this is the case, then it would seem to follow
that Brann might want to jettison talk of the self with that of the will.
It does not seem to me altogether that she does. Maybe there is room
to insert a wedge here. The Hegelian account, I believe, holds that the
2. For instance, there seem to me to be far-reaching implications of Hegel’s
treating of being in the way he does. Much of this could be spun out from the
fact that a doctrine of being is included in a Logic, and one particularly pertinent feature of that doctrine (under the heading of Essence) is that being exhausts itself in appearances. The “ontological optimism” that Brann attributes
to Socrates by means of the forms seems off the table for Hegel. This metaphysical point is, I think, of direct consequence for Hegel’s approach to human
action.
3. At least two prominent elements of Brann’s account are ripe for consideration via Hegel’s understanding of nature. The first would be the cogency of
the debates surrounding determinism and free will. Speaking for myself, the
implicit metaphysics which grounds the mechanical view of nature is long
overdue for a systematic and thorough demolishing. To continue engaging such
debates on those terms is to throw good effort after bad. Whether a new metaphysics of nature will get a hearing is hard to say. The second issue would be
that of feeling. This feature of the human soul is important for Brann, and it is
for Hegel, too. But I think one would have to take up Hegel’s account of animal
feeling in the Philosophy of Nature, especially as the mark of inwardness and
proto-subjectivity, in order to see what might be radical in his understanding
of human feeling.
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notion of self must be developed (and, perhaps, purified) because the
telos of human history is freedom and freedom is centered on how
things count or don’t count, are justified or not justified, for me. Here
a whole can of worms is opened, not the least of which would be
Hegel’s contention that Christianity is—was—necessary for us. At the
very least we might see that the infinite relationship of the individual
to the divine is a “picture-thought” of the modern subject’s relationship
to absolute spirit. Talk of a will would be one feature of this necessary
passage through Christianity. But the real burden of the Hegelian account falls on its insistence that the realization of human flourishing
is a historical achievement. It is in working out this claim that an account of overcoming the will would be located. One version of such
an overcoming can be found, I think, in the closing section of the fifth
chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit, for there we are given a picture
of human action in which willful self-assertion must be replaced by
action grounded in mutual confession and forgiveness.4 But, of course,
for Hegel replacement will not mean simply canceling; the passage
through willfulness must in some way remain at work in its overcoming. None of this can count as an argument against Brann, but only as
an indication of the space in which to pursue a certain kind of
question.5 Another way to ask this question would be to query whether
Brann is right that Socrates’s thoughts “could be anyone’s thoughts,
anytime” (248). I suppose, in a way, I am raising the old question about
4. A perspicacious reading of these paragraphs can be found in J. M. Bernstein,
“Confession and forgiveness: Hegel’s poetics of action” in Beyond Representation: Philosophy and Poetic Imagination, ed. Richard Thomas Eldridge
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 34-65.
5. One full-fledged example of the kind of argument I have in mind can be
found in Robert B. Pippin, Hegel’s Practical Philosophy: Rational Agency as
Ethical Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Hegel’s treatment
of nature cuts deeply into many aspects of debates about the will, but one place
to look is Terry Pinkard, Hegel’s Naturalism: Mind, Nature, and the Final Ends
of Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). There is some direct overlap
between Un-Willing and Kenneth R. Westphal, “Autonomy, Freedom & Embodiment: Hegel’s Critique of Contemporary Biologism,” Hegel Bulletin 35
(2014): 56-83. An attempt to make good on Hegel’s account of freedom in terms
of the condition of modern institutions is undertaken in Alex Honneth, Freedom’s Right: The Social Foundations of Democratic Life (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2014). A more Kantian flavored approach to these questions
can be found in Christine M. Korsgaard, Self-Constitution: Agency, Indentity,
and Integrity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.)
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
ancients and moderns, whether there is a genuine quarrel and, if so,
with whom to side.
Also at issue here would be whether Brann has done justice to
Hegel—can have done so—by analyzing his treatments of willing in
isolation. The question is not whether Brann interprets her chosen texts
correctly; the question is whether such interpretations can be adequate
if done (too much) in isolation from Hegel’s thinking more broadly.
This, as always, is a particularly vexed issue in dealing with Hegel, but
I wonder if Brann’s other readings don’t suffer similarly. For instance,
is it so clear that Thomas’s Aritotelianism can be easily separated from
its Christianizing (47)?
I also wonder if Brann’s treatment of the major thinkers in her book
is not too much one-at-a-time. After the strenuous effort of her surveying of so many conceptions of the will, Brann concludes that it does
not add up. Is this way of asking the question too static? What if instead
of asking if it adds up we were to see what these thinkers have to say to
each other? In some cases, such engagement is explicit: Kant dwells
with Rousseau in the development of his moral theory; Hegel has an
eye on Kant at every turn in working out his own positions. But even
where this is not so explicit, we can attempt to construct for ourselves
an imagined conversation between thinkers. I think, though, that this
act of the imagination cannot be just a comparing of arguments; we
must, again, endeavor to take up as much of a thinker’s thought as possible. On the one hand, this would require us to keep in mind how a
thinker sees, in some fundamental way, how things hang together; on
the other hand, it would ask us to keep an eye—if I can put it this way—
on the style of thinking involved.
The figure I most worry is slighted along these lines in Un-Willing
is Kant. My reservations are not about any particular assertions that
Brann makes about Kant’s thinking (she is illuminating here as well),
but about the spirit of the engagement. Here perhaps my own prejudices
and inclinations are at work, but it seems to me that both in spite of and
because of his excesses, Kant allows me to see something that I would
not have otherwise, that there is some element of human willing and
action that is excavated through his stark formulations. But not simply.
That is, I cannot just pluck out some insight from Kant to be combined
with insights from other thinkers. Somehow, I have to let Kant’s vision
of things as a whole set to work my own thinking. And then by putting
Kant into conversation with others, letting them, through my thinking,
contend with each other, I can think things I would not have otherwise.
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I fear that the structure and tone of Brann’s book could too quickly invite us to be over and done with a figure like Kant.6
Even as these questions were triggered by Brann’s book, and even
as I cultivated them, the book itself made me suspicious of them. Is the
Hegelian undertaking too sophisticated, too theoretical, too systembound, and, most of all, too remote from the immediacy of lived experience? Is the question of historicism itself too bound up with the will?
Is there a too-generous way of reading philosophical texts, a way that
slips into indulgence? At its best, Brann’s book shows us what it is like
to be comfortable dwelling at the beginnings of things, locating our concerns and principles nearby and within ourselves.
6. When consulting an essay on Kant that Brann’s book called to mind I found
there, and in two companion essays, these formulations: “Kant’s greatness,
like that of other great philosophers, lies in the simplicity of the fundamental
innovations on which his systematic edifice rests. . . The unavoidable dogmatism hidden behind the Kantian concept of ‘freedom’ (i.e., ‘will’ or ‘pure practical reason’) that has been pointed out so frequently, is irrelevant once we
address the problem of the modus operandi of the Kantian innovation.” “The
greatness of Kant’s practical philosophy is based on the fact that it is developed
within the framework of a critique of reason and that it is closely interwoven
with his theoretical philosophy, his philosophy of religion, and his philosophy
of history. In contrast, most contemporary ethical thought consists of ungrounded assertions, unprincipled casuistry and reflections lacking any organic
unity with the rest of our knowledge.” “Kant’s texts are not historical artifacts,
but still-contemporary deeds, erga: our age is, philosophically, the energeia
of Kant’s texts.” These quotations are from, respectively, Agnes Heller, “Freedom and Happiness in Kant’s Political Philosophy,” Vittorio Hösle, “The
Greatness and Limits of Kant’s Practical Philosophy,” David R. Lachterman,
“Kant: The Faculty of Desire,” all found in Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 13.2 (1990). I offer these quotations only as examples of the cast of mind
I have in view.
�
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Trentina, Allison
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The St. John’s Review
Volume 57.2 (Spring 2016)
Editor
William Pastille
Editorial Board
Eva T. H. Brann
Frank Hunt
Joe Sachs
John Van Doren
Robert B. Williamson
Elliott Zuckerman
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��Contents
Essays & Lectures
Res tene, verba sequentur ........................................................1
Eva Brann
WHERE, Then, Is Time?...................................................................12
Eva Brann
Music and the Idea of a World ..........................................................25
Peter Kalkavage
On Jacob Klein’s Greek Mathematical
Thought and the Origin of Algebra ..............................................47
Arian Koochesfahani
Which Sciences Does the Political Science
Direct and Use and How Does It Do So? .........................................70
Edward M. Macierowski
Ass, You Like It? Shakespeare’s
A Midsummer Night’s Dream as Political Philosophy ......................79
Nalin Ranasinghe
��ESSAYS & LECTURES
1
Res tene, verba sequentur*
A Reflection on Three Questions Concerning
the Re-telling of Sacred Stories and of Myths
(An Academically Disreputable Inquiry)
Eva Brann
For John Roth
Questions:
I. Are there canonical sources—gold-standards—for myths, and
how would we recognize them?
II. Should our re-visioning of sacred persons and mythical people
stay true to the standard version?
III. Should there be myth-dilations?
Brusque answers:
I. Yes, the two Bibles for sacred stories, and Homer, mainly, for
pagan myth.
II. Yes, at least as far as their vitals, their life-data, the given facts,
are concerned.
III. Yes, myths demand amplification.
I. Gold-standards: Which and Why?
1. The Hebrew Bible (including the Apocrypha) and the Christian
Bible palpably differ in authority from, say, gnostic gospels, such
as the Gospel of Judas, which is flagrantly fantastic and deliberately contrarian. Since this little essay is mainly about pagan
myth, I shall stray into the Bible-related answer to the second
question with a testimonial and then have done with the Bible as
a canonical source.
Eva Brann is a tutor and former dean at St. John’s College in Annapolis.
*Cato the Elder: “Hold onto things, the words will follow.” Quoted in
Jane Hirshfield’s essay “The Question of Originality,” in Nine Gates:
Entering the Mind of Poetry (New York: Harper Perennial, 1998).
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers (1933-1943) is the
most expansive re-telling of the Hebrew Bible I know of, twentysix chapters of Genesis (24-50), roughly thirty-five pages, expanded more than fifty-fold into eighteen-hundred pages. As far
as I can tell, this meticulous detailing, this exposé of the human
story behind the sacred story and of events not only on the living
earth and its terrestrial underworld, but also in a heaven of disaffected angels, does not deviate one jot or tittle from the given
Biblical fact, what you might call the life-structure of the twelve
brothers and their one father and several mothers, nor are Mann’s
thousand-and-one concrete realizations of the laconic original in
any way factually incompatible with it. This disciplined faithfulness, I will claim below, imparts to the retelling a pithy vitality
that a looser treatment would dissipate.
2. What can I mean by the “vital facts” of a mythical being? Here
is an anecdote that intimates what is meant by a fact:
Clemenceau, French prime minister from 1917-1920, during a
friendly discussion with a representative of the Weimar Republic
about what historians might write concerning German guilt for
the First World War, said: “This I don’t know. But I know for certain that they will not say that Belgium invaded Germany.” Facts,
when ascertainable, are interpretation-proof residues of reality.
By “vital” facts I mean biographical data of that sort.
Where are the facts of myth to be found? In the canonical account, the gold-standard telling. I will give an example of divergent facts in different texts, which bear on the biographical
armature of Helen—the Helen of whom Marlowe asked: “Was
this the face that launch’d a thousand ships, / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?”
Stesichorus, a prolific sixth-century B.C. poet of a wholly
lost oeuvre, wrote, conventionally, of a Helen who went to Troy.
For this imputation on her respectability, the gods blinded him
until he produced a palinode, a counter-song of retraction (retold
by Plato in Phaedrus 243), in which she never was in Troy, but
was rescued from her abductor Alexander in Egypt by its king.
Homer, we may infer, refused this retraction, which would have
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nullified his Iliad—and remained blind. The counter-canonical
tale, in which Troy harbored a phantasm of Helen, is accepted by
Herodotus (Persian War, 2.112 ff.). His motive is, I think, to relegate to the status of “mythical” in the derogatory sense this early
West-East incursion. It is mere pre-history; history begins with
the datable antecedents to the East-West invasion of the Persian
War. Euripides later picks up this version in his Helen, a romance.
3. Now why is Homer’s version the standard reference? How can
I know that? Well, first he precedes Stesichorus by roughly a century, so the later writer is being reactive, derivative. Second,
Homer’s poems were saved, presumably deservedly. These are,
however, mere appeals to circumstance. The truly telling argument appeals to Homer’s greatness and the consequent poignant
actuality of his people.
I aver that books come in an arguable continuum of judgment-categories from really bad, through enjoyably competent,
to seriously good. But “great” is a category discontinuous with
this spectrum; it breathes in a different ether. The criteria are, in
fact, specifiable, although here only in abbreviated fashion: it is
sufficient to observe that the band of those who have actually
read the books in question tends to come together over their classification. For example, despite Hesiod’s wintry charm, I, at least,
have never heard anyone argue that he is seriously comparable
to Homer.
Why not? What propels Homer, for those who have savored
him line by line, into a darling of the gods who blinded him not
as a punishment but to make him the fitter a conduit for the
Muses’ song—an artful “maker” (Greek: poietēs) of epic poetry,
yet not out of matter created by himself, but from fully formed
figures imparted to him by the Musical divinities (a distinction
elaborated below, in II.3 and 4).
Take this very case—Helen. Stesichorus’s Helen is the
choice-less victim of an abduction, perhaps a rape. This Helenversion saves her reputation but at the expense of her vitality.
Homer’s Helen is in every respect fully actual: She is, before her
escapade as she is after her recapture, tired of her limp husband
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Menelaus. She willingly runs off with the pretty-boy Alexander,
taking along Spartan treasure and leaving behind her baby-girl.
A real abductor would have forced her to bring the child, a valuable house slave, as we learn in the Odyssey (14.447). Helen is
indefeasibly seductive—she will make up to Alexander’s brother
Hector in Troy and beguile Odysseus’s son Telemachus in
Sparta—but she never likes the man she’s with. A funny line in
the mostly unfunny Iliad comes after she has watched her present
man skedaddle from the single combat with her husband, the contest arranged to end the Trojan war then and there. She has been
watching it from Ilium’s topless towers (or rather high walls) and
Aphrodite comes to her with an order: “Go to your man, he’s
waiting in your bedchamber.” And she says (at some length):
“Why don’t you go?” (3.395). This fatally beautiful, flagrantly
defective female is unsteady and willful and altogether a presence—the real Helen, a woman who makes choices, bad ones.
At home in Sparta she could have bid the charming Trojan prince
a suppressedly tearful good-bye. And he would have seen enough
to make that devastating choice, the so-called Judgment of Paris,
that threw the goddesses into the war-mode. This heedless preference for the mortal Helen over three immortals expressed by
Priam’s most light-weight son is, incidentally, alluded to only in
one line, late in the Iliad (24.28) and in very vague language not
naming Helen; clearly Homer thinks it’s a very subsidiary cause
for his war. So Helen’s vitals are not to be tampered with, unless
lots of evidence is adduced. —She was in Troy, all right.
4. Some texts are excused from this obligation to preserve factuality. For example, Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), in bulk the post-pagan
counterpart to Mann’s post-biblical Joseph, is not to be held to
any fact, but can be as factlessly atmospheric as the author likes,
because Ulysses is not Odysseus in his own place and time; rather
Bloom is the Jewish-Irish reincarnation, the avatar of a remote
pagan.
Similarly Kazantzakis’s Odyssey: A Modern Sequel (1938),
a continuation grafted onto the twenty-second book of the
Odyssey, is a deliberate fantasy, a contravention of Homer’s ac-
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count of the hero’s return. In this epic, Odysseus returns for
good—a final return confirmed by a last short voyage in which
the sailor takes leave of his odysseian travels by going way inland, there to build a sailor’s cenotaph. Kazantzakis’s willful rewriting of the Odyssey, three times the length of the Homeric
epic, pays a price: This new, entirely modern—here meaning indeterminately straying—Odysseus and his wildly fantastic pilgrimage are difficult to take in (and I can’t pretend to have gotten
far). Moreover, this new Odysseus, who takes off into the wild
blue yonder, introduces a duplicity, a rending, into the mythical
world: There are now two Odysseuses. This doubling is not the
same as two perspectives on one character. For example, we may
ask whether Aeschylus’s Clytemnestra commits an assassination
or performs an execution and if his Orestes commits a vengeful
matricide or performs a divinely-ordered retribution—but only
if there is one queen and one son about whom we ask.
5. So Homer is not one of many, an idiosyncratic poetaster and
lax researcher who failed to acknowledge alternative versions.
His Helen is the Helen, not because, as I shall claim below, he
concocted, conflated, composed her cleverly, but because she
came to him. One way to put this is that, as he lived, blessedly,
with a tradition of tales from which to harvest concretely present
detail for his figures as well as hints of immemorial depth, so he
was unburdened by the scholar’s notion of “literature,” which replaces the natural coherence of the imaginative world with the
learned administration of written texts. His highly formal and
consequently very expressive prosody, his clever punning and
sparely-expressed psychological complexity, are only embellishments spun out of his artistry. —His people come from elsewhere
and they bring their own inimitable souls and their proper eventfulness. He holds on to his people and the words do come: Res
tene, verba sequentur.
II. Canonical Revisioning: How and Why?
1. From the writer’s perspective, adherence to the prototype is
profitable because the unconstrained, uncontained imagination
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goes flaccid; it becomes tautly concentrated when encased by the
cincture of fact.
2. From the story’s perspective, one might well ask “what’s the
difference?” as long as the tale is well told. Well, it makes a great
difference for the epic world, the world of the imagination, into
which the story taps. In bringing an invented alternative, an innovation, into this world, the writer, as I said above, rends it, tears
its fabric—for the pagan myths form a coherent universe in their
own time and place. Now there will be two homonymous but different beings, both now vagrants in their territory, vying for legitimacy. There seems to me to be an obligation for latter-day
writers to integrate their re-telling into its world—or why call
your creation “Helen”? Two Helens offend against Ockham’s
Razor by needlessly multiplying entities—a mere misdemeanor
in the realm of logic but a sort of sin against the land of the imagination.
3. Once the factual frame is subverted, the discipline is gone and
mere invention supervenes—that ludicrous human arrogation of
divinity called “creativity.” The tale now issues not from the character’s essence but from the writer’s, the faux-creator’s, invention. No longer does this author call on the Muses—“Sing,
goddess, the wrath” and “Speak to me, Muse, of the man”— but
on his own “creativity,” and all too often that piddling confection,
a literary creation, comes forth. Not, however, I hasten to say, inevitably, for human invention and artifice too can produce clever
and convincing works. So let me repeat here how a maker-poet
differs from a creator-poet. The former applies his well-trained
artistry to received material, of which more below (II.4); the latter
imitates God by making something out of nothing—in modem
parlance, out of his unconscious.
4. Disregard of Homer’s givens is an invitation to what appears
to me the most deleterious mode for making fictions: subjectivity.
Put positively, the poets that seem to me to make the most vital
fictions, beings that have more life and surely greater longevity
than real people (or animals: what real dog has lived through the
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millennia that Odysseus’s old Argos has?), are objective reporters. Beings come to them, become manifest, and press to be
bodied forth. They appear, to be sure, in the imagination, but they
are not made by the imagination. The poet is to be credited for
his acute internal vision. It achieves his beings’ thereness: their
imaginative concretion and verbal articulation, their human-alltoo-human particularity and definitive description. That
Odysseus has a long torso and short legs is well-observed by
Homer and his vivid word pictures come from keen looking—
the kind of seeing that blindness fosters.*
There is a curious notion that poetry is self-expression: Well,
lyric poetry perhaps, but surely not epic or epic-derivatives, in
which the rare “I” is authorial, or better, reportorial, and not personal. There is a second strange idea that authors’ sufferings bring
gravity to their work. Well, if so, probably more for readers who
seek in fiction the warm motions of feeling rather than the cool
delights of imagination. To me it seems that the maker’s emotional vulnerabilities aren’t in it, at least not as generative principles; sympathy for victimized women, abhorrence for brutal
men, these are imported latter-day sensitivities, romantic in mode
and contemporary in content; so conceived, figures can’t come
into their own. Take, on the other hand, a case of an author clearly
in love: Tolstoy with Natasha Rostov, as actual a being, both as
an enchanting girl and as a dowdy, demanding mater familias, as
ever walked the earth. —Surely, she appeared to him first, and
he couldn’t help but love her. I can’t imagine that she was conceived to bolster the self-esteem of young wives thickening
around the middle.
There is, to be sure, good subjective fiction as well, but its
appeal is to readers’ personal sensibilities or their special interest
in the author. Such fictions tend to lack that poignant particularity
which is the facade assumed by universality in epics and novels.
In the course of the fifth century B.C., Odysseus seems to
have lost his Homeric standing—his vivid imaginativeness de*So the English Homer in his blindness sees and tells “of things invisible to mortal sight” (Paradise Lost 3.55).
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graded into self-serving lying, his ingenious versatility into base
scheming, his meaning-laden adventures into comic episodes.
Sophocles’s Philoctetes and Euripides’s satyr play, The Cyclops,
and minor pot-paintings are the evidence. Honest Homer gives
some cause for this view, to be sure, but why it took over, I don’t
know; perhaps Odysseus was regarded as a naturalized Athenian
and so fair game. But the Odysseus, Homer’s Odysseus, who has,
as the commander of his homeward-bound fleet, episodes of culpable obliviousness, and, as the returned repossessor of his
palace, a moment of murderous rampageousness, is accorded
some justification: sheer exhaustion on the seas, and once at
home, the discovery that his palace is infested by a hundred-plus
uninvited suitors who have eaten out his substance, plotted to
murder his son, and all but committed outrage against his wife.
The Homeric Odysseus is a dilatory but faithful husband, bound
to a wife who is his equal and partner; he is an ever-mindful parent who—as far as I know alone of all the heroes encamped before Troy—regularly refers to himself as a father, “the father of
Telemachus” (2.260, 4.354), a usually temperate and self-controlled man, and, above all, a great poet, the poet of his own
odyssey. To see him as repulsive is to put in suspension his full,
his objective, his primary Homeric being in deference to a preconceived sensibility.
5. What, then, is the function of human imagination in making
fictions, and particularly in filling out myths? I think that there
are two imaginative functions: one is like a workshop, the other
like a reception area.* The workshop is an internal place where
human artfulness goes to work on given material to curry and articulate it. The reception area is an internal place just waiting for
the Muses to present beings and the actions that spring from their
essence—that being a fancy way of saying outright what our con*Kant’s apparently similar “productive” and “reproductive” imagination
are toto caelo different, the first being a deep faculty for bringing together sensibility and understanding to make cognitive experience possible, the other being analogous to ordinary memory. See his Critique
of Pure Reason, B 181.
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temporaries find insupportably embarrassing: No one, no one
whosoever, has a non-evasive answer to the question where these
self-sustaining fictional beings come from. This I do know: that
their appearance in the imaginative chamber is what makes great
fictions objective—given rather than created. And that is precisely why it seems to me pusillanimous to refuse to consider a
theological explanation.
6. Another charge against subjectivity in myth-adaptation is that
it invites indeterminacy. For while objectivity is apt to let cheerfulness break out, the subjective mode tends to ally itself with
the suffering moods. Now objective suffering has some tragic
clarity, but subjective suffering tends to willful irresolution.
Irresolution, indeterminacy, is the via ignava, the “craven
way,” of the intellect; it is the enemy of openness, for it is a powerful pre-entrenchment. The mantra “Life is very messy” shifts
responsibility to a non-being, “Life”; in sober fact, it is people
who make messes, and people are meant to unmake them. Some
tragic dilemmas have no solution, but all human conditions have
a resolution: a way we come to deal with them, either by a masterful coping or by a determined resignation or by a decision to
take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them.
It seems to me that art, especially narrative art, should not be
so unlike human reality as to be terminally indeterminate, when
the human life-span is a concatenation of crises-plus-resolutions,
and the whole often reveals order in retrospect. So, also, then,
should works of art offer not escapism, to be sure, but some sort
of sublimation—which is but a sort of condition-transcending
conclusiveness.
7. Aristotle says that plot (mythos) is the source, and as it were,
the soul of tragedy, because tragedy is primarily an imitation of
actions, and therefore only secondarily an imitation of agents
(Poetics 1450a40 ff.). In other words, the event structure determines the character. That may be true of tragedies, which are
brief cut-outs of extended life, concentrating on an event and its
actors. Epics, however (perhaps not the anonymous bardic songs
but surely the attributed Homeric poems), which are not under
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the Greek one-day time-limitation customary for tragedy, but are
time-extensible ad libitum (Aristotle, Poetics 1449b8-9), may be
said to work in reverse: the character extrudes, so to speak, the
events. Here the person determines the myth, at least in its detailed realization: Its people act out who they are, and an old story
of one of those East-West women-stealings (which for Herodotus
are, as I said, the dubious pre-historic antecedents of the Persian
War) is turned by the canonically envisioned Helen-character into
a willful running-off. For real, round people, in life or fiction, are
not mere victims for long—and especially not in fiction, where
victim-types tend to make the plot peter out and thus to prevent
finalities. After all, waiting to be rescued is no life, and such
supine characters have no after-life either. Hence, one might
make it a rule of receptive imagining and so of fiction-writing—
a first bit of advice to authors-to-be: Before you even begin to
write, know what happens after your telling is done. For if you
don’t know that, you don’t know the meaning of your story. Real
characters must live out the afterlife you’ve made for them, and
their fate must backlight your story.
8. Even a great work, like Charlotte Bronte’s best, Villette, is diminished by willful indefiniteness: By the last page we do not
know whether Lucy Snowe will receive her intended husband
back, saved out of the tempest encountered by his returning ship,
or will be left with the cold comfort of being the directress of a
well-established girls’ boarding school. There are, to be sure,
heavy hints at a shipwreck, but that is because the author, while
reluctant to burden her long-suffering heroine with one more final
disaster, also wishes to capture for her story the romantic gravity
of ultimate misfortune. But it is not done in good faith; Charlotte
Bronte must know whether his proper mythos makes the man
emerge safely—or drown.
Terminal indeterminacy, abandoning the reader in medias
res, is not only irritating, it is irrealistic, for in real life M. Paul
either walks in the door of that pensionnat in the “clean
Faubourg” or he doesn’t. So also one of these options should turn
out to be a fact of the Muses’ tale; why, then, muddy the waters
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with that indecisively raging tempest at sea? Better to build in
some clear clues of eventuation; that done, it is, to be sure, a neat
trick of the story-telling art to finish before the conclusion, leaving it for imaginative readers and epigonous myth-makers to clue
out the fact.
III. Should there be myth-dilations?
One feature of a solid, well-rounded item of reality is that its substance is attended by millions of strange shadows, or conversely,
that it offers indefinitely many perspectives: angular ones, as the
observer circumambulates the object, radial ones, as the viewer
pans in for close-ups and beyond. Well-actualized beings of the
imagination are just the same. The Muse-delivered prototype entrains multitudes of re-tellings; for the captivated imagination
there is no end of new views.
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WHERE, Then, Is Time?
Eva Brann
Let me first explain my odd-sounding title. It is a variation on
the most famous question-and-answer about time ever posed. It
comes from the eleventh book of Augustine’s Confessions, published about 400 C.E.: This is his question: “What, then, is time?”
And this is his preliminary answer: “If nobody asks me, I know;
if I want to explain it to him who asks me, I don’t know.” But
that’s only the beginning. What follows is, to my mind, the deepest and most persuasive positive solution to the perplexity.
I
In modern times the most sophisticated and detailed answer is
given by Edmund Husserl in his book The Phenomenology of the
Consciousness of Internal Time, finished in 1917. It is essentially
an elaborated version of Augustine’s solution. Its title tells why
I have substituted “where” for “what” in Augustine’s famous
question: Time is, in both works, understood primarily as an
event within our soul (or, as it is called for the sake of scientific
respectability, the psyche). I might say here by way of clarification that “soul” is traditionally used for the power from which
emanate all the activities of life, from sense perception through
all kinds of thinking to the intuition of supra-sensory being, while
“consciousness” applies only to the part of life that is aware or
self-aware.
Now I hope you’ll forgive me if I do some more name-dropping. It’s for distinguishing a second answer to the question
“Where is time,” namely outside, in the world, in nature. Three
great names—apparently—stand for this location: Plato, Newton,
and Einstein.
Eva Brann is a tutor and former dean at St. John’s College in Annapolis.
This lecture was originally presented at the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. on 11 December 2015.
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Plato’s dialogue Timaeus (circa 360 B.C.E.) is, into modern
times, the classical astronomer’s very own work. The reason is
that it provides one set of conditions under which it is plausible
to make finite models of the world. That condition is that there
be a uni-verse, a well-ordered cosmos consisting of an encompassing starry sphere, an inner array of closed, non-intersecting
planetary orbits, including that of the sun, and a stable center for
the human observer, the earth. Of this world it is possible to produce a moving mathematical model called an orrery. And the reason we can model the world is that it is itself the incarnation of a
timeless ideal model, a mathematical paradigm for an incarnation
that is the work of a divine craftsman.
Time is built into this cosmic universe by the god, who, upon
having “thought of making a certain movable image of eternity,”
at once so ordered the heavens that they were “an eternal image
going according to number, which we have given the name Time.”
In other words, the whole cosmos is a clock, whose starry sphere
is a moving dial at night and the tip of whose hand is the planet
Sun, marking out the hours of the day by its positions in the sky
or by the shadows it causes the style of a sundial to cast.
Next, Newton, who states very definitively in his Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy of 1687, his Principia, that
there is an “Absolute, true and mathematical time,” an equable,
independent flux, distinct from that relative time which is only
the measure of some, presumably reliable, even motion.
And finally, in his introduction of special relativity, the 1905
paper “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” Einstein says
boldly that for local time, the definition of time can simply be
“the position of the small hand of my watch” (I, para 1). In other
words, time is what the clock tells.
These three understandings of the source of time seem certainly to place it squarely outside of consciousness, into nature,
namely as the divinely made heavens themselves, or as a universal stream within them, or as a humanly made artifact, a clock.
However, the externality really only works for Einstein, for
whom time, local or astronomical, is operationally defined in
terms of a theory of measurement based on the postulates of rel-
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ativity, a measurement by which astronomically remote clock
time can be compared with local time. But even in that case it
isn’t clear whether time so defined is established as external or
rather abolished altogether, being a mere designation for locations on an analogue dial or a digital register.
One more name here, actually the earliest to do away with
time: Aristotle, in the fourth book of his Physics (after 335 B.C.E.),
defines time as the counted number of a locomotion according
to before and after. In other words, time is no visible or sensed
something, such as a designated heavenly appearance or a pervasive flux, but just an activity of counting passages. And, as I
said, it seems to me that Einstein’s positivist, boldly practical understanding has the same effect: It’s not time but stations of
movement, the position of mobiles like clock hands, that is real.
So if time is outside, it’s just one unit motion measuring out or
counting up another motion. But then again, counting is ultimately a psychic activity; if we didn’t have the experience of
counting up moments internally, we couldn’t interpret a digitally
displayed aggregate as time that has passed.
It’s even worse with Plato’s and Newton’s view of time. Consider this: Some of the greatest works at the beginning of the sciences of nature are theologies. Certainly the Timaeus introduces
a divinity, a divine artificer. But above all, so does Newton’s
Principia. He devotes its final pages to an exposition of God in
Nature which ends with the words: “And thus much concerning
God; to discourse of whom from the appearances of things, does
certainly belong to Natural Philosophy.”
In his Optics Newton says, moreover, that these appearances
betoken an incorporeal Being “who in infinite Space, as it were
in his sensorium, sees the things themselves intimately.” He
means that space is that part of God’s soul in which he receives
sensory impressions—presumably including primarily the temporal flux, which could, perhaps, be understood as his stream of
consciousness.
So also does Plato in the Timaeus ultimately put time inside
the soul, an encompassing world soul: For his divine craftsman
wraps the cosmos with bands of soul-stuff, structured by musical
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ratios so as to impart rationality and beautifully proportioned motion to the world within. In this strange and wonderful cosmology, the soul is the cincture, the sash of the world’s body.
The point I’m making is that if you ask the question: “Is time
internal or external?,” there appear to be some great scientists
who believe the latter, but if you ask it differently: “Is time in the
world or in consciousness, the number of such believers is reduced, because they think that the world itself is comprehended,
activated, by a sort of soul. And, as I said, there are those who
reduce going time to the counting of passage and told time to the
number pointed at on a dial (which is itself a motionless imitation
of a celestial circuit) or displayed on a screen (which is a lifeless
imitation of a soul seen counting). In effect, they too do away
with time as a distinctive “something.” It is nothing but one motion used to measure another.
II
The questions “What or where is time” now seem to need to become ultimate, to demand: “Is there time at all?” Perhaps a version of more immediate interest to you is: Is the dimension “t”
really needed in formulas of physics? I have tried to read books
like Julian Barbour’s The End of Time (2000), whose high level
arguments for the abolition of time from physics I am not competent to understand. But there is a very elementary consideration
along the same lines: Diagrams in elementary kinematics tend
to get loci of paths by plotting distance against time, but time itself is represented by distance, the t-axis (Galileo, Two New Sciences, Book IV, Theorem 1). Now most objects we symbolize,
we re-present in the dimension in which they actually exist, be
they visual, that is spatial, or auditory or tactile. For example,
the eight-sided sign that verbally says STOP, or crosses out motion
with the cross-symbol X, is itself in the plane dimension of space,
and that, in turn, is the dimensionality of the viewing plane of our
vision—for the third dimension is an experiential inference from
the two-dimensional picture plane onto which sight-lines from the
depths of space are projected—ultimately our retina. But when an
item is not representable in its own physical dimension (because
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it has none), be it an idea, an angel, or infinity, we are alerted that
something about it is not, so to speak, kosher. And all the images
of time I know of are indeed either spatial extensions marked by
selected now-points or registered counts of sensory pulses from
heart beats down to atomic periods.
But if that’s the only way to get hold of time, then time has,
as I said, been nullified: It’s just a way of measuring something,
say, life lived or ground covered, by means of the continuous motion of some uniformly moving mobile or the continual accumulation of some equably occurring events.
Are these notions a scientist needs to worry about? Well, no,
the realm in which questions of Being or Nonbeing are at home
is not a venue for result-oriented research. It’s a place to park
questions that need to be bypassed when you have engaging and
preoccupying research to do. They’ll keep there for the time
when you can’t help yourself because you really want to understand the postulated conditions of science, which cannot themselves be science.
The American psychologist William James knew as much
about the human soul as about the scientific psyche. I mentioned
“Phenomenology” before, when I cited Husserl’s work on internal time. Phenomenology is the careful description of the constitution of consciousness. I believe that James was actually the
transatlantic founder of this European movement, because I cannot think of a more acute analysis of our internal life than he presents in his short Psychology of 1892. In the Epilogue to this
classic he says plainly and candidly what we all need to hear. He
regards himself as a natural scientist and takes that to involve two
postulates: 1. Determinism—that all events are rigidly constrained by the laws of nature, and 2. Atomism—that the stuff
participating in these events consists of massy elementary particles, which are in force relations to each other. These claims applied to psychology make it a science and the psyche a naturally
constrained entity. In effect this means that our physiology determines our psychology.
Ethics, James then says, makes a counterclaim: Our wills are
free. Scientists do not concern themselves with spontaneity and
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freedom. Then he goes on: “The forum where they hold [such]
discussions is metaphysics. Metaphysics means only an unusually
obstinate attempt to think clearly and consistently.” He continues:
A specialized scientist’s “purposes fall short of understanding
Time itself . . . and as soon as one’s purpose is the attainment of
the maximum of insight into the world, the metaphysical puzzles
become the most urgent of all.”
III
So let me launch into one account of time that I find both in accord with experience and elegant in its presentation. It is that of
Augustine, with which I began. I am not quite sure if his understanding is metaphysical or theological. I’ve never read a great
theologian about whom I was clear whether he was more metaphysician or more believer—probably each for the sake of the
other: “I believe so I may understand” says Anselm in his Proslogion of the later eleventh century—and, though he denies it, perhaps the converse is true as well. Allow me to point out that
scientists do just the same: They accept postulates on faith so that
they may do research, and they do research so that they may find
a truth.
If it is the case that time never makes its appearance out in
the world but only motion is in evidence, then either time is not
or it is in the only other venue of which I can think, inside our
soul. As one of our seniors (Maxwell Dakin) put it to me when I
took him to lunch: “We aren’t in time, but time is in us.” For Augustine time is internal psychologically but also external theologically. When physical time has been shown to lack all physical
evidence and therefore to be scientifically void, it might still be
theologically real.
Augustine’s manuscripts contain no diagrams, as far as I
know. Yet his exposition of time seems eminently diagrammable,
and that’s how I’ll present it—to be internally imagined rather
than externally projected.
Inscribe, then, in the mental field of your imagination an upright line. Make it finite in length, for it is to stand for your mortal
soul, but also indefinite, for it is to represent that expansible stor-
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age, the part of the soul called the memory, and also those forward-projected images termed expectations. That is to say, points
on it are moments of memory, long ago or recent, and also hopes
and fears, near or far off.
Now set this perpendicular across a horizontal straight line.
That line will be quite definitely finite, for it represents the world
moving from the week of its creation to the last judgment and
the somewhat less well-defined end-time: Solvet saeclum in favilla, “Secular time will dissolve into ashes,” as goes the sacred
text, the Requiem. The crossing, it would be the “origin,” the zero
point (if we were to think of this picture anachronistically as a
diagram of Cartesian x- and y-axes) represents the location where
we, our aware soul or consciousness, take place, so to speak,
where we are actually present in and to the ongoing world as its
participating eye-witnesses. The part of the psychic upright below
the world-line represents the past, all the memories left by the
passing present that have been pushed down, point by memorypoint, into the deeper past, way back to earliest childhood. The
part of the upright above the world-line represents what we might
call “future-memory” or expectations, our projection of images,
drawn from modified memory, onto the future motions of the
world. The closer to the origin, the present, the sooner and more
likely are our predictions to come about and the more effective
are our anticipatory decisions.
So far this is a plane figure, but there is also a line through the
origin into the third dimension. Augustine calls this z-axis extensio,
which means roughly “outreach.” It represents the access we have
to unmoving timeless realms, such as mathematics, eternal verities,
and, above all, to the Divinity, whose time is the so-called “standing now” (nunc stans) of theology, within which our moving world
is an infinitesimal interlude. “Extension” is thus our stretching toward immortality, and it has no definable extent.
The upright soul-axis, on the other hand, he calls “distention.” By the z-axis we reach out beyond ourselves; by the x-axis,
our consciousness, we are distended, prolonged, so to speak,
within ourselves. Though we live in zero-time, within the present
moment, on the cusp of now, we carry above and below this
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crossing of world and awareness all our past in memory and our
future in expectant imagination. Though pointillistic beings in
actual world-presence, we are all there simultaneously in temporally ordered memory and expectation. We contain all the time
there is for us individually, all our past and all our future, present
within us. So I will quote Augustine’s famous formulation of exclusively internal time. He says:
Such three [past, present, future] are indeed in our
soul and elsewhere I do not see them. The present
of what has gone by is memory, the present of what
is present, eyewitness, the present of what is future,
expectation. (11.20)
The future, therefore, is not a long time, for it is not,
but the long future is merely a long expectation of
the future. Nor is the time past a long time, for it is
not, but a long time past is merely a long memory
of past time. (11.28)
In my youth I was an archaeologist, digging up the past in
Greece. You astronomers are, similarly, the archaeologists of the
universe, the experts of experts in pastness. Nothing comes to
your eyes but what is aeons in the past.
How then can Augustine say to us that the past that is not
specifically ours as memory has passed away? Well, if I dig up,
say, an Attic cooking pot, rough, undecorated, and with a blackened bottom, that pot is not past but present. The same for the
stars of which you capture evidence in your observatory. What
makes the pot a survival of the past, the kind called “historical
evidence,” is what might be called external memory. The fact that
the pot is deep beneath the earth’s surface, buried in strata that
are analogous to the soul’s memory stratification doesn’t help to
make it past; its thereness is still now. But the fact that there are
written epics and histories and other transmitted memories of the
“glory that was Greece,” together with some common sense
which tells me that they too boiled their beans—those circumstances make me infer a past beyond my own birth, a past-pot,
so to speak, made 2,500 years before I was born.
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I think it must be the same for you: You have ways of calculating the distance of the starry objects you focus on and you
know the travelling speed of the signals they emit, and so you
calculate your way back into a past that is, in fact, over: That
past, however, is now for you or it is not at all. There is an argument that world time must be real because it comes in different
configurations: The orbital times of classical Newtonian dynamics are cyclical and reversible. You can run the heavenly clock
backwards without damage to the laws of nature. And there is the
so-called “arrow of time” for a thermodynamic understanding of
the world as progressing, or rather deteriorating, into disorder in
the absence of shots of energy. And there is the theological view
I just referred to, in which the universe occupies a stretch of time
inserted into an atemporal eternity with a dramatic first week and
a less clear-cut end. This theological time-line is mirrored in cosmology by the claim that time has a spectacular beginning but a
fizzling end, if any. I should add here quickly that I am not pretending to understand these temporal possibilities. I just read
about them. But this I do see: All these theories are actually about
the measurements of motions and in them time may be a convenient symbolic dimension, but it’s not a substantial being; the present alone, our being there, is real. It is not time that displays
diverse qualities but particles of matter that obey different laws
of motion. Augustine, it seems to me, saves our sense that we
ourselves are temporal in the absence of any evidence that nature,
the world of bodies in motion, is so.
Let me, finally, speak of a culminating clarification Augustine
has accomplished. He has explained why time is naturally thought
of as having three phases. The explanation is in terms of three psychic capacities: In our memory we store away in a time-generating
order reproducible moments of the world’s motions and events
that have come to our attention. Those observations yield a past
with a chronological structure. Through sensory awareness we
live now, in an actual, if momentary, presence. That is our present,
our now. And in our imagination, which is memory in its transfiguring mode, we prefigure, expectantly, in hope, fear, or resignation, things that might come to be. That’s the future.
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IV
Allow me to end with a particular preoccupation of mine. When
I say that only the now is real, I may seem to claim that life in
the “just now” is the life there is. The Latin word for “just now”
is modo, from which comes our word “modernity.” Living in the
“just now,” in expectation of the next “just now,” does seem to
be a primary feature of modern life with its obsession for the
short-term, for speed and novelty. In fact, the adverb “now” is
etymologically related to “new” (Indo-European: newo). I’m all
for making the most of our moments, but not so much insofar as
they confront us with that hard-edged brash factuality, called reality. I have more faith in actuality, which I think of as bringing
vibrant significance to our lives. But that’s a long story not for
today, so let me dwell instead for a moment on the comparative
residual powers of the past and the future.
The past has passed away; we say “it was.” But the verb was
is a tensed form of is. For my part, I do not believe that anyone
can succeed in recalling the past into the present, as a German
historian (Leopold von Ranke) famously demanded of history: It
should render the past “as it really, effectively had been” (wie es
wirklich [or eigenlich] gewesen ist). That is impossible for two
reasons: First, because, since a human day has 24 x 60 = 1440
minutes, called “specious presents” by William James (Psychology (1892), Chapter XVII), meaning lived moments, an adequately real history would have to take account of and pass
judgement on each of these moments, both psychic and physical,
of every dead human being as well as every resultant group activity—which would be a practically infinite task even if the material were actually accessible. And second, it is impossible
because I believe that a thoughtful person coming to grips with
the past will have to go schizophrenic, that is, “split-minded,” in
order to entertain the following, unavoidable dual persuasion: On
the one hand, it is simply not determinable that there is a past
that has actually happened, because the conduct of human individuals, like the behaviors of electrons, may be terminally uncertain for an observer in a way analogous to the Uncertainty
Principle of physics: The historian’s observational perspective
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cannot help but suppress one feature of a situation in focusing on
another. Or even worse: Perhaps human life is just not ultimately
determinable because of our incurable inability to penetrate people’s interior or, yet worse, because human beings are in themselves indeterminable, perhaps more radically than electrons.
On the other hand—and here’s what splits the mind—who
can avoid believing that there really was one way it had actually
been in the past, that some things were the case and others not?
Thus when some revisionists were arguing that the Germans had
not indisputably initiated the First World War, the French statesman Clemenceau said something to this effect: “At least no one
will claim that on the night of August 3, 1914 the Belgians invaded Germany.”
So, all that said, whether the established past is always a tiny
selection of the real past, or the real past is itself in principle uncertain, either within clear limits or with large latitude, it seems
extreme to say that the past is totally not. There is a roughly recoverable past, especially by means of written works. And (I want
to say this briefly but emphatically) the depth and coherence of
the present depends on being mindful of this past. That too is a
subject for a different lecture.
So I come to my concluding expression of personal opinion.
Just as it seems to me essential to coherent living to ascribe actuality
to the past, so it seems to me essential to effective action to deny it
to the future: The future is far more not than the past. In fact it is a
big Nothing—at least the human future is just a nonbeing.
I am an amateur reader of anthropology, and here’s a pertinent anthropological discovery from the Andes.* In most cultures
the future is thought of as confronting us, coming toward us, existing ahead of us. In the Andes of South America there is, however, a language, Aymaran, and its speakers for which the future
comes up from behind. These people use the Aymaran word for
*Rafael Nuñez and Eve Sweetser, “With the Future Behind Them: Convergent Evidence From Aymara Language and Gesture in the Crosslinguistic Comparison of Spatial Construals of Time,” Cognitive Science
30 (2006): 1-49.
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“back” to refer to future events and gesture behind them to indicate its coming. This way is highly unusual, but to me it makes
perfect sense. There is a future that is fixed from the past, that
future which is predictable because past events are determinately
causative. Thus having a bad drought in the summer just behind
you makes a poor harvest in fall to come a practical certainty.
Above all, celestial motions, which are fixed by natural law, are
highly predictable; thus an Ephemeris gives the coordinates of
celestial bodies way into the future. That’s a way of saying that
the future is determined from behind us, since prior causes determine posterior effects—certainly in large-scale nature.
There’s a huge “but.” Determinists will argue that we human
beings are also bits of nature and entirely determined by brain
action. If we only knew the brain’s condition in every detail we
could entirely predict a human being’s action. Never mind the
practical impossibility of complete information; if we are altogether parts of nature, absolute prediction is in logical principle
possible, and impracticable only in mere fact. Then there is indeed a future, though not one coming at us but one issuing from
our circumstances.
But it is possible that we have a capacity for spontaneity of
action based on liberty of choice and freedom of decision. If that
is the case, then the human aspect of the future is indeed a great
big Nothing until we, here and now, decide to give it the shape
we choose. It may be that the antecedent causes of choice, which
are trains of thought, are even more exigently binding than the
laws of nature, but they include an element of weighing and judging that is inviolably ours. If there is this parallel track of free
choice, then this is what those future-gurus deserve who undertake to tell us what the future holds and sends at us, “like it or
not,” and who advise us to prepare for and accommodate to these
futuristic advents, even if we judge them to be bad—on pain of
being overrun by them. They deserve to be told that they are trying to invade the realm of our expectations and intending to highjack our imaginations. In other words they are attempting to
curtail our freedom, and their bid to have us bow to their inevitabilities should be met with a counter-bid for them to butt
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out. For to the question “where is time?” the answer is: For sure
not in the future; the human future is nonexistent until we imagine it and act accordingly—and by then it’s already the present.
Let me hasten to say as my final point: Our free choice,
which is, as I’ve said, sure to be ultimately quite constrained by
the demands of truth-seeking thought, has at least an initial moment of spontaneity, when we focus our attention on a subject
and commit ourselves to thinking it through—on its terms. This
spontaneity, this freedom, seems to me to be anchored in two,
somewhat iffy facts. One is the powerful, personal experience of
being my-self, my own mistress, unavoidably in charge. The
other is the powerful public sense of not belonging entirely to
myself but of willingly surrendering part of me to my community—and that this is a particularly telling practice of freedom.
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Music and the Idea of a World
Peter Kalkavage
“Music, too, is nature.”
—Victor Zuckerkandl,
Sound and Symbol
This lecture explores the differences between two perspectives on
music: one ancient, one modern. The texts I have chosen are
Plato’s Timaeus, a dialogue that freshmen will read in seminar toward the end of the year, and Schopenhauer’s The World as Will
and Representation, a great book not on the program. Each of
these works presents an all-embracing account of the world—a
cosmology—that highlights the bond between world and music.
I hope that my study in contrast will lead us to a deeper understanding of music as it relates to the whole of all things, our human
condition and our happiness. I also hope that it will show why
music is the most comprehensive of the liberal arts, and why it is
the case that to speak about music is to speak about everything.
My talk has three parts. In the first, I focus on the central role
that music plays in Timaeus’ cosmological optimism. According
to Timaeus, the world of Becoming is a beautiful work of art
ruled by the supreme goodness of intelligent divinity. In Leibniz’s
phrase, it is the best of possible worlds. In the second part, I turn
to Schopenhauer’s cosmological pessimism, according to which
the world is not the shining forth of intelligent purpose but the
work of a blind urge that Schopenhauer calls the will. Music, for
Schopenhauer, is the most potent and truthful of the arts because
it is a “copy [Abbild] of the will itself.” In the third part of my
talk I offer, by way of a coda, some thoughts on music and world
in the context of the Bible.
Peter Kalkavage is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis. This lecture was first presented in Annapolis on 6 November 2015.
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Part One. Rootedness and Musicality
The Timaeus is Plato’s most overtly musical work. Music is
prominent in other dialogues as well, notably in the Republic and
Laws, and in the Phaedo, where Socrates calls philosophy “the
greatest music” (61A); but it is so much a part of the form and
substance of the Timaeus that the dialogue may be said to be all
about music.
The projected drama of the Timaeus is a performance by
three illustrious political men, whose task is to entertain Socrates
with a feast of speech: Timaeus of Italy, Hermocrates of Sicily
and Critias of Athens. A fourth was supposed to have joined them,
but he is a no-show. The men who did show up form a trio of
poet-rhetoricians, who have agreed to gratify Socrates’ desire to
behold his best city, which he had described on the previous day,
engaged in the words and deeds of war (19B-20C). The star of
the show is officially Critias, who boasts about how he will harmonize the particulars of Socrates’ city in speech with those of
an ancient unsung Athens. This Athens of old, Critias claims, really existed once upon a time and nobly fought against the insolent kings of Atlantis. But Timaeus upstages Critias with his long
speech about the cosmos and proves the superior poet. How can
one top a magnificent, richly detailed speech about the whole of
all things—the cosmology that is the unmatched model for all
cosmologies to come?
Early in the Timaeus, we hear about the importance of music
in human communal life, as Critias recollects what his greatgrandfather and namesake experienced when he was a young boy.
This Critias joined other boys in a music contest in which they
sang poems recently composed by the lawgiver Solon (21B). The
contest was part of the boys’ initiation into their family tribe and
took place during a festival in honor of Dionysus, the god of intoxication. It depicts the very moment in which impressionable
youths are officially rooted in their tribe, and by extension their
city. Through the act of singing, the opinions of Solon take root
in these young souls and become authoritative. They become
things not merely heard and obeyed but imbibed, incorporated
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and cherished. A similar ritual enrooting is at work, as we shall
see, in the speech of Timaeus.
We know from the Republic that music, which for the Greeks
includes poetry, is dangerous. Because music has the power to
shape the soul for good or ill, to make it orderly or disorderly, an
account of the best regime must include a critique of music as
one of its prime components. At one point Socrates tells us why:
So, Glaucon, . . . isn’t this why nurture in music is most
sovereign? Because rhythm and concord most of all sink
down into the inmost part of the soul and cling to her
most vigorously, bringing gracefulness with them; and
they make a man graceful if he’s nurtured correctly, if
not, then the opposite (401D5-E1).1
The passage underscores the tremendous power of music and
shows why music is crucial to moral-political education. It recalls the final book of Aristotle’s Politics, which treats the musical education of those who are to be free human beings and
good citizens.
Plato and Aristotle realize that we are on intimate terms with
music. The intimacy verges on the supernatural, since music
seems to be a kind of magic that causes the listener to be held
and spellbound. Music, like Orpheus, enthrals. Aristotle observes
at the beginning of his Metaphysics that sight is the privileged
sense, the one that we hold most dear and that most reveals the
differences of things. Musical hearing can lay claim to another
kind of privilege. Music has an intense personal inwardness, an
immediate emotional effect and a power to form our character,
opinions and way of life. In moving our affections it moves our
whole being. This is the ground of the danger that music poses.
In music there is no safe distance between perceiver and perceived, as there is in sight. There is also no refuge: we cannot
turn away from music as we can from a thing seen, since music
is not spatially bounded but sounds everywhere. Moreover, in lis1. I have slightly modified the translation by Allan Bloom, The Republic
of Plato (New York: Basic Books, 1991).
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tening to a piece of music, we are not free to survey its parts at
will, as we can with an object that is seen, but must wait for a
moment to sound.2 The tones come when they want to. And yet,
listening to music is more than mere passivity, for it affects us
by virtue of its forms and structures. Listening, in other words,
is an act, in which we not only feel but also perceive. This is the
paradox that is music, which can overwhelm our reason and selfcontrol but always through the order and precision of its tones
and rhythms. To borrow terms made famous by Nietzsche, music
could not be Dionysian if it were not thoroughly Apollinian,
which it must be if it is to be an art at all.
As I mentioned earlier, Timaeus’ speech—or, as he famously
calls it, his “likely story” (29D)—is an effort to put the world of
Becoming in the best possible light. It is a defence of Becoming
in response to Socrates’ indictment in the Republic. In that dialogue Socrates tells Glaucon that genuine education turns the soul
away from Becoming or flux and toward the changeless realm
of Being (7.518C). It leads the potential philosopher out of the
cave of opinion and up into the sunlight of truth. The likely story
takes us in the opposite direction—from Being down to Becoming. It tells us how a craftsman-god, who is without envy and
very ingenious, and who gazed on archetypal Being, brought
order to the primordial chaos through a combination of providence and the beautiful structures of mathematics. Timaeus calls
his speech both a mythos or story and a logos or account. Socrates
calls it a nomos, which in Greek means law and song, as well as
custom and convention (29D). The word implies that Timaeus’
cosmology is a form of quasi-political music. This music estab2. For a discussion of the difference between seeing and hearing, see
Hans Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966): “For the sensation of
hearing to come about the percipient is entirely dependent on something happening outside his control, and in hearing he is exposed to the
happening . . . he cannot let his ears wander, as his eyes do, over a field
of possible percepts, already present as a material for his attention, and
focus them on the object chosen, but he has simply to wait for a sound
to strike them: he has no choice in the matter” (139).
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lishes our right relation to the cosmic whole whose offspring we
are. It makes us law-abiding citizens of the world—good cosmopolitans. By playfully re-enacting the birth of the cosmos,
Timaeus is attempting to persuade his listeners, Socrates in particular, that the world of body and flux, properly understood, is
worthy of our serious attention, emulation and praise. All the
mathematical constructions and stories are songs that commemorate the Great Founding. By “singing” these songs of law and
order, we celebrate our cosmic roots. Moreover, since the world
for Timaeus is a god (34B), physics comes on the scene as the
truest act of piety.
Musical references abound in the likely story. The primordial
chaos is said to be unmusical or out of tune (30A), and the movement of the stars resembles a choric dance (40C). The elusive receptacle or matrix—the cosmic “mother” who shakes the four
elemental bodies into their proper places when they wander, like
wayward children—gives the world a rhythmic sway (52C-53A).
The sway is evident in all cyclic movement: our heartbeat,
breathing and walking, in the vibrating string and pendulum,
swings and cradles, and the undulating surface of the sea. The
construction of the regular geometric solids is also music. Here
Timaeus ingeniously harmonizes these beautiful sphere-like
shapes—tetrahedron, octahedron, icosahedron and cube—with
the observable properties and behaviour of the four elements:
fire, air, water and earth (53D-E).
The greatest musical moment in the story is the construction
of the musical scale out of ratios of whole numbers (35A-36B).
It is based on the Pythagorean discovery that the intervals that
make up melody—octave, perfect fifth, perfect fourth, etc.—are
produced by string-lengths that are in small whole number ratios.
Much can be said about the god’s act of scale building, especially
in light of the problem it solves, namely, the natural incompatibility of some intervals with others. Here I must rest content with
a brief summary. Timaeus’ god builds the world soul out of musical ratios, having first mixed together forms of Being, Same
and Other. He then cuts and bends the scale-strip to form the rotation of the celestial sphere and the orbits of the planets (36B).
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These periodic movements, which constitute time, are not only
the music in the sky but also the reflections of divine thought,
whose image we carry around in our sphere-shaped heads.
For Timaeus, musicality is the sum of human virtue and the
ground of happiness. By musicality I mean the adjustment of all
our actions to the regular, periodic movements of the heavens.
To be virtuous and happy is to conform to the cosmic law and to
move in sync with the music of the whole. It is to live a life that
is in every respect well timed, symmetrical and balanced—the
life of a star. We achieve balance when, for example, in devoting
ourselves to study, we also make sure we get enough rest and
physical exercise (88A). The most essential human musicality
comes from astronomy. This is not because the beauty of the
whole is most apparent in the visible heavens, but because the
heavens are the home of thought in its healthiest, most regular
form. To think the heavenly motions, to discern the ratios in the
sky, is to be one with that condition of intellectual health and consummate musicality enjoyed perpetually by the world soul.
I have said that the likely story is a song that celebrates our
cosmic roots. But it is also the story of a fall. In the book of Genesis, there is creation and fall; in the Timaeus creation is fall. As
I noted earlier, world building starts at the top and goes down—
just like a Greek musical scale. It goes from Being to Becoming
and from the best things in the world to the worst. The lower,
subhuman animals are generated by intellectual devolution. This
is the process in which human beings lose their divine intelligence by having lived an acosmic, disorderly life and must reenter Becoming in an animal form suited to their moral and
intellectual degradation. The likely story begins with the heavens
and ends with shellfish, creatures that contain the souls of humans who in their previous lives exhibited what Timaeus calls a
“total lack of musicality” (92B).3 But even these lowest beings
enhance the beauty of the whole, since without them the cosmic
scale of life would lack its lowest notes and be incomplete.
3. Translations of the Timaeus are from Plato: Timaeus, trans. Peter
Kalkavage (Newburyport, MA: Focus Press, 2001).
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According to Timaeus, our souls originated as pure intellects,
each living in its own star. In being born, we become profoundly
disordered. We leave off being star-lords and become mindless,
inarticulate babies, beings incapable of controlling any of their
movements. That is why education is necessary—because, as
fallen stars, we must recover “the form of [our] first and best condition” (42D). Mathematical astronomy is the most important
part of education because it is the means by which we humans,
whom Timaeus calls heavenly plants, return to our roots in the
sky (90A). It is also the highest form of therapy. By engaging in
astronomy, the human intellect, which grew ill at birth, comes to
itself and recovers its circular movement, former health and
proper functioning as the guide and navigator of daily life. We
study astronomy so that by “imitating the utterly unwandering
circuits of the god [Cosmos], we might stabilize the wanderstricken circuits in ourselves” (47C). Music that is heard and felt
plays a similarly therapeutic role. The gods gave us music “not
for the purpose of irrational pleasure…but as an ally to the circuit
of the soul within us when it’s become untuned, for the purpose
of bringing the soul into arrangement and concord with herself”
(47D-E).
On this note of music as therapy, I conclude the first part of
my talk. I now turn to a very different account of music and
world.
Part Two. From Divine Circles to the Wheel of Ixion: Music
in a World of Woe
The first and main volume of The World as Will and Representation is divided into four books.4 Thomas Mann, the greatest admirer of Schopenhauer in the twentieth century, called it “a
symphony in four movements.”5 Mann, himself a cosmological
pessimist, was keenly sensitive to the role that music plays in the
work. In his essay on the philosopher, he observes that Schopen4. The second volume consists of supplements to the four books in Vol. 1.
5. “Schopenhauer,” in Thomas Mann: Essays, trans. H. T. Lowe-Porter
(New York: Random House, 1957).
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hauer, who was very musical, “celebrates music as no thinker has
ever done” by making music metaphysically significant. Mann
proceeds to speculate: “Schopenhauer did not love music because
he ascribed such a metaphysical significance to her, but rather
because he loved her.” For Mann, will rather than intellect is the
source of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics of music, where will signifies everything in us born of passion and feeling. The supremacy of will over intellect is the most important respect in
which the world of Schopenhauer differs from the world of
Timaeus.
As its title indicates, The World as Will and Representation
depicts the world as having two distinct sides or aspects. One
side, representation, is the topic of Book One. As representation
or Vorstellung, the world is everything that is vorgestellt, “placed
before” us and made present in the daylight of consciousness. Although a more accurate rendering of the word would be “presentation,” which suggests original coming-to-presence as opposed
to derivative imitation, I have chosen to keep the traditional term.
Representation is the realm of perceived objects—finite determinate things and all their properties, which appear in space and
time and interact according to the principle of sufficient reason,
that is, through the relation of cause and effect. Representation
is the world as a well-ordered surface. It is what most of us would
call the world simply.
Schopenhauer turns to the other, inner aspect of the world in
Book Two. He uses terms from Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason:
whereas representation is the world as appearance or phenomenon, will is the world as thing-in-itself or noumenon. Will, here,
is not a psychic faculty. It is not my will or your will, or God’s
will, since for Schopenhauer there is no God. Will is the universal
force and infinite striving that underlies all things and rises to
self-awareness in man. Schopenhauer calls the will “eternal becoming, endless flux” (164).6 As the world’s “innermost being”
and “kernel” (30-31), will is the source of meaning (98-99). Will
6. Numbers in parentheses refer to page numbers in the edition by E. F.
J. Payne (New York: Dover, 1969).
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reminds us that life is more than the cool perception of objects:
it is also feeling and care. Objects of representation are vessels
of my care. They are meaningful, important to me in all sorts of
ways. This object I desire and strive to possess, that one I avoid.
This event I hope for, that one I dread. This human being I love,
that one I despise. My body is the embodiment of my care. It is
the seemingly concrete reality to which I am intimately joined
and which I care about in a thousand ways. My living body reminds me that I am constantly in the condition of seeking to preserve my life and to stave off harm, pain, frustration and death.
My being and my life consist in striving to be and to live. I cannot
escape striving, not even when I sleep, for it is more obvious in
dreams even than in waking life that representations matter to me
and are the creatures of my care. Dreams are my hopes, fears,
anxieties and desires made into a private movie, often a surreal
one. Most of us would say that as a human being with a certain
nature I am subject to this care. Schopenhauer is far more radical:
for him, I am this care, this infinite striving to be and to live as
this individual with this body.
Dreams are to desire what the whole phenomenal realm is to
the noumenal will. Schopenhauer reminds us repeatedly that what
we call life is a dream. The will is not the cause of the world,
since causality operates only within the dream world of phenomena or appearances. There is no intelligible principle or intelligent
god (as there is for Timaeus) that is responsible for the natural
order. Nature is unaccountably there, just as human beings are
unaccountably there, “thrown” into existence. The will does not
cause nature but rather objectifies itself as nature—just as our
care objectifies itself in dreams. Hence the phrase, “the world as
will and representation.” The self-objectification of the will is
the basis of Schopenhauer’s cosmology. The will objectifies itself
in a fourfold way: as inorganic nature, plant life, animal life and
human life. Schopenhauer constructs an ingenious isomorphism
or analogy between these four grades of nature and the tones that
make up the major triad with its octave (153). The work of the
will is especially noteworthy in the case of our bodily parts,
which are so many ways in which the will objectifies itself:
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“Teeth, gullet, and intestinal canal are objectified hunger; the genitals are objectified sexual impulse; grasping hands and nimble
feet correspond to the more indirect strivings of the will which
they represent” (108). This striking rendition of the human body
is a modern counterpart to Timaeus’ outrageous stories about our
bodily parts, which are mythically represented as manifesting,
and ministering to, our souls. But whereas Timaeus is tongue-incheek, Schopenhauer is in deadly earnest.
The identity of will and meaning shows why music is metaphysically significant. As Schopenhauer writes in another work,
music, especially melody, “speaks not of things but simply of
weal and woe as being for the will the sole realities.”7 From the
standpoint of the will, being is meaning. Music is unique among
the arts because it depicts the inner world of care—pure meaning
apart from all objectivity. It represents not the rational world soul
but the passionate world heart.8 Music, moreover, is not an elitist
Pythagorean who speaks only to her learned inner circle but
rather the “universal language” that is “instantly understood by
everyone,” intuitively and without the aid of concepts (256).
In my account of the Timaeus I highlighted the therapeutic
function of astronomy and music, both of which minister to fallen
man. They are a corrective to the cosmic necessity of our having
been born as mortal beings subject to mortal flux and mindless
desire (42A ff.). Being born, for Timaeus, is in one sense a gift—
the gift of organic life. But it is also, for the reasons I mentioned,
our burden and our fate. Being born is a mixed blessing. For
Schopenhauer it is an outright curse. To be born is to become an
egocentric individual afflicted with insatiable desire, in particular
sexual desire. To be is to be subject to “the miserable pressure of
the will” (196). The will, as I noted earlier, is infinite striving—
7. Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. 2, trans. E. F. J. Payne (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1974), 430.
8. “The heart, that primum mobile of animal life, has quite rightly been
chosen as the symbol, indeed the synonym, of the will” (Vol. 2, 237).
The atheist Schopenhauer says at one point: “like God, [music] sees only
the heart” (Vol. 2, 449).
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striving with no ultimate good or end. Moments of contentment
and joy appear, but only as passing tones, ripples in a sea of frustration, ennui and renewed desire. To live is to suffer. Schopenhauer here reveals the hard edge of his pessimism and his “tragic
sense of life.”9 He cites approvingly poets like Calderon who define original sin as “the guilt of existence itself,” and who affirm
that it would be better never to have been born.10
Schopenhauer’s recurring image of life as suffering is the
wheel of Ixion. Ixion was King of the Lapiths. After being shown
hospitality by Zeus, he lusted after Hera and tried to seduce her.
For this attempted outrage Zeus bound Ixion on a wheel of fire
and consigned him to Tartarus. Only once did the wheel of torment stop—when Orpheus descended to the Underworld and
charmed its inhabitants with his song.11 This, for Schopenhauer,
is the human therapy that all fine art offers, in particular the art
of music. Music represents the will as thing-in-itself, meaning
apart from all things and pictures, and is for this reason metaphysically significant. But music also gives us momentary relief
from the fiery wheel on which we are bound, the wheel of infinite
longing. In music, as in all aesthetic contemplation, we are no
longer self-interested individuals but “pure, will-less subject[s]
of knowing,” subjects who are “lost in the object” (209). In art,
as Schopenhauer puts it, “We celebrate the Sabbath of the penal
servitude of willing; the wheel of Ixion stands still” (196).
The third part of Schopenhauer’s book is devoted to the arts,
which are beyond the principle of sufficient reason. This is evident in music, where tones, though tightly connected, have no
causal relation to each other. The opening phrase of Beethoven’s
9. The title of Miguel de Unamuno’s book.
10. Schopenhauer quotes from Calderón’s Life Is a Dream: “For man’s
greatest offence is that he has been born” (Vol. 1, 254). This is “the guilt
of existence itself”—original sin. Death is, in effect, the correction of an
error. Schopenhauer would say to the dying individual: “You are ceasing
to be something which you would have done better never to become”
(Vol. 2, 501).
11. Ovid, Metamorphoses 10.42.
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Fifth Symphony, for example, does not cause the second.12 Unconcerned with causality and deduction, art is the intuitive apprehension of the Ideas, which Schopenhauer takes from Plato,
for the most part from the Timaeus. The Ideas are the eternal archetypes of nature—the four grades of the will’s self-objectification that I mentioned earlier.13 In the human realm they are the
universals of experience. Shakespeare’s plays, for example, are
a distillation of what is eternally true of human life. In the complex ambition of Macbeth, jealousy of Othello and tragic integrity
of Cordelia, we behold archetypes of will at its highest grade.14
Art is therapeutic because, as the aesthetic contemplation of universal Ideas, art detaches us from the particular objects of our
care. That is why we take pleasure in even the saddest music,
which calls upon us us not to weep but to listen.
Art, however, is not an enduring release from Ixion’s wheel
and offers only “occasional consolation” (267). The fourth part
of Schopenhauer’s book takes us from artist to saint, who alone
is truly happy—if one can call resignation happiness. The saint
has neutralized the will to be and to live through the knowledge
that objects of care are nothing but illusion (451). He needs no
artworks. This neutralization of the will makes the saint good. In
the obliteration of his ego, he is released from his private suffer12. Schopenhauer makes this point in The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, trans. E. F. J. Payne (La Salle, IL: Open Court,
1974), 127: “In just the same way, the succession of sounds in a piece
of music is determined objectively, not subjectively by me the listener;
but who will say that the musical notes follow one another according
to the law of cause and effect?”
13. It is important to note how the Ideas for Schopenhauer differ from
how Plato describes them. For Schopenhauer, the Ideas cannot be genuine beings, for that would undermine the ultimacy of the irrational will.
They are simply eternal modes or ways in which the will objectifies itself. The Ideas are more like adverbs than nouns.
14. These archetypes recall Vico’s “imaginative universals.” See The
New Science of Giambattista Vico, trans. Thomas Goddard Bergin and
Max Harold Fisch (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988). See
Paragraphs 381 and 460.
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ings and free to take compassion on the suffering of other human
beings and even on that of animals (372).
I now turn to Schopenhauer’s metaphysics of music, which
appears in Volume One of his book and again in Volume Two.
These chapters contain the most fascinating discussions of music
one will ever read. They are an attempt to identify music as a
source of truth, indeed the deepest truth: “The composer reveals
the profoundest wisdom in a language that his reasoning faculty
does not understand, just as a magnetic somnambulist gives information about things of which she has no conception when she
is awake” (260). Schopenhauer illustrates his general ideas with
many references to specific musical phenomena. I shall address
only a few of them.
I begin with music as imitation. According to Plato and Aristotle, music, in its tones and rhythms, imitates the dispositions
and passions of the soul. As Aristotle observes in the Politics,
melodies and rhythms are “likenesses of the true natures of anger
and gentleness, and also of courage and moderation and all the
opposites of these and the other states of character” (1340a20).15
Aristotle is referring to the Greek musical modes—Dorian, Phrygian, Mixolydian, etc., which achieve their different effects
through a different placement of half steps in their scales. The
Dorian mode, Aristotle says, gives the soul “a moderate and settled condition,” whereas the Phrygian “inspires.” A difference in
mode can be heard in our familiar opposition of “bright” major
and “dark” minor. This huge musical difference hinges on no
more than whether there is a whole step or a half between the
second and third degrees of the scale. It is gratifying to hear
Schopenhauer, a philosopher, respond to this fact with fitting
amazement (261).
What Timaeus and Schopenhauer add to the imitative relation between music and soul is the connection between music
and world. We are responsive to music because the so-called external world has an interior, as do we, and is always already
15. Aristotle’s Politics, trans. Joe Sachs (Newburyport, MA: Focus
Press, 2012), 250.
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music-imbued. For Timaeus, music in the form of the diatonic
pattern—the recurring order of whole and half steps—is woven
into the fabric of the cosmic soul, of which our souls partake.
That is why we respond to the diatonic modes. We look with
longing at the stars because that is where our souls come from,
and we take delight in identifying Same and Other in the things
of the world because our souls are made of Same and Other. So
too, we welcome music into our souls because we detect in it the
inflections of our psychic modalities—our various soul possibilities. Where there is music and listener, music calls to music. It
is a case of sympathetic vibration grounded in the nature of the
ensouled cosmos.
Schopenhauer differs from Timaeus in his understanding of
interiority. He rejects the soul as a principle of being on the
grounds that it makes real what is in fact illusory, namely, our individuality.16 The principle of individuation in general, like the
principle of sufficient reason, applies only to the world of phenomena, which Schopenhauer regularly calls the “veil of Maya”
or illusion. In listening to music, we suspend our individuality
and are in touch with will as process rather than with a stable
mode of soul and character.
From a musical standpoint, Schopenhauer differs from
Timaeus by going beyond the Pythagorean idea of interval as
sensed ratio and treats music as the embodiment of tension or
force. This modern concept of force, also known as conatus or
endeavour, is prominent in the physics of Newton and Leibniz
and was introduced into natural science by Hobbes, who, like
Schopenhauer, rejects a highest good and depicts desire as an infinite striving “that ceaseth only in death.”17 Dissonance in music
is a kind of tension or force. As the vector-like impulse to move
in a definite direction, it is the analogue of desire.18 The suspen16. “[S]oul signifies an individual unity of consciousness which obviously does not belong to that inner being. . . . The word should never
be applied except in a metaphorical sense” (Vol. 2, 349).
17. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan 11.1.
18. “Hitherto, the concept of will has been subsumed under the concept
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sion is a good example of how dissonance works in music. In a
suspension, two lines or voices start out in consonance but then
produce dissonance when one of the voices moves while the
other holds its note. A resolution of the dissonance then follows.
Schopenhauer writes: “[Suspension] is a dissonance delaying the
final consonance that is with certainty awaited; in this way the
longing for it is strengthened, and its appearance affords greater
satisfaction. This is clearly an analogue of the satisfaction of the
will which is enhanced through delay.”19
The word “analogue” is important here. The suspension is
not the image or likeness of a specific desire that is eventually
gratified but rather a tonal event that communicates, in a purely
musical way, a universal truth about the will. When Schopenhauer says that music is the universal language, he is not being
poetic. He means that although tones are not words, they function
intuitively in the same way that words function conceptually—
not as likenesses of the things they signify but as symbols, bearers
of universal meaning. In the case of music, this meaning is perceived and felt rather than inferred. Listening to music is nonverbal symbol-recognition.
Music as force flourishes in the tradition of modern tonal harmony. This long and glorious tradition reaches from Bach and
Handel, through Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven, up to Brahms
and Wagner, and continues in our own century. Tonal music, as
opposed to the mode-inspired music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, exhibits the directed tension I mentioned earlier. There
of force; I, on the other hand, do exactly the reverse, and intend every
force in nature to be conceived as will” (Vol. 1, 111).
19. Vol. 2, 455-6. An even better instance of the connection between
dissonance and will is the appoggiatura or leaning tone. This unprepared dissonance on a strong beat delays a tone of the melody and intensifies expectation. It is the perfect musical imitation of longing. A
fitting example occurs in Tamino’s love song in the Magic Flute.
Tamino gazes on a picture of Pamina and falls in love with her. By
singing in response to a picture, he moves from the world as representation to the world as will. His repeated leaning tones on the words “I
feel it,” “ich fühl es,” embody the universal truth of erotic love.
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is a play of forces—tonal dynamism. Needless to say, such music
is friendly to the language of will, for will is tension, and force is
will that has not yet attained self-consciousness. The musicologist
Heinrich Schenker applied this very term to music: Tonwille, the
will of the tones. In tonal harmony tension is not confined to isolated events, like the suspension, but pervades the whole of a musical piece and constitutes its unity. The term “tonal” refers to the
rule of a single tone, the tonic or keynote, to which all the other
tones in a tonal work point or, as some theorists prefer to say, the
centrality of the tonic triad, the I-chord. These tensions—Victor
Zuckerkandl calls them dynamic qualities—compose the major
scale and cause it to sound like a journey with clearly defined
stages and a predetermined end: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8.20 Tension is especially urgent in degree 7, which strives toward 8, as desire
craves its satisfaction. Degree 4 tends, less urgently, down to 3.
Together, degrees 4 and 7 produce the dissonant interval of the
tritone. This is the best example of directed tension in music, since
the tritone, when combined with degree 5 in the bass, makes up
the dominant seventh chord, which points to the tonic triad and
so fixes the music in a key. Thanks to their dynamic relations,
which operate at many levels, tones and the triads they form generate musical wholes through the artful prolongation and eventual
resolution of their will-like tension.
I cannot leave the topic of musical tension, and of tone as the
symbol of desire, without citing Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. In
this work we hear extreme chromaticism, constant unresolved
cadences and the deceptive shifting of tonal centers. These phenomena form the tonal analogue of eros as infinite longing. As
others have noted, the work pushes tonal harmony and musical
tension to the absolute limit by extending the striving of tones
over the course of several hours. The historical connection between Wagner’s musical drama and Schopenhauer’s book, although fascinating, is beyond the scope of this lecture. Here I
simply observe that the opening phrase of the Prelude, with its
20. The Sense of Music (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959),
18-28.
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famous “Tristan chord” resolving to a dominant-seventh chord,
is perhaps the most powerful evocation of tension-as-desire in all
of music. Wagner’s phrase sets up a cadence that is not completed
until the very end of the work, when the crashing waves of the
orchestra overwhelm the transfigured Isolde before settling into
the blissful, post-climactic froth of B major. For Schopenhauer,
this immense prolongation of musical tension is the noumenal
interior of the lovers’ prolonged phenomenal eroticism. More
cautiously stated, it is the analogical, symbolic representation of
that interior. The universal, undying truth of the story is not in
the death-bound characters but in the tones.
The central teaching of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics of
music is that music is “a copy [Abbild] of the will itself,” not of
the Ideas of the will, as in tragedy (257). To be sure, all the arts
objectify the will, but the non-musical arts do so “only indirectly.” They present universality through the medium of things,
whether the Parthenon or the complex individuality of Cordelia.
Music, by contrast, makes no such appeal and represents, imitates, the world’s pure subjectivity. It does so through tones all
by themselves.
We must bear in mind when reading Schopenhauer that by
music he means “the sacred, mysterious, profound language of
tones.”21 This signals the primacy of what Wagner called “absolute music” and we now call instrumental music.22 Music as
the language of tones, captures, for Schopenhauer, the Absolute
through non-visual representations. It is the will “speaking to us”
through the medium of composers, who are the will’s symbolists,
somnambulists and high priests.23 Because tones are meaningful
all by themselves, Schopenhauer can make the astonishing claim
that music, in passing over the Ideas and everything phenomenal,
21. Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. 2, 432.
22. See Wagner on Music and Drama, ed. Albert Goldman and Emil
Sprinchorn (New York: Da Capo Press, 1988), 171.
23. For a critique of the thinker’s claim that “through him speaks the
essence of things itself,” see the chapter entitled “Heidegger and Theology” in Jonas, The Phenomenon of Life, in which Jonas connects Heidegger with Gnosticism and finds in Schopenhauer’s theory of music
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“to a certain extent, could still exist even if there were no world
at all” (257). The reason is that music, in negating the world as
thing, contains that world from the perspective of its deepest interior, its immortal heart. Schopenhauer states this with maximum concision in the other work to which I referred earlier:
“Music is the melody to which the world is the text.”24 In other
words, tones all by themselves represent the indwelling, immortal
spirit of the world. If we imagined the phenomenal world as a
staged opera or a movie, then the orchestral parts and score would
stand to it as inner to outer, essence to appearance, truth to seeming. As I observed in the case of Wagner’s Tristan, the real drama,
the world in its truth, would be taking place not in what we see
but in what we hear. It would be a drama of tones.
But although music transcends the world as thing, it also has
a profound connection with that world—again, by analogy.
Schopenhauer is fascinated by this analogism and speaks like an
Archimedes who has just made remarkable discoveries and cries
“Eureka! I have found it!” As I mentioned earlier, the major triad
with its octave captures in symbolic form the four natural grades
of the will’s self-objectification and is a mirror of the Whole. The
ground bass mirrors inorganic nature. Each note of this bass functions as the fundamental to the overtones that faintly sound above
it (258). This mirrors what happens in nature as a whole, where
higher grades of being develop out of the lowest, and where organic nature constantly depends on the inorganic, as the upper
partials depend on their fundamental. The tones between the bass
notes and the melody that floats above are the musical analogue
of plant and animal. These tones form the harmonic organism that
binds lower bass and higher melody. They mirror the way that
the sole philosophic precedent for Heidegger’s claim that poets and
philosophers embody “the voice of Being” (257). Jonas comments:
“Schopenhauer’s fantasy [unlike Heidegger’s] was innocent, for music
is nonresponsible and cannot suffer from the misconception of a duty it
does not have” (258). There is good reason to think that music is not as
“innocent” or “nonresponsible” as Jonas thinks.
24. Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. 2, 430.
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plant and animal life mediate between the inorganic realm and our
higher, human nature. This analogy exists within the scale itself,
where the hierarchy of tones mirrors “the whole gradation of the
Ideas in which the will objectifies itself” (258). To hear an ascending scale is, in a sense, to hear the entire cosmos. Even the inevitable impurity of intervals that exists in all tuning or temperament
is an analogue of phenomenal nature. An interval that is slightly
“off,” say an equal-tempered major third, mirrors natural idiosyncrasy—“the departure of the individual from the type of the
species” (258-9). The incompatibility of some intervals with others, the very problem that makes temperament necessary, is also
an aspect of the will: it is the musical analogue of the will’s “inner
contradiction,” which is the whole concern of tragedy (266). Even
death finds its way into the world of tones. Death occurs, says
Schopenhauer, in modulation, where a change of key “entirely
abolishes the connection with what went before” (261).
Finally, there is melody as the musical analogue of phenomenal
man: “in the melody, in the high singing, principal voice, leading the
whole and progressing with unrestrained freedom, in the uninterrupted significant connexion of one thought from beginning to end,
and expressing a whole, I recognize the highest grade of the will’s
objectification, the intellectual life and endeavour of man” (259).
Melody, the ultimate mythos and symbol of human life, “relates the
story of the intellectually enlightened will, the copy or impression
whereof in actual life is the series of its deeds.” But melody, for
Schopenhauer, “says more” because it goes beyond outward deeds
and events. It also “relates the most secret history [my emphasis] of
the intellectually enlightened will, portrays every agitation, every effort, every movement of the will, everything which the faculty of
reason summarizes under the wide and negative concept of feeling,
and which cannot be further taken up into the abstractions of reason”
(259).
To sum up, there is nothing in the natural world, or in the inner
and outer life of man, that does not find its counterpart in the all-embracing realm of tones. Music as symbol is the whole of all things.
It is the world. That is why, as Schopenhauer says, “we could just as
well call the world embodied music as embodied will” (262-3).
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Coda. Another World of Longing
I end my musical-cosmological reflection with a piece of music
that depicts the world as a certain kind of music, polyphony. It
is Palestrina’s motet, Sicut cervus. Beloved by St. John’s students, the piece is a musical setting of the opening of Psalm 42
in the Vulgate: Sicut cervus desiderat ad fontes aquarum, ita
desiderat anima mea ad te, Deus (“As the hart longs for flowing
streams, so longs my soul for you, O God”). The motet is a good
example of what Nietzsche called Palestrina’s “ineffably sublime sacred music.”25
Every musical composition is both a world unto itself and an
image of the world. This is the central proposition of my lecture.
The world of Sicut cervus is that of the Bible and the biblical
God. Creation, here, is good. It produces beings, not images of
intelligible originals or illusory phantasms. The world is not confined to head and heart, to our subjectivity, but is “out there” and
solidly real. The God of the Bible is not a craftsman who leaves
the world after having made it, or an indifferent prime mover, but
the God of promise and history—the God who makes covenants
with his people. He is someone to whom one can pray. Salvation
comes not from dialectic, or astronomy, or art, or the death of
care based on the gnosis of cosmic nothingness, but from faith
in God.
Although the words of the motet express longing, the tones
do not represent longing as stress and strain. The music is a continually graceful gesture that transmutes the pain of longing into
a serene order of voices—voices that seem always to know their
place. Sicut cervus is composed in two senses of the word: it is
well constructed, and it has an unperturbed disposition. During
the piece, motion goes on and time passes, but the overall “feel”
seems beyond time and change, like a musical emanation of the
nunc stans or eternal Now. It is as if grace were already present,
and the singers were experiencing, in the very midst of their
yearning, prospective joy in the object for which they yearn.
25. The Birth of Tragedy, 19.
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Aquinas cites three criteria of beauty: unity, wholeness and radiance or claritas.26 Sicut cervus has these in abundance, especially
radiance. The music seems to be suffused with warm light. It is
full of feeling but also sounds intelligent, lucid and self-possessed. The movement is a continuous flow, in imitation of the
waters for which the hart thirsts. The tones move, it seems, not
because they have to but because they want to, not out of compulsion but out of freedom. The sound is a spontaneous unfolding, as if the four vocal parts are miraculously improvising their
lines as they go along, only gradually discovering the perfectly
coordinated whole they are in the process of forming. Dissonances occur to enhance consonance and beget motion, but they
are not prominent, and the piece as a whole could not be described as a play of forces. Sicut cervus is music without will.
This brings me to the most important respect in which Palestrina’s motet is the image of a world. Sicut cervus is polyphony
that lacks (because it does not need) the tonal-harmonic principles at work in the polyphony of Bach. Vertical relations are for
the most part the result of simultaneous horizontal relations. The
four voices that compose the piece enter one at a time in points
of imitation. The voice that follows seems to be inspired to enter
by the one that leads. The parts move in obedience to the rules
of good voice leading but do more than exhibit formal correctness. They seem to delight in each other’s company and to be
naturally social. At times, they even graciously step aside for each
other, as if rejoicing in the being and individuality of other lines.
Sicut cervus, in its non-urgent flow, is a musical community that
captures the sound of friendship. And just as friends engage in
all sorts of play, the vocal lines play off one another, often exhibiting contrary motion—simultaneous movement in opposite
directions. Thanks to this friendly contrariety, which keeps the
parts audibly distinct, the voices celebrate, contrary to what
26. Summa Theologica I, Q. 39, a 8. For an excellent discussion of the
three formal criteria of beauty, see Umberto Eco, The Aesthetics of
Thomas Aquinas, trans. Hugh Gredin (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1988), 64 ff.
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Schopenhauer asserts, the reality and truth of the principle of individuation, as they conspire to form a perfect, natural sounding
republic of tones. The voices of Sicut cervus, in this respect, may
be said to enact the contrapuntal play that we find among souls
in Dante’s Paradiso.
With this non-tragic image of the world, my study in contrast,
with its Biblical coda, reaches its end. These two great books,
Plato’s Timaeus and Schopenhauer’s World as Will and Representation, differ greatly in how they view being, becoming and
the human condition. But they also go together because, more
than other great discussions of music with which I am familiar,
they invite us to consider that music is more important than even
music lovers might think—that music is, to quote Mann, metaphysically significant and captures the whole of all things, not in
concept but in image and feeling. Are the cosmologies of
Timaeus and Schopenhauer, separately or together, an adequate
account of music? I think they are not. There are limits to the
hyper-rational Pythagorean approach to music, just as there are
limits to Schopenhauer’s Romantic conception of music as representing feeling and irrational will. Both accounts are nevertheless inspired efforts that hit upon certain undeniable truths.
My closing note is inspired by the philosopher Schopenhauer’s personal love of music, which I share. Music, even the
saddest music in the world—music that is worlds apart from Sicut
cervus and may even be the sound of despair and crushing
grief—is dear to us and makes us happy, if only for a while.
Maybe this is because music, as a living presence that comes to
us, offers itself to us, assures us that we are not alone: that there
is something out there in the world that knows our hearts and
may even teach us to know them better. Thanks to music, we experience what it means to be connected to the whole of all things,
even when that whole seems tragic; what it means to have a soul
and not just a mind; to have depth, and not mere rightness, of
feeling and being; and, above all, what it means to be open to
ourselves and our world through listening.
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On Jacob Klein’s
Greek Mathematical Thought
and the Origin of Algebra
Arian Koochesfahani
Introduction
Descartes described his mathematical physics as a “practical”
philosophy by which human beings could “make ourselves like
masters and possessors of nature.”1 Today this feature of mathematical physics is almost uncontroverted and is usually the first
line of defense against skeptics.2 The proximity to truth of a physical theory is often considered directly proportional to its utility.
Jacob Klein (1899-1978) separated the utility claims and truth
claims of physics, arguing that since not all of the mathematical
equations used in modern physics can be translated into natural
language, physics is deficient in meaning and is “not so much the
understanding of nature as the art of mastering nature.”3 It is in
his book Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra4
(GMT) that Klein grounds the strongest version of this claim: the
“‘exact’ [mathematical] nature [sought by mathematical physics]
Arian Koochesfahani is a graduate of James Madison College, Michigan State University.
1. Descartes, Discourse on Method, trans. Richard Kennington (Indianapolis: Focus Publishing, 2007), 49.
2. By “skeptics” I mean nihilists, historicists, philosophical skeptics,
the “it’s just a theory” people—anyone who argues that modern physics
does not uncover significant truths about nature.
3. Jacob Klein, Lectures and Essays, ed. Robert B. Williamson and Elliott Zuckerman (Annapolis: St. John’s College Press, 1985), 60.
4. Trans. Eva Brann (Boston: MIT Press, 1968), henceforth abbreviated
GMT.
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is not something that is concealed behind the appearances, but is
rather a symbolic disguise concealing the original ‘evidence’ and
the original experience of things.”5
In GMT there are three levels of argument at work. On the
surface, Klein makes the mathematical side of physics appear
strange and new by contrasting the unity of mathematics and ontology in Greek philosophy with the universal, tool-like character
of symbolic mathematics.6 In the middle layer, Klein argues that
this difference is characterized by the transformation of the Greek
notion of arithmos into the modern concept of number, a transformation with profound implications for all modern physical
concepts (gravitation, energy, etc.).7 Finally, there is Klein’s
philosophical thesis: symbolic mathematics is symbolic in that
it takes numbers to be mental operations, i.e., numbers are understood either as concepts or are defined in terms of the mathematical operations the mind performs. As a result, symbolic
mathematics legitimizes physical quantities that are intuitively
5. Klein, Lectures and Essays, 84. For Klein, what are disguised by
mathematical physics are the implications of the meanings that are
given in natural language and that arise from the sensible world, i.e.,
the material of Greek philosophy (GMT, 118-120).
6. GMT, 4.
7. Ibid., 117-121. Klein suggests that mathematical physics identifies
nature with a mathematical representation of nature. I believe this is
correct as a description of many of the practitioners of mathematical
physics, but incorrect as a description of the theories themselves. Consider magnetism. Magnetic action-at-a-distance has been eliminated
in practice, i.e., in the discourse of scientists, by filling space with
“fields” which, as mathematical objects, don’t actually constitute an
explanation of the phenomenon. The replacement of magnetic actionat-a-distance with magnetic fields bearing magnetic force is an example of identifying the presented (magnetic action-at-a-distance) with
the represented (fields, mathematical objects). But this is just how magnetism is thought about. It is not a logical consequence of anything in
mathematical physics. However, this statement has to be qualified because what is and is not a consequence of a physical theory can be difficult to determine.
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impossible.8 The challenge to physics is the claim that such
quantities are mere constructions of the intellect. These constructions may help us understand how things happen (“the structure
of the world”), but they don’t tell us what nature is.9
In what follows, I try to reconstruct Klein’s argument about
mathematics to put into context his suggestion that symbolic
mathematics makes certain equations in modern physics absurd,10
before discussing the entire argument in the conclusion. Klein’s
argument in GMT is that modern mathematics is no longer an ontological science of quantity but an epistemological science of
order. To grasp this, we need to understand that, for the Greeks,
mathematics—or at least arithmetic—springs from a reflection,
buttressed by a few basic preconceptions, on the experience of
counting.
Arithmos and Arithmetic
Two distinctions are fundamental to the Greek mathematical tradition.11 First is the philosophical distinction between being and
8. See Joseph K. Cosgrove, “Husserl, Jacob Klein, and Symbolic Nature,” at the Providence College Digital Commons, 2008 (http://digitalcommons.providence.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context
=philosophy_fac).
9. Ibid., 185. However, if general relativity tells us that shape is relative
to velocity, isn’t this a case of scientific progress refining our intuitions
about the properties of physical things and thereby refining our intuitions about nature? Assume that velocity does affect shape. Our ability
or inability to see velocity affecting shape is irrelevant to the discovery
of this truth. We should no longer think of shape as a monadic property,
and this constitutes a refinement of intuition. As Jodi Azzouni puts it,
“we didn’t see that coming.” See Jodi Azzouni, “Can science change
our notion of existence?,” in ProtoSociology 28 (2011): 206 (pdf version, http://www.protosociology.de/Download/Azzouni-Existence.pdf,
5).
10. I simplify certain aspects of Klein’s argument for the sake of clarity.
In cases where different interpretations are possible, I pick the one I
find most provocative.
11. GMT, 10.
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becoming. Since what can be known can be passed on essentially
unchanged, knowledge, for the Greeks, is knowledge of what is.
Greek mathematics is in this respect the paradigmatic Greek science. In fact, the Greek word mathesis means what is knowable
and teachable in general. Hence, for the Greeks, mathematics is
especially oriented towards being. The second distinction is made
within mathematics, and is the distinction between multitude and
magnitude, or between discrete and continuous quantity. To the
study of the first corresponds arithmetic and logistic, while to the
second corresponds geometry.
The difference between arithmetic and logistic is central to
Klein’s argument inasmuch as logistic, which occupies shifting
territory in Greek mathematics, has been perfected by modern
mathematics. To appreciate the difference between arithmetic and
logistic, it is necessary, before even defining these sciences, to
understand how the Greeks understood “number” (arithmos).
The notion of arithmos emerges from the experience of
counting.12 When we count, we always have a multiplicity of
things before us. When faced with a single thing, we do not count
it. If we say that it is “one,” we are speaking about its unity or
we are asserting that it exists. One is not many. Therefore, “one”
is not an arithmos. The first arithmos is “two.”13 Further, when
we count, not only do we always count definite things, but we
always count things of the same kind. When we count apples and
bananas, we count fruit, and when we count in addition the plates
on the table, we count objects. Thus, the definition of an arithmos: a definite count of definite things. In the case of ten sheep
and ten apples, the counts are equal, but the arithmos in each
case, the decad, is different. This is why the Greeks use funny
terms like “sheep-number” and “bowl-number.”14 Every arithmos
is a “counting number,” not a “counted number.” If I ask how
many of something there is and the answer is “two,” this is just
12. Ibid., 46.
13. Ibid., 49.
14. Ibid., 12.
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an abbreviation of “two of the thing in question.” Therefore,
arithmoi are expressed in sentences, not by symbols, and they
are not definable by the ways they can be produced by operations,
algebraic or otherwise.
One might object that we can speak of “two” without reference to any kind of thing. The Greek response is that such talk
tacitly refers to imperceptible entities: pure units. This claim is
based on an answer to the question of what it is that is the same
for everything that can be counted, a question that the Greeks
take as auxiliary to the question of what it is about every countable thing that makes it countable. The latter question is the focus
of arithmetic. On their way to answering this question, the Greeks
take their cue from the fact that we count in terms of kinds, and
they conclude that to be countable means (1) to be uniform with
respect to other countable things and (2) to be delimited, to possess a clear determination.15 After all, uniformity and delimitation
are properties of kinds. The countable as such is therefore externally discrete and, as a determined whole, internally indivisible.
In other words, to be countable as such is to be a “one” among
homogeneous “ones.” These “ones” are therefore “noetic beings”
(pure units) accessible to thought alone. The purely “intellectual”
quality of the pure units explains how we can speak of “two”
without referring to two things in the sensible world. This line of
argument also shows, incidentally, that the “one” is the arche or
source of arithmos, since without the “one” there could be no
arithmos; a fact accorded ontological significance by Plato.16 But
here, in the context of arithmoi, the “one” is always among other
“ones,” and as the paradigmatic expression of multiplicity, these
“ones” constitute an infinite field.17
Arithmetic, then, is the attempt to comprehend all these “ones”
and, in so doing, to explain the possibility of counting. It will become pertinent later that the specifically Platonist arithmetician tries
15. Ibid., 53.
16. Ibid., 49.
17. Ibid., 51.
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to determine how an arithmos, which is many things, can at the
same time be one, namely, this particular arithmos.18 This is a version of the general question about the existence of noetic arithmoi,
since in this context “being one,” “having unity,” and “existing” are
all equivalent. In any case, all arithmeticians rely on classification
to comprehend the arithmoi. The idea is to organize arithmoi by
recognizing a consistent distribution of well-defined properties,
each property being called an arithmetic eidos.19 The Platonist is
again an exception, in that the Platonist does not conceive of eidē
as properties so much as actual “entities” which allow each arithmos to be “one,” to have “unity,” or to exist.20 While it turns out
that both Plato and Aristotle criticize this way of accounting for the
existence of arithmoi as either incomplete (Plato) or incorrect (Aristotle), it is nonetheless true that classifying arithmoi is the main occupation of arithmeticians, their focus being on the truths, directly
ontological or not, about these mathematical objects.21
18. Ibid., 49.
19. Ibid., 57. This is in part because through the use of a gnomon we
can see that certain groups of arithmoi share similar “shapes.” A gnomon is a configuration of points which, after being fitted around a single
point (the “one”), can be continually expanded to produce a figure always similar in appearance. For example, starting from the one, three
points form a square, an addition of five points forms a larger square,
and so on for every odd number. Following the Pythagorean heritage,
each eidos is rooted in a genus, e.g., the “limited” or “unlimited,” and
this rooting anchors them in ultimate principles. The most comprehensive eidē are the “odd” and the “even.” The “odd” captures all those
arithmoi which cannot be divided without a remainder, while the “even”
captures all those that can be so divided. The “odd” links back to the
“same” and thus to the “limited” because only discrete quantities cannot
be divided without remainder. Because continuous quantity can be divided without remainder, the “even” links back to the “other” and thus
to the “unlimited.”
20. Since there are more eidē than the “odd” and the “even,” each arithmos is constituted by its own network of eidetic-memberships (e.g., five
is prime, while nine is composite as an “odd-times-odd”).
21. Ibid., 79, 102.
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Logistic and Greek Ontology
Logistic, in contrast to arithmetic, is concerned neither with
counting nor (derivatively) with adding or subtracting, but with
multiplying and dividing.22 Arithmetic and logistic work together:
arithmetic classifies arithmoi and accounts for their existence
while logistic determines the relations that hold between arithmoi
of pure units. If arithmetic is concerned with the eidos or “form”
of arithmoi, then logistic is concerned with their hyle or “material”—the units themselves.23 Consider multiplication: if I have
two pure units and am told to multiply this arithmos by two pure
units, I simply add together as many of the former as there are
units of the latter. Of course, whenever the multiplier is two units,
the operation is called doubling. Logistic is thus the study of the
relations or ratios that necessarily hold between arithmoi depending on which eidē the arithmoi belong to.24 It is especially important to think of logistic not as studying the relations between
eidē of arithmoi. It is always the arithmoi, not the eidē, that are
the objects of investigation. After all, you can’t multiply eidē.
How the eidē are understood has an important impact on logistic. Platonism makes logistic impossible. According to Plato,
the noetic arithmoi are given existence by the arithmetic eidē because these eidē are organized by the Ideai (the Ideas in the “theory of Ideas”).25 For Klein, Plato conceives of the Ideai as being
to the eidē just as the noetic arithmoi are to the pure units.26 This
22. Ibid., 19.
23. Ibid., 16.
24. Ibid., 24.
25. Ibid., 70.
26. Ibid., 89. For Plato, it is evident that in the phrase “each is one but
both are two,” the word “two” expresses a unity that belongs to each
only in their togetherness, by virtue of a special koinon or commonality
between them that gives rise to a koinōnia, a communion. Thus, in The
Sophist, three possibilities for the “ontological methexis” problem arise:
“(1) There is no koinōnia [of the eidē] at all. (2) All the eidē are mutually related. (3) There is partial koinōnia, in the sense that some eidē
can ‘mix’ with each other but others not.” The first two possibilities are
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is convenient for Plato because by conceiving of the Ideai as
quasi-arithmetic structures, he can solve the ontological problem
of the participation of the species (eidē) in their genus (Idea) and
the mathematical-ontological problem of the existence of the
arithmoi. The argument is this: the arithmetic “two” exists because it is an image of the foundational, absolutely separate eidetic two, the two, which is the Idea of Being, which holds
together the eidē “rest” and “change.”27 Platonism makes logistic
literally unthinkable, which leaves the third. The third indicates the
arithmetic character of the Ideai in that it implies that the eidē constitute
communities or “arithmoi” of “unique eidetic ‘units’,” which, on account of their uniqueness, cannot be counted, but exist in their togetherness.
27. Ibid., 82-3, 87-8, 95-6, 98, 235. To elaborate: assume rest and
change to be, as it were, the fundamental elements, and assume of rest
and change that each is and both are. We do not address in both some
“third thing,” because Being is to be understood as an arithmetic koinon.
But how can each be? If Being belonged to any one of the two, then
only that one would “be.” On the other hand, if both “were” simultaneously, then rest and change, which are not combinable, would be combinable. Plato resolves the dilemma like this: just as Being, as an
“arithmetic” structure, is other than rest and change, so too “are” rest
and change, which cannot be without each other, only because they are
other than each other. Since Being is therefore other than both (although
not both together), while each must be other in order to be at all, this
means that Being is always also Non-Being, namely, Other. And this in
turn means two things. First, that the conjunction of the “opposites” rest
and change is in fact only the “‘co-existence’ of elements other in kind,”
so that oppositions are only “appearances” (96). Second, that we may
“rightly speak of all things whatsoever as ‘non-beings,’ and conversely,
because things partake of being, as ‘being’ and ‘beings’” (96). But this
means at the same time that otherness is, in accordance with the first
point, recognized as the bond between every Idea and its eidē, and thus
as the source of all articulation. The ordinary way of speaking, on the
other hand, in accordance with the second point, ceases to make sense.
We can say with equal correctness that a horse is an animal and not an
animal. Thus, the answer to the principal question in the Sophist—how
images, which somehow both are and are not what they represent, are
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impossible because the pure unit is regarded as not only indivisible but as fundamentally separate from the sensible world, just
as the “one” which is the archē of arithmoi is regarded as an
image of the “One” of which there can be no Idea and which is
altogether beyond being.28 Since a unit that is indivisible and selfsubsisting can’t have fractional parts (not to be confused with
fractions, which dispense with units), the Platonist denies the existence of what makes possible the precise calculation already familiar to the Greeks. Platonism and logistic are thus
incompatible. This inability (in principle) of Platonists to theorize
calculation is a potential reductio of Platonism.
Aristotle’s philosophy, on the other hand, is more robust.
According to Aristotle, arithmoi receive their existence from the
existence of the kind of counted thing.29 This is first of all because the pure units are what is common to every kind of thing,
that is, they have the properties common to all kinds. Because
the noetic arithmoi are given existence not by their eidē but by
their units, which exist even less concretely than natural kinds,
it follows that all the noetic arithmoi exist in the same, highly
general way—a far cry from the fundamental differentiation of
noetic arithmoi that results from the Platonic position that the
noetic arithmoi get their existence from different eidē. Aristotle’s
position implies that the arithmetic eidē, rather than being the
sources of existence for arithmoi, are merely qualities of them.30
possible—is that being itself has a “‘mirror-like nature’” (82). On the
one hand, the uncountable ordering of being through the Ideai depends
on the archē of otherness, the indeterminate dyad. As the twofold in
general, it is the expression of all possible being and non-being, and
the source of imageability. This imageability stretches from the sensible
things to the eidē (which they image) and likewise from the arithmoi
to the Ideai. In the human realm, this imageability is expressed in
speech about being, because speech is considered the “image” of
thought. On the other hand, the archē of being (and therefore of
thought), the “One Itself,” is simply beyond being (98).
28. Ibid., 98, 100.
29. Ibid., 106.
30. Ibid., 110.
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This “demotion” of the eidē goes hand in hand with how Aristotle authorizes fractional parts of noetic units.
For Aristotle, fractional parts are actually whole units with
respect to a new measure.31 In other words, the indivisibility of a
unit is just a property of the unit insofar as the unit is a measure.
Why are all units measures? Because noetic units are a product
of abstraction, the selective disregard of a thing’s visible properties.32 Rather than thinking that the sensible things qua countable
presuppose the noetic units, we are to think that the noetic units
presuppose the sensible things. In every case, noetic units depend
for their existence on sensible or imaginary objects, making every
arithmos a “multitude measured by a unit.”33 In practice, this
means that if we split a unit in half, each “half” is now a whole,
because the original unit, say, one apple, has given way to a new
unit, the “half-apple.” It is a simple matter of determining the
unit measure, though this does not mean that we give existence
to the noetic units or that we can can pick units of measure with
total freedom. The appropriate measures are always limited by
what it is we want to measure, and the noetic units are always
there for us in the first place. Abstraction is just how we access
them. This intertwining of the sensible and noetic neatly blocks
the one-many problem that vexes the Platonist. Because noetic
units are always abstracted and never counted, the one-many
problem does not arise. The point with respect to the fractional
part of the unit is just this: since the noetic unit is always abstracted, it can be “divided” because its division is simply equivalent to the assumption (via abstraction) of a new unit of measure.
Note that this does not abolish the distinction between continuous
and discrete quantity, inasmuch as we cannot measure a line by
both a unit and infinitely decreasing fractional parts of that unit
simultaneously.
Aristotle’s position begins to blend arithmetic and logistic:
it explains the existence of noetic units in a way that explains the
31. Ibid., 109.
32. Ibid., 104.
33. Ibid., 109.
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possibility of precise calculation. Because the existence of arithmoi is not always “on loan,” as it were, from the eidē, Aristotle
can hold, with reference to Plato, that the “real” eidē of arithmoi
are nothing other than their “multitude” or “quantity” as such.34
The triad is “once three” independently of whether its “material”
is noetic or sensible. Aristotle thus identifies that aspect of “number” to be treated by logistic as the very being of “number.” This
is important because the shift from Greek to modern (highly logistical) mathematics involves (1) substituting the concept of
number for the existence of number and (2) treating the two as
equivalent.
However, the disagreement between Plato and Aristotle on
the “nature of number” takes place within a fundamental agreement that mathematics is an ontological science of quantity, that
“numbers” are always of units, and that “numbers” of pure units
do not exist in the mind alone.35 This is why the Greeks did not
develop symbolic formulae. As the next two sections show, what
made possible such a revolution is the notion that numbers are
concepts.
Viète’s Reinterpretation of Aristotelian Logistic:
Calculating with Concepts
Klein brings out the implication of Aristotle’s approach: “The
transformation of the ontological conception of mathematika
which leads by way of Eudoxus to the Aristotelian doctrine,” results in “the reversal of the ‘Pythagorean’ thesis that the mensurability of things is grounded in their numerability.” It is “now
numerability [that] is, conversely, understood as a—not even always complete—expression of mensurability.”36 Especially relevant is that Euclid not only takes up logistical matters under the
34. Ibid., 110.
35. Ibid., 179-180. The general theory of proportions is to Aristotle’s
ontology roughly as arithmoi are to Plato’s. Aristotle considers it to be
(1) methodologically akin to the study of being qua being, and (2) part
of that study itself.
36. Ibid., 240.
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name of arithmetic (causing henceforth the constant confusion
of the two) but also has logistic appear as a “special case” of the
general theory of proportions.37 This makes arithmetic (read “logistic”) seem subordinate to geometry, and it is from this perspective that François Viète introduced symbols into mathematics
through his reinterpretation Diophantus’s Arithmetica, the authoritative Aristotelian logistic.
Diophantus, following Aristotle, understands eidē as qualities
of noetic arithmoi.38 His calculations make use of eidē because
the solutions are supposed to exhibit relations that necessarily
hold between noetic arithmoi of certain eidē. The point is to show
that if the same calculation is performed with arithmoi of such
and such eidē, the resulting arithmos will always have certain
qualities. This is why, in the course of his calculative procedures,
Diophantus introduces signs that serve both as abbreviations for
eidē and as stand-ins for a single arithmos belonging to each
eidē.39 Recall that eidē can’t be multiplied (or manipulated in any
other way). For the Greeks, only arithmoi, definite counts of definite things, can be “operated” on. Diophantus’s letter-signs are
therefore “mere word abbreviations” for “some one arithmos belonging to this eidos.” They are not variables. Does this mean
that the mathematician has to perform an infinite amount of calculations to complete one proof? No: the generality and therefore
the theoretical character of Diophantian logistic is based on the
fact that a given procedure of calculation works for all cases of
the same type.40 Whether Diophantus proves this is open to question since Klein does not say, but it seems clear that if no such
proof appears in the Arithmetica, then Diophantian logistic is
open to attack—and this would include Viète’s transformation of
Diophantus’s letter-signs into objects of calculation.41
37. Ibid., 44.
38. Ibid., 143.
39. Ibid., 145.
40. Ibid., 132.
41. Ibid., 148.
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In light of Euclid’s blending of logistic and geometry, Viète
takes logistical analysis and synthesis as parallel to geometric
analysis and synthesis, believing that true analysis (algebra)
must “exhibit” magnitudes in figure or number because it is
about “numbers” with a “direct geometric interpretation.”42 The
point for our purposes is that Viète therefore (1) regards as superfluous the final computation and exhibition of a particular
arithmos, and (2) considers multitudes to have the same determinacy possessed by the magnitudes put to work in geometric
proofs, so that the determinacy of any multitude lies merely in
the proportion that it makes with other multitudes.43 Aiming to
realize Euclid’s general theory of proportions as a theory of
equations, Viète understands every proportion to be the construction of an equation and every equation, once transformed, to be
the solution of a proportion, thereby permitting an “arbitrary”
amount of determinate solutions “on the basis of numbers assumed at will.”44
Hence, to realize the general theory of proportions as a theory
of equations is in fact to transform the former—whose generality
lies specifically in demonstrating truths that hold for all instances
of a mathematical form—into an art of calculation which,
tellingly, Viète calls the “logistic of species.”45 First, about the
“logistical” aspect: Viète stresses the law of homogeneity, a law
which ensures, in contexts where magnitudes are represented by
multitudes, that the mathematician compares only homogenous
magnitudes—in other words, that one employs the same units of
measurement for each magnitude involved in a calculation.46 We
may not take the length of a line and add or subtract it from the
42. Ibid., 157, 164. See Burt C. Hopkins, The Origin of Symbolic Mathematics: Edmund Husserl and Jacob Klein (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2011), 273-275, 520, for a discussion of how Viète blends
these two modes of analysis and synthesis.
43. Ibid., 165.
44. Ibid., 163.
45. Ibid., 184.
46. Ibid., 172.
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area of a plane. In this, Viète follows the Greek logistical tradition. But he departs from this tradition by removing the distinction between theorems and problems. As Hopkins paraphrases
Klein, “[Viète] understands theorems to be problems whose solution is not so much the truths themselves about mathematical
objects but the ‘art of finding or the finding of finding’ of the
general solution to all mathematical problems.”47 As for the
“species” aspect of the “logistic of species,” the species are what
make possible the general solutions.
Having transformed the general theory of proportions into
a theory of equations, complete with the equality sign and syntactical rules that allow mathematical operations to be symbolized, Viète requires a general object to operate on, an object
defined by quantitativeness as such.48 For this purpose, he appropriates the Diophantian eidē and reads them as “variables.”49
Their determinacy, which makes them operable, comes automatically from their being set up in an equation. Once in an equation, a letter sign becomes interpreted not as a quantity but as
quantity-in-general. What distinguishes a symbol (in Klein’s
sense) from a Diophantian letter-abbreviation is that it signifies
the concept of quantity. Viète’s “species” can in this respect be
understood as a generalization of the “true” arithmetic eidē of
Aristotle (not to be confused with the eidē that feature in Diophantus’s logistic as mere properties of arithmoi). Recall that
for Aristotle the triad itself constitutes an eidos. Viète not only
replaces this eidetic triad with the concept of threeness, inseparable from the symbol 3 (or any stipulated mark), but replaces
the eidē of arithmoi in general with the concept of the quantity,
inseparable from the symbol A (or any stipulated mark). Viète’s
innovation, and the essence of symbolic mathematics, is to allow
47. Hopkins, Symbolic Mathematics, 496.
48. GMT, 166.
49. For the sake of brevity, I omit Klein’s interpretation of the role
played by the law of homogeneity in Viète’s appropriation of the
eidē.
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calculation with concepts.50
Is it nonsense to add the concept of twoness to the concept
of twoness? No: the problem is linguistic. The concept of twoness
is equivalent to two-in-general. To add two-in-general to two-ingeneral is simply to disregard the units involved. The difference
between three-in-general (the moderns) and the triad (Aristotle)
is that the latter cannot exist without units of some sort. If we
have three apples, then we have one triad. If we then apply abstraction to get noetic units, then we have two triads. There is no
triad-in-itself. Moreover, there is no Greek equivalent for quantity-in-general. For the Greeks, “quantity-in-general” refers to
every instance of quantity at the same time, not to something that
can be individually picked out by the mind as being any quantity
whose units we have disregarded. With the idea of quantity-ingeneral, the moderns cause something like a paradigm shift in
mathematics without justifying it philosophically. For Klein, the
one who produces the closest thing to a justification is Descartes.
Mental Operations as Symbols
Descartes explains that the concept of quantity is indeed suited to
be the subject of calculative operations.51 In the first place, a concept does not have the permanence of a being. It exists only insofar as it is “present to the intellect,” and it is present only insofar
as the intellect is “turned towards itself.” In other words, a concept
exists only so long as the mental act of conception is maintained.
The concept of quantity, in particular, arises when the intellect
takes the idea of number (which, residing in the imagination, always goes together with enumerated units) and separates (“abstracts”) from it the character of being a number (i.e., a quantity).
The intellect thus obtains for itself the concept of quantity.52 However, a paradox arises. On the one hand, because of its dependence
on the imagination, the concept of quantity can’t absolutely ex50. GMT, 175.
51. Ibid., 207.
52. Ibid., 201.
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clude the original beings “imaged” in the imagination. On the
other hand, as a concept, its content can’t include any determinate
beings. Therefore, to acquire the content of the concept of quantity, the intellect returns to the imagination and produces for itself
the “indeterminate content,” the countable or measurable in general, in the form of an arbitrary image having figure (in this case,
a letter-sign).53 The idea is that any image of a shape or a figure
can in principle be equated with any amount of an appropriate
measuring unit. This same mental operation applies to the “idea”
(in the imagination) of twoness, threeness, and so on.
This means that when we deal with a variable in an equation,
we present to ourselves our own mental act of conceiving of
quantity-in-general.54 We don’t err in identifying the object of
representation (the content of the concept of quantity) with the
means of its representation (the arbitrary image), because in this
case the two really are identical.55 The identity of an arbitrary
image and the content of the concept of quantity is the paradigmatic symbol in Klein’s sense. For Klein, this amounts to a new
“possibility” of “understanding,” according to which symbols are
the key to knowledge of the world.56 Klein’s point is that
Descartes gives an account of the sort of abstraction by which
we disregard the units of a quantity as well as the determinacy
of any quantity, similar to the way in which Aristotle explains
our access to pure units. One interpretation is that Descartes
builds on Aristotle’s philosophy, since his “symbol-generating
abstraction” depends on the prior activation of Aristotelian ab53. Ibid., 205.
54. Cf. Hopkins, Symbolic Mathematics, 521.
55. GMT, 123.
56. Ibid., 200, 210. To make this mode of cognition work, Descartes
characterizes the intellect not exactly by incorporeality but by an unrelatedness to corporeality. Descartes’s dualism is in this sense strictly
logical rather than ontological. The surprise is that this dualism makes
the mind a necessary condition for the substance of the world. Descartes
relates the corporeal directly to the imagination through the senses. But
for Descartes, corporeal things are the only things in the world, and the
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straction (interpreted in a certain way) to get “ideas” of arithmoi
into the imagination.57 The first abstraction provides “numbers”
of pure units, the second provides “pure numbers” and “pure
number in general.”
However, Descartes ascribes an epistemological “independence” to algebra that was achieved by John Wallis, who can be
interpreted as taking a fully “operational” view of numbers.58
Wallis drops Descartes’s notion that algebra exhibits the order of
the world (see footnote 56), but he spontaneously fulfills Viète’s
requirement of homogeneity by conceiving the homogeneity of
numbers to be given by their symbolic character.59 For Wallis,
numbers are homogeneous because they are dimensionless, and
they are dimensionless because treating numbers strictly in terms
of the “numerical genus” is identical to conceiving them symbolically.60 This allows Wallis to equate “numbers” with “indices
imagination, which is corporeal, receives its impressions of things without error. Therefore, since the imagination deals most easily and simply
with extended things, the essence of corporeality is extendedness (the
concept of extension), which is therefore the substance of the world.
But the content of the concept of extension is the measurable in general,
the same as the content of the concept of quantity. Therefore, the substance of the world is the concept of quantity. Descartes concludes that
correct algebraic equations exhibit the order of the world.
57. Ibid., 202.
58. It was the Flemish mathematician Simon Stevin (1548-1620) who
carried out the “complete and effective assimilation of the ‘numerical’
and the ‘geometric’ realm” under the concept of quantity by assimilating “the concept of ‘number’ to operations on ‘numbers’ already long
established” (GMT, 197, 293). Stevin thus “no longer deals with numbers of units which are determinate in each case but with the unlimited
possibility of combining ciphers” according to definite rules, thereby
allowing irrationals, negatives, and—crucially for the “continuity” of
number understood as a complete numerical correspondence to measurable magnitudes—fractions to become “numbers” (193).
59. GMT, 218.
60. Ibid., 217.
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of ratios.”61 “2” thus becomes equivalent to “2/1.” Moreover, because Wallis says that a ratio—which is dimensionless because
it tells us how many times one magnitude is contained in another—results from the division of one magnitude by another, his
implicit understanding of symbolic numbers is that they, in addition to the symbols for operations, image the mental operations
of calculation. It it true that we have to distinguish mental operations such as Descartes describes—concept-producing operations we aren’t aware of—from mental operations such as
division or squaring—straightforward operations we are aware
of. But “numbers” are in both cases understood as embodying
mental activity.
Because equating indices of ratios with number implies that
“number” has no connection to a particular multitude, Wallis,
with his “symbolic” reinterpretation of Euclidean ratio (radicalizing the “parallelization of ‘arithmetical’ with ‘geometrical’ procedure” initiated by Viète), detaches algebra from any real
objects.62 This makes the number symbols themselves the “beings” that correspond to knowledge , so that “the content of reasoning [i.e., mathematical propositions and inferences] . . . ipso
facto engender[s] its form [i.e., symbols], the latter doing nothing
more than formulating the very movement achieved by the mind”
in its ordered progression from quantities that are known to those
that are desired.63
It is in this sense that symbolic mathematics is an epistemological science of order and arrangement. Each symbol signifies
a mental operation (whether of calculation or conceptualization)
and symbolic (unit-less) numbers are substituted for the “definite
counts of definite things” familiar to the Greeks. Hence, to define
numbers, such as imaginary numbers, solely in terms of opera61. Ibid., 223.
62. Ibid., 212.
63. Quotation from Étienne Gilson in David Lachterman, The Ethics of
Geometry: A Genealogy of Modernity (New York: Routledge, 1989),
182.
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tions and the equality sign is just an extension of the “definition”
of numbers as mental operations.64 What prevents symbolic
mathematics from becoming arbitrary is its rootedness in the concept of quantity, a concept grounded in turn in the idea of arithmoi. Symbolic mathematics can therefore be seen as a system
with a hard core (involving conceptualized quantities) expanded
upon by postulations.
Conclusion
Is mathematical physics vitiated if symbolic numbers embody
mental operations? As Cosgrove shows with reference to the theory of special relativity, Klein’s work suggests an affirmative argument.65 In special relativity, time- and distance-measurements
are relative to a frame of reference described by a coordinate system. All coordinate systems are defined by four variables: three
for the dimensions of space, one for time. However, where space
is represented directly as x, y, z, time is represented indirectly as
66
67
√(-1)·ct. This way, every variable has units of distance, and
since (√(-1)·ct)2 = -c2 t2, it follows by substitution that s2 = dx2 +
dy2 + dz2 - c2dt2 is formally equivalent to s2 = x1 + x2 + x3 + x4. This
allows for an elegant mathematical characterization of the theory,
which flows from the fact that there are equations (the Lorentz
transformations) which take us from two mathematically described positions in one frame of reference to those same meas64. The imaginary “unit” (i) is that number which, when multiplied by
itself, gives negative one: i2 = -1. It is also stipulated that it is equal
only to the positive square-root.
65. Cosgrove, “Husserl, Jacob Klein, and Symbolic Nature,” 14-16.
Cosgrove advances an argument on Klein’s behalf, since Klein does
not fill the gap between his work on mathematics and his suggestions
that mathematical physics identifies nature with mathematical representations.
66. c is the constant velocity of light in a vacuum, t is an interval of
time.
67. Given that the velocity of an object multiplied by an interval of time
gives the distance traversed.
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urements in another frame of reference that is in uniform motion
relative to the first. From these equations it follows that all frames
of reference share the property s2 = dx2 + dy2 + dz2 - c2dt2.68 Each
value of s2 is called a space-time interval.69
Restricting consideration to one spatial dimension, and replacing, as Cosgrove does, c2 (a constant) with 1, the equation
reduces to s2 = dx2 - dt2.70 If we now regard the space-time interval
as a physical quantity given in units of space-time, then dx2 - dt2
is an intuitively absurd subtraction of units of time from units of
distance that yields units of space-time. We perform the subtraction only by operating on symbolic numbers. Thus, our path from
measurements in the sensuous world to space-time passes
through a mathematical symbolism that filters out our intuitions
inexplicably. In this way, we cover nature with a symbolic disguise, namely, space-time.
The main problem with this argument is that it begs the
question. It assumes that the space-time interval is a physical
quantity and argues for the shattering of our intuitions. But it is
not a logical consequence of the theory that the space-time interval is a physical quantity. The physical significance of the
space-time interval does not require the latter to be an “absolute” quantity representing the “real world” of space-time.
We can simply regard space-time interval as a quantity whose
value implies certain facts about any two events being related
to one another across all frames of reference. That is, we can
characterize the correlation between equations and experiments
68. x2 is in units of distance, c2 (as the constant velocity of light) in units
of velocity, and t2 in units of time. d tells us that we are dealing with
the difference between two coordinate values.
69. That the space-time interval is invariant with respect to all frames
of reference is the mathematical certification of special relativity, inasmuch as it preserves the universality of the laws of nature.
70. Cosgrove gives s2 = t2 - x2, but the difference is immaterial since in
either case the value of s2 is invariant between frames of reference. I
will object to Cosgrove’s substitution of 1 for c2 shortly.
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in terms of a network of inferences. For example, if dt2 is
greater than dx2, making s2 negative71 (this is termed a “timelike” interval), then there is no frame of reference in which the
two events being related to one another occur simultaneously.
From this inference-oriented perspective, to posit an “absolute
world” of space-time is an act of philosophical interpretation.72
As regards Cosgrove’s substitution of 1 for c2, this step, while
mathematically permissible, is required only by his assumption
that the space-time interval is a physical quantity.73 However, that
the space-time interval be given in units of distance, not units of
space-time, is the desired result of representing the time coordinate indirectly as the variable √(-1)·ct. Though we might want to
know where we can find the distance s2, this distance is nowhere
because it cannot be measured. It can only be calculated. But this
is no problem. From the claim that some quantity is in units of
distance it does not follow that this quantity can be measured. A
quantity can be imaginary—it can be a mathematical artifact—
without voiding any of the reasoning that leads to or away from
it. This is why the space-time interval can be imaginary and still
have physical significance. From its value, we can draw conclusions about any two events being related to one another across
all frames of reference. The space-time interval is meaningful
and intuition-preserving within the total context of the theory of
special relativity. It is only when it is interpreted as a physical
quantity that it covers over the sensible world like a symbolic
disguise. No experiment can prove the existence of space-time,
with reference to the special theory of relativity.
Therefore, assuming similar arguments can be made for similar “concepts,” I don’t think that Klein is correct to suggest that
71. For why this is unproblematic, see Cosgrove, “Husserl, Jacob Klein,
and Symbolic Nature,” fn. 43.
72. The interdependence of space and time, and even the mathematical symmetry of the two, is not equivalent to the existence of a single
physical medium.
73. As Cosgrove argues: “Clearly the quantity c2t2 - x2 cannot itself be
a space-time interval since it has units of distance” (15).
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modern physics is vitiated by mathematical symbolism—that it
substitutes a symbolic nature for nature itself. This is because the
character of symbolic mathematics as a reasoning tool is the heart
of symbolic mathematics. One could take the foundation laid by
Klein and argue that it is because symbolic mathematics allows
us to exhibit our own mental activity that the mathematical part
of physics can’t be responsible for generating a symbolic nature.
It only allows us to make that mistake. Of course, the example
of the space-time interval certainly supports Klein’s view that the
goal of modern physics is to identify immutable relationships
(“laws of nature” representing the “structure of the world”)74 that
hold between things insofar as the properties of the latter can be
measured. At least, reformations of our basic concepts, including
space and time, do not seem forthcoming.75 This frees us to philosophize in the Greek mode, drawing out the implications of the
meanings given in natural language, so long as we take into account the achievements of mathematical physics and science in
general.76
On the other hand, the intimate connection that Klein draws
between the Greeks and the theoretical character of algebra is
suspect. It is not clear that symbolic mathematics is logically dependent on Greek mathematics, because Klein does not discuss
any theories about mathematics other than those of the Greeks
and that of Descartes. He pulls off his argument by assuming that
showing how modern mathematics came to be is equivalent to
revealing its theoretical underpinnings. Though Klein refers at
least once to his work as “historical” in the ordinary sense, he is
concerned to reveal a “special kind of conceptualization,”
namely, “symbol-generating abstraction,” that is necessary for
symbolic mathematics.77 Thus, Klein concludes by asserting that
74. GMT, 184-185.
75. See Azzouni, “Can science change our notion of existence?”
76. The reason to prefer a proposition that issues from a theory over a
proposition that issues from intuition is that to discount the former is to
discount the theory. So, it can be reasonable to doubt one’s intuitions.
77. GMT, 4, 147.
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Wallis’s conception of arithmetic (which we may identify with
symbolic mathematics) “can be understood only in terms of a
symbolic reinterpretation of the ancient ‘numbered assemblage,’
of the arithmos.”78 I think it is fair to say that this has not been
demonstrated.
78. Ibid., 223.
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Which Sciences Does the Political
Science Direct and Use and
How Does It Do So?
Edward M. Macierowski
Core texts are at the heart of any educational tradition. Since they
are so close to heart, they deserve reading and rereading, and
sometimes in rereading we discover key forks in the road, decisive moves that lead us to think along certain lines rather than
along others. A recent translation of Aristotle’s Nicomachean
Ethics highlights one of these forks in the road and leads us to
reexamine the question about what Aristotle calls the “architectonic” role of political science, its role as master-builder over the
other sciences. In this paper I propose to do four things: (1) to
call attention to a seemingly trivial editorial choice made by Ingram Bywater in his influential edition of the Greek text of Aristotle’s Ethics; (2) to show that this editorial choice has no basis
in the manuscript tradition and is therefore misguided; (3) to
show what is at stake for political practice; and (4) to show in
what ways political science directs and uses the other sciences
and in which ways it does not.
1. Noticing the problem
One of the great merits of a recent translation of Aristotle’s Ethics
is that it meticulously adheres to Ingram Bywater’s 1894 Greek
critical edition in the Oxford Classical Texts. Let me first quote
from this translation Book I, chapter 2, and then from a note that
calls attention to a thought-provoking oddity. Here is Aristotle:
If, therefore, there is some end of our actions that we
wish for on account of itself, the rest being things we
Edward M. Macierowski is Professor of Philosophy at Benedictine
College in Atchison, Kansas. This paper was first delivered at the
twenty-first annual conference of the Association for Core Texts and
Courses held in Plymouth, Massachusetts on 10 April 2015.
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wish for on account of this end, and if we do not choose
all things on account of something else—for in this way
the process will go on infinitely such that the longing involved is empty and pointless—clearly this would be the
good, that is, the best. And with a view to our life, then,
is not the knowledge of this good of great weight, and
would we not, like archers in possession of a target, better hit on what is needed? If this is so, then one must try
to grasp, in outline at least, whatever it is and to which
of the sciences or capacities it belongs.
But it might be held to belong to the most authoritative and architectonic one, and such appears to be the political art. For it ordains what sciences must be in cities
and what kinds each person must learn and up to what
point. We also see that even the most honored capacities—for example, generalship, household management,
rhetoric—fall under the political art. Because it makes use
of the remaining [here note 10 calls attention to the elimination of a word] sciences and, further, because it legislates what one ought to do and what to abstain from, its
end would encompass those of the others, with the result
that this would be the human good. For even if this is the
same thing for an individual and a city, to secure and preserve the good of the city appears to be something greater
and more complete: the good of the individual by himself
is certainly desirable enough, but that of a nation and of
cities is nobler and more divine (1094a18-b11).1
Let us now read their useful note 10:
The MSS add at this point the word practical (or sciences
“related to action”: praktikais), but Bywater, followed by
Stewart and Burnet, deletes it.2
Let us now attend to the key sentence once again, with and without Bywater’s deletion. First with the deletion:
1. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Robert C. Bartlett and Susan
D. Collins (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 2-3.
2. Ibid., 3.
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Because it makes use of the remaining sciences and,
further, because it legislates what one ought to do and
what to abstain from, its end would encompass those
of the others, with the result that this would be the
human good.
In this version, political science seems to “make use of the remaining sciences” without any restriction. Now let us see what
the text sounds like without Bywater’s deletion:
Because it makes use of the remaining practical sciences and, further, because it legislates what one ought
to do and what to abstain from, its end would encompass those of the others, with the result that this would
be the human good.3
Our first question is this: To what did “the manuscripts add” the
restrictive word “practical”? Our second question is: From what
did Bywater delete the word “practical”? These questions bring
us to the next stage of our argument.
2. Evaluation of Bywater’s Deletion
It is easier to answer the second question than the first: Bywater deleted the restrictive adjective praktikais from the universal testimony of the Greek manuscript tradition. The only
possible answer to the first question is that the manuscripts all
and each added something to what Aristotle had said. But apart
from the manuscripts themselves, how would one know what
Aristotle said or thought? At any event, Bywater reports no
variant in the Greek manuscript tradition. The medieval Latin
3. “Because it makes use of the remaining practical sciences and, further,
because it legislates what one ought to do and what to abstain from, its
end would encompass those of the others, with the result that this would
be the human good” (1094b4-7; italics mine): chrōmenēs de tautēs tais
loipais [praktikais] tōn epistēmōn, eti de nomothetousēs ti dei prattein
kai tinōn apechesthai, to tautēs telos periechoi an ta tōn allōn, hōste
tout’ an eiē t’anthrōpinon agathon. Burnet reports no variant manuscript
readings and simply asserts of the bracketed word “seclusi”—“I have
set it aside.”
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translation must be based upon a Greek manuscript of the same
manuscript tradition; for it also keeps the restrictive adjective
“practical.”4 Even the medieval Arabic manuscript tradition reports the same reading.5 In short, Bywater flies in the face of
the universal testimony of all the surviving manuscript evidence. A scholar of Bywater’s stature must have had some reason. Can we find it?
It should be noted that a year after his Greek edition of the
Ethics he did provide a justification for his departure from the
manuscript tradition. Here is what he says about the passage
in question:
I, 2, 1094b4 chrōmenēs de tautēs tais loipais [praktikais] tōn epistēmōn.
loipais, though recognized indirectly by Aspasius (p.
6, 3-5), is represented in his paraphrase by praktikais
(hyparchei de tēi politikēi kai to chrēsthai tais praktikais tōn epistēmōn, p. 6, 11). From this I infer that
praktikais is really a gloss, which in the inferior MSS.
has found a place in the text along with the genuine
word loipais, and which in Kb, as sometimes happens
in this MS. (v. supra p. 19), has dispossessed it. In a
context like the present the limitation involved in praktikais is inappropriate; for if politikē is the one supreme
art, all other arts must come under it, not the practical
arts merely. The qualification was no doubt suggested
by what is said later on at the end of Bk. VI. (1145a 6),
4. The medieval Latin translation of this passage from the Ethics (found
in the Leonine critical edition of Aquinas’s Sententia Libri Ethicorum,
[Rome: Leonine Commision, 1969] T. 47, 7) obviously depends upon a
Greek manuscript with the same reading: “Utente autem hac reliquis
practicis disciplinarum, amplius autem legem ponente quid oportet operari et a quibus abstinere, huius finis complectitur utique eos qui aliarum,
quapropter hic utique erit humanum bonum” (italics mine).
5. The Arabic Version of the Nicomachean Ethics, ed. Anna A. Akasoy and
Alexander Fidora, trans. Douglas M. Dunlop (Boston: Brill, 2005), 114.7
“Since this art employs the practical sciences . . . ”; 115.7, line 8: “fa-idh
kānat hādhihi-ṣinā‘a tasta‘milu-l-‘ulūm al-‘amaliyya . . . ” (italics mine).
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but that point is not yet of any importance for the argument; and it would have required a much more distinct statement, if Aristotle had meant to insist upon it
at this early state in his discussion.6
Here Bywater prefers the authority of the second century
commentator Aspasius to that of the universal manuscript tradition, but attempts to eliminate the praktikais reported by Aspasius himself. On the other hand, Bywater himself admits
two circumstances, which limit and impair to some extent the value of the evidence in his Commentary.
(1) We must remember, in the first place, that the
Commentary, as we now have it, from MSS. of very
late date, has suffered sadly in the process of transmission to us. . . .
(2) In the second place, the Commentary is really
more of the nature of a paraphrase, with quotations
from the original interspersed or incidentally worked
into the text. Hence it is that in his restatements of Aristotle Aspasius often allows himself a pretty free hand;
he substitutes, for instance, his own connecting particles; he inserts what he thinks conducive to clearness,
and ignores what he deems trivial or unimportant for
the general meaning.7
The key to Bywater’s justification for preferring his inference from the spongy evidence of Aspasius against the universal manuscript tradition is therefore this doctrinal claim: “if
politikē is the one supreme art, all other arts must come under
it, not the practical arts merely.” Does Aristotle hold that “politikē is the one supreme art” without qualification?
6. Ingram Bywater, Contributions to the Textual Criticism of Aristotle’s
Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892; reprint, New
York: Arno Press, 1973), 22-23.
7. Bywater, Contributions, 1-3. For a recent survey of the scholarship
on the role of Aspasius in transmitting the text, see the introduction by
Joaquín E. Meabe to Aristóteles, Ética a Nicómaco (Buenos Aires: Las
Cuarenta, 2014), 1-24. The introduction is available on-line: https://
www.academia.edu/7973667/Ética_a_Nicómaco
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3. So what? Why is it practically important to keep the restriction in place?
Aristotle was a thoughtful and careful writer. Thoughtful and
careful writers do not use words without purpose. Aristotle
elsewhere distinguishes three kinds of thought: “If all thought
is either practical or productive or theoretical, physics must be
a theoretical science.”8 The productive sciences are concerned
with making something; e.g., a carpenter produces a cabinet,
which is able to stand on its own as a separate product once it
is finished. The practical sciences are concerned with doing
something; e.g. a singer acts only so long as she is singing: the
song, the singing, and the singer are actually inseparable. The
theoretical9 sciences involve the attitude of an on-looker; e.g.,
the spectator at a football game does not change anything in
the game merely by watching it. If there are any theoretical
sciences, that is, ways of knowing things that trace them back
to unchangeable first principles whose truth is self-contained,
8. Aristotle, Metaphysics 1025b25, trans. W. D. Ross (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908). Against the background of Mill’s utilitarianism and
Marx’s obsession with practice (e.g., the conclusion of the eleven theses on Feuerbach: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world
in various ways; the point is to change it” in Karl Marx and Frederick
Engle, The German Ideology, ed. C. J. Arthur [New York: International Publishers, 1947], 123), it is not surprising that theoretical philosophy in the nineteenth century might get out of focus. The polemic
against theoretical philosophy was more obvious even earlier in
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Part IV (1651): “Of the Kingdome of
Darknesse.”
9. It is important not to misunderstand what Aristotle is getting at here.
Today, the words “speculative” or “theoretical” connote some idle, ungrounded, tentative attitude that may not even have anything to do with the
truth. For Aristotle, by way of contrast, theoretical sciences aim to take in
the truth of things as they are. Indeed, Aristotle argues that there are three
main theoretical sciences: a study of changeable beings, which he calls
physics or natural science; a study of beings dependent upon matter for
their existence but not for their intelligibility, which he calls mathematics;
and a study of being precisely as such which he calls sometimes “wisdom,”
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then there might be a possible tension between a political
leader who wants everything to be under his control and a
philosopher who recognizes that some things cannot be otherwise than as they are. Aristotle, however, respects the authority
of the political leadership, focusing attention on “the most honored capacities”; note, however, that theoretical philosophy is
not on the list. Aristotle’s three examples are all practical disciplines: “generalship, household management, rhetoric.”
4. Conclusion: in what ways political science directs the other
sciences and in which ways it uses them.
By way of conclusion, I should like to call attention to a recently published translation of Thomas Aquinas’s commentary
on this passage, wherein he finds “two characteristics of an architectonic science”: (a) “that it dictates what is to be done by
the art or science subject to it,” e.g. horsemanship orders the
activity of bridle-making and (b) that the architectonic science
uses the sciences subject to it “for its own ends.”10 If one blurs
the distinction between “practical sciences” and “sciences”
without qualification, as Bywater’s deletion does, the speculative sciences become entirely invisible, and so does Aristotle’s
point. Let’s focus on (a)—how politics dictates what is to be
done.
Now the first of these is applicable to politics or political
science both in regard to the speculative and in regard
to the practical sciences, in different ways, however. Political science dictates to a practical science both consometimes “first philosophy,” and sometimes “theology.” Aristotle makes
no explicit mention of any “theoretical” sciences in this passage, but, granting that the universal testimony of the manuscript tradition is right, this
should indicate to careful readers who know something about philosophy,
that there might be something somehow over the horizon of political thinking. Only in the last book of the Ethics does he point to a distinction between
two types of happiness: that of the citizen and that of the philosopher.
10. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, in Medieval Political Philosophy: A Sourcebook, ed. Joshua Parens and Joseph
C. Macfarland (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011), 274.
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cerning its use—whether or not it should operate—and
concerning the specification of its act. It dictates to the
smith not only that he use his art but also that he use it
in such a fashion as to make knives of a particular kind.
Both are ordered the end of human living.11
Given that there are also theoretical sciences to take into account,
we can now appreciate the contrast:
But political science dictates to a speculative science only
concerning its use and not concerning the specification of
its work. Political science orders that some teach or learn
geometry; and actions of this kind, in so far as they are
voluntary, belong to the matter of ethics and can be ordered to the goal of human living. But the political ruler
does not dictate to geometry what conclusions it should
draw about a triangle, for this is not subject to the human
will nor can it be ordered to human living, but it depends
on the very nature (ratio) of things.12
As to the second point (b), “the use of subordinate sciences belongs to political science only in reference to the practical sciences.” In modern terms, even a Stalin cannot make two plus two
equal to anything but four, though he might be able to intimidate
people into saying otherwise. “Hence,” Aristotle adds, “we see
that the most highly esteemed, that is, the noblest, skills or operative arts fall under political science, namely, strategy, domestic
economy, and rhetoric, which political science uses for its own
end, that is for the common good of the city.”13
Aquinas then notes the distinction between political science,
which “is most important, not simply, but in the genus of the practical sciences” which treats the ultimate end of human life, but
leaves room for the study of the “ultimate end of the whole universe . . . which is the most important without qualification.”14
11. Ibid., 274. Italics mine.
12. Ibid., 274. Italics mine.
13. Ibid., 275.
14. Ibid., 275.
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Against the background of the fuller range of Aristotle’s
properly philosophical thought, we can see in what sense Bywater’s position is right and in what way it needs to be qualified.
“The qualification,” he said, “was no doubt suggested by what is
said later on at the end of Bk. VI (1145a 6).”15 What is that?
And yet prudence does not exercise authoritative control
over wisdom or the better part [of the soul, just as the art
of medicine does not do so over health either, for it does
not make use of health but rather sees how it comes into
being; it is for the sake of health, then, that medicine issues commands, but it does not issue them to health. Furthermore, it would be just as if someone should assert
that the political art rules over the gods because it issues
commands about all things in the city.16
If Aristotle’s principal audience for his ethical lectures should
be gentlemen rather than philosophers, the reason “that point is
not yet of any importance for the argument” might well be that
gentlemen would not even think of disagreeing. Perhaps, as Bywater says, “it would have required a much more distinct statement, if Aristotle had meant to insist upon it at this early state in
his discussion.” But is there any dispute between a philosopher
who might claim to prove the existence of unchangeable beings
and gentlemen who would surely not contest the immutability of
the gods of the city? Aristotle does not trouble perfect gentlemen
with the fine points of theoretical philosophy, but he counts on
them to recognize that certain opinions held by gentlemen offer
a bulwark against tyranny. As for Aquinas, his proximate audience would likely not be gentlemen, even if they were scholars.
Aquinas does, at any event, show why the restrictive adjective
“practical” is not superfluous.
15. Bywater, Contributions, 23.
16. Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, 134.
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Ass, You Like It?
Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s
Dream as Political Philosophy
Nalin Ranasinghe
William Shakespeare’s early comedies are marked by the pervasive presence of twins. Remarkably, this theme extends even to
the level of the plays themselves: comedies and tragedies with
striking similarities appear on stage at about the same time. While
each play in such a dyad conforms to the requirements of its respective genre, the presence of a doppelgänger creates irony, and
raises questions about the comic or tragic conclusions reached in
each play.
One such pair is Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s
Dream. Both were written and performed in the mid-1590s, and
both raise very similar questions about love, marriage and politics
while yet describing exactly opposite—and thus perfectly complementary—dramatic trajectories. In Romeo and Juliet we see
a potential comic resolution to a political impasse turn tragic
through a malefic combination of religious meddling and starcrossed accident. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, on the other
hand, presents an inherently tragic situation that slips into a conventional comic conclusion. Its characters are not weighed down
by determinate causality and intractable philosophical struggles
with their own natures; the whole play seems to share Puck’s airy
comment on human affairs: “Lord, what fools these mortals be”
(III.ii.115). The attitude of the fairies is broadly benevolent; they
revel in what’s comic and contingent in human matters, advancing rather than hindering the interests of mortals. Despite much
misunderstanding and maladroit manipulation, the actions of the
Nalin Ranasinghe is Professor of Philosophy at Assumption College in
Worcester, Massachesetts.
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play’s characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream are hardly fatalistic. For the most part, humans entangle themselves in homespun webs of false necessity. They are foolish, but not wicked.
Unlike Romeo and Juliet, which shows the disaster that can arise
from imposing social, political, and clerical structures on human
life, A Midsummer Night’s Dream offers a self-portrait of Shakespeare, a man as playful as Puck and as wise as Bottom, as he attempts to reconcile the divine and the human in our nature, and
tries to repair the rupture between reason and religion.
In repudiating the reductive cruelty of Old Comedy, and rehabilitating, in the spirit of Erasmus, the gentler magic of a
Menander or Plautus, Shakespeare offers a truly Christian alternative both to the austere anti-theatrical hellfire of Knox and to
the corrupt ritualism of the Old Church. The new and overzealous
religious piety of Shakespeare’s time banished all playhouses
from London and re-situated them on the other side of the river.
Similarly, the young lovers Hermia and Lysander escape the
harsh laws of the city by taking refuge in the dark woods of the
imagination. I argue that A Midsummer Night’s Dream makes the
case for ending the ancient feud between philosophy and poetry,
which in Shakespeare’s day had become a conflict between rational but politicized religionists and pagan pastoral poets.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream signals its comic intent by
rewriting the myth of Theseus and Hippolyta. Anyone conversant
with the Greek tales would know that on the eve of Theseus’s
marriage to Hippolyta an Amazon invasion of Attica took the
bride’s life—a conclusion as contrary to the sunny ending of
Shakespeare’s play as any that could be dreamed. It seems, then,
that because of the events Shakespeare relates, the tragic outcomes of the myth were averted. Hippolyta did not die in battle
against her own people; Theseus did not take another wife, Phaedra; and Hippolytus, the son of Theseus and Hippolyta, did not
die misjudged by his father because of his haughty insensitivity
to his stepmother’s passion for him. Shakespeare’s alternative
mythology transmutes tragedy into comedy.
But Shakespeare does not leave the tragic behind entirely.
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We are reminded of darker forces at the very start of the play.
Theseus, in ordering Philostrate to encourage exuberance in the
kingdom, makes a reference to sorrow by way of contrast: “Go,
Philostrate, / Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments; / Awake
the pert and nimble spirit of mirth; / Turn melancholy forth to funerals; / The pale companion is not for our pomp” (I.1.11-15).1
Almost immediately, an old man bearing his father’s name,
Egeus, appears with a complaint against his disobedient daughter
Hermia. The original Egeus, Theseus’s father, threw himself into
the ocean when he failed to see the victorious signal flag that
Theseus forgot to fly over the ship returning him to Athens from
his mission to defeat the Minotaur in Crete. The Aegean Sea remains an enduring monument to Egeus’s precipitous despair.
Shakespeare’s Egeus is similarly hasty in despairing over his
child. Hermia has fallen madly in love with Lysander rejecting
her father’s wish that she marry the almost identical Demetrius.
For his part, Demetrius has recently turned his affections to Hermia, despite having previously wooed and won the love of Helena, who had once been Hermia’s closest friend. Shakespeare
paints the two pairs of lovers as being almost indistinguishable
in character from each other.2
Angry Egeus demands that the full weight of the patriarchal
Athenian law be applied against his disobedient daughter. If Hermia persists in denying her father’s legal right to overrule her affections, she must choose between execution and perpetual
confinement in a nunnery (I.i.69-73). Although Theseus is sympathetic toward Hermia, he claims to be powerless under the law
he must uphold; he gives her the same four days to make her
1. Citations from A Midsummer Night’s Dream are keyed to The Norton
Shakespeare: Based on the Oxford Edition, ed. Stephen Greenblatt,
Walter Cohen, Jean Howard, and Katharine Maus, (New York: W. W.
Norton, 1997).
2. My reading of the play has been greatly influenced by Rene Girard’s
“Love by Another’s Eye: Mimetic Punning in A Midsummer Night’s
Dream” in his book A Theatre of Envy (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1991), 72-79.
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choice that stand between him and his approaching nuptials.
(I.i.83ff.) According to Duke Theseus, Hermia should view her
father as a god. She is but wax, subject to his formative power,
to be defaced or reshaped in any way he chooses (I.i.47-51). It is
also clear that Egeus is willful; even though there is no real difference between the two men vying for his child’s hand, his own
freedom of choice is all that really matters. In other words, to
Egeus reason means nothing more than his authority to rule arbitrarily over the desires of those under his power. His law is not
just; it is merely the tyranny of age over youth. It is no wonder
that Hermia and Lysander try to flee from it.
Yet when we follow the lovers to overhear their conference,
we rapidly lose our respect for them as well. It is as everything
they know about love came from a poor staging of Romeo and
Juliet—a play, I think, which Shakespeare spent much of his career trying to atone for. In choosing Juliet’s adolescent passion
over Egeus’s self-centered authority, the lovers find themselves
hooked on the other horn of the dilemma. Pure passion is as mad
as puritanical rationality. Furthermore, since A Midsummer
Night’s Dream actually contains a poor performance of a crude
version of Romeo and Juliet, we see our lovers obliviously mocking a play that accurately reflects their own follies and vices. To
their elders, they are victims of Eros, tortured on the rack of passion.
Lysander and Hermia are quite certain that “the course of true
love never did run smooth” (I.i.134). To them this means that the
intensity of their mad passion is reinforced by the conventional
love-perils they must overcome—and they are unaware of the
fact that having love-perils is itself a convention. But this surely
amounts to choosing “love through another’s eyes,” (I.i.140) the
very command Hermia rejects when told her eyes must see with
her father’s judgment. Further confirmation of the self-conscious
madness induced by this kind of love is given by Helena, who
tells Demetrius of the lovers’ plan to flee Athens, thus jeopardizing her chance to be rid of her rival merely because she expects
to be thanked by him for this favor. Helena is all too aware of the
fickle nature of love, which “looks not with the eyes but with the
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mind” (I.ii.234), but she is no less prone to be ruled by a force
that elevates “to form and dignity . . . things base and vile”
(I.ii.232). Her judgment is ruled by forces to which she submits,
even as she laments their tyranny. We are again reminded of her
namesake, Helen of Troy, and her excuse “a god made me do it.”3
This divinization of love—both affirmed and denied in A Midsummer Night’s Dream to the extent that it reveals love to be random and supernaturally potent—seems to distinguish between
two distinct ways of being influenced by love: we can fall under
the spell of an imaginary love we create for ourselves, or we can
actually succumb to the real thing. Although A Midsummer
Night’s Dream seems to warn that the effects of imaginary love
are as short-lived as they are rare, we will shortly receive an account of the transcendent origins of this sickness. This disease is
so potent that just the desire for it can lead to follies that lack all
the divine power and inspiration imparted by true love.
Meanwhile, in accordance with Theseus’s demand for merriment, a troupe of lowly but loyal Athenian artisans are preparing to stage a play. Although these men are far lower on the social
scale than the lovers, their affairs, and the account of imagination
that attends them, are of particular interest because Shakespeare
himself did not belong to the nobility, while he is almost universally considered one of the world’s greatest poets. Like the demideity Eros, whom Diotima describes in Plato’s Symposium as the
offspring of Need and Plenty,4 Shakespeare is a unique combination of low status and high imagination. Despite being out in
“the wind and the rain” like Touchstone at the play’s end, Shakespeare nevertheless had the honor of being summoned to entertain the highest nobility. One could say that Titania is the
alter-ego of Queen Elizabeth.
Thus, despite the ridicule they suffer, the players called “rude
mechanicals”—and Bottom in particular—will teach us how to
laugh at them; this will prepare us for the self-knowledge that
will have us laughing at ourselves together with Puck. The deep
3. Homer. Iliad, 6.349.
4. Plato, Symposium, 203b-d.
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self-knowledge that is to be imparted here is comic rather than
condemnatory: the doctrine of original sin and limited redemption is replaced by the doctrine that men are fools with immortal
yearnings that make us both sublime and ridiculous. Shakespeare’s theater takes the place of the church and its rituals, just
as Athenian theater sought simultaneously to worship, to edify,
and to entertain. As in the Christian liturgy, the Theater of Dionysus—a god-man who was torn apart and consumed by his devotees—brought grace and desire into close contact. In theater, the
performance is not marred by the personal imperfections of the
individual performers, just as in the Mass the sacrifice of the Eucharist is not tainted by any sins that may attach to the priest performing the service. Indeed, the theater constitutes a polite but
decidedly pagan challenge to the church’s claim to be the sole
pathway to God. Shakespeare’s comic theater does not insult divinity, and thus it avoids both hubris and original sin. On the contrary, it takes the ancient Greek view of the sacredness of theater
and joins to it the Christian humanistic belief in the ultimate
goodness of both creation and its God.
Now the rude mechanicals are anxious not to offend the nobles
in the audience; for this reason they try to explain away any troubling aspects of their performance. This concern is essentially political. Theater has always been a vehicle for breaking through class
constraints, and an indirect organ of social criticism, as the ruling
classes have always been well aware. Recall Elizabeth I’s alarm at
recognizing herself in Richard II: she is supposed to have said, “I
am Richard II, know ye not that?”5 Shakespeare too is aware of
the political implications of his art. By calling his play a “Dream”
and presenting it as fantasy, he makes it easy for his audience to
escape the strictures of society. This in turn allows them eventually,
like the young lovers in the play, to be delivered from the shackles
of self-ignorance that are tightened by society’s prohibitions—as
illustrated by the Myth of the Cave in Plato’s Republic.
5. See Jason Scott-Warren, Was Elizabeth I Richard II?: The Authenticity of Lambarde’s “Conversation,” Review of English Studies 64:
(2012), 208-230.
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Bottom the weaver stands out from all the other players. His
profession suggests that Shakespeare intends him to be a parody
of Plato’s statesman, who weaves together all the different constituencies of a city. He resembles the kind of poet most feared
by the guardians of the Republic in his zany desire to play every
role and steal every scene.6 His wild malapropisms suggest that
he cares little for the nature of things, and that nothing is stable
in his whirligig view of reality. For Bottom, at bottom, all things
are one. This would be worrying enough to the forces of order,
but what is worse is his earnest desire to “play” the tyrant (I.ii.2122, 33). Fortunately, no one has to take Bottom seriously. Although his boundless energy, incorrigible ingenuity, and good
humor might have stood him in good stead at a higher station in
life, Bottom’s Christian name, Nick, indicates his actual condition: he is “nicked,” or safely penned within the confines of social
reality.
The play now turns to the fairies in the depths of the forest.
We meet Puck (an emancipated version of Prospero’s indentured
spirit Ariel in The Tempest), who is the chief factotum of Oberon,
King of Fairies. If Bottom is the hidden solid base of our play,
Puck is its grand unifying principle; his task is “to jest to Oberon
and make him smile” (II.i.44). This sprite seems to delight in jolting all things out of their accustomed positions and thereby causing their true natures to be revealed. Nature, after all, involves
continual growth and self-revelation: as Heidegger pointed out,
in Greek the term for nature, phusis, essentially means “growth.”7
The nature of a city too must involve growth, repeated overturning of established categories, and continual revelation of its character. The static order of a city is only its body; a city only
becomes a polis by striving toward the beautiful and the just,8
and it often needs the aid of guiding daimon to do so. In fifthcentury Athens, Socrates played this role through his persistent
6. Plato, Republic, 398a.
7. Heidegger, Pathmarks, trans. William McNeil (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 189.
8. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1094b.
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practice of public dialectic. In the Athens of A Midsummer
Night’s Dream, Puck plays this role through his persistently playful upending of public norms. The continual reconsideration of
settled categories shows that the telos of the city, its true end and
purpose, cannot be sustained by economic and social stability
and self-sufficiency. Such as structure results in a stifling hegemony like that of Egeus, in which the old use the law to punish
the sexual desires of the young in order to advance their own
vices, which are directed more at gaining and preserving power
than at fertile productivity.9
Puck reports a quarrel between Oberon, his master, and Titania, the queen of the fairies. It seems that they have fallen out
over a changeling boy on whom they both have claims. While
the queen loves him for the sake of her dear friend, his dead
mother, with whom she spent many a pleasant hour, Oberon
seems to want him for reasons that have more to do with jealousy
than genuine affection. It seems that the mimetic impulse to desire another’s possession simply because the other takes delight
in it extends far beyond the human realm. But we also see the
contrast between this kind of jealous desire, which can only express itself through contending over things inconsequential in
themselves, and true friendship. When we recall how the longstanding friendship between Hermia and Helena was swiftly
ended by the introduction of mimetic romantic desire, we wonder
how and from source wanton fancy, a sort of love in idleness,
gains the tragic desire to uproot itself from what is natural and
orderly. Mimetic desires must reflect, however deceptively, some
transcendent reality that the natural order can only understand in
terms of transgression and outrage. Otherwise, we cannot explain
how the imagination effortlessly overturns the natural order,
strikes out after goals that cannot be grasped by the likes of old
Egeus, and threatens to turn us all into lunatics, star-crossed
lovers, and bad poets. Small wonder that the outraged rulers of a
city choose to fight this force using every means in their power.
9. See Montaigne, “On Repenting” in Essays, trans. Donald M. Frame
(Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1958), 610-620.
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Some explanation of the origin of these desires is provided
when Oberon and Titania make their entrance accompanied by
their entourages. While they bicker we learn that both Theseus
and Hippolyta owe much to the fairy queen and king: although
their beneficiaries are oblivious to this, Oberon and Titania have
provided these lucky mortals whom they love with supernatural
assistance in their heroic exploits. It is striking that the benevolence of the fairy rulers is bestowed upon Theseus and Hippolyta
on the basis of erotic attraction. Even for fairies, love seems to
defy all the conventions of marital fidelity. Although they know
how to use love’s power far more efficiently than humans, the
fairies are clearly not immune to the madness of love. This is why
their quarrel over the changeling boy has produced terrible consequences in the physical world. Nature’s order has been terribly
disrupted: the harvests have been ruined; the seasons do not
change on time; indeed, all the limits of nature have been transgressed. Titania admits that she and Oberon are the progenitors
of this mad chaos. Their erotic desires are not fulfilled by sexual
union, but rather by infusing those they love with their power.
The rhythm and order of the cosmos, and of all the creatures in
it, seem to be kept through their meeting and dancing, which their
quarrel has prevented.
After Hippolyta’s angry departure, Oberon schemes to torment her for this “injury” to his pride. Now Puck is told to employ magic against Titania; he must use the juice of a flower, once
touched by one of Cupid’s arrows, to make her fall madly in love
with the next living creature she sees (II.i.172). Insofar as A Midsummer Night’s Dream analogizes the politics of its time, neither
Cupid’s arrow nor Puck’s flower-juice hit the mark. The intended
victim, the Queen of England, seems to have been immune to
love’s otherwise irresistible power. Elizabeth was about sixty
years old when the play was first produced, and by that time, it
appears, she understood the reality of love, and was not to be
ruled by its false signifiers.
While Shakespeare may tread, however lightly, on dangerous
political ground, he does not seem to be in open conflict with the
unstated doctrines of love that we have managed to derive from
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the play. We distinguished earlier between the real madness of
love and merely falling victim to the concept of love. Now let us
remember Plato’s Phaedrus, from which the language of lunatic,
lover, and poet is derived, and recall Socrates’ famous palinode
in defense of truly divine love.10 Like Elizabeth, Socrates—
whose only claimed area of expertize was in matters of love—
was immune to the blandishments of false love: he was more than
able to resist the sexual attraction of the all-but-irresistible Alcibiades.11 These examples of being able to separate true love
from false love show that love is not in itself madness. Nevertheless, it is also the basis of the various forms of lunacy come
over us because of our craving for love, a craving that is often
just as blind as it is selfish. We must distinguish between beholding the genuine object of love, falling into the genuine madness
of love, and embracing the base imitation of this genuine madness—recall Plato’s condemnatory suspicions in the Republic of
imitations twice and thrice removed from the truth.12 Moreover,
in the Phaedrus Plato describes even the god of Olympus as
being only a bit better than humans at pursuing true hyper-Uranian beauty.13 Although Oberon and Titania are not comparable to
the Olympian gods, they are still located on much higher rungs
on the ladder of love than humans. If Plato is to be believed, the
fairies can confer the benefits of love on those below them, while
they themselves also remain subject to the power of love.
Returning now to the play’s action: Oberon, hiding in the forest, observes Demetrius and Helena. Plato’s image of the magnetic chain of attraction from the Ion is the key to their behavior.14
Demetrius searches wildly for Hermia, despite being well aware
of the repugnance she feels for him; Helena meanwhile com10. Plato, Phaedrus, 244a ff.
11. Plato, Symposium, 219 b-d.
12. Plato, Republic, 602b-c.
13. Plato, Phaedrus, 247a-c.
14. Plato, Ion, 533d-536d.
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plains quite explicitly about the magnetic attraction that her
sometime lover still exerts on her. She is well aware of, but unaffected by, his repeated claims to be sickened by the sight of her.
Demetrius is disgusted Helena’s masochistic appeal, “The more
you beat me, I will fawn on you: / Use me but as your spaniel,
spurn me, strike me, / neglect me, lose me; only give me leave, /
unworthy as I am, to follow you” (II.i.204-5). But this reaction,
she says, only increases her desire for him.
Oberon watches them leave, the maid in hot pursuit of the
man, and he feels sympathy for hapless Helena. He instructs
Puck, who has just returned with the magic juice, to apply some
of it to the eyes of the man in Athenian garb so that he will return
the affections the young woman he has just spurned. While Puck
is occupied in this task, Oberon will treat sleeping Titania’s eyes
in the same way. While the fairy king’s intentions toward his own
queen are clearly mischievous, he sincerely wishes to help poor
spurned Helena win back her beloved. Unfortunately, or perhaps
serendipitously, Puck sprinkles the flower-juice on Lysander as
he sleeps some distance away from Hermia following a minor
disagreement over whether or not it would be correct for them to
lie in repose beside each other. Then, as luck would have it, Helena comes by, still chasing Demetrius. She awakens Lysander
only to see him fall madly in love with her. Helena, in a self-pitying mood after her encounter with Demetrius, believes that
Lysander is playing a cruel trick on her. She cannot understand
how else he would now speak so dismissively of his beloved Hermia, while lavishing the most fulsome praise on herself. Helena
then flees, hotly pursued by the newly ardent Lysander.
Meanwhile Hermia, waking up from a nightmare to find herself alone in the dark forest, panics. Certain that Lysander would
never have abandoned her, she is convinced that something quite
terrible has happened to him. By this time, however, her categorical certainty about Lysander has been undermined, for the audience at least, both by the implicit sexual overture he made to her
and by the subliminal message in her dream of a serpent stealing
away with her heart. Hermia takes this a warning that Helena will
betray her, as indeed she has (though not in relation to Lysander).
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Here we begin to note that the course of their love will be compromised equally by their own characters and by the impediments
others will throw in their paths. Whatever their fate will be at the
play’s end, their mimetically idealized expectations of each other
will have been modified by these magically induced events. The
four lovers, trapped between the stifling laws of the city and the
mad passions released in the forest, are consumed in pairs, just
as Theseus’s Minotaur devours the pairs of young people in
Crete. As the second act ends, attention is drawn to Titania, who
slumbers in her bower. She too will soon awaken to find herself
drawn to a most unexpected erotic object.
When the third act begins we are again reminded by the mechanicals’ elaborate precautions to avoid giving offense, that
Shakespeare too is conveying weighty and sensitive matters in
an allegorical fashion. Bottom begins the rehearsal by declaring
that some things in their comedy “will never please” (III.i.9). He
believes that gentle ladies in the audience will never bear the
sight of Pyramus killing himself. But, rather than leaving the
killing offstage as the Greeks would, Bottom proposes writing a
prologue that would dispel all fear by revealing not only that
Pyramus is not really killed, but also that Pyramus is actually
Bottom the Weaver. Further, since the sight of a lion would occasion even greater fear, the lion should name himself and wear
a mask exposing half the actor’s face. As a final absurd precaution, this fearful lion should expressly entreat the audience not
to show fear or even tremble as he comes before them; for that,
he should tell the onlookers, would be the pity of his life.
The players then address several ridiculous technical problems, with Bottom once again taking the lead. They consider how
to represent the moonlit night when Pyramus and Thisbe meet,
and decide it would be best for one to enter with a bush of thorns
and a lantern, saying “that he comes to disfigure or to present the
person of Moonshine” (III.i.51-53). Next, since the lovers speak
through a wall, Bottom proposes that another dress in materials
“that signify wall” and use his fingers to make a hairy, chalky
cranny through which Pyramus and Thisbe speak words of love
to each other (III.i.57-60).
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While it is very clear that Shakespeare intends Bottom’s audience to find these primitive representations hilarious, and in
the last instance even obscene, he fully expects, on the contrary,
that most of those in his own audience will be oblivious to his
taking similar—if markedly less absurd—precautions to obviate
offense and fear. He takes these measures in order to prevent his
audience from suspecting that they are being deceived. Just as
Helena should not have been convinced that Lysander and
Demetrius were mocking her intentionally, although they themselves in their separate delusions were quite sincere, Shakespeare
has to do all he can to prevent his audience from indulging in the
paranoid suspicion the playwright, or even the whole world, is
deliberately engaged in a conspiracy against them—as tempting
as such a conclusion may seem to their solipsistic egos. Shakespeare takes great pains to reveal the extent to which coincidences, accidents, and errors pervade the human world. Gods and
fairies seldom act with perfect foresight; more often, they are
scrambling to repair the damage done by blind chance, mortal
mistakes, and even their own well-intended plans.
The climax of A Midsummer Night’s Dream arrives when
Puck decides to place an ass’s head on Bottom. As a result of this
strange transformation the other players run away in terror and
the unsuspecting weaver is left alone with Titania. This fulfills
Oberon’s desire that his queen should fall madly in love with a
“vile thing” (II.ii.40) when she awakens to see Bottom with her
anointed eyes. Oberon’s aim is to embarrass Titania in order to
make her more willing to surrender to him her former favorite,
the little changeling boy. Yet, once again, while carrying out the
king’s instructions to the letter, Puck has somehow added an element of inspired randomness that produces unexpected results.
The “translated” Bottom somehow does not believe himself to
be changed in the least respect. His essential nature unchanged
by Puck’s trick, Bottom retains his characteristic aplomb and
does not give any credence to the fearful observations of Snout
and Quince that he is “changed” and “translated” (III.i.102-105).
He denies these allegations and refuses to be made an ass of,
telling Snout that he sees an ass’s head of his own—that is, Bot-
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tom sees that all other men are asses. His use of the word “ass”
in addressing both Snout and Quince also suggests that he does
not see himself in this light. Bottom believes that they are knavishly trying to frighten him. He refuses to be frightened. Is he
more or less the ass for this?
When Bottom begins to sing in order to show his fellow players that he is not afraid, he awakens Titania. Professing to be as
enchanted by Bottom’s singing as by his shape, the queen goes
on to declare that she has fallen in love with him at first sight.
He responds by telling her that, while she has little reason to feel
this way about him, he sees that “reason and love keep little company nowadays” (III.i.126-29). Bottom finds it a pity that some
honest folk cannot reconcile them, self-consciously owning that
he can “gleek” (III.i.129), or jest knowingly, on occasion; he is
perhaps laying claim to being that rare philosophical poet, one
capable of addressing the desires rationally. The enamored Titania then tells the asinine sage that he is as wise as he is beautiful—a claim that cannot be faulted. Bottom modestly denies both
claims, adding that he would be quite satisfied with sufficient wit
to find his way out of the forest. Just like the lovers, Bottom understands that he is trapped in a maze, but he is unable to see that
he now resembles the original bull-headed denizen of the Cretan
labyrinth.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a retelling, and perhaps a rectification, of the ancient Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. Bottom is as strange a hybrid beast as the man with the head
of a bull that Theseus slew in Minos’s labyrinth. Because he is a
weaver, however, he is tied to the ball of string that Ariadne gave
to Theseus in order to help him escape from the maze. His double
nature is sewn together when Titania falls in love with him, and
she too expresses a double nature: she is both Ariadne, who provides Bottom with the way out of his predicament, and Pasiphaë,
the wife of Minos who falls in love with the bull of Poseidon.
How will Shakespeare’s Duke Theseus overcome the monster
Bottom in a manner that is consistent with comedy? Will he retain the moral ambiguity of the original Theseus, who cleverly
outwitted the Minotaur to save his Athenian comrades but also
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betrayed his promise to marry Ariadne, leaving her behind on
an isolated island where she finally is rescued by the god Dionysus? Will Duke Theseus act in a similar way toward Bottom?
And will Dionysus, god of the theater, rescue him?
While the love-stuck Titania is plying the amazed Bottom
with gifts, even promising to purge Bottom of his “mortal grossness” and place at his disposal attendant fairies who will fetch
him “jewels from the deep” (III.i.139-142), the four young lovers
are rushing headlong into their own labyrinth—the labyrinth of
undifferentiated confusion into which they have been led by their
impulsive passions.
At the beginning Helena and Hermia were best friends
(III.ii.199-220). This relationship mirrors the pure friendship enjoyed by Titania and the changeling boy’s mother. Duke Theseus’s appropriation of the changeling reminds us that the original
Theseus violently snatched Hippolyta from her Amazon kingdom. This is why the Amazon invasion of Athens, which, as mentioned earlier, does not occur in A Midsummer Nights Dream,
becomes a significant non-event. Instead of an angry female reaction to male violence, the play substitutes the quarrel between
Hermia and Helena that erupts towards the end of Act III, scene
ii. Their forthcoming marriages alienate them from each other.
Their female sisterhood is fractured by the approaching demands
of sexuality and childrearing. The breast takes precedence over
the heart. Moreover, friendship, the candid sharing of souls, is
about to be replaced by the demands of economic necessity and
patriarchal power. (Patriarchal tyranny over womens’ lives is represented, as suggested earlier, in the figure of Egeus. Recall
Lysander’s angry jab at Demtrius: “You have her father love,
Demetrius; / Let me have Hermia’s: do you marry him” [I.i.9394]. Lysander is unacceptable to Egeus precisely because he has
wooed Hermia directly, rather than submitting to Egeus’s patriarchal rule over his daughter’s life.)
While it is certain that Demetrius becomes interested in Hermia after successfully wooing Helena, it is not clear whether this
occurred before or after Lysander gained Hermia’s love. In either
case, the bond between the two women had been broken. As
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Hermia and Helena progress from childhood friendship to adolescent romance to parentally approved marriage, they move
away from genuine friendship toward the social roles that stifle
self-realization.
Perhaps this move toward conventional roles could also explain Demetrius’s attraction to Hermia. If his conventional relationship with the beautiful but rather passive Helena became
dissatisfying, he would naturally seek the wonderful qualities that
his fiancée praised so highly in her friend. (To paraphrase the
song from Two Gentlemen of Verona, “Who is Hermia? what is
she, / that Helen so commends her?”)
By contrast, Lysander’s romance with Hermia, by virtue of
being disapproved by her father, may not yet have been soured
by familiarity or proximity. Short, dark, and thus less attractive
by normal standards of beauty, Hermia certainly seems to possess
more spirit than the somewhat masochistic Helena. Yet she will
be shocked to discover that Lysander’s attraction to her, despite
his apologies when she refuses to let him sleep beside her, is ultimately sexual in nature. He is not seeking a friend in marriage,
but a sexual partner. This natural urge toward marriage turns out
to be even less fulfilling than the conventional one to Hermia,
and perhaps to anyone who has shared true friendship with another soul.
It is all too easy to see how Lysander, after being spurned by
Hermia, finds the more physically endowed Helena to be more
attractive. On the other hand, Demetrius, whose sole reason for
being drawn to Hermia has been mimetic, loses interest in her
the moment he finds that Lysander is now drawn to Helena. This
fact makes her rise in stature in his eyes. Demetrius makes the
mistake Socrates points out in the Euthyphro: to him, Helena is
not loved because she is inherently desirable; she is loved because another person loves her.15 Whatever inherently desirable
qualities Hermia may possess, they become invisible to
Demetrius when he sees that Helena is loved by Lysander.
15. Plato, Euthyphro, 10a-11b.
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Though Hermia may be a far better object of mimetic desire,
once Oberon anoints Demetrius with the magic juice, he only has
eyes for Helena. When Puck brings Helena to meet the now enchanted Demetrius, he is delighted to find that she has Lysander
in tow. As Demetrius sleeps, Helena bitterly denounces Lysander
for his treachery. By using the very oaths he swore before Hermia
to now pledge his love to her, he is only proving that he is just as
false now as he was then. Things only get worse when Demetrius
wakes up. When he too professes his undying love, Helena smells
a rat. She believes mistakenly that both Lysander and Demetrius
are playing a cruel joke on her (note how this runs parallel to Bottom’s belief that the other players were trying to trick him!). She
is rightly convinced, however, that the feelings they profess are
not genuine. Their praise is for an idea rather than a real person;
they are not talking about her at all. Being the masochist she is,
Helena would rather be hated honestly than endure this kind of
rhetoric. She is also convinced that all this is part of their rivalry
for Hermia’s hand. While both Lysander and Demetrius deny this
charge, Hermia reappears, and Helena tells the two men that they
now have a chance to prove their claim before Hermia in person.
(Quite unlike Bottom, Helena has real difficulty accepting any
good fortune.)
With Hermia’s return matters reach a climax. First Lysander
brutally tells her that Helena’s beauty took him from her side,
and then Helena herself accuses a stunned Hermia of being a part
of a cruel conspiracy. Sadly recalling the blissful childhood years
they spent together as the closest of friends, growing together
“with two seeming bodies but one heart” (III.ii.215)—a state not
unlike that of Aristophanes’s circle-men of Plato’s Symposium—
Hermia accuses of Helena of betraying not just herself, but all
women. The distinction between true friendship and mimetic love
is now perfectly clear: in fact, A Midsummer Night’s Dream does
not depict one instance of true reciprocated love. Hermia’s
amazement at Lysander’s betrayal is redoubled when she finds
that Demetrius, whom she has just roundly abused for pursuing
her, has now returned his affections to her antipodes—the despicable Helena. Her world has been inverted.
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Even after Hermia states her astonishment at these accusations—“I am amazèd at your passionate words” (III.ii.221—another reference to a maze—Helena reiterates her charge of
conspiracy, drops a dark hint about death, and tries to leave.
When Lysander attempts to prevent her departure, calling her
“my love, my life, my soul,” (III.ii.247), Demetrius claims to love
her more and challenges him to a duel. Hermia then seeks to prevent Lysander from pursuing Helena, only to hear Lysander call
her an “Ethiope” and a “tawny Tartar” for her darker complexion,
and a “serpent” whom he will shake off as she clings to him
(III.ii.257-264). Worse, when Demetrius charges him with not
being really in love with Helena, Lysander haughtily responds
that he will not kill such a worthless thing as Hermia just to prove
his feelings towards Helena.
Nothing in her past life has prepared Hermia for this. Asking
him what can harm her more than hate, she asks “Am I not Hermia, are you not Lysander?” Yet her words “I am as fair as I was
erstwhile” (II.ii.274-275) do not recognize that beauty resides in
the eye and not in the object itself. This is why she, formerly
thought fair, is now but a dark tawny “Ethiope.” When Hermia
goes on to accuse Helena of having literally seduced Lysander,
maybe recalling too late his wish to sleep with her, Helena then
calls her a “puppet” (III.ii.289). Although Helena means “deceptive,” outraged Hermia takes this as a reference to her height.
Dubbing poor Helena a “painted maypole,” (II.ii.297) Hermia
claims she is yet tall enough to scratch her eyes out. Helena then
says that she will take her folly back to Athens. Her only fault,
in her eyes, was to betray the lovers’ plan to Demetrius whom
she still loves despite his offenses. When she declares her fear of
Hermia (“She was a vixen when she went to school / And though
she be but little, she is fierce [III.ii.325-326]) both young men
prepare to come to blows over who will defend her.
Now Oberon and Puck decide to step in. Puck denies that he
is to blame for the pandemonium but admits to being gladdened
by the “jangling” (III.ii.354). Oberon instructs him to separate
the two angry young men from each other by imitating their
voices in turn until they fall asleep, exhausted by chasing after
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illusions. Puck must then crush an antidote to the “love in idleness” in Lysander’s eyes, restoring his normal way of seeing
things. Oberon claims that this will take away “all error”
(III.ii.369) from his sight, and he declares that when the lovers
awaken, they will believe that everything they have seen and
done was nothing but a dream. He is sure that once back in
Athens they will be reunited “with league whose date till death
shall never end” (III.ii.374). While Puck attends to that, Oberon
will wheedle the changeling away from Titania before undoing
the spell on her and restoring peace to all things.
At this point, Puck urges Oberon to hurry before the daybreak,
as ghosts flee from the first rays of the sun. But Oberon corrects
him, saying that “we are spirits of another sort” (III.ii.389), who
need not fear the glorious day. It is as though Puck represents
something older and a shade darker; more mischievous than Ariel,
he is also a pagan force of chaos and disruption. There is a bit of
Mephistopheles in Puck; he inadvertently serves the ends of goodness, despite seeking to fool, trip and disrupt.16 While this residual
pagan element seems to interfere with and interrupt both the perfection of God’s creation and the order of the city, there is a vital
sense in which Puckishness saves what is joyful and spontaneous,
and thus truly human, from the rules, rites, and routines of
preachers, prudes, and prigs. Although he acted at Oberon’s bidding, Puck can take pride in his masterpiece of confusion—the
translated Bottom is Puck’s finest creation.
While the lovers sleep in the woods, Act IV finds Titania,
in her own words, “doting” on Bottom while her four attendant
fairies cater to his every whim. After he has been fed, scratched
and serenaded, Titania sends her fairies away and Bottom falls
asleep in her arms. Shakespeare—at least as tactful in his consideration of his audience’s sensibilities as is Bottom of his audience—presents no overt signs of a sexual encounter between
Bottom and Titania. But the connection to the myth of the
16. “Part of the power / That constantly wants evil and constantly does
good.” Goethe, Faust: The First Part of the Tragedy, trans. Margaret
Kirby (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2015), 1335-36.
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Minotaur dispels the possibility that their union is purely platonic. According to the original story, Pasiphaë’s mad desire for
the bull of Poseidon prompted her to have Daedalus build her
a portable wooden cow, within which she could position herself
in order to copulate with the bull.
Oberon and Puck arrive to find Bottom cradled in Titania’s
arms, and Oberon feels pity for her. After securing custody of the
changeling boy, he no longer feels the need to continue the farce.
He drops the juice on Titania’s eyes to remove the magic, then he
orders Puck to remove the ass’s head so Bottom may return to
Athens and “think no more of this night’s accidents / But as the
fierce vexation of a dream” (IV.i.66). Titania wakes and tells
Oberon of a most strange vision: “Methought I was enamored of
an ass,” though once awake she exclaims, “mine eyes do loath his
visage now!” (IV.i.73,76). While Bottom sleeps on, his head removed, the king and queen dance and are reconciled. They will
now bless the union of Theseus and Hippolyta. It is a fair inference
that, had this interlude in the woods with Bottom not taken place,
the royal pair would not have been reconciled, the marriage would
not have been graced by their presence, and the bloody Amazon
invasion, symbol of sexual strife, would have come to pass.
Meanwhile, Theseus and Hippolyta, while hunting in the forest, find all four lovers asleep. When Egeus finds out that
Lysander and Hermia were fleeing Athens in defiance of his will,
he asks Theseus to punish them, looking to Demetrius for support. Yet Demetrius confesses that his desire for Hermia has
“melted as the snow” (IV.i.163). Recalling this passion as he
would a sickness, he barely remembers or feels it now. Helena is
again the sole object of his love. This frees Theseus to decree that
the two couples shall be married along with him that very day.
This should be welcome news, yet the lovers are still in shock.
When the four lovers are alone, they canvass one another’s
memories and find, as Hermia puts it, that “everything seems
double” (IV.i.187). In other words, no identity is as stable as it
was a night ago when she was Hermia and he Lysander. Likewise, Helena reflects that she has “found Demetrius like a jewel,
mine own and not mine own” (IV.i.188). We all have deeper iden-
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tities that cannot be owned even by ourselves, let alone by others.
While Lysander, who was twice enchanted, has very little to say,
it seems to Demetrius that they are still asleep and yet dreaming.
As he observed earlier, things once indubitably certain now seem
distant and mutable “Like far-off mountains turnèd into clouds”
(IV.i.185). All that they are certain of is Theseus’s order that they
follow him to the temple. To Demetrius, only this proves that
they are awake. In essence, it is by the temple, the cave, and the
city—for all three are equivalent—that the uncertainties of the
nightmare in the forest are safely secured. This is why they
meekly return to the cave, despite knowing full well that they
shadows they behold there have unsuspected depths. The four of
them will no doubt fashion an agreeable account of what happened to them in due time.
And then there’s Bottom. He was never truly lost in the bottomless ambiguity of the enchanted wood because he’s his own
bottom. The “bottom” is the piece of wood around which a
skein of thread is wound, so that Bottom is connected, as we
said, to Ariadne’s thread. Bottom is able to exit from his enchanted confusion because of his ability to thread his way
through many different roles. Though comically ignorant, he is
nonetheless self-possessed, ingenious, and imaginative, and
these qualities lead him through his labyrinthine trials successfully, even as he playfully mangles all the roles he steps into.
After meeting Titania—an experience more supernatural than
anything the lovers undergo—Bottom is indeed purged of his
“mortal grossness,” as Titania promised. And yet he has enough
“bottom” to take up all the jewels that Titania’s fairies bring
him from the depths of the ocean.
Bottom’s appearance is deceptive, even to the spirits. Puck
ridiculed Bottom’s wit. Oberon confidently expected that the
ass-headed monster would forget everything about his wild
night in the woods. But they both seriously underestimated the
worth of humble weaver. A man who is stable and “bottomed,”
or self-contained, who can assume the humiliating mask of ass’s
head to hide his gravity, is not to be scorned if he is a master of
the royal art of weaving—that is, of statesmanship. Only such
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a person can guide us safely through the dark woods of imagination and the subterranean cave of opinion.
It is unclear whether Theseus, when he discovers the four
young lovers, ignores Bottom or whether Bottom is invisible to
him. In any case, Bottom’s experiences from that night in the
woods far surpass the lovers’ experiences. The lovers have only
encountered Hegel’s “bad infinite”—the anarchic possibilities
that haunt the soul on a dark night—but Bottom has seen things
sublime and trans-rational. Since he was never enchanted—it was
Titania who was magically induced to fall in love with him—he
does not need to be disenchanted; Oberon simply orders Puck to
“take off this head” (IV.i.77). Despite being discovered in the
queen’s arms, Bottom escapes punishment by being taken for an
ass. What would Elizabeth’s father Henry VIII have made of this
lèse majesté?
When Bottom awakens from his fairy-induced slumber, he
at first believes that no time has elapsed at all and that he is still
awaiting his cue in the play. Then he realizes that something has
happened to him: “I have had a most rare vision. I have had a
dream—past the wit of man to say what dream it was. Man is but
an ass if he go about to expound this dream” (IV.i.199-202). Bottom sees that he lacks the categories to describe his experience.
Instead, dipping into the stores of his memory, he produces a garbled version of 1 Corinthians 2:9 to describe the inability to describe his dream: “The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man
/ hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his / tongue to
conceive, nor his heart to report what /my dream was” (IV.i.21114). Shakespeare prudently stops Bottom from continuing on to
the next verse of the scripture, which details the blessings God
has prepared for us—that would be a blasphemous comparison
between Titania’s bounty and God’s. Instead, Bottom will “get
Peter Quince to write a / ballet [ballad] of this dream: it shall be
called Bottom’s / Dream, because it hath no bottom.” (IV.i.21416). And he will sing it after Thisbe dies, presumably because his
vision provides intimations of a glorious afterlife. Perhaps his
mystical vision will be the metaphysical basis of any future
comedies Bottom himself may create.
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Act V begins with Theseus and Titania discussing the four
young lovers’ account of their recollections from the preceding
night. The act is strikingly undramatic: nothing significant happens. So deliberately flat an ending seems to demand that we shift
from action to interpretation. Our focus goes from Helen to Hermes, from the enchantments of love to questions of hermeneutics.
It is amusing to see two well-known figures from mythology arguing over how much credence should be given to “antique stories” and “fairy toys” (V.i.3)—especially when Theseus uses
images from Socrates’s palinode in Plato’s Phaedrus, where the
philosopher defends divine madness and poetic inspiration. As if
to drive this point home, Theseus speaks of how “The poet’s eye
in full frenzy rolling, / doth glance from heaven to earth, from
earth to heaven” (V.i.12-13). This image derives from Plato’s
Symposium, in which Socrates recounts what Diotima told him
about Eros, the child of Need and Plenty.17 In A Midsummer
Night’s Dream, the child of need and plenty would correspond to
any offspring of the union between Bottom and Titania, who
would represent a weaving together of the human and divine
realms.
Since the matter of Theseus’s argument only serves to unweave its content, Shakespeare urges us to agree with Hippolyta
when she points out that the harmony of the four tales “More
witnesseth than fancy’s images / And grows to something of
great constancy [consistency]” (V.i.25-26): the stories are not
merely the fanciful products of over-heated imaginations. While
Theseus denounces the tendency of humans to exaggerate—
“How easy is a bush supposed a bear!” (V.i.22), this only makes
it harder for us to accept his own heroic, but no doubt exaggerated, deeds. It seems as if he kills monsters by denying that they
exist. This daylight dilution of night’s truths, anticipating the
Enlightenment’s tendency to disparage everything that cannot
be measured, strengthens the very irrationality it tries to contain.
Theseus’s hyper-rationality may well have caused the threat of
the Amazon invasion, which happily has been averted. Largely
17. Plato, Symposium, 202e-203a.
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thanks to Bottom’s intervention, nothing happens. As W. H.
Auden put it, “Poetry makes nothing happen.”18 The curse of
reification has been lifted from nature.
When Theseus is asked to choose among several alternative
forms of entertainment to fill the three hours before supper and
bed, it is clear that his strong preference is for comedy—and the
more banal the better—over epic, tragedy or lyric. This is quite
consistent with the tendency to reduce a bear to a bush, or turn
the Minotaur into an amazed ass. The first three choices offered
by the master of revels are (1) the battle with the Centaurs, (2)
the murder of Orpheus by the Bacchae, and (3) a lament over
the decline of learning by the nine muses. Theseus rejects the
first two: he has told Hippolyta about the one and already seen
the other. When the third choice is thought too satirical for the
day, all that remains is our “tedious brief scene” Pyramus and
Thisbe, of “very tragical mirth” (V.i.56-57). So the Duke
chooses it, albeit over the strong objections of Philostrate. The
strange combination of comedy and tragedy that is contained in
the promise of “tragical mirth” probably has more to do with
Theseus’s aristocratic predilection of finding amusement in unintended buffoonery than with Socrates’s assertion in the Symposium that the art of making tragedies is also the art of making
comedies.19
Even after being informed that the play both “tedious and
brief” (V.i.58), and only comic in that it is likely to be poorly
performed, Theseus is determined to favor the rude mechanicals
with his patronage. Hippolyta expressed a reluctance to see the
simple-minded players embarrassed undertaking a task that is
beyond their capacities, but Theseus replies that the audience
ought not to incline toward harsh criticism: “Our sport shall be
to take what they mistake: / And what poor duty cannot do, noble
respect / Takes it in might, not merit” (V.i.90, 92). But the intent
to judge the players by their “might”—by their widow’s mite,
18. W. H. Auden, “In Memory of W.B Yeats” in Selected Poems, ed.
Edward Mendelson, (New York: Vintage, 1989), 80.
19. Plato, Symposium, 223d.
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one might say—fails, even though Theseus claims that he has
the power to see beyond appearances:
Where I have come, great clerks have purposèd
To greet me with premeditated welcomes,
Where I have seen them shiver and look pale,
Make periods in the midst of sentences,
Throttle their practiced accent in their fears,
And in conclusion dumbly have broke off,
Not paying me a welcome. Trust me, sweet,
Out of this silence yet I picked a welcome,
And in the modesty of fearful duty
I read as much as from the rattling tongue
Of saucy and audacious eloquence.
Love, therefore, and tongue-tied simplicity
In least speak most, to my capacity. (V.i.87-99)
But this self-estimate is not accurate: the play is so bad that it
cannot help but elicit derisive comments even from Theseus. He
cannot get beyond reductive charity. Though he wishes to make
the meaningless speech of the rough artisans orderly, he lacks the
imagination to see that Bottom at least is pointing towards something that far exceeds the capacities of his station in the shadow
world of the cave. To Theseus, art is a diversion from reality,
filled with impractical ideals and impossible dreams, that must
be tolerated by a kind of benign neglect—which is precisely the
attitude that Theseus bestows on the mechanical.
Since the Duke does not allow Bottom speak his epilogue,
Shakespeare’s audiences must imagine it for themselves. The
contours of this epilogue are clear enough: first, it must conclude
the mechanicals’ rendition of Pyramus and Thisbe; second, it
must explain A Midsummer Night’s Dream; and third, it must also
explain Bottom’s mystical vision. This is why Bottom wants to
place it after Thisbe’s death: it has to reveal what lies beyond
death, what sustains life, and what justifies love. Bottom’s epilogue is the “bottom line” to be extracted form his near-death experience with Titania.
There are clear parallels between Theseus/Oberon and Hippolyta/Titania. This is why the four roles are almost always
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played by the same pair of actors. The male power of reason imperiously believes that it can censor, control, and shape the
thoughts of the disordered female soul. But through his mystical
vision, Bottom has been initiated into a suprarational wisdom by
Titania. Can this wisdom be stolen from him as easily as Oberon
tricked Titania or Theseus raped Hippolyta? A Midsummer
Night’s Dream trusts the power of drama to resurrect visions long
forgotten by seers and heroes. “The best are but shadows and the
worst are no worse if imagination amend them” (V.i.208-209). It
must be the audience’s imagination, not the actor’s, that redeems
the poet in the cave. Every time A Midsummer Night’s Dream is
performed, it becomes the vehicle, being ridden by an ass,
through which salvation may enter the world.
Theseus cannot see that art bestows deeper meaning on
human life than order. The wall dividing Pyramus and Thisbe
represents the strife between reason and desire, between philosophy and poetry, city and theatre, law and will, civilized religion
and pagan nature. The role of Lion, who threatens to destroy
Pyramus and Thisbe, was one of those coveted by Bottom; it too
stands for the Minotaur, the monster that devours young lovers
in the dark labyrinth of desire that is nature. Yet it is the translated
Bottom who finds that Titania, the feminine principle at the heart
of nature, is far from monstrous. It takes imagination and charity,
qualities Bottom possesses in abundance, to reconcile principles
that seem to be separate and opposed. But this is precisely why
Theseus, acting in the name of the male principle that dominates
the city, must overcome overcome the horned beast by denial,
standing on his claim to have slain the Minotaur. The truth revealed in A Midsummer Night’s Dream seems to be this: Men like
Lysander and Demetrius become horned monsters when they are
trapped in the labyrinthine coils of desires they cannot own or
even recognize. Their paramount ambition is to possess the
women they love and maintain their amour propre; that is to say,
they only want to know other souls as objects, without genuinely
trying to behold them as independent selves. But to burn with
unloving passion avails us nothing. To quote St. Paul, though in
a slightly different sense than he intended it, “Though I give my
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body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.”20
Despite his ignorance, Bottom, having been opened up to the
grace of Nature by Titania, sees much further than the lovers.
By comparison, they wear the heads of asses. True beholding
of another self creates a loving obligation to protect and nurture
the inner life of the other’s soul. One sees into that soul, as it
were, through the eyes of a god. One the one hand, a love like
this is infinitely preferable to the sort of “love” that motivates
Egeus’s feudal claims over his daughter Hermia, who is for him
“but as a form in wax, / By him imprinted and within his power
/ to leave the figure or disfigure it” (I.i.49-51). On the other hand,
because of the godlike glance into the other’s soul, a Christian
audience may well be inclined to regard it as blasphemous.
Other elements of Bottom’s epilogue would have to clarify
the various ways in which love can go wrong. One way is that
lustful or selfish love, in seeking spiritual support for its desires,
falls into despair when the poetry it gets hold of is bad. Another
way is that abstract reason, in seeking to domesticate the untamed
aspects of eros, falls into nihilism. To avoid these and similar errors, the passions must be educated by poetry—not manipulated,
as Oberon does, or rejected, as Theseus does. It is true that wellcrafted laws can mitigate or even remove the possessiveness inherent in some kinds of selfish love (such as the property rights
Egeus claims over Hermia). Indeed, such laws can help to ensure
equality and even aid in the perennial human struggle to climb
out of the cave. But neither law nor logos is easily taught to
lovers. It would be better, if fate allows, to attend to our own
soul’s need for love before being gripped by the passions. Our
own soul’s unique charity for itself is to become equal to itself,
to see itself clearly and love itself for what it truly is. This is the
preparation that makes us capable of dealing with our passions
competently. And the test of success in this preparation is to return
to the cave—as Bottom returned to Theseus’s court after his mystical vision, or as Socrates willingly entered the courtroom to deliver his apology—bringing love, disorder, erotically charged
20. 1 Corinthians 13:3.
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chaos, and “mirthful tragedy” to our fellow humans rather than
submitting to the reductive comedy of life constrained by generic
rationality. To draw an example from another magical play: It is
surely thus, after consolidating his mystical wisdom, that Prospero
returns to Milan as its Duke after the events of The Tempest.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is as anarchic a carnival, we
must imagine, as Bottom’s mystical vision must have been. Its
mad antics and category-crossing magic represent the way of
wonder, an approach to a wisdom that cannot be contained within
the rational confines of the logos. This wisdom, the wisdom of
the spirit, comforts and inspires us when we reach the limits of
the logos.
Spirit works in the spectral forests encircling the sublime, in
the element of amazed ignorance; wonder is its vehicle, enlivening us much more vitally than anything or anyone we may try to
possess. Its counterpart, logos, works with abstract categories,
trying to convince us that the divine is not deeply irrational, nor
jealous, nor unjust; but its reassuring arguments fail to convince,
because they fly in the face of human experience. Spirit, on the
contrary, addresses the passions, the absurdities, the savageries,
and the secrets of the individual soul—its struggles have more in
common with Dostoevsky’s novels than with Hegel’s System.
Each individual soul’s passage through the dark woods of imagination is different, and all are dialectical in the sense that the
traveler learns as much from error as from truth. Similarly, love’s
benefits come from giving, forgiving, losing, and laughing: these
acts strengthen and liberate the soul, whereas their contraries—
taking, accusing, winning, and excessive seriousness—weaken
and strangle it. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a feast for the
soul, and we leave it with richer eyes, emptier hands, and longer
ears. Only a beautiful ass can save us.
�
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Pastille, William
Brann, Eva T. H.
Hunt, Frank
Sachs, Joe
Van Doren, John
Williamson, Robert B.
Zuckerman, Elliott
Trentina, Allison
Sachs, Joe
Kalkavage, Peter
Koochesfahani, Arian
Macierowski, Edward M.
Ranasinghe, Nalin
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The St. John’s Review
Volume 52, number 1 (Fall 2010)
Editor
William Pastille
Editorial Board
Eva T. H. Brann
Frank Hunt
Joe Sachs
John Van Doren
Robert B. Williamson
Elliott Zuckerman
Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant
Barbara McClay
The St. John’s Review is published by the Office of the Dean,
St. John’s College, Annapolis: Christopher B. Nelson, President;
Pamela Krause, Dean. All manuscripts are subject to blind review.
Address correspondence to the The St. John’s Review, St. John’s
College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800.
©2010 St. John’s College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in
whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
Desktop Publishing
The St. John’s Communications Office
Current and back issues of The St. John’s Review are available on-line at
www.stjohnscollege.edu/news/pubs/review.shtml.
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
3
Contents
Essay
Jacob Klein’s Two Prescient Discoveries..............................5
Eva Brann
“YOU ARE THAT!”: The Upanishads Read Through
Western Eyes.......................................................................21
Robert Druecker
Principles of Motion and the Motion of Principles:
Hegel’s Inverted World........................................................71
Peter Kalkavage
The Work of Education........................................................99
Jon Lenkowski
Falstaff and Cleopatra........................................................109
Elliot Zuckerman
Review
Portraits of the Impassioned Concept: A Review of Peter
Kalkavage’s The Logic of Desire: An Introduction to
Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit......................................123
Eva Brann
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5
JACOB KLEIN’S TWO
PRESCIENT DISCOVERIES
Eva Brann
Jacob Klein was in the last year of his nine-year tenure as dean of
St. John’s College in 1957 when I came as a young tutor. He died
in 1978, still teaching. In those twenty-one years during which I
knew him, he was above all a teacher—mine and everybody’s.
His spirit informed the college. While dean, he was a fierce
defender of his conception of this remarkable community of
learning. This passion had generous parameters, from a smiling
leniency toward spirited highjinks to a meticulous enforcement of
rules meant to inculcate intellectual virtue. As a tutor, he shaped
the place through lectures that the whole college attended and
discussed, through classroom teaching that elicited from students
more than they thought was in them, but above all through
conversation that was direct and playful, serious and teasing,
earthily Russian and cunningly cosmopolitan. We all thought that
he had some secret wisdom that he dispensed sparingly out of
pedagogical benevolence; yet he would sometimes tell us things
in a plain and simple way that struck home as if we had always
known them. I, at least, always had the sense of hearing delightful
novelties that somehow I’d known all along. He also had an
aversion to discipleship and a predilection for wicked American
kids. And he could be infuriating whenever someone tried to
extract definitive doctrines from him. His reluctance to pontificate
was in part indolence (we sometimes called him “Jasha the
Pasha”)—an indolence dignified by his aversion to philosophy
carried on as an organized business—and in part pedagogical
reservation—a conviction that to retail one’s thought-products to
students was to prevent inquiry. This aversion to professing
authority is, to my mind, his most persuasive and felicitous legacy
Keynote Address at the Conference on Jacob Klein, held at Seattle University on
May 27-29, 2010. Eva Brann is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis.
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to the college, and the reason we still call ourselves tutors—
guardians of learning—rather than professors—professionals of
knowledge.
Nonetheless, there were doctrines and they were published.
He had set himself against academic publication, so much so that
I had to translate Jasha’s youthful book on the origin of algebra in
secret—though when confronted with the fait accompli he capitulated quite eagerly. This book is now the subject of Burt
Hopkins’s acute and careful analysis, The Origin of the Logic of
Symbolic Mathematics: Edmund Husserl and Jacob Klein (to be
published in 2011).
Today I would like to present two of his chief discoveries
from a perspective of peculiar fascination to me—from the standpoint of the contemporary significance and the astounding
prescience, and hence longevity, of his insights. Now I grew up
intellectually within a perspective enforced by our program of
studies and reinforced by Jasha’s views (forgive the informality;
it was universal in his circle), which were rooted in certain continental philosophers, of whom Husserl was the most honorable.
The guiding notion of this perspective was that modernity is best
apprehended as being in a ruptured continuum with Greek
antiquity—a continuum insofar as the terms persist, ruptured
insofar as they take on new meanings and missions. That
perspective makes those who hold it avid participants in the
present—critically and appreciatively avid.
I will state immediately and straightforwardly the issues of
our present-day lives to which Jasha’s insights speak. First, they
speak to the ever-expanding role of image-viewing and virtual
experience in our lives. Here the questions are: What degree of
“reality” is ascribable to images? What does life among these
semi-beings do to us? Do we lose substance as they lose their
ground? Do originals retain their primary or even a residual
function in the virtual world? Second, Jasha’s insights speak to
the burgeoning brain science that tends to ascribe an ultimately
physical being to human nature. Here the questions are
approachable in terms of “emergence.” Granted that brain and
mind are intimately linked, what is the manner in which the latter
EVA BRANN
7
emerges from, or projects into, the former? How might an entity
emerge, be it from above or below, that is radically different from
its constituents? These are questions about consciousness (what
we are aware of) and about self-consciousness (who we are) that
should be of great concern to us, because they dominate public
life quite unreflectively. To put this in a form that is not currently
fashionable: Do we have souls?
Klein’s two insights, then, are both interpretations of Platonic
writings and are set out in A Commentary on Plato’s Meno (1965)
and Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra
(1934). The latter is a learned book written by a private European
scholar for academic readers, the former is a very accessible work
written by an American teacher for lovers of Socrates. Of both
these insights Burt Hopkins has produced detailed analyses,
which have added a new edge to doctrines I’ve lived with familiarly for half a century. I will, however, feel free here to
supplement, embroider and question Jacob Klein’s interpretation
of Plato and Burt Hopkins’s reading of Klein as I go. I’ll do it
implicitly, so you shouldn’t trust this account for faithfulness to
the letter, though I hope you may trust it for faithfulness to the
spirit. You’ll see, I think, what I mean when I speak of the
immediacy and naturalness of Klein’s interpretation: His readings
sit well.
The first insight, then, begins with an understanding of the
lowest segment of the so-called Divided Line in Plato’s Republic,
that mathematical image (picture it as vertical) of the ascent to
Being and the learning associated with that ascent. In this lowest
segment are located the deficient beings called reflections,
shadows, and images, and a type of apprehension associated with
them called eikasia in Greek and usually rendered as
“conjecture.” Klein’s interpretation starts with a new translation
of this noun: “image-recognition.” The nature of these lowest
beings—they are revealed as basic rather than base—is set out in
Plato’s Sophist. Consequently, the Republic and the Sophist
between them lay the foundations of the Platonic world.
The second discovery involves a complex of notions from
which I’ll extract one main element: the analysis of what it means
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to be a number, and what makes possible this kind of being—
which, as it turns out, makes possible all Being. Again, the
principal texts are the Sophist and the Republic, supplemented by
Aristotle’s critical account of Plato’s doctrine. To anticipate the
perplexity that is also the doctrine: Take any number—say two. It
is constituted of two units. Each is one, but both together are two.
How can it be that two emerges from elements that are each
precisely not two? I might remark in passing that Socrates thinks
that one mark of readiness for philosophical engagement is a
fascination with this perplexity. And from my experience with
students, I know that Socrates was correct.
So now, after these broad previews, some nitty-gritty.
Socrates begins by dividing the whole line mentioned above in
some arbitrary ratio, and then he divides the two subsections in
that same ratio. So if the whole line is, say, sixteen units, and the
ratio is, say, triple; then one segment is twelve units, the other
four. Then subdivide the twelve-unit segment similarly into nine
and three units, and the four-unit segment into three and one.
There are now four segments, two by two in the same ratio with
each other and with the first division of the whole. Whether you
want to make the top or the bottom segment the longest depends
on whether you assign more length to the greater fullness of
Being or to the larger profusion of items. It can also be shown that
in all divisions of this sort—called “extreme-and-mean ratio”—
the middle segments will be equal. Socrates will make the iconic
most of this mathematical fact.
Now the subsections make a four-term proportion called an
analogia in Greek—a:b::b:c—and they mirror, as I said, the
division of the whole line. You can read the line up or down.
Down is the cascade of Being, which loses plenitude as it falls
from true originals to mere images. Up is the ascent of learning,
ending in the direct intellectual vision of the prime originals, the
eide, the “invisible looks” in Klein’s language, usually called the
“forms.” Beyond all Being there is the notorious Good, the
unifying power above all the graduated beings, the principle of
wholeness, which I’ll leave out here. At the bottom is the aforementioned “image-recognition.” Now just as each of the object-
EVA BRANN
9
realms assigned to the upper sections is causally responsible for
the ones below, so, inversely, in learning, each stage, each
capacity, is needed for the learner to rise. None are left behind; all
remain necessary. And so the bottom, the first capacity, is also the
most pervasive. Children recognize images early on. Look at a
picture book with a two-year-old: “Kitty,” he’ll say, pointing.
“Careful, it’ll scratch.” “No, it won’t,” he’ll say, looking at you as
if you were really naïve. That’s image-recognition, the human
capability for recognizing likeness as belonging to a deficient
order: a cat incapable of scratching.
It is as fundamental for Socrates as it is low on the scale of
cognitive modes, because imaging is the most readily imaginable,
the least technically ticklish way of representing the activity by
which the realm of intelligible Being produces and rules the world
of sensory appearances. Each step downward in the scale of being
is a move from original to image; each step upward in the scale of
learning involves recognizing that something lower is an image of
something higher.
Just to complete the sketch of the Divided Line, here are the
stages of knowledge and their objects in brief. Above images,
there are the apparently solid objects of nature and artifice. The
acquaintance with these is called “trust,” pistis. It is the implicit,
unreflective belief we have in the dependable support of the
ground we tread on and the chair we sit in—the faith that our
world is not “the baseless fabric of a vision” that melts into thin
air.
This whole complex of dimensionally defective images and
taken-on-faith solidity of our phenomenal world is itself an image
of the upper two parts of the line. The third part, equal in length
to the second from the bottom, contains all the rational objects
that look, on the way up, like abstractions from the sensory
world—mathematical models and logical patterns. To these we
apply our understanding, a capacity called in Greek “thinkingthrough,” dianoia. They are then revealed to be the originals of
the sensory world, the intelligible patterns that impart to the
sensory world such shapeliness and intelligibility as it has. Thus
they make natural science possible; for they are the rational
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counterparts of the sensory world. Finally, there is the realm of
direct knowledge. As happens so often in the dialogues, the
contents of these upper reaches are named in inverse relation to
the contents of the lower ones: “invisible looks” (since eidos is
from the vid-verb, the verb for seeing), and they are reached by a
capacity for direct insight (which Aristotle will in fact analogize
to sensing)—noesis. Above and beyond them all is the very Idea
itself, the idea of all ideas—the Good, which produces, nourishes,
and unifies all beings, and grounds all human learning.
Implicit in this ladder of Being is the answer to the question
that matters most: What is an image, such that we can know it as
an image? The answer is given in the Sophist, whose main
character is, in his general person, an image incarnate—the mere
image of a truly truth-seeking human being. Socrates poses the
opening question of the Sophist, but he sits silently by as a
Stranger from Italian Elea, a follower of Parmenides, finds a
solution. I’ll venture a guess why he falls silent. In the Sophist
appears a serious ontological teaching, and ontological doctrine is
not Socrates’ way: He is the man of the tentative try, of
hypotheses. I’ll even venture a—perhaps perverse—appreciation
of this mode: His stubborn hypotheticalness, his unwillingness to
assert knowledge, is the complement of his unshakable faith in a
search for firm truth, carried on in full awareness of human
finitude.
What then is the Parmenidean solution? I call it Parmenidean
although the Stranger, the intellectual child of Parmenides, calls
himself a parricide, since he is about to deny a crucial
Parmenidean teaching: that Nonbeing is not, is neither sayable
nor thinkable. For he will in fact affirm a yet deeper teaching of
his philosophical father: that what counts is being thinkable and
sayable. The Elean Stranger will show how Nonbeing can be
thinkable and how speech is in fact impossible without it—as was
indeed implicit in Parmenides’ very denial.
It is thinkable as Otherness. To say that something is not is
usually to say that it is not this but that, that it is other than
something perspectivally prior. (I say “usually,” because there
“is” also something called “utter non-being,” which is indeed,
EVA BRANN
11
though superficially utterable, insuperably unthinkable.)
Relational, comparative Nonbeing, however, is one of the great
ruling principles of ontology. It is totally pervasive, since
whatever is a being is other than other beings. It is the source of
diversity in the world and of negation in speech. Has the Stranger
really done in his philosophical progenitor? No, as I intimated. He
has actually saved Parmenides from himself; for he has shown
that Nonbeing is, is Being in another mode. Being is still all there
is. There is no parricide. Moreover, this Other, a piece of apparently high and dry ontology, turns out to give life to the realm of
ideas and to the world of human beings: it informs the one with a
diversity of beings and articulates the other with the oppositions
of speech.
Why was this modification necessary in the search for the
Sophist? Because a Sophist is indeed a faker, himself an image of
a truth-seeker and a producer of images of what is genuine.
Otherness, the great genus of “The Other,” is the condition of
possibility for images, since it has three tremendous powers. First,
it makes possible that a thing not be what it is. And that is just
what characterizes an image: “It’s a kitty,” the child says,
pointing. But not really; it doesn’t scratch. Or people bring out
photographs in order to be in the presence of an absent one, but
they are not real enough to assuage longing. Hence an image is
understood first, and most ontologically speaking, as not being
what it is, but also, second, as being less than the original it represents; for it represents that original in a deficient likeness. Here a
second capacity of the Other shows up: it creates a defective,
derivative Otherness. And third, it makes negative knowledge and
denying speech possible: we can think and say, “The image is—
in some specifiable way—like its original; but likeness is not
identity.” The sentence “An image is not the original” displays
Otherness as negation, articulated as Nonbeing. The ability to
utter—and mean—that sentence is specifically human. Its loss
would be, I think, a serious declension of our humanity. Therefore
this complex of consideration, illuminated by Klein in his book
on the Meno, seems to me crucial for navigating our imageflooded world with full awareness.
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More particularly, the ability to distinguish image from
original is crucial today because the shaping of our American
lives, which is more and more a matter of declining options and
refusing temptations, is much in need of suggestive approaches
for coping with images. What are the truths and falsehoods of
images in general? What consequently are the effects of discretionary image-viewing on our consciousness? Do all images in
fact have originals, or is it images “all the way down”? And if
there are always originals, how can we find our way back to
them? What is real within our world, what is genuine beyond it?
I’ll assert simply that without occasional reflection on such an
eminently current issue our lives tend toward passing by rather
than being lived. “The unexamined life is unlivable (abiotos),”
Socrates says in the Apology (38a)—and so a life without
reflection on its central issues is thus, in effect, unlived.
I’ll now go on to Klein’s second interpretive discovery, a
much more technical, but equally future-fraught, construal.
A preoccupation of Socrates—it might be puzzling to readers
who haven’t yet seen the implications—is often expressed by him
in this way: “Each is one, but both are two.” To be gripped by this
odd perplexity is, as I said, a beginning of philosophizing. The
oddity comes out most starkly when we think of countingnumbers, the natural cardinal numbers. Take the first number,
two. (For the ancients, one is not a number; it is the constituent
unit of which a number is made.) Each of its units is one and
nothing more. Yet this unit and another together make up the
number two. Neither is what both together are. This ought to be
strange to us, because we are used to the elements of a natural
collection having each the quality that characterizes the whole:
The doggy species subsumes dogs. Whether we think of
dogginess either as an abstracted generalization or as a qualitybestowing form, each member has the characteristic that names
the kind. Clearly, numbers are assemblages that work differently
from other classes. Numbers have a uniquely characteristic, a socalled “arithmological” structure. The recognition of the significance of this situation and its peculiar appearance among the great
forms, particularly in respect to Being, is Klein’s achievement.
EVA BRANN
13
Let me begin by briefly reviewing the kinds of numbers Klein
takes into account. He observes—a previously ignored fact—that
the first meaning of the Greek word that we translate as number,
arithmos, is that of a counted assemblage of concrete things. Any
counted collection—a flock of sheep, a string of horses, a herd of
cattle—does not have, but is an arithmos. If we think as Greeks
(and we may, with a little effort), we count ordinally, because we
must keep items in order: first, second, third (and then go on
cardinally four, five, six, for verbal convenience). But when we
have counted up the whole, we allow it to become a heapnumber—a distinct, discriminated group. It is a counted
collection that has lost its memory. An arithmos is such a sensory
number. It is, for example, a sheep-number, and its units are
sheep-monads. To me it seems undecidable whether such a
concrete number has an arithmological structure, since in it the
sheep are both sheepish and mere units; as a flock we discriminate
them, as units we count them.
Next come the mathematical numbers made up of pure
monads, units that have no quality besides being unities. A mathematical number is defined by Euclid thus: “An arithmos is a
multitude composed of monads,” where a monad is a pure unit.
This type of number has an arithmological structure with a
vengeance, and you can see why: a pure unit has no characteristics besides unitariness. It’s neither apples nor oranges, which is
precisely why you can count fruit or anything at all with it. Being
thus devoid of qualities, it has mere collectibility, but it has no
other contribution to make to the assemblage. Being two is not in
the nature of a monad as a monad, though adding up to two is.
“Two” appears to emerge from these associable units. If you think
this is unintelligible, so does Socrates. It will get worse.
The difficulty is implicitly acknowledged in the modern
definition of number. It begins with arithmos-like concrete assemblages. If their elements, treated now as mere units, can be put
into one-to-one correspondence, the collections are said to be
equivalent. The collection or set of all equivalent sets is their
number. This definition evades the questions, What number is it?
and Does the set of sets arise from the units of the concrete
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
collection, or does it bestow on them the numerosity? Therein lies
an implicit recognition of Socrates’ problem.
It gets worse, for now a third type of number appears. Klein
knows of it from Aristotle’s critical report in the Metaphysics,
where there is mention of “form-numbers,” arithmoi eidetikoi.
The highest genera in the Platonic structure of forms are
organized in such numberlike assemblages. These are, unlike the
indefinitely many mathematical numbers, limited in multitude.
(There may have been ten, the so-called root-numbers of the
Pythagoreans.) Now the super-genera in the Sophist are Same and
Other. The highest after these is Being, which consists of Motion
(kinesis) and Standstill (stasis). (This last is often translated as
“Rest,” but that inaccurately implies a cessation from, or deprivation of, motion, though the two genera are coequal.) Notice,
incidentally, that the three kinds of numbers run in tandem with
the three rising upper segments of the Divided Line—concrete
numbers with the sensory world, pure units with the mathematical
domain, form-numbers with the eidetic realm.
Each of these forms acts like a monad in an arithmetic
collection. However—and this is Aristotle’s most pertinent
criticism—these high forms are not neutral units. They are each
very much what they are in themselves, indefeasibly self-same
and other than all others. They are, as he says: asymbletoi,
“incomparable,” literally “not throwable together.” Thus, unlike
pure, neutral mathematical numbers, they cannot be reckoned
with across their own genus, and so, a fortiori, it would be seen
that their association within their genus is unintelligible. For how
can Motion and Standstill be together as the genus of Being if
they have nothing in common and so cannot be rationally added
up?
Klein claims that Aristotle’s cavil is in fact Plato’s point. The
forms are associated in what is the very paradigm of an arithmological structure: what each is not, that they are together. It is
because they have a number structure in which unique eide
associate in a finite number of finite assemblages that
innumerable sensory items can collect into concrete countable
heaps organizable into finite classification. Furthermore, it is in
EVA BRANN
15
imitation of these eidetic numbers that we have the indefinitely
many mathematical numbers uniting as many pure units as you
please—though we are left to work out the manner of this
descent. For my part, I cannot claim to have done it.
I have mentioned before what is certainly the foremost
stumbling block for most people in accepting the forms as causes
of worldly being and becoming. The perplexity is usually put as
“the participation problem”: how do appearances “participate” in
the forms? These are infelicitous terms, because they imply the
least satisfactory answer—that dogs somehow take a part in, or
appropriate a part of the form, a non-solution scotched in
Socrates’ very early attempt in the dialogue Parmenides at articulating his great discovery of the forms. “Imaging” might be a
more felicitous term, since it is at least less awkward to the intellectual imagination than is “partaking.”
But let me stick here with the familiar term, and follow Klein
in pointing out that the participation problem has two levels. On
the lower level, the question is how the phenomenal world participates in the forms. On the higher level, it is how the forms
associate with, participate in, each other. For unless they do form
assemblages, genera and their constituent eide, the sensory world,
even granted that it does somehow receive its being and structure
from these, can have no learnable organization. Crudely put: we
can classify the world’s beings, natural and artificial, in terms of
hierarchies of kinds, such as the genera, subgenera, species, and
subspecies of biology, only because their causative principles
have a prior, paradigmatic structure of associations and subordinations. On this hypothesis, even only artificially distinguished
heaps can be counted up by reason of the arithmological character
of eidetic groupings.
The eidetic numbers are thus intended to be a Platonic
solution to the upper-level participation problem. It is, so to
speak, a highly formal solution. For while the type of association
is named—the arithmoi eidetikoi with their arithmological
structure—the cause of any particular association is not given.
There is no substantive answer to the question, Just what in a
form makes it associate numerologically with a specific other?
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
There should be no such answer, because the eidetic monads are,
after all, incomposable. Motion and Standstill have in themselves
nothing in common. Moreover, why are they the sole constituents
of Being? And yet, there must be an answer since they are in fact
composed. As Klein keeps pointing out, in the upper reaches the
logos, rational speech, fails. One way it fails is that to reach the
number two, for instance, we count off one, one, two; that is, three
items—yet there are not three, but only two. For Two, be it mathematical or eidetic, is not over and beyond the two units; it is just
those two together. How two items can become one our reason
cannot quite articulate. Nor can it say what makes either an
eidetic monad, which is a qualitative plenum, or the mathematical
unit, which is a qualitative void, associate with others in
“families,” (that thought-provoking classificatory term from
biology) or in “numbers” (those colorless collections that yet
have highly specific characteristics).
Now we come to Klein’s novel construal of just this eidetic
number Two, which occurs in the Sophist, although it is not
explicitly named there. Being is a great eidetic genus. It is
composed of Standstill and Motion. Neither of these can have any
part in the other; it is just as unthinkable for Standstill to be
involved in Motion as for Motion to be involved in Standstill. Yet
there is nothing in the world that is not both together. Our world
is one of dynamic stability or stable dynamism, in place and in
time. The duo responsible for this condition in the realm of forms
is called Being. Being is not a third beside or above Motion or
Standstill but just the togetherness of these subgenera. Being is
only as both of these together, and neither of them can be except
as part of a pair. As an unpaired monad, neither is; both are as a
couple: Being is the eidetic Two. And once more, it is this arithmological structure that descends to, makes possible, and is
mirrored in, the mathematical number structure of any mathematical two—on the one hand. On the other hand, it makes the
phenomenal world appear as I have just described it: at once
stable and moving, variable and organizable. On the way up, it
might look as if the eidetic numbers are an erroneous levering-up
of a mathematical notion; on the way down, they appear as the not
EVA BRANN
17
quite humanly comprehensible, but necessary, hypothesis for an
articulable world, a countable and classifiable world. And again,
seen from above, Being must—somehow—bring about its own
division; but seen from below, Being emerges from its
constituents. And just as the modern definition of number in terms
of equivalent sets leaves unarticulated the question of whether the
number set is the ground of or the consequence of the equivalent
sets, so too in Klein’s exposition of the first eidetic number, Two,
it is left unsaid whether the genus determines its eidetic monads,
or the reverse, or neither. It is left, as textbooks say, as an exercise
for the reader—a hard one.
I might, before I end, even venture a still formal but
somewhat more specific answer to the associability question. In
the upper ontological reaches, at least, what might be called
extreme Otherness—by which I mean either contrary (that is,
qualitative) or contradictory (that is, logical) opposition—seems
to be the principle grounding togetherness. Motion and Standstill
are as opposite as can be, and for that reason yoked in Being; so
are Same and Other. I will not pretend to have worked through the
hierarchy of these five greatest genera. Nonetheless I have a
suspicion that Same and Other, the most comprehensive genera,
are not only intimately related to each other as mutually defining,
but may ultimately have to be apprehended together as prior to
and thus beyond Being, as a first self-alienation of the One, the
principle of comprehension itself. As such, they might even be
termed the negative Two, but that’s too far-out. In any case, these
Plotinian evolutions are beyond my brief for today. I refer to
Plotinus at all only because his One is in fact articulable only
negatively and, is self-diremptive.
Now the strange structure of number, in which indiscernibly
different but non-identical elements like pure monads, mere units,
can be together what they are not individually, is only a case,
though the most stripped-down, clarified case, of what is
nowadays called “emergence.” Recall that emergence is the
eventuation of a novel whole from elements that seem to have
nothing in common with it. Examples range from trivial to lifechanging. Socrates himself points out that the letters sigma and
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18
omega are individually different from the initial syllable of his
own name, “So,” and that this is one new idea composed of two
elements (Theaetetus 203c). Two molecules of hydrogen and one
of oxygen combine to form water, whose liquidity emerges as an
unforeseeable quality. Individuals form communities that evince
a might beyond the additive powers of their citizens. The
emergent entity is other than rather than additional to, novel to
rather than inferrable from, its elements. In the reverse case,
sometimes called projection, the elements falling out from a
totality are qualitatively quite different from it. This case might be
called inverse emergence; an example might be the relation of
Platonic forms to their participant particulars.
The most significant problem of emergence is also the most
contemporary one. Since it seems indisputable that specific brain
lesions lead to specific psychic disabilities, it is claimed by scientists who don’t want simply to identify mind with brain that the
soul is brain-emergent. Does that make it a mere epiphenomenon?
A miracle? “Emergence” names the event as a bottom-up process.
But could it be a top-down happening, could the soul shape, or
participate in shaping, its physical substructure? These are the
recognizable old questions of “one-and-many”: one over, or in, or
out of, many?
I want to make a claim that in this company especially should
garner some sympathy: when deep human matters are at issue, it
helps a lot to have delved into some ontology; the inquiry into
Being may not affect our lives materially, yet it illuminates our
daily lives more directly than does research providing factual
information or theory producing instrumental constructs. This is
the hypothesis under which Jacob Klein’s opening up of two
Platonic preoccupations, images and numbers, is of current
consequence. Herein lies the prescience, the foresightedness of
his Platonic discoveries.
Addendum
I have omitted here, as too complex for brief exposition, a third,
more directly global interpretation of the modern condition,
EVA BRANN
19
which is central to Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin
of Algebra. It is an understanding of the basic rupture between
antiquity and modernity, of the great revolution of the West, as
brought about by, or at least paradigmatically displayed in, the
introduction of algebra. Algebra works with quantities abstracted
from concrete collections (such as were betokened by the Greek
arithmoi), with “general,” essentially symbolical “numbers,”
such as the variables x, y, z or the constants a, b, c. These letters
are symbols of a peculiar sort: they represent neither a concrete
thing nor a determinate concept, but rather present themselves as
the object of a calculation—a mere object, an indeterminate
entity. Klein saw algebraic problem-solving procedures, so
effective precisely because so contentlessly formal, as
emblematic of a modern rage for that second-order, deliberately
denatured thinking which dominates as much of our lives as is
method-ridden. The human consequences of this symbolic
conceptuality are great.
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
“YOU ARE THAT!”
The Upanishads Read Through
Western Eyes1
Robert Druecker
Introduction
The original title of this essay—“You Are That!”—was a
quotation, from the Chāndogya Upanishad, of an exclamation
made several times by a man named Uddālaka to his son
Śvetaketu. The “That” refers to a realm or state of being, known
as “Brahman.” One who experiences it is called a “knower of
Brahman” (brahmavid). Uddālaka was a knower of Brahman,
speaking to his son out of his direct experience.
The classical Upanishads are expressions of, and invitations
to, this direct experiencing. Understanding them, therefore, is a
matter of understanding what that experiencing is like, not a
matter of believing or knowing some truths about the world.
Thus, elucidating the meaning of this title will convey a sense of
the experience of Brahman, which is what the Upanishads as a
whole are about.
But, of course, their ultimate aim is not simply to produce
understanding in this sense, but rather to bring about the direct
experiencing of the Brahman-realm. Even Śaṅkara, the most
highly esteemed expositor of the Upanishads, a man noted for his
theoretical acumen, considered direct experience as surpassing all
understanding. He is said to have regarded theoretical reflection
as one hundred times more efficacious than oral instruction,
meditation as one hundred thousand times more efficacious than
theoretical reflection, and direct experience of the Brahman-realm
as defying all comparison.
The revised title of the essay is: “‘You Are That!’: The
Upanishads Read Through Western Eyes.” In making this change,
Robert Drueker is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis.
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I have followed Aristotle’s recommendation to begin with the
things best known to us, where “us,” in this case, refers to the St.
John’s community. Thus, Part One will give a sense of what the
Brahman-realm is like by elaborating on an analogous experience
in Homer and Aristotle. Part Two will elucidate the experiencing
of Brahman in a more direct way.
Finally, many of the writings in the Upanishads are dialogues
involving a knower of Brahman. Yājñavalkya is the central figure
in the conversations in the oldest Upanishad. In working on the
lecture, I imagined him, a knower of Brahman, as my interlocutor.
Throughout the essay, I will allow the voice of Yājñavalkya to
provide his understanding of analogues between the Brahmanrealm and the worlds of Homer and Aristotle.
Part One: Νοεĩν and Ittisāl (Conjunction)
A. Homer
Homer frequently refers to human beings or gods waking up to,
or realizing (νοεĩν), the full significance of a situation.
Sometimes, on the other hand, what they realize is their ability to
wake up to the full meaning of a situation (νόος in some uses).2
The verb in the aorist expresses an individual’s sudden flash of
insight. For instance, Hektor, resisting his parents’ entreaties,
holds his position, as he watches Achilleus coming toward him.
He is pondering what might happen should he retreat or should he
offer to return Helen; but then Achilleus closes upon him: “And
trembling took hold of Hektor when the realization suddenly
struck him (ἐνόησεν) [what single combat against Achilleus really
meant], and he could no longer stand his ground there, but…fled,
frightened.” (II, 22.136-37).3 The use of the progressive aspect,
however, conveys the process of fitting pieces together gradually
to form a wholly new picture, as when Theoklymenos tells the
suitors that the realization is dawning upon him (νοέω) that there
is an evil on the way that they will not be able to avoid (O,
20.367-70).
Because of the intensity of the character’s involvement in the
situation, the experienced shift in significance is often accompanied by strong emotion, as is the case with Hektor. When the
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insight concerns an individual object instead of a situation, the
realization is always accompanied by such emotion; it is as if the
shift in the meaning of the situation were compressed into a single
thing or person. So, For example, Menelaos, having caught sight
of Paris, leaps down from his chariot. Then, Homer tells us,
“when [Paris] realized the full significance of Menelaus standing
there among the champions, the heart was shaken within him” (I,
3.29-31). The full significance here is that Menelaus is drawing
near Paris, seething with an overwhelming desire to kill him.
“Realization of significance” has a variety of meanings that
spread over a directional arc.4 A character begins in a situation in
which he has already seemingly recognized (γιγνώσκειν) the
surrounding things or people as definite individuals that are
familiar. Then, once awakened to their real significance, he or she
experiences a corresponding emotional impact; a way of dealing
with the newly perceived situation comes to light and the will to
do so arises. Thus, the present naturally extends itself into the
future. When the primary meaning is at either end of this arc, the
other parts of the arc are co-present. Thus, when the emphasis is
on present clarity of mind, the future is nonetheless kept in view.
(For instance, when Kirke tells Odysseus that no magic can work
on his ability always to realize what is the real meaning of the
situation in which he finds himself, she also has in mind the
insightful character of his future aims, plans, and actions [O,
10.329].) And, on the other hand, when the emphasis in on future
action, clear vision in the present is also involved. (For instance,
when, according to Achilleus, Peleus vowed to the river
Spercheus that Achilleus would sacrifice to him upon the latter’s
return home, this wish [νόον] was not a representation of a vague
future, but rather a distinct depiction of the wished-for future
action and of the detailed steps leading to it [I, 23.144-49].)
The realization of significance may or may not be prepared by
a thought process. But when it is, the realization is distinct from
the preceding reasoning, in the same way as “seeing” one of
Euclid’s proofs is different from figuring out how it is justified in
terms of previous propositions. For Yājñavalkya, realizing
Brahman can also be characterized as including an emotional
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response—joy (ānanda)—and a way of acting—calm responsiveness to the whole situation.
The realization may penetrate to great depth and extend far in
space and time, like that of Theoklymenonos mentioned earlier or
like that of Athena when she speaks to Achilleus as he is drawing
his sword to kill Agamemnon. The more intense the situation and
the deeper and broader the realization, the more likely it is that the
characters are raised above their ordinary abilities, so that they are
able to see almost all the implications and consequences of the
situation with unusual clarity and to act with extraordinary
foresight. This experience of being raised above the ordinary is a
divine manifestation.5
Homer most often mentions Athena and Apollo in such
moments. For instance, Odysseus’s sudden realization of the true
meaning of return—the moment when he recognized the right
time to reveal himself to Telemachos—occurs in the presence of
Athena (O, 16.155ff.). And Hektor’s sudden waking up to danger
when he was about to oppose Achilleus is Apollo’s manifesting
himself (I, 20.375ff.). These two examples point to the difference
between the two gods. Athena remains untroubled and serene in
the midst of action, while she discerns at every juncture what the
situation requires, plans the deed with precision, and readies
herself to bring it about energetically. Apollo, on the other hand,
is associated with a cognitive attitude of stately objectivity, wideranging gaze, distance and freedom, clarity and good form. He is
the god of the saving or preserving awareness (σωφροσύνη)
expressed in the Delphic dictum, “Know thyself,” meaning
“Realize what human beings really are, that is, how great a
distance separates them from the omnitemporal gods” (HG, 21617, 215, 52, 57, 59, 78-79, 66). Yājñavalkya would remark that
such traits as serenity in the midst of action, the freedom of a
ranging gaze, and saving, or preserving, awareness pertain to the
Brahman-realm as well.
In a manifestation of Athena or Apollo, the god is revealed as
the very essence of the realization. That is, the realization’s
ultimate meaning is that it is a ray of the divine, illumining human
life. Homer realizes that the complete lucidity in which we
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sometimes act is a connection with something superior to us, even
though we think of it as a quality of our own minds. In decisive
moments, what a warrior realizes is both himself and the deity
together (HG, 7, 247, 174, 184-85). Yājñavalkya would comment
here that in the Upanishads, this non-separateness of the human
and divine is known as “non-duality” (advaita; BU, IV.3,32):
“Whoever meditates on a divinity that is other (anyām) [than
himself], thinking, ‘This [god] is one (anyah), I am another
(anyah),’ does not know [‘I am Brahman’]” (BU, I.4.10).
Homer’s recognition of moments in which the divine and the
human are non-dual is sharply opposed to a view that would see
Athena and Apollo as external causes of the events he is narrating
(HG, 213). Somewhat similarly, according to Yājñavalkya, we are
invited to awaken to Brahman not as an external cause, but rather
as what is most profound in our experience.6
When the god is present in moments of non-duality, the
warrior’s ego and personality recede into the background (HG,
241f.). That sort of impersonality, which also characterizes the
moment when we experience the truth of a Euclidean proposition,
is inherent in the Brahman-realm, according to Yājñavalkya.
The divine coming-to-presence has been said to occur at “the
critical moment when human powers suddenly converge, as if
charged by electric contact, on some insight, some resolution,
some deed.”7 Lightning comes forth from the clouds to strike
buildings or trees that have risen from the earth; so, too, the divine
suddenly emerges from the background to shock an individual
only when that individual has gone forth from himself toward the
background. Yājñavalkya could note that the instant of recognition of the Brahman realm is also compared to “a sudden flash
of lightning” (BU, II.3.6; cf. KeU, IV.4). Moreover, he would
think that moving toward the background might be, in some way,
analogous to a “moving-towards” Brahman—something like the
movement involved either in practicing meditation or in coming
to wonder, “Who am I?”
While in the examples given so far the divine manifestation
has come in an awakening to significance or in an elaborating of
a plan, this should not lead us to think the divine is encountered
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merely by turning inward. The appearance of the goddess is not,
for instance, Achilleus’s pondering whether to kill Agamemnon or
to check his anger (I, 1.193), but rather the resolution of his introspection in a flash of certitude (HG, 174, 48). Yājñavalkya would
agree that introspection neither characterizes the Brahman-realm
nor is a means thereto. However, there is, he would add, a
different sort of inward turn that can facilitate its realization.
There are many instances in which a god is present at a
moment when none of the characters is aware of it. But
sometimes a warrior, when awakening to the full significance of
his situation, may realize that his very awakening is itself the
manifestation of a god. An interesting example occurs when
Poseidon appears to the Aiantes in the likeness of Kalkas. At first
neither brother is aware of the presence of a god; but, after
Poseidon departs like a hawk, Aias son of Oïleus realizes that
some god, whom he does not recognize, has addressed them,
while Telemonian Aias notices only his own increased strength
and energy (I, 13.43-80). On other occasions the human being
recognizes the god by name—sometimes only after the encounter,
but sometimes already at its inception (HG, 207-08).
A god may be especially close to a particular individual in
that the human being regularly displays the qualities of the
particular god, as Athena acknowledges Odysseus does (O,
13.330-32; HG, 192-95). There is even one person who seems to
be fully awake to divine presence—Homer himself, who
sees events through and through even when the participants see only the surface. And often when the
participants sense only that a divine hand is touching
them the poet is able to name the god concerned and
knows the secret of his purpose (HG, 195-96).
According to Yājñavalkya, there is just as much idiosyncratic
variety in realizing Brahman as there is in recognizing the
presence of a god in moments of waking up to meaning: different
individuals respond differently, both in frequency and in degree,
to such events.
Up to this point in our consideration of Homer we have
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27
emphasized cognition. This is appropriate because cognition in a
broad sense is the way in which we come to realize Brahman.
However, this focus on cognition gives a distorted picture of the
world as Homer depicts it. For there are many gods—Ares,
Aphrodite, Poseidon, Hera, and others—who manifest
themselves in the world in addition to Athena and Apollo, who are
especially associated with realizing significance. Moreover, the
appearance of a deity often involves an inner phenomenon other
than awakening, as when Hektor’s body is “packed full of force
and fighting strength” (I, ,17.211-12) or when Athena puts
“courage into the heart” of Nausikaa (O, 6.140). Yājñavalkya
could point out that these phenomena of enlivening, energizing,
and strengthening were included, along with realization, in what
the Upanishads call the “Inner Controller” (antaryāmin; BU,
III.7.1).8 He might also remark that Homer did not think of nonduality as limited to cognition, because he recognized that these
phenomena, too, were divine manifestations.
In addition to a character’s “waking up” to the presence of a
god, a deity often manifests itself by affecting a character from
outside. Most notably, Patroklos’s aristeia was put to an end by
Apollo, who “stood behind him, and struck his back and his broad
shoulders with a flat stroke of the hand so that his eyes spun” (I,
16.791-92). Yājñavalkya would point out that events like this
might be echoes of Brahman as “pouring forth,” or “emitting,” all
things. (MuU, I.1.7.) He would add that, just as Homer recognizes
the one Apollo both in his striking of Patroklos and in Hektor’s
realization mentioned earlier, so too the Upanishads express the
realization that the inner controlling and the outer emitting are
one when it states: “This Self is…Brahman” (BU, II.5.19).
B. Aristotle and Averroes
For help in thinking through the experiences highlighted by
Homer, we turn to Aristotle. In moments of realization, we are in
a state of what he called “being-at-work,”—what I will call
“activity.” Activity is “complete over any time whatever”; it is not
a temporal phenomenon. By contrast, a motion “is in time and
directed at some end…and is complete when it brings about that
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at which it aims” (NE, 1174a15-21). For example, whereas the
activity of dancing is “all there” at each moment, the motion of
learning to dance is complete only when you’ve actually become
a dancer.
Homer’s gods Athena and Apollo are manifested in activities
of ours that would be “choiceworthy in themselves” (NE, 1144a1)
even if they didn’t effect anything in addition. The active state of
our ability to awaken to significance is what is best and most
powerful in us and is “either divine itself or the most divine of the
things in us.” When it is directed toward the most divine, timeless
things, it is a pure beholding (NE, 1177a13-21).
One living in this state of activity would be living a life that
“is divine as compared with a human life.” Hence, Aristotle said,
“one ought to immortalize” (NE, 1177b25-34); that is, one ought
to be as much as possible in this best state of activity—the activity
of Homer’s Athena and Apollo, or of Aristotle’s impersonal
divinity. When we are in that state, we are in the same state over
a limited extent of time as is the divine over the whole of time.9
Moreover, “each person would even seem to be this [best state of
activity]” (NE, 1178a1). “[A]nd so the person who loves and
gratifies this is most a lover of self” (NE, 1168b33).
Yājñavalkya could comment that the Brahman-realm, too,
has the characteristics of being an atemporal phenomenon, of
being a sort of pure beholding, and of being our true self.
Moreover, it, too, is impersonal, not divided up into essentially
different Athena-moments and Apollo-moments. Finally, knowers
of Brahman, living the life of their true self, are leading a life that
transcends the human. Consequently, since most of us live in
ignorance of Brahman, most of us are not living the life of our
true self.
Aristotle seems to agree formally with this conclusion: it is,
after all, an implication of Apollo’s injunction “Know thyself.” It
might be objected, however, that Aristotle’s characterization of
the true self as divine contradicts Apollo’s insistence on
separating the human from the divine. Yājñavalkya would reply
that when a similar objection is voiced in his tradition, the
response is that the contradiction is only apparent. Someone who
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took the “You” in “You are That!” to refer to his ordinary sense of
self, would be engaging in self-inflation. Students are encouraged
to ponder “Who am I?” as a practice, in order to shift them from
the ordinary to the true sense of self. So, Yājñavalkya and
Aristotle could both take “Know thyself” in a double sense: “With
respect to your ordinary sense of self, think mortal thoughts, but
recognize that the true you is divine activity.”
In On the Soul Aristotle began to sketch what might be
entailed in realizing his analogue to “You are That!”—namely, the
immortalizing involvement in the best activity. One of Aristotle’s
foremost interpreters, Averroes, has developed Aristotle’s blackand-white sketch into a detailed, full-color portrait that bears a
striking resemblance to the Upanishadic picture. To that portrait
we now turn.10
The customary name in philosophical texts for Aristotle’s best
state of activity is “intellection.” Following Aristotle’s lead,
Averroes begins his account of intellection with what is clearer to
us, and he ends it with what is clearer by nature. There are three
main figures in his initial portrait—the “material intellect,” the
“disposed intellect,” and the “agent intellect.” Averroes compares
intellection, as Aristotle does, to a craft in which some material,
like clay, receives a form—say, that of a bowl (OS, 430a10-14).
When I acquire a simple intelligible, such as, ‘straight line,’ it is
received as form by the material intellect—which, not being
corporeal, is material only in the sense that it serves as materialfor. My disposed intellect,11 now having the acquired intelligible
as an active disposition (ἕξις), is in what Aristotle calls a first state
of maintaining itself (έχειν) in (ἔν) its completed condition
(τέλος), with respect to this intelligible. Henceforth we shall say,
somewhat inaccurately, that the mind in this state is “in first
actuality.” By analogy, we could say that Suzanne Farrell, the
accomplished dancer, is “in first actuality” when not dancing
(since she maintains all the dispositions of a dancer), but is “in
second actuality” when dancing (since she then makes use of
those dispositions.) Similarly, when I am not contemplating the
intelligible ‘straight line,’ my intellect is “in first actuality” (since
I have the disposition necessary to contemplate it if I so choose),
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but when I am contemplating it, perhaps in the course of a demonstration, my intellect is “in second actuality” (since I am then
making use of the disposition).
According to Aristotle, “the soul never engages in intellection
without an appearance” (431a24), which Averroes takes to mean
imaginative appearance.12 Thus, when I am led up to (ἐπάγεσθαι)
a particularly suggestive instance, say a good image of a straight
line, that image specifies that the material intellect will receive the
intelligible ‘straight line.’ Averroes said that the material intellect,
as so determined by my imagination,13 is “conjoined” with it and
that my disposed intellect is precisely this conjunction of the
material intellect with my imagination.
One of the unusual features of Averroes’ interpretation is that
according to him, there is only one material intellect. My disposed
intellect and your disposed intellect are the results of its conjunctions with the different images in our respective imaginations; we
actualize it differently. In this way the one material intellect is
said to be incidentally many. (Zedler 1951, 175.) Moreover, since
my imagination is corporeal, the intelligibles of mundane things
in me, and, consequently, my disposed intellect itself, are
generable and corruptible.14 Yājñavalkya might also say that the
one Brahman is incidentally many individual selves (jīvātman).
Now, before the intelligible ‘“straight line’” can be received
by the material intellect, the irrelevant portions of the image in
which it is “embodied” must be taken away (ἀφαιρεῖσθαι). This
abstraction brings it into the state of actual intelligibility. To
elucidate this act of abstraction, Averroes referred to another of
Aristotle’s comparisons: The passage from potential to actual
intelligibility is like a color’s transition from potential visibility to
actual visibility when the lights in a room are turned on. The
“light” that illumines the darkness of the image, producing the
abstraction of the latent intelligible, is the agent intellect.
This picture of the agent intellect as shining from the outside
onto a potential intelligible embedded in an image is, however,
only the way it first appears to us. Averroes said that if we
consider its role in the intellectual insights we have when we draw
conclusions from the intelligibles that we have acquired—for
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31
example, the insight that one and only one straight line may be
drawn between two points—we come to a deeper view. In reality,
the agent intellect is related to the intelligibles of my disposed
intellect as form to material. It is as though the agent intellect
were a light full of Color itself. What really happens when it
shines on an image is that the image’s conjunction with Color
itself draws out of the latter a particular color, one that had been
potentially within Color itself. Then that particular color is
received by the material intellect. Even in my acts of intellecting
simple intelligibles in the world, the agent intellect is incidentally
in partial conjunction with my imagination.15 Since I am, then,
intellecting it to some degree, it must be at work as the form of
my disposed intellect.
For Averroes, this understanding means that the agent
intellect itself is the source of the intelligibility of the corporeal
world. For since the image arises on the basis of sense perception
of things in the world, the potential intelligibles in my imagination are due to the potential intelligibles in the things in the
world. Consequently, Averroes takes the agent intellect to be
Aristotle’s unmoved mover from the Metaphysics (1072b18-30;
1075a5-11). Hence, there is only one agent intellect; and it is its
very activity of unchanging, eternal self-intellection.
Correlatively, the potential intelligibles of things in the world are
their actualities, their being-at-work maintaining themselves in
their respective states of completeness. Their intelligibility
depends entirely upon the agent intellect in the following way: for
each of them its state of completeness is the closest state to the
agent intellect’s self-intellection that its materials are capable of
attaining.16 The agent intellect’s responsibility for all intelligible
being makes it analogous to the one source of all existence in
Yājñavalkya’s tradition.
But how can the self-directed intellection of the agent
intellect be responsible for our intellection of the intelligibles in
things outside of itself in the world, when it and the object of its
intellection are absolutely one? Reflexively turned toward itself,
it is not aware of the multiplicity of the potential intelligibles of
mundane things as such. Yet it nevertheless does comprehend
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them, somewhat in the way that the craft of pottery-making
comprehends the forms of all the bowls for which it could be
responsible. But to be actively responsible for the intellection of
this intelligible on this occasion, the agent intellect must also be
“turned outwards,” as it were, away from itself, in order to shine
on the appearances of mundane things in the imaginations of
individual human beings.
When it is turned outward but still not illuminating any
appearance, the agent intellect seems to be lacking any intelligible. And yet as an image arises, the agent intellect will bring one
of the intelligibles into focus. Thus, surprisingly, the agentintellect-as-turned-outward is pure potentiality, pure material-for;
it is the material intellect. In order to appear as such, that is, as
empty of intelligibles of mundane things, it must become
“temporarily ignorant of itself” (Blaustein 1984, 214-15).
This self-forgetfulness is concretely realized by its
conjunction with our imaginations. By virtue of that conjunction,
the agent intellect becomes “ignorant” of being the self-intellecting source of all intelligibility; it appears, instead, in each of
us in a double form—first, as our partially actualized receptivity
for intelligibles (our disposed intellect) and, second, as light
eliciting those intelligibles by abstraction from our images. The
agent intellect’s ignorance of itself seems to be in remarkable
agreement with the role of ignorance in the Upanishads:
according to Yājñavalkya a knower of Brahman “knows
knowledge and ignorance, both of them, together” (IU, 11). For
Brahman, too, turns outward, so that ignorance, that is, awareness
of multiplicity, is one of its aspects (Aurobindo 1996, 61-62 and
94). But Brahman is both knowledge and ignorance; the two are
inseparable (Aurobindo 1996, 58 and 72).
From the perspective of an individual human being, as I learn
more, the agent intellect becomes the form of my disposed
intellect to an ever greater degree. In this way my three principal
differences from it will decrease. First, in acquiring more intelligibles, my disposed intellect becomes less and less a partial view
of the agent intellect. Second, in advancing to intelligibles that are
less and less referred to the corporeal world, my disposed intellect
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33
becomes purer.17 Third, in embracing ever more encompassing
intelligibles, it approaches the agent intellect’s unitary vision.
Ultimately, while still “in this life” (Ivry 1966, 83), I may
arrive at the point where I have acquired all the intelligibles.18
Then I will have achieved a state of complete conjunction19 with
the agent intellect. My disposed intellect will have lost all traces
of individuality,20 which are what make it my disposed intellect; it
will have perished as such. All of me that is not intellect is “cut
off” from my intellect, which is identical with the agent intellect
(Blaustein 1984, 272). In this sense the state of complete
conjunction has been said to involve an “existential break” from
the world.21 Once again Yājñavalkya would recognize in this
existential break an analogue, at a deep experiential level, to a
prominent feature of the realization of Brahman.
In complete conjunction, I experience myself permanently
(Ivry 1996, 83) as shining forth intelligibility, but this “myself” is
not the self I used to think I was, for the conjunction removes that
which had prevented me from recognizing that the agent intellect
is my form.22 Averroes says that at this point the agent intellect,
united with us as our form, functions as our sole operative
principle.23 We might wonder what life in this state of conjunction
would be like. One suggestion is that I might experience it as “a
wakeful loss of rationality,” a loss of consciousness of my
humanity (Blaustein 1984, 272). I would not be engaged in
thinking things out; I would not be conscious of myself as an
individual, as a member of the human species.
Alternatively, guided by his own experience, Yājñavalkya
would propose that perhaps I might be aware of myself (what
Aristotle in the Ethics pointed to as my true self) engaged in selfintellection, while simultaneously being aware of experiencing
my ordinary self involved in its everyday activities against this
backdrop. Yājñavalkya would offer two possibilities, the second
of which would not be analogous to his own experience. First, in
each instance of intellection, I could perhaps experience the agent
intellect as transitioning from unitary self-intellection to the
offering of an aspect of itself to my imagination. Second,
analogous to the end of the path outlined in the Yoga-Sutras (that
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is, kaivalya),24 it could be that when I am engaged in self-intellection I ignore the particulars of the world and desist from
everyday activities, and so, ultimately, wither away and die.25
Part Two: Cit (Pure Awareness)
To begin our consideration of pure awareness, let us return to
Aristotle. In the Nichomachean Ethics he writes:
[O]ne who is seeing is aware (αỉσθάνεται) that he is
seeing, and one who is hearing [is aware] that he is
hearing,…[and, in general,] whenever we are
perceiving [we are aware] that we are perceiving and
whenever we are engaged in intellection (νοῶμεν) [we
are aware] that we are engaged in intellection
(1170a29-31).26
To what aspect of experience is Aristotle pointing here? Many
believe this passage means that perceptual consciousness is
accompanied by a reflection on, or a thought about, that
consciousness.27 For example, I know that I’m looking at you
seated there before me. However, such reflection seems to occur
only intermittently. Hence, an alternative interpretation has been
proposed,28 according to which perceptual consciousness is
always “selfaware”—that is, aware (of) itself,29 but not conscious
of itself—although, at any given time, we may notice
selfawareness to a greater or lesser degree. Yājñavalkya would
emphasize that only diligent practice could enable me to
recognize the difference between reflective consciousness and
selfawareness in my own experience.
To clarify the difference between selfawareness and reflective
consciousness, we shall draw upon some descriptions of
experience by the philosopher J.-P. Sartre.30 Consciousness is
necessarily always aware (of) itself, but precisely as being
conscious of an object beyond itself. “[T]his awareness (of)
consciousness…is not positional; that is, consciousness is not for
itself its own object. Its object is outside of it by nature…. We
shall call such a consciousness ‘consciousness of the first
degree’” (S, 23-24). In this essay, “consciousness” will always
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35
mean positional consciousness, consciousness of an object.
As an example of first degree consciousness, let us take my
perceptual consciousness-of-a-coffee-cup-on-a-table—say, in the
mode of staring-at.31 In this experience, the perceptual
consciousness is not an object for itself, whereas the coffee-cupon-a-table is an object for it. But in each such act of
consciousness, there lives an attentive presence by virtue of
which the consciousness is aware (of) itself. When, as is usually
the case, the attentive presence goes unnoticed, we experience
only a dim awareness (of) consciousness.
Yājñavalkya could point out that in his tradition this
awareness is called the “witness” (sākshī; ŚU, VI.12-14) and the
self-aware quality of consciousness is called “self-luminousness”
(svajyotir). He might add that this is what he was referring to
when he said, “You cannot see the seer of seeing; you cannot hear
the hearer of hearing; you cannot think of the thinker of thinking;
you cannot perceive the perceiver of perceiving” (BU, III.4.2);
and when he said, “It is the unseen seer, the unheard hearer, the
unthought thinker, the unperceived perceiver. Other than this
there is no seer…hearer…perceiver” (BU, 7.23). Sartre would
seem to agree with him that this awareness cannot be the object
of consciousness: this sphere “is a sphere of absolute existence,
that is, of pure spontaneities, which are never objects” (S, 77).
As opposed to this selfaware, first-degree consciousness-ofobjects, which makes up most of our waking lives, there arises
from time to time “a consciousness directed onto [the firstdegree] consciousness, [that is,] a consciousness which takes [the
first-degree] consciousness as its object.” Sartre calls it a “seconddegree” or “reflecting consciousness.” Whereas in the previous
case there was no duality at all to synthesize, here “we are in the
presence of a synthesis of two consciousnesses, of which one is
consciousness of the other.” When I think, “Staring at this coffee
cup on the table is wasting time,” this act of reflective
consciousness involves a synthesis of the thinking consciousness
and the reflected-upon consciousness-of-the-coffee-cup.
Moreover, just like first-degree consciousness, second-degree
consciousness—my thinking, in this instance—is self-aware (S,
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28-29).
When the thinking consciousness posits the previously
unreflected-upon staring consciousness as its object, it is not its
own staring that it is positing. What the reflecting consciousness
states about the staring consciousness does not concern itself; it
concerns the staring consciousness, which the reflecting
consciousness reflects upon. Hence, what reflecting
consciousness is turns out to be selfaware consciousness of
another, prior, selfaware consciousness, which, in turn, is
consciousness of an object that is not a consciousness. Reflecting
consciousness really does re-flect; that is, it bends backward to
look at an earlier moment of consciousness.
The fact that it is not its own staring that the thinking
consciousness posits in reflecting on the staring consciousness
raises the question whether the I that seems to be thinking “is that
of the consciousness reflected upon” and not, in fact, an I
supposed to be “common to the two superimposed consciousnesses.” Indeed, one suspects that the reason why every reflection
possesses a sense of self is that the reflective act itself gives birth
to the sense of self in the consciousness that is reflected upon (S,
28-29).32 Sartre offers an example in order to test this hypothesis:
I was absorbed just now in my reading. I am going to
seek to recall the circumstances of my reading….
Thus I am going to revive…also a certain thickness of
un-reflected-upon consciousness, since the objects
were able to be perceived only by that consciousness
and remain relative to it. That consciousness must not
be posited as the object of my reflection; on the
contrary, I must direct my attention onto the revived
objects, but without losing sight of the un-reflectedupon consciousness, while maintaining a sort of
complicity with it and making an inventory of its
content in a non-positional way. The result is not in
doubt. While I was reading, there was consciousness
of the book, of the heroes of the novel, but the I was
not inhabiting that consciousness (S, 30; italics in the
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last sentence added).
Here Sartre reawakens the original self-aware consciousness and
dwells in the awareness.
That awareness is also a precondition for reflection. Should
he reflect, upon being absorbed in his readings, “I was absorbed
in my reading,” then, instead of dwelling in the awarenesscomponent of the original consciousness, he would, as it were,
transform it into an act of consciousness, the object of which is
the original consciousness, (of) which the awareness was aware.
There certainly is an I present to that second-order
consciousness.33 So, we may call it “self-consciousness.”
Based on this I of reflection, Sartre shows how I construct a
unified sense of self in three stages: first, as a unity of states, like
my hatred of Peter; then as a unity of actions, like my playing a
piano sonata; and finally as a unity of qualities, like my spitefulness. For instance, let us suppose a first-order consciousness of
disgust and anger, present together with the perception of Peter. If
the self-consciousness reflected only on what was appearing in
the first-order consciousness, it would be thinking, “I feel
disgusted with Peter.” But instead, the angry disgust at Peter
appears as a profile, or perspectival view, of the disposition
“hatred of Peter,” just as a house will show itself to me in different
profiles depending upon where I am standing. The hatred appears
to be showing a “side” of itself through the momentary
experience of angry disgust. To the self-consciousness, the angry
disgust appears to be emanating from the hatred. On a later
occasion, perhaps, the hatred will appear upon reflection as an
actualization of a quality of spitefulness, which is in me (S, 4546, 51, 53). But in neither case does the self-consciousness realize
that the hatred or the spitefulness is arising in the moment of
reflection; rather it supposes that the state or the quality was
already there in the first-order consciousness.34
This process resulting in a sense of self leads me to say things
like “my consciousness,” when in fact “[t]he I is not the owner of
consciousness; it is the object of consciousness” (S, 77).
Yājñavalkya could report that a process of construction of the
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sense of self (aham-kāra) also figures prominently in the
Upanishadic tradition. It leads to the arising of many fears and
desires, which, in turn, function as barriers to the realization of
Brahman by keeping us “glued” to objects. I note that there is a
remarkable agreement here with Sartre, who wrote: “But perhaps
the essential role [of the sense of self] is to mask to consciousness
its own spontaneity…. Hence, everything happens as if
consciousness…were hypnotizing itself over that sense of self,
which it constituted” (S, 81-82).
Usually we do not notice the awareness-aspect of
consciousness because we are so taken up with what is appearing
to consciousness. Yet, on occasion, awareness may stand out in
our experience. For instance: Some people are engaged in a
heated discussion at an outdoor café, when a nearby car suddenly
backfires. Several of the participants may be so caught up in the
conversation that they don’t even notice the loud sound; others
may be startled and shift their attention to the street; someone
who was anchored in awareness, however, would notice, but not
be jarred by, the sound.
Another example: On a good day the football quarterback Joe
Montana, at the top of his game, would experience a pass play as
follows.35 He was conscious of the linemen rushing at him, of his
receivers running downfield, and so on. But instead of looking
with hurried, anxious glances, he experienced an awareness
spread over the whole unfolding scene. All the players seemed to
be moving in slow motion, and everything appeared with great
clarity and distinctness. He was keenly aware of his own body, the
motions of his limbs and an overall sense of relaxation, as his arm
drew back and the ball headed toward the receiver.36 Taken by
itself this example may mislead us into thinking that awareness is
dependent on the attainment of a certain level of skill, in this case,
that of an MVP quarterback. But the previous example and the
following one make it clear that this is not the case.
A third illustration: Some automobile drivers experience
freeway traffic as follows: “First, one driver cuts me off; then a
slowpoke is holding me up. My consciousness narrows to focus
on the offending driver; and, irritated, I react by honking or
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39
suddenly changing lanes.” Another driver may perceive the same
cars on the beltway as if they were moving in a force field. She
experiences that field as calling forth the alterations in her driving
required in order to maintain a smooth flow of traffic.
A fourth instance: “Surgeons say that during a difficult
operation they have the sensation that the entire operating team is
a single organism, moved by the same purpose; they describe it as
a “ballet” in which the individual is subordinated to the group
performance” (Csikszentmihalyi 1990, 65).
A fifth example: The following story shows a transition out of
awareness into self-consciousness:
Suppose a woman is engaged in sewing something. A
friend enters the room and begins speaking to her. As
long as she listens to her friend and sews in
[awareness], she has no trouble doing both. But if she
gives her attention to her friend’s words and a thought
arises in her mind as she thinks about what to reply,
her hands stop sewing; if she turns her attention to her
sewing and thinks about that, she fails to catch everything her friend is saying, and the conversation does
not proceed smoothly. In either case….she has transformed [awareness] into thought. As her thoughts fix
on one thing, they’re blank to all others, depriving the
mind of its freedom.37
This example enables us to avoid the misconception that
awareness is incompatible with words. For it was a shift in the
way in which she attended to speech, or to her sewing, that led to
the woman’s loss of the ability to attend to both simultaneously.
A sixth and final case, as described by Merleau-Ponty (1945):
Being most of the time in the consciousness-mode, we live in a
world that “only stirs up second-hand thoughts in us.” Our mind
is taken up with “thoughts, already formulated and already
expressed, which we can recall silently to ourselves and by which
we give ourselves the illusion of an interior life. But this supposed
silence is in reality full of words rattling around.” However,
occasionally we may “rediscover primordial silence, underneath
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the words’ rattling around.” Then we pass from the mode of
consciousness-of-objects to dwell in awareness. We experience “a
certain emptiness,” “a certain lack which seeks to fill itself,” to be
transformed into speech (213-14). Then there can emerge “an
authentic word, one which formulates something for the first
time”—such as “that of the child who is pronouncing her first
word, of the lover who is discovering his feeling” (207-08), or of
“the writer who is saying and thinking something for the first
time” (214). In the mode of awareness, we can live through a sort
of original emergence.
Words usually serve to keep our thoughts moving within
already formulated articulations. They could be said to function
like “preciptitates” (Niederschläge)38 of previous “chemical
reactions,” brought about by our own words or those of others.
However, when awareness becomes prominent, it acts as a
catalyst, which facilitates a fresh chemical reaction.
All the above examples manifest an awake, keen involvement
in experience together with an absence of the sense of self and of
self-focused emotions and motivations from the foreground. And
each of them brings to the foreground a different property of
awareness: the first, “unstuckness” to objects; the second,
spaciousness, not merely in the spatial and the temporal senses;
the third, responsiveness to dynamic qualities of the surrounding
field; the fourth, organic connectedness with whom or what39 is in
the field; the fifth, motion away from the directing I; and the sixth,
a sense of emptiness out of which newness arises spontaneously.
We might say that a good seminar could give evidence of
some of these signs of increased awareness. If, over time, the
participants have developed seminar skills analogous to the skills
developed by the members of a surgical team, the seminar might
be experienced as a sort of ballet. Along with the development of
those skills, some of the members may have cultivated their
awareness to some degree, paralleling the range of levels of
awareness in the operating team. That cultivation may enable
them to experience “a certain emptiness,” from which an
“authentic word” may emerge with greater frequency.
Such characteristics of awareness as those listed above have
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led people in certain pursuits, such as martial arts, to cultivate it,
so that it will remain reliably in the foreground. In developing a
painterly vision,40 for instance, one must learn to forget what
things are, in order to see how they are actually appearing to the
eye—which means, how they are coming into being before our
eyes. As Merleau-Ponty says of Cézanne: “It is the mountain that
he interrogates with his gaze. What exactly does he ask of it? To
unveil the means, visible and not otherwise, by which it is making
itself a mountain before our eyes.”41
We might expand on this account in the following way. As a
potential painter’s awareness becomes more prominent, she no
longer sees things as already “finished off,” but, instead, as
having a potential for greater “aliveness.” It is as if they were
calling to her to join in their emergence. Then she may heed the
appeal and begin to paint. Now it is this particular piece of fruit
before her that she captures “coming into being before her eyes”
in such a way that it can do so later before our eyes.42
Another example of the cultivation of awareness is found in
psychoanalysis. In his recommendations on the proper attitude to
be adopted by the analyst, Freud counsels a state of mind
possessing, first, an absence of reasoning or
deliberate attempts to select, concentrate or understand; and [second,] even, equal and impartial
attention to all that occurs within the field of
awareness…. This technique, says Freud…“consists
simply in not directing one’s notice to anything in
particular and in maintaining the same ‘evenly
suspended attention’…in the face of all that one
hears” (Epstein 1904, 194).43
That is, the analyst deliberately withdraws from consciousnessof-objects and dwells in the awareness component of
consciousness. This open attentional attitude is to be distinguished, on the one hand, from a merely passive attention, in
which the mind wanders freely from object to object, and, on the
other, from a focal attentional attitude, searching for a particular
meaning (Epstein 1904, 195). Partly because evenly suspended
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attention was criticized as unattainable,44 Freud’s prescriptions to
practice it did not become integrated into psychoanalytic training
programs.
However, Wilfred Bion, perhaps the most thoughtful psychoanalyst of the latter part of the twentieth century, forcefully
advocated this practice in the following terms:
[T]he capacity to forget, the ability to eschew desire
and understanding, must be regarded as essential
discipline for the psycho-analyst. Failure to practise
this discipline will lead to a steady deterioration in the
powers of observation whose maintenance is essential.
The vigilant submission to such discipline will by
degrees strengthen the analyst’s mental powers just in
proportion as lapses in this discipline will debilitate
them….
To attain to the state of mind essential for the
practice of psycho-analysis I avoid any exercise of
memory…. When I am tempted to remember the
events of any particular session I resist the
temptation…. If I find that some half-memory is
beginning to obtrude I resist its recall….
A similar procedure is followed with regard to
desires: I avoid entertaining desires and attempt to
dismiss them from my mind. For example…it interferes with analytic work to permit desires for the
patient’s cure, or well-being, or future to enter the
mind. Such desires…lead to progressive deterioration
of [the analyst’s] intuition….
[There is an aspect of ultimate reality] that is
currently presenting the unknown and unknowable [in
the consulting room]. This is the ‘dark spot’ that must
be illuminated by ‘blindness’ [that is, ignorance].
Memory and desire are ‘illuminations’ that destroy the
value of the analyst’s capacity for observation as a
leakage of light into a camera might destroy the value
of the film being exposed (Bion [1970] 1983, 51-52,
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55-56, 69).
The effect of failing to observe this discipline is to interpret
what the patient says in terms of what the analyst wishes or
already “knows,” thus closing her off from what may be emerging
for the first time in the current hour. Bion’s psychoanalytic state
of mind may be comparable to Socratic ignorance. Both represent
an opening up of the self in conversation, for the sake of noticing
emergent possibilities that would otherwise remain unthought.
Another area in which a practice has been advocated for the
enhancement of awareness is philosophy. In the early twentieth
century, Edmund Husserl proposed pursuing wisdom by
following a path that he called “phenomenology.” By this he
meant an account of the things appearing to you precisely in the
way in which they actually appear.
Philosophy students sometimes think that studying phenomenology entails mainly reading books. However, learning to see the
things appearing to you precisely in the way in which they
actually appear takes practice. Martin Heidegger, Husserl’s best
known student, had great difficulty at the beginning of his study
of phenomenology.
It concerned the simple question how thinking’s
manner of procedure which called itself “phenomenology” was to be carried out…. My perplexity
decreased slowly…only after I met Husserl personally
in his workshop…. Husserl’s teaching took place in a
step-by-step training in phenomenological “seeing”
which at the same time demanded that one relinquish
the untested use of philosophical knowledge…. I
myself practiced phenomenological seeing, teaching
and learning in Husserl’s proximity after 1919.45
The phenomenological seeing that one would practice is
founded on an act called “the phenomenological reduction.”
While the reduction was instituted in the service of phenomenological philosophy, Husserl was aware of a powerful transformative effect it could have upon the person practicing it:
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Perhaps it will even turn out that the total phenomenological attitude, and the [reduction] belonging to it,
essentially has, first of all, the vocation of effecting a
complete personal transformation, which would, in the
first place, be comparable to a religious conversion,
but which beyond that contains within itself the
significance of being the greatest existential transformation to which humanity as humanity is called.46
Yājñavalkya would note at this point that the designation
“greatest existential transformation”—like the earlier “existential
break” associated with conjunction in Averroes—also fits with the
experience of “waking up to” (pratibodham) Brahman (KeU,
II.4).
In characterizing the phenomenological reduction, I shall
borrow the descriptions of the Husserl’s closest collaborator in his
later years, Eugen Fink, because they are vivid and strongly
suggestive of awakening to Brahman.47 The phenomenological
reduction is a two-part act (F, 41). Husserl called the first
component of that act a “disconnection” (Ausschaltung) or an
epoché (ἐποχή)—a suspension of the “natural attitude,” the
attitude in which we take things for granted, or as a matter of
course (als selbstverständlich).
Disconnection means that you deliberately abstain from all
beliefs; you inhibit your customary acceptance of what “counts”
(das Geltende) for you (F, 39-40). In Sartre’s terms, you cease
living in acts of positional consciousness. While remaining
disconnected, as we observed Sartre doing, you turn your
attention from the objects of consciousness to the awareness
ingredient in consciousness-of-objects. You are not caught up
with objects, but are attentively “spread” over the whole of
consciousness-of-objects, without positing that whole as an
object. And you alter your mode of attention from an active
searching-for to a receptive letting-things-come. You are learning
to do something involuntary, like preparing to receive “the
visitation of sleep,” which comes as the god Dionysus visits his
followers, when they no longer are distinct from the role they are
playing.48 You are not gradually acquiring things in the way the
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disposed intellect acquires intelligibles.
The disconnection includes the “nullification” of the sense of
yourself as an empirical human being—it “un-humanizes”
(entmenschlicht) you inasmuch as it “lays bare the…onlooker in
himself” that is “already at work” in you, into which you now
“fade away” (F, 40). In the terminology of this essay, you
disidentify with your sense of self, and you pass into awareness
instead of remaining in consciousness. Yājñavalkya might remark
that the realization of Brahman involves a similar correlation
between the deconstruction of the sense of self (nir-aham-kāra)
and a fading away into the “witness,” which, as we have seen, was
already at work.
You are now in a position to notice precisely what appears to
you in just the way in which it appears. As with Freud’s evenly
suspended attention, all the phenomena are treated equally; none
is assumed in advance to have priority over the others. As in the
case of painterly vision, you are not imposing your knowledge on
your experiencing; you are operating “prior” to your identification of things or events. Your going backwards involves a sort
of reversal of the outward-turning action of the agent intellect.
For the agent intellect elicited intelligibles from their latent state
in the appearances, whereas the disconnection goes back behind
those intelligibles, which, due to language, are already at work in
our ordinary experience of the appearances. In its open attentiveness, the disconnection has an “empty” relationship to
experience, perhaps somewhat like the agent intellect in its
“empty” state as material intellect.
The second component of the phenomenological reduction,
the reducing proper, is a leading-back.49 In the reducing, “while
explicitly inquiring backwards behind the acceptednesses…with
respect to your belonging to the world,” you “blast open
(sprengen),” through transcendental insight, the “captivation and
captivity (Befangenheit)” caused by those world-acceptednesses.
You experience this as a “breakthrough” (Durchbruch; FK, 348).
As a result, you discover for the first time that a primordial
conviction (Husserl calls this an Urdoxa) has been underlying all
of your experiences—an unformulated, implicit acceptance of the
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world and of yourself as belonging to it (F, 40-41). Here ‘world’
refers, not to the collection of all things, but to what is originally
given as a universal background, in the way a horizon is given for
vision. While you may have occasionally experienced a
breakdown of particular beliefs in the past, that did not shake your
implicit acceptance of the horizon.
You are now sharing in the onlooker’s awareness of the
world, which is the “universally flowing and continuing [world-]
apperception,” the “underground” (Untergrund) out of which
every act of consciousness springs up. In this sense, phenomenology is said to make the ultimate ground of the world available
to an experience (FK, 349, 352, 340),50 one in which we
experience “how…the world is coming about for us” (Husserl
1962, 147.29-32).
Yājñavalkya might accept the notion that painterly vision,
evenly suspended attention, and the phenomenological reduction
are at least partial Brahman-experiences, ones that go beyond the
spontaneously arising Brahman-moments on the football field or
on the highway. However, he would point out two differences.
First, they are cultivated in the service of other ends—painting,
healing patients, or pursuing wisdom—whereas realization of
Brahman is the supreme end (BU, IV.3.22), pursued for its own
sake. Second, in the other contexts awareness is to be actualized
only on particular occasions—before the canvas, in the consulting
room, or in the phenomenological “workshop”—whereas one
remains continually in the Brahman-realm.
According to Husserl, in going about the course of ordinary
life, the phenomenologist has the epoché as “an active-dispositional51 attitude to which we resolve ourselves once and for all”
and which “can be actualized again and again” (Husserl 1962,
153.36-37 and 140.19-20), like the dancer’s repeated re-actualizing of the dancing that she has as a first actuality. This raises the
question whether the knower of Brahman could be said to be
Brahman in this dispositional sense.
In the Upanishadic tradition you may engage in a meditative
practice, in which you could pass through several stages. At the
beginning you deliberately concentrate and turn your
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consciousness inward, while endeavoring to dwell more and more
in awareness (Sekida 1985, 62 and 93).52 You need to keep
reminding yourself to notice the awareness, which is always
there. Initially you cannot accomplish this while you are doing
something else, because a thing or event always captures your
attention.
After a while you will be able to maintain this centering of
yourself in awareness. While your mind gradually has become
dominated by awareness, you still occasionally experience
moments of conscious reflection on the immediately preceding
moment of awareness (Sekida 1985, 93).53 You are now “allowing
the mind to fluctuate.” The following analogy may convey some
sense of this experience.54 Suppose a neighbor were to ask you to
look after her children. When the children come, you could take
one of three different courses of action: first, you could abandon
responsibility by telling them that they can do whatever they want
as long as they don’t bother you; or, second, you could try to
control them by telling them what to do and what not to do; or,
third, you could
allow the children to play. This “allowing” is not
active, since you do not interfere. It is not passive,
since you are present with the children…in a total
way. It is like a cat sitting at a mouse hole. It appears
to be asleep, but let the mouse show but a whisker and
the cat will pounce. It is only by allowing that one
truly understands what allowing means.
“Allowing” brings awareness to the fore in a way that pushing
away and controlling do not.55 You are aware of movements from
focused to unfocused consciousness, of shifts from perceptual to
thinking consciousness, of fluctuations from consciousness-of to
empty awareness, and so forth, as well as of the reversals of all
these. “Allowing is…so to say, what fluctuating awareness is
‘made of.’”
Eventually no reflection is experienced any more; this total
wakefulness completely purifies one of the “sleepiness” which is
what the “habit” of consciousness really is (Sekida 1985, 62 and
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94).56 To be aware you don’t have to be conscious of something;
nor do you need to be someone, much less someone special (Low
1993, 40).
Positional consciousness-of-objects, which was first for us,
here shows itself to be in fact a derivative of non-positional
awareness, which is what is first in itself. Initially, consciousness
seemed to have the component of awareness; but now we may say
that awareness sometimes manifests itself partially in the form of
consciousness-of-objects, while in itself it is pure awareness (cit).
Again, this is quite analogous to what Averroes said of the agent
intellect. In itself it is pure, having no reference to the world; but,
through its outward turn, it conjoins itself with our imaginations,
resulting in the emergence from it of particular intelligibles.
Upon emerging from this absolute silence, you may be so
forcefully struck by something in the world that you consciously
recognize that you are just pure awareness (Sekida 1985, 95). You
momentarily become conscious of this “objectless being present
with the children in a total way” as yourself. You are now
conscious of having arrived in the Brahman-realm.57 Yājñavalkya
might note that this recognition is what is expressed in the words:
“I am Brahman!” (BU, I.4.10), adding that this experiencing of
pure awareness is what he was referring to when he said:
Though then he does not see [any thing], yet he does
not see while seeing. There is no cutting off of the
seeing of the seer…. But there is no second
(dvitīyam), no other (anyad), separate from him, that
he could see…. When there is some other (anyad),
then one can see…the other (BU, IV.3.23 and 31).
According to this account, pure awareness seems to be empty.
Yājñavalkya could respond that, while it is empty of objects, it is
full in the sense that it is an experiencing of the moment-tomoment “going forth of things in different directions”
(vyuccaranti), like “sparks from a fire” (BU, II.1.20).
Alternatively, it is an experiencing of the whole’s springing forth
(sambhavati), which is like a spider emitting (srjate) a thread of
its web, or like plants springing up from the earth (MuU, I.1.7). It
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is as if in pure awareness we had “gone backward” to a point just
“before” things, self, and world emerge. This brings to mind a
passage in Sartre: “Thus, each instant of our conscious life reveals
to us a creation ex nihilo...[—]this inexhaustible creation of
existence of which we are not the creators” (S, 79).
Yājñavalkya’s characterization of the fullness of pure
awareness is conveyed by the traditional name for the Brahmanrealm, saccidānanda. The three parts of the one word express the
oneness of pure existence (sat), pure awareness (cit), and pure joy
(ānanda). Since there is no “of,” as in “consciousness-of,”
awareness is pure sat rather than a consciousness of it. Fink seems
to be giving voice to the same experience when he refers to the
unique identity of the onlooker and the universally flowing worldapperception: as “there is…no other (anyad), separate from him,
that he could see,” so there are no objects to separate the onlooker
from the flowing world-apperception (FK, 355).
This oneness of existence and awareness appears in the
Thomistic branch of the Aristotelian tradition as follows: Each of
us exists by virtue of a separate act of “is-ing” (esse), which is
something other than our essence, our humanity. A human being
is, not by virtue of being human, but by participation in, or
reception of, is-ing from, absolute Is-ing, just as a piece of wood
that is afire is so by participation in Fire (ST, Q.3, A.4r). Absolute
Is-ing is like the Sun, and a human being is like some part of the
air. Each individual instantiation of the intelligible human essence
remains illuminated, that is, continues is-ing, only as long as
absolute Is-ing is shining on it (ST, Q.8, A.1r). That is why
Thomas says that what we call “creation” is, in fact, an ongoing
“flowing out, arising, springing out (emanatio)” (ST, Q.44, A.1r)
from absolute Is-ing. This much of Thomas’s view can help us to
understand how the Upanishadic experience of cit is an
experience of sat.
Jacques Maritain (1956) applied Thomas’s understanding of
the distinction between esse and essence to interpret the
experience of the knower of Brahman in the following way.58 In
reflecting consciousness we experience our soul in its acts. What
we experience in reflection is not our intelligible essence but
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rather our self as “prisoner of the mobility, of the multiplicity, of
the fugitive luxuriance of the phenomena and the operations
which emerge in us from the night of the unconscious—prisoner
of the apparent self” (145-46). But, as we have seen, the cultivation of awareness, as distinct from consciousness or reflecting
consciousness, enables those on the path toward realizing
Brahman to pass out of ordinary self-conscious experience and
into “an exceptional and privileged experience, emptying into the
abyss of subjectivity…to escape from the apparent self, in order
to reach the absolute Self” (146). These practitioners “strip
themselves of every image, of every particular representation, and
of every distinct operation to such a degree that…they reach not
the essence of their soul but its existence, substantial esse itself”
(148) “by an…annihilating connaturality” (146), in the absolute
silence of total wakefulness.
[F]rom the fact that existence is…limited only by the
essence that receives it…one can understand that this
negative experience, in reaching the substantial esse
of the soul, reaches, at once, both this existence
proper to the soul and existing in its metaphysical
profusion and the sources of existing, according as the
existence of the soul…is something that is emanating
and is pervaded by an inflow from which it holds
everything…. It is the sources of being in his soul that
the human being reaches in this way (153-54).
Thus, through practice in experiencing pure awareness (cit), the
knower of Brahman has come to experience himself as the inflow
of is-ing flowing out from absolute Is-ing (sat). One might say
that the transition from experiencing myself as the witness to
recognizing pure awareness is like going from having my finger
on the pulsing of the world to recognizing my finger as the
pulsing of the world. Maritain’s interpretation clearly distinguishes the Sun of Averroes’ outward-turned self-intellection of
intelligible essences from the Sun of outflowing self-aware
existence.
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Now we are in a position to say that when Śvetaketu realizes
“You are That,” he is experiencing himself as the outflow of sat
and he is recognizing, as his true self, pure awareness (of) the
continual emanation of sparks that are “on the way” to becoming
things—and that this recognizing is that very outflow. Moreover,
in this recognition Śvetaketu is what is recognized: “One who
knows the supreme Brahman becomes that very Brahman” (MuU,
III.2.9; cf. BU, IV.4.13) and “becomes this All” (BU, I.4.10).
Just as we wondered earlier what the daily experience of the
state of complete conjunction would be like, so now the
analogous question arises with respect to the Brahman-realm. In
the discussion of the phenomenological reduction, I raised the
possibility that we could acquire pure awareness as a first
actuality, in the sense of an active disposition. The knower of
Brahman would then alternate between pure awareness and
consciousness-of, in the way that I can “turn on” or “turn off” my
contemplation of the Pythagorean Theorem as I wish. This
suggestion would parallel Aristotle’s experience that we are, for
intermittent periods of time, in the same state as the divine itself
is over the whole of time. The difference would be that instead of
turning from one mode of consciousness (say, perceiving or
thinking) to another (intellecting), the knower of Brahman alternates at will between two different ways of total experiencing—
between consciousness and pure awareness. It would be
somewhat analogous to looking at the well-known ambiguous
figure of the duck-rabbit, and seeing it now as a duck, now as a
rabbit.
We learn from Yājñavalkya that living in the Brahman-realm
is, instead, like a hypothetical double seeing of both the duck and
the rabbit at once, rather than like a seeing of them in alternation
(Carter 1997, 54).59 The knower of Brahman is engaged with
“consciousness-of” while simultaneously remaining in the realm
of pure awareness. The following analogy, in which the author
(Sharma) quotes Ramana Maharshi, conveys something of this:
The ordinary person only sees the reflection in the
mirror but the realized person sees the reflection as
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well as the mirror. “For instance you see a reflection
in the mirror and the mirror. You know the mirror to
be the reality and the picture in it a mere reflection. Is
it necessary that to see the mirror we should cease to
see the reflection in it?” Similarly, the realized one
continues to experience the world in his realized state.
Thus the realized person appreciates “the distinctions”
of sound, taste, form, smell etc. “But he always
perceives and experiences the one reality in all of
them.”60
Brahman-knowers experience the everyday world in the mirror of
purified awareness, and this makes possible their keen yet calm
involvement in that world. In the analogy we could take “seeing
the reflection” to stand for consciousness of the world, and
“seeing the mirror,” for pure awareness. When I see the mirror
along with the reflections, the latter are not being viewed “from
outside,” as they are in the mode of consciousness, but rather as
emerging out of awareness. One might also apply the analogy to
the self by saying that knowers of Brahman experience their
ordinary selves, too, as being virtual images cast by the mirror.
The mirror analogy may be applied to the modes of experiencing other than those encountered specifically in meditative
practice. Consciousness-of-objects in any manner—perceiving,
sensing, emoting, evaluating, thinking, and so on—and selfconsciousness, too, are like a vision of things in the virtual space
of the mirror. There are two fundamentally different modes of
consciousness-of-objects, depending upon whether the object in
question is an object in the true sense. When it maintains itself
throughout a succession of acts of consciousness, it is an object in
the etymological sense, namely something set or put (jectum)
before or over against (ob) the act of consciousness. This settingover-against is what is meant by “subject-object duality.” Such an
object shall be referred to henceforth as an ‘Object.’ It has an
identity, to which we may return again and again.
The following example illustrates the different layers that
may arise in perceptual consciousness-of-Objects. It begins with
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the emergence of an implicit Object from the background,
continues with a prepredicative explicating of it, and then
undergoes various layers of predicative development. The
following illustration may help to explain this: While I am
engaged in seminar, someone’s coffee cup may emerge from the
margins of my consciousness and may attract my attention and
become an explicit object of consciousness. My attention may
travel from its color to a figure on the side, and then to its overall
shape, and so on.61 Then my interest may awaken sufficiently so
that I think, “The cup has a circular figure on the side.” This shift
represents a transition from the cup’s just previously having
become implicitly determined as having a circle on its side to its
being grasped in an active identification as determined by the
circle on its side.62 Then I may think, “The fact that the cup has
that circular figure on its side is puzzling. I wonder what it stands
for.” My thought may subsequently be led to such Objects as “the
circular,” “shape in general,” and “property.”63
“Prior” to such perceptual consciousness of Objects and its
developments, there is a sensory consciousness of objects that has
been vividly described by Erwin Straus (1956). We sense objects
in the same way in which we respond to the dynamic quality of a
tone, which is “a state of unrest, a tension, an urge, almost a will
to move on, as if a force were acting on the tone and pulling it in
a certain direction” (Zuckerkandl 1959, 19). We are in a
symbiotic relation (Straus 1956, 200) with the “tones,” to which
we respond with incipient movements as we do to dance music
(239). This pre-linguistic, flowing realm is the ground from which
Objects emerge (204). We live simultaneously in the Objective
and the sensory and may experience the tension between them, as
the latter resists being fit into the former. Some people may be
especially attracted to the loss of their stance over-against
Objects, to the dispersion of their self-consciousness, and to the
blurring of the distinctness within the Objective realm (284 and
275). Precisely because of its lack of subject-Object duality and
self-consciousness, sensory consciousness is occasionally
mistaken for awareness by beginners. It is, however, just another
way of viewing the reflections in the virtual space produced by
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the mirror.
All of the above are distinctions that can be seen clearly in the
vision of that virtual space. In addition to seeing these distinctions, the knower of Brahman sees the virtual space and its reflections as emanating from the mirror. This second sort of seeing is
pure awareness. While awareness is never totally absent from our
experience, we notice it to varying degrees.
Usually, the degree to which we notice it is very minimal—as
when we seem to be, in Sartre’s words, “hypnotized” by what we
are conscious of. This is our “default” mode of experiencing.
When we are reading, thinking, conversing in seminar, dancing,
gazing at a sunset, or “even stretching out a hand to open the
door,” we are absorbed in that moment’s action (Sekida 1985, 91).
When we are self-conscious, we are also absorbed in the selfconsciousness. In absorption, awareness seems to have gotten
lost; but it has only receded into the deep background.
In some special moments, which have been called moments
of “flow” (Csikszentmilalyi 1990), awareness becomes prominent
in an incidental way:
A rock climber explains how it feels when he is
scaling a mountain: “You are so involved in what you
are doing [that] you aren’t thinking of yourself as
separate from the immediate activity” (53).
The absence of the self from consciousness does
not mean that a person in flow has given up the
control of his psychic energy, or that she is unaware of
what happens in her body or in her mind…. A good
runner is usually aware of every relevant muscle in his
body, of the rhythm of his breathing, as well as of the
performance of his competitors within the overall
strategies of the race (64).
We do not deliberately pursue such moments; they just
happen. The flow experience may be spontaneous, as in the earlier
examples of the driver and of the woman sewing; or it may be
skill-related, as in the examples of Joe Montana, the surgeon, and
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the rock climber. In the case of skill-related flow experiences, one
might say that the body’s usual resistance to intended action is
overcome by practice. As a result, consciousness as “overagainst” the body disappears, allowing awareness to become
prominent. We move out of flow when the “over-againstness”
arises again as the “I” becomes active either in reaction (“Wow!
This is so exciting!”) or in action (“If I bear down, I can keep this
going”).
As we saw in relation to painting, psychoanalysis, and
phenomenology, prominence of awareness may be deliberately
cultivated in order to be able to engage in some pursuit. Here
awareness is practiced, so that the practitioner comes to
experience the witness as a disposition. Once the practitioner
comes to possess the witness as a first actuality, he or she can then
activate it when engaging in the activity for the sake of which it
was developed.
Finally, in the double seeing of the knower of Brahman, pure
mirror-awareness is permanently prominent as a second actuality;
and there is a “loose,” “unstuck,” clear consciousness-of-objects
as well. This is said to be the state of one “freed while alive”
(jīvanmukta; cf. BU, IV.4.7).
In virtue of the oneness of sat and cit, this double seeing is
one with the out-flowing of existence. Thus, freedom manifests
itself on the one hand inasmuch as one’s awareness is active or
creative in respect to the world, and on the other hand inasmuch
as one’s action is responsive or receptive with respect to the
world—a reversal of the usual receptivity of consciousness and
activity of action (Yuasa 1987, 68). In the realm of action, this
freedom is freedom to respond without a “hitch” to the [field of
dynamic qualities] in the field of experience, which are analogous
to the directional arc involved in realizing the full significance of
a situation mentioned in Part One. These field [tensions] include
what Yājñavalkya takes Aristotle to be referring to when he
speaks of feeling feelings or performing actions as required
(δεῖ)—in the required cases, with respect to the required people,
in the required way, and for the required reasons (NE, 1106b1727).
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Another way of putting this is to say that the freedom of the
knower of Brahman manifests itself in the ability to be able to
move freely through the world with grace and effortlessness,
which [preserves thoughful awareness] (σοφροσύνη):65
For σοφροσύνη is precisely the virtue of general and
unself-conscious self-possession, of universal grace
and effortless command neither specified by particular
action, which would transform it from σοφροσύνη to
some particular virtue, nor checked by any opacity,
which would translate it into a mode of self-control.
What could work better for its model than a pure
objectless knowledge?
Knowers of Brahman have no inner barriers that can impede the
spontaneous emergence of whatever is called for by the current
moment.
In conclusion, we note certain formal parallels between the
role of Brahman in the Upanishads and that of the agent intellect
according to Averroes. First, each is the source—Brahman, the
source of all existence; the agent intellect, the source of all being,
that is, of all intelligibility. Second, both are “self-luminous” and
are responsible for “seeing” in some sense. Third, the non-dual
relation between the individual self and Brahman is like that
between the disposed intellect and the agent intellect. Fourth, a
“self-forgetting” “outward turn” occurs in the case of each of
them. Fifth, both the experience of Brahman and the experience
of intellection could be said to involve a breaking-free from my
ordinary captivation by the images on the walls of a cave-like
dwelling; both involve engaging in practice; and both ultimately
arrive at an existential breakthrough to “immortalizing.” In that
breakthrough, in both cases, I deconstruct my ordinary sense of
self and discover my true self as being both non-private (that is,
not mine alone) and non-dual with respect to the true self of
others.
There are fundamental differences, however, in other
respects. In the case of intellection, one escapes the captivity of
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opinions and of the perceptual world by becoming free for intelligibles through the gradual purification of theoretical study; in
the case of realizing Brahman, one escapes the captivity of the
mundane way of experiencing objects, regardless of whether they
appear in sensory, perceptual, or intellectual consciousness, by a
sudden shift from involvement in consciousness (whether firstdegree or reflective) to pure awareness—a shift that may be
experienced by the practice of cultivating awareness. Moreover,
the one, impersonal, non-dual, true self of us all, in which we
share in our immortalizing, is understood by Averroes to be the
self-intellection of the agent intellect; Yājñavalkya, on the other
hand, understands it to be pure awareness. And finally, in intellection, the material intellect realizes conjunction with the agent
intellect, which is the source of all intelligibility in the world; in
experiencing Brahman, however, pure [selfawareness] realizes
that it is non-dual with respect to the emergence of existence in its
entirety, encompassing both the sensory and the intelligible
realms.
Jacob Klein makes the following comment on Aristotle: the
receptive aspect of “νοεῖν…is the state of wakefulness, a state of
preparedness and alertness…. Νοῦς…when it is…one with the
νοητά….[—o]nly then can be said to be wakefulness ‘at work’”
(Klein 1964, 65). Looking back at the beginning of this essay,
Yājñavalkya might wonder how Homer’s realization of the full
significance of a situation,66 Aristotle’s reception of an intelligible, and Averroes’ complete conjunction with the agent
intellect’s self-intellection would compare, in regard to their
degrees of wakefulness, with dwelling in pure awareness.
He might think that the major difference between the
Upanishads and our three Western thinkers is that in the former
the state of empty receptivity is supreme—that is, even more
wakeful than “wakefulness at work.” But, alternately, it might be
that Averroes’ account of complete conjunction is a satisfactory
partial depiction of Brahman. If we focus on the emerging
revelation that occurs in the empty, receptive intellect’s becoming
one with a “profile” of the full, unitary agent intellect, we may be
considering one face of Brahman, as it were, namely, the intel-
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lectual one. Perhaps Klein was directing our attention to the
wakefulness of the experiential living-through of such a moment,
a wakefulness that, however, is not limited to the intellectual
sphere.
Let us allow Yājñavalkya the last word: “What you may be
overlooking is that the empty, receptive material intellect is an
appearance of the outward turning of the full source of determinacy, the agent intellect, whereas, in the case of Brahman, the
full and determinate is an appearance of the outward turning of
the empty.”
1
This essay is a revision of two NEH-supported lectures given at St. John’s
College, Annaopolis, on February 15 and 19, 2008 and dedicated to the
memory of Ralph Swentzell, who did so much to further the study of Eastern
Classics at St. John’s College.
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meditate on them as [being] simply the Self (BU, I.4.7).
9
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1075a7-11: “So, the condition the human intellect...
is in at some period of time...is the condition the intellection that intellects
itself is in over the whole of time.” Cf.: “For the gods, the whole of life is
blessed, and for human beings it is so to the extent that there is in it some
likeness to such a state of activity” (NE, 1178b25-26).
10
I am indebted to my colleague, Michael Blaustein, for a very fruitful recent
conversation about Averroes. This section is based upon the works of Altmann,
Black, Blaustein, Hyman, Ivry, Leaman, and Zedler listed in the bibliography.
Leaman and Zedler have been particularly helpful for the early part, but I have
taken most of it from Black. In the later part I have relied heavily on
Blaustein’s working out of the details of the relation between agent and
material intellects and have made significant use of Altmann and Ivry,
especially the latter’s thoughts about conjunction while we are still alive.
However, responsibility for any errors that there may be in the interpretation of
Averroes is mine alone.
2
This and the following few paragraphs are based on K. von Fritz, “ΝΟΟΣ
and ΝΟΕΙΝ in the Homeric Poems,” Classical Philology 38 (1943), 79-93.
‘aql bi al-malaka, which means intellect in natural disposition, aptitude,
faculty; intellectus in habitu.
3
12
Also: “the intellective [part of the soul] intellects the [intelligible] looks in
appearances” (De anima 431b2). I accept Nussbaum’s (1978) suggestion about
the meaning of φαντσία. It is based on such passages as the following 428a1,
7, 14ff., & and 29ff., as well as; 428b30ff.), wherein in which the link between
φαντσία and φαίνεσθαι seems compelling.
The translations from Homer are based upon those listed in the bibliography.
4
This “directional arc” is analogous, at a higher level, to Merleau-Ponty’s arc
intentionnel on the level of sensing (Merleau-Ponty 1945, 158).
5
The following few paragraphs are based on W. Otto, The Homeric Gods: The
Spiritual Significance of Greek Religion (New York: Pantheon Books, 1954).
6
Since this essay is intended to be an introduction to a way of experiencing, it
will not go very far into the many conceptual distinctions that have come to be
seen as part of the Upanishadic teaching. For instance, there is no discussion
of the distinction between nirguṇa and saguṇa Brahman. While it is true that
such distinctions do reflect distinctions in experience, the reader who is being
introduced to the way of experiencing in question is not likely to have encountered them.
7
This quotation and the situation described in the following sentence derive
from HG, 6, 210, 195.
8
The Inner Controller is depicted mythologically as follows:
He entered in here right to the tips of the nails, as a razor slips into
a razor-case…. When he breathes he is called ‘breath’; when he
speaks, ‘speech’; when he sees, ‘eye’; when he hears, ‘ear’; when
he thinks, ‘mind.’ They are just the names of his actions. Whoever
meditates on any one of these does not know [the Self], for [the
Self] is not completely active in any one of them. One should
11
13
In fact, for Averroes, the imagination or, more properly, the cogitative
power—which, together with the imagination and memory, prepares what is
given in sensation, so that, when illumined by the agent intellect, the intelligible look can appear through and in-form the material intellect—is a fourth
intellect, the passible intellect (LC, 449.174, and cfp. 409.640). “The cogitative
power has the following functions: it can make an absent object appear as
though present; it can compare and distinguish the re-presented objects with
each other; it can judge whether a given re-presented object bears a relation to
a directly presented sense intention” (Zedler 1954, 441).
14
Yet because the human species is eternal, the succession of human souls in
which intellection of intelligibles of mundane things occurs ensures the continuity of intellection in the material intellect and the omnitemporality of the
intelligible looks of mundane things as such. Through the repeated presentation of potential intelligibles in imaginative appearances, this succession
“provides a replica in time and in matter of the eternal” intellection of the
agent intellect (Zedler 1951, 173). It is possible that the belief that souls
migrate into different bodies in succession is a reflection in the form of popular
myth of the truth of the omnitemporal unity of the material intellect in the
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60
multiplicity of disposed intellects (Altmann 1965, 82).
15
The agent intellect in this incidental connection would be what Aristotle
referred to as the intellect that enters “from outside the door”: “It remains then
that intellect alone enters additionally into [the seed of a human being] from
outside the door (θύραθεν) and that it alone is divine, for corporeal being-atwork has nothing in common with its being-at-work” (De generatione et
corruptione 736b27). Cf.:
But the intellect seems to come to be in [us] while being an
independent thing, and not to be destroyed…. [I]ntellecting or
contemplating wastes away because something else in us is
destroyed, but it is itself unaffected (without attributes). But
thinking things through and loving or hating are affections
(attributes) not of the intellect but of that which has intellect,
insofar as it has it. For this reason, when the latter is destroyed,
the intellect neither remembers nor loves, for these acts did not
belong to it but to the composite being which has perished; the
intellect is perhaps something more divine and is unaffected (OS,
408b18ff.).
What Averroes actually says is that the incidental connection constitutes a
“disposition” (isti‘dād, which means readiness, willingness, preparedness,
inclination, tendency, disposition, propensity; dispositio) of the agent intellect,
but one located within human souls. It is a disposition to receive the intelligible looks of mundane things. Thus, the material intellect is in reality the
agent-intellect-as-having-such-a-disposition-in-human-beings.
16 Based
on Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1072b12: “[I]t is beautiful and in that way
a source.”
17
When my disposed intellect is actively engaged in intellecting an intelligible
look, it is also intellecting itself, since, as Aristotle points out, the intellect is
one with what it intellects, in that the second actuality of both is identical, as
lumber’s being built is one with the activity of building. In contemplating itself
as informed by the intelligible look, my intellect is also directed toward the
image, which specifies the particular look that is to be received, in the same
way in which, when we look at a painting, we are directed toward the scene
that we see in it. However, since the mundane thing toward which the intellect
is directed via the image is not pure intelligibility, the disposed intellect’s selfintellection is not pure self-intellection; its act of intellection is not absolutely
one with its object of intellection. In this way it differs from the self-intellection of the agent intellect; for the object of the agent intellect’s intellection
does not point beyond itself.
18 What had been my intellect would now be either fully (Blaustein 1984, 272
and 283) or partly assimilated to the agent intellect. That is, either “I” would
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be engaged in intellection of everything intelligible or, having abandoned all
the contingent aspects of my intellection, I would be focusing solely on its
formal aspects, which are supplied by the agent intellect, so that I would be
participating in an aspect of the formal governing source of the whole
(Leaman 1998, 101-03).
19
Ittisāl =connectedness, unitedness, union; juncture, conjunction, link;
connection; contact (from wasala = to connect, join, unite, combine, link,
attach). Continuatio = a following of one thing after another, an unbroken
series, a connection, continuation, succession (from continuare = to join
together in uninterrupted succession, to make continuous). Wasala may be a
reformulation of Aristotle’s θίξις.
Altmann (1965, 83) says that this notion reflects Plotinus’s συνάπτειν (= [1]
[transitive] to join together; [2] [intransitive] to border on, lie next to;
combine, be connected with). Consider: “[W]e lift ourselves up by the part [of
the soul] which is not submerged in the body and by this conjoin at our own
centres to something like the Centre of all things…. [W]e must suppose that
[our souls conjoin] by other powers, in the way in which that which is engaged
in intellection naturally conjoins with that which is being thoroughly intellected and that that which is engaged in intellection…conjoins with what is
akin to it with nothing to keep them apart” (Plotinus, VI.9.8.19-30).
Altmann (1965, 83n.) also mentions that Plotinus refers to his experience of
union as a contact (ἁφή). However, in Averroes, “conjunction” (ittisāl) is to be
distinguished from “union” (ittihād); the latter signifies oneness, singleness,
unity; concord, unison, unanimity; combination; amalgamation, merger, fusion;
union, (from wahada = [1] to be alone, unique; [2] to make into one, unite,
unify; to connect, unite, bring together, amalgamate, merge). In Greek the
corresponding word is ἕνωσις = combination into one, union.
20
In its perfected state, as engaged in intellection of the agent intellect, the
disposed intellect is called the intellectus adeptus (Hyman n.d., 188), “intellect
that has reached to or attained or obtained.”
21
Altmann 1965, 74, characterizing the position of Averroes’ teacher.
22
Blaustein 1984, 284. Cf. also: “[T]he material intellect’s awareness of itself
even when it is not thinking of any intelligible form…is itself a kind of
actuality, however empty. Averroes claims that this kind of self-awareness is in
fact the obverse of the [agent] intellect’s fully conscious awareness of itself;
the material intellect’s awareness of its own potentiality is a dim awareness of
its actuality as the [agent] intellect.” (Ibid.)
23
It is interesting to note that with respect to conjunction, the agent intellect
exercises all four kinds of responsibility that Aristotle describes in the Physics.
It is responsible for my attainment of conjunction in functioning as my end
(τέλος). Moreover, it is responsible for the motion of learning, by which I
approach conjunction; for my learning is really its producing intelligibles in
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me by revealing itself to me as the form of my disposed intellect (Blaustein
1984, 276-77). Since the agent intellect is what I am increasingly intellecting
and, thus, coming to be, it is also responsible for conjunction in the manner of
a form. Finally, it is also responsible as material, since the material intellect is
ultimately identical with it. The same could be said of Brahman, with the key
difference that its responsibility is not limited to the realm of intelligibility.
24
Patañjali 1989, IV.34; see also Feuerstein’s comment in Patañjali 1989, 145.
Kaivalya is “the aloneness” of seeing.
25
As far as Averroes’ own position with respect to individual immortality goes,
there are two interesting possibilities. He may have thought that the only
immortality was the impersonal immortality of the state of conjunction and
that philosophers were orienting their lives accordingly; the belief in personal
immortality on the part of ordinary people would then be the closest approximation to truth of which they were capable. On the other hand, he may have
held that, while only a few intellects may attain conjunction, all souls are
immortal (Zedler 1954, 451-52). There is a somewhat similar divergence in the
Upanishadic tradition between Śankara’s position that the individual self is in a
sense unreal and Rāmānuja’s view that individual selves, while not
independent, are real.
26
Cf. the following passages: “Since [in all cases of seeing and hearing] we
are aware (αỉσθανόμεθα) that we are seeing and hearing, it must either be by
sight that we are aware [for example] that we are seeing or by some other
[sense]” (OS, 425b11-12). “To each sense there belongs something special and
something common. For example, what is special to sight is to see, [what is
special] to hearing is to hear, and similarly with the rest. But there is also a
certain common power that goes along with all of them, by which one is also
aware that one is seeing and hearing (for it is not, after all, by sight that one is
seeing that one is seeing).” (De somno et vigilia, 455a12-5.)
27
We may speak of self-consciousness in the sense as consciousness of myself
only “after” the construction of the sense of self, which is discussed in the text
below.
28
By Kosman (1975), who also made reference to Sartre’s La Transcendence
de l’Ego. In planning the lectures, I had intended to use Sartre to introduce the
notion of selfawareness (see footnote 29) as an alternative to anything in
Aristotle. However, Kosman’s article, which I discovered while writing the
lectures, made it possible to cite Aristotle himself in order to introduce this
notion.
29
I write “selfawareness” and “awareness (of) itself” to suggest that the
relationship between awareness and what it is aware (of) is not the same as
that between consciousness and the object of consciousness. I am following
Sartre’s practice in L’être et le néant (pp. 18-20), where he writes conscience
(de) soi to refer to what I am calling “selfawareness” or “awareness (of)
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itself.”
30
In La Transcendance de l’Ego, from which the quotations are taken, Sartre
uses only one word, conscience, which I have rendered as “consciousness”
when it is positional and as “awareness” when it is non-positional. Moreover,
he does not here write conscience (de), as he did later (see footnote 28).
31 What is said will apply as well to consciousness that is imagining, remembering, judging, thinking, intellecting, feeling, or evaluating.
32
See footnote 34.
33
The last two sentences represent my understanding of Gurwitsch 1985, 5,
second paragraph.
34
Gurwitsch (1941) pointed out that this account of the arising of the sense of
self is incompatible with the fact that reflection can accomplish no more than
to render explicit the content of the reflected-upon consciousness (332-33). He
later (1985) offered a corrected account of the construction of the psychical
empirical sense of self (15ff.). It is based on the recognition that both states
and qualities “designate psychic constants, i.e., regularities of
experience…rather than mental facts which themselves fall under direct
experience” (15), as they do in Sartre.
35
I remember many years ago reading an article by him in The Washington
Post, in which he described his experience in something like these terms.
36
These characteristics are similar to those in the example of the violinist in
Csikszentmihalyi 1990: “A violinist must be extremely aware of every
movement of her fingers, as well as of the sound entering her ears, and of the
total form of the piece she is playing, both analytically, note by note, and
holistically, in terms of its overall design” (64).
37
Bankei 2000, 58. I have substituted “awareness” first for “the Unborn” and
then for “it,” referring to her Buddha-mind.
38
This word is used passim in Husserl 1964.
39
It need not be living beings with respect to which we experience the
connection: “The [mountain] climber, focusing all her attention on the small
irregularities of the rock wall that will have to support her weight safely,
speaks of the sense of kinship that develops between fingers and rock.” “This
feeling is not just a fancy of the imagination, but is based on a concrete
experience of close interaction with some Other.” (Csikszentmihalyi 1990, 64)
40
A popular book on learning to draw tells us of a subjective state that artists
speak of, which is characterized by “a sense of close ‘connection’ with the
work, a sense of timelessness, difficulty in using words…a lack of anxiety, a
sense of close attention to shapes and spaces and forms that remain nameless.”
It is important for the artist to experience the shift from the ordinary state to
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
this one. The student is encouraged to set up the proper “conditions for this
mental shift” and to become “able to recognize and foster this state (Edwards
1979, 46). These characteristics correspond quite well with the qualities of a
consciousness in which awareness is in the foreground.
41
Merleau-Ponty 1961, 166, translation modified.
42 The articulation in this paragraph emerged in a conversation with Nina
Haigney, just a few minutes before I delivered this lecture. It was an example
of the sort of thing it attempts to articulate—a conversation, with awareness to
some degree in the foreground, allowing for the experience of “a certain
emptiness,” followed by the emergence, in two people, of an “authentic
word”—or a least a relatively authentic one.
43
The quotation from Freud is from “Recommendations to Physicians
Practicing Psychoanalysis” (1912).
44
By Theodore Reik in 1948; see Epstein 1904, 199-201.
45
M. Heidegger, On Time and Being, quoted in Ihde 1977, 15; italics added
and translation corrected at one point.
46
Husserl 1962, 140.27-33; to maintain consistency of terminology, I substituted “reduction” for “epoché.”
47
Husserl himself conveys the same view in different language (Husserl 1962,
Sections 37-42).
48
Merleau-Ponty 1945, 191, where, however, the expression is not being used
to characterize the phenomenological reduction.
49
The distinction between disconnection and reducing proper parallels that in
the Buddhist tradition between mindfulness (sati) and seeing distinctly in
detail (vi-paśyana).
50
Cf. “And so also must the gaze made free by the epoché be…an experiencing gaze” (Husserl 1962, 156.13-15).
51
I take habituell to correspond to an adjectival form of ἓξις.
52
This stage in the yogic tradition involves eight members, the last three of
which are concentration, meditation, and in-stance (samādhi), which is
opposed both to ex-stasy and to our ordinary counter-stance vis-à-vis objects
(Patañjali 1989, II.29).
53 Cf. Patañjali 1989, I.42 and 44: coincidence with reflection (savicārā
samāpattih).
54 The quotations in the remainder of this paragraph are taken from Low 1993,
149-50; italics added.
55
When allowing the children to play, you are not caught up in their playing;
DRUECKER
65
so, you have a kind of distance from it. Yet you are “with” them, accompanying them. Thus, your distance is of a different kind than the distance that
occurs in objectification, where the ob-ject stands over against you (discussed
in the text below). Moreover, while it might seem as though the objective,
perceptual world were free of captivation, when compared to the dynamic,
sensory realm (discussed in the text below), one can see that the former is, in
fact, grounded in the primordial doxa of the latter.
56 The
role that this experience of pure awareness plays in the Upanishadic
tradition parallels that of the “aloneness of seeing” (drśeh kaivalyam; Patañjali
1989, II.25) in the yogic tradition (Patañjali 1989, III.50; IV.26 and 34).
57
This account of realization of Brahman is based on zen sources. However, as
Shear (1983 and 1990) points out, this experience of awake, pure
selfawareness lacks any empirical qualities or content. As a result, differing
references to it as the Brahman-realm or Buddha-nature are not pointing to
qualitative differences in the experience (Shear 1983, 57-59; 1990, 392). [Note
added in revising the lecture: I now think it would be better to say that the zen
account is an interpretation of the realization of Brahman.]
58
The page numbers given in this paragraph refer to Maritain 1956.
59
Sekida 1985, 91-97, also depicts the corresponding state in the zen tradition
in this way. Carter proposes the comparison with binocular vision. It is interesting that Bion also uses this analogy (Grinberg, Sor, and Tabak di Bianchedi
1993, 35-36).
60
Sharma 1993, 43; first two sets of italics added. The quotation is from
Ramana Maharshi as reported in D. Goodman, ed., The Teachings of Sri
Ramana Maharshi (NY: Arkana, 1985), 42 and 41.
61
Cf. the description in Husserl 1964, 124-25.
62
Cf. the description in Husserl 1964, 206-08.
63
Cf. the descriptions in Husserl 1964, §§58-61, 80-82, 86-87 and in Husserl
1950, §10.
64
The page references in the remainder of this paragraph are from Straus
1956.
65
I believe that Kleist (1964) had the same phenomenon in view when he
reported Herr C.’s words after two anecdotes, one about a graceful dancer who
lost his grace when self-consciousness arose and the other about a bear, who
effortlessly parried every thrust of Herr C.’s rapier with a graceful swipe of his
paw:
[I]n the same degree as, in the organic world, reflection becomes
more obscure and weaker, grace emerges there ever more radiant
and supreme.—Yet just as…the image in a concave mirror, after
�THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
66
withdrawing to infinity, suddenly comes right in front of us again,
so when consciousness has, as it were, passed through an infinite,
grace will again put in an appearance. Hence, it appears most
purely in the human bodily structure that has either no selfconsciousness or an infinite self-consciousness (Kleist 1964, 67).
That is, in our terms, grace emerges in the realm of animal, sensory
consciousness, a realm that we can experience, but not enter completely
(Straus 1956, 284). And it emerges again in the realm of pure [selfawareness],
in which we are no longer caught up in first- or second-degree consciousness.
66
Another question to pursue might be whether Homer’s realization of full
significance became narrower and more limited in passing over into intellection.
DRUECKER
67
containing Ia, QQ.2-11.
TU
Taittitrīya Upanishad
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_____, Aristotle’s Physics: A Guided Study, tr. and ed. J. Sachs (New
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Brihadāranyaka Upanishad
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Fink, E., Sixth Cartesian Meditation: The Idea of a Transcendental
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“Die Phänomenologische Philosophie Edmund Husserls in der
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Otto, W., The Homeric Gods: The Spiritual Significance of Greek
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I
Homer, Iliad
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KeU
Kena Upanishad
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LC
Averroes, Long Commentary = Commentarium Magnum in Aristotelis
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Mundaka Upanishad
NE
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics; translation altered in some places.
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Homer, Odyssey
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Aristotle, On the Soul; translation altered in some places.
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Sartre, J.-P., La Transcendance de l’Ego: Esquisse d’une description
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Waddell (New York: South Point Press, 2000).
Bion, W., Attention and Interpretation (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson Inc.,
1970/1983).
Csikszentmihalyi, M., Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (New
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Edwards, B., Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain: A Course in Enhancing
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Transpersonal Psychology 16 (1904), 193-205.
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
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Fink, E., Sixth Cartesian Meditation: The Idea of a Transcendental Theory of
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Philipp Reclam Jun., 1964), 58-67.
_____, “Die Phänomenologische Philosophie Edmund Husserls in der
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Kosman, L., “Perceiving that We Perceive: On the Soul III, 2,” The
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Grinberg, L., Sor D., and Tabak di Bianchedi, E., New Introduction to the
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Leaman, O., Averroes and His Philosophy (Surrey: Curzon, 1998).
Gurwitsch, A., Marginal Consciousness (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press,
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Phenomenological Research 1 (1941), 325-38.
Gurwitsch, A. and Schütz, A., Philosophers in Exile: The Correspondence of
Alfred Schutz and Aron Gurwitsch, 1939-1959, ed. R. Grathoff and tr. J Evans
(Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 1989).
Homer, The Iliad, 2 vols., tr. A. Murray (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1925).
_____, The Iliad of Homer, tr. R. Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago,
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_____, The Odyssey, tr. A. Cook (New York: W. W. Norton, 1974).
_____, The Odyssey of Homer, tr. R. Lattimore (New York: Harper and Row
Publisher, 1967).
Husserl, E., Die Krisis der Europäischen Wissenschaften und die
Transzendentale Phänomenologie, ed. W. Biemel (Haag: Martinus Nijhoff,
1962).
_____, Erfahrung und Urteil (Hamburg: Claussen Verlag, 1964).
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Philosophie I (Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1950).
Hyman, A., “Aristotle’s Theory of the Intellect and Its Interpretation by
Averroes” in Studies in Aristotle, ed. D. O’Meara (Washington, DC: The
Catholic University of America Press, n.d.), 161-91.
Ihde, D., Experimental Phenomenology: An Introduction (NY: G.P. Putnam’s
Sons, 1977).
Ivry, A., “Averroes on Intellection and Conjunction,” Journal of the American
Oriental Society 86 (1966), 76-85.
Klein, J., “Aristotle, An Introduction,” in Ancients and Moderns, ed., J.
Cropsey (NY: Basic Books, 1964).
Low, A., The Butterfly’s Dream: In Search of the Roots of Zen (Rutland, VT:
Charles E. Tuttle Company, Inc., 1993).
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Alsatia, 1956).
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Perception, ed. J. Edie (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964).
_____, Phénoménolgie de la perception (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1945).
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NJ: Littlefield, Adams & Co., 1965).
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in her Aristotle’s De Motu Animalium (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1978).
Otto, W., The Homeric Gods: The Spiritual Significance of Greek Religion
(New York: Pantheon Books, 1954).
Patañjali, The Yoga-Sutra of Patañjali, tr. G. Feuerstein (Rochester, VT: Inner
Traditions International, 1989)
Plotinus, Enneads, Volumes III, V, VI, and VII, tr. A. H. Armstrong
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967-88).
Sartre, J.-P., L’être et le néant (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1943).
_____, La Transcendance de l’Ego: Esquisse d’une description phénoménologique (Paris: Vrin, 1966). [Originally published 1936.]
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the Alter Ego,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 2 (1942), 323-47.
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Weatherhill, 1985).
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Banarsidass Publishers, (1993).
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Philosophical Quarterly 30 (1990), 391-401.
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Snell, B., “Die Ausdrücke für den Begriff des Wissens in der Vorplatonischen
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Books, Inc., 1966).
_____, Vom Sinn der Sinne (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1956).
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QQ.2-11, T. McDermott, O.P., ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company,
1964).
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Philology 38 (1943), 79-93.
Yuasa, Y., The Body: Toward an Eastern Mind-Body Theory, tr. N. Shigenori
and T. Kasulis (Albany: SUNY Press, 1987).
Zedler, B., Introduction to Aquinas’s On the Unity of the Intellect against the
Averroists (Milwaukee: Marquette University, 1968).
_____, “Averroes and Immortality,” New Scholasticism 28 (1954), 436-53.
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Catholic Philosophical Association 25 (1951), 164-78.
Zuckerkandl, V., The Sense of Music (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1959).
71
Principles of Motion and the
Motion of Principles:
1
Hegel’s Inverted World
Peter Kalkavage
Oh, judge for yourselves: I have been concealing
it all the time, but now I will tell you the whole
truth. The fact is, I…corrupted them all!
—Dostoevsky, “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man”2
In the Phenomenology of Spirit, late in Hegel’s chapter on force
and understanding, a baffling figure comes before us. It is the
famous “inverted world.” This figure completes the dialectic of
understanding. As a result of the inverted world, consciousness—
the sole but protean hero of Hegel’s philosophic epic—undergoes
a conversion: it ceases to put truth in objects or things and instead
places it in the thinking subject.
My plan is to take us through Hegel’s chapter on understanding with the following questions in mind: Why, for Hegel, is
understanding logically unstable? Why is force its proper object?
What is the inverted world, and how does it come about? What
does it show us about the nature of thinking, and the nature of
nature? Finally, how does the inverted world bring about the great
turn in the Phenomenology from knowledge as the consciousness
of things to knowledge as grounded in self-consciousness?
Understanding, Verstand, has a range of meanings in Hegel.
It refers most generally to our capacity for making distinctions,
our power of analysis. In his Encyclopedia, Hegel indicates the
function and limit of understanding as follows: “Thinking as
understanding stops short at the fixed determinacy and its
distinctness vis-à-vis other determinacies.”3 In other words,
understanding establishes fixed boundaries and stable identities.
Fond of schematizing, it regards mathematics as the model of
Peter Kalkavage is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis.
�72
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
what it means to know. In the Phenomenology, the archetype of
Verstand is the “new science” inaugurated by Galileo and
Descartes and brought to its peak in the force-theories of Newton
and Leibniz. The chapter “Force and Understanding” presents a
critical reflection on this science. Hegel studied the physics of his
day extensively and acknowledged its impressive achievements.
But it does not for him embody absolute truth; it is not science at
its highest, most complete stage. Hegel’s exposé in the
Phenomenology reveals why this is the case, why the supposedly
stable principles of modern physics are ultimately unstable.
Hegel’s chapter is difficult even by Phenomenology
standards. To guide us through its twists and turns, I have divided
my presentation into six parts. The first three deal respectively
with Force, Law, and Explanation. These are related as follows.
There are forces at work in nature that operate according to
immutable laws (for example, the law of universal gravitation).
The scientist explains nature by showing how a given
phenomenon (say, a body in free fall) is an instance of a force
grounded in one of these laws. Hegel’s account preserves this
familiar interweaving of force, law, and explanation but at the
same time places it in the context of a dialectical unfolding.
Hegel’s logic, unlike ordinary logic, proceeds genetically, like
life. Concepts, stages, moments, categories, whatever we wish to
call them, do not merely succeed each other, or relate to each
other in the manner of different aspects, but emerge out of the
evolutionary process that is thought. In the chapter before us,
force gives birth to law, and together these give birth to explanation, which eventually gives birth to self-consciousness. This
amazing process as a whole, this labor, defines understanding.
I. Force
The Phenomenology is the journey of consciousness to absolute
knowing, or what Hegel calls Science. We come upon understanding at a pivotal moment in this journey: at the transition from
the sensuous to the intelligible. The previous shapes of
consciousness are sense-certainty and perception. Like all the
KALKAVAGE
73
shapes in Hegel’s book, they embody certainty—a claim to know
absolutely or unconditionally. Sense-certainty places its absolute
trust in the sensuous particular, the whatever-it-is that is here and
now; perception trusts the thing and its properties. Both shapes of
knowing, together with their corresponding objects, prove to be
self-contradictory: they negate themselves.
Force is the Phoenix that rises from the ashes of thinghood. It
is an example of what Hegel calls determinate negation. This is
negation that preserves and lifts up what is negated [79, 113].*
Force is the proper object of understanding because it resolves the
dissonance that defines the thing of perception. The thing is a One
and a Many: this one thing and its many properties. To save this
opposition from being contradictory, perception posits another:
the thing is independent or for itself and dependent or for another,
that is, related to other things. In the dialectic of perception, these
opposed aspects become identical: the thing is shown to be
independent insofar as it is dependent, and dependent insofar as it
is independent [128]. It makes no sense, then, to regard the thing
as absolutely real: a thing is what it is, not through itself alone but
only in relation to what it is not, namely, other things. How this
ideality of thinghood comes about does not concern us here. The
relevant point is that force solves the problem at hand, the
problem of substance and relation. Things as things dissolve in
their essential relation to other things: they lose their substance.
Force, by contrast, is substance that is relation. It is the higher
category of substantial relation, the unity of being-for-self and
being-for-another, of independence and dependence.4
Let us look more carefully at what this means.
Force, our new object, is not something seen or heard or felt
but only thought. It is the purely intelligible inner core of perceptible things. Force is not property but act, the act of selfexpression.5 In the force-world, a thing does not, strictly
speaking, have a property but rather emanates what we call a
property from an intense invisible center.6 By analogy with
*
Numbers in square brackets refer to paragraph numbers in Phenomenology
of Spirit, translated by A. V. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977).
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
language, force, in Hegel’s terminology, is the utterance or
Aüßerung of an inner point. Hardness, for example, is not a
quiescent attribute lodged in the thing but an act by which the
thing asserts itself or “makes its point.”7 Moreover, to act is to act
upon another thing. Action implies interaction. This is how force
makes it possible for individual things to be what they are through
their relation to other things: their being-for-self is a being-foranother, and their being-for-another a being-for-self.
Force, Hegel tells us, is a movement [136]. This is not
movement in space but dialectical movement—conceptual instability or transition. Consider a metal sphere. Its hardness is one of
the properties by which the sphere, at the level of perception,
defined itself as an independent thing. Hardness is now to be
regarded as emergent from an intensive center, a center of force.
Force is the transition of a given content—in this case,
hardness—from inner to outer. As Hegel stresses in an earlier
version of his system, force is not cause as opposed to effect but
rather the identity of cause and effect.8 The intensive center of
force does not produce something other than itself but exactly
itself.9 It is a self-realizing potential. It is like an inward thought
that finds faithful expression in outward speech.
Dialectical movement comes into play when we attempt to
spell out precisely what is happening in the transition from inner
to outer. What we find is that the act of self-expression involves
negation. The hardness of the sphere, as an emergent property or
effect, must come out of hiding, be released from mere implicitness or potency; but if it were simply released, set free, it would
not be the hardness of the sphere, the expressive manifestation
sprung from the intensive center of force. And so, we must
conclude that as a property is affirmed or posited, it must at the
same time be negated as something independent or on its own. As
the property is emitted, it must remain the property of the thing,
the expression of the center of force. Hegel uses the terms force
proper and force expressed to distinguish the two moments
involved in the action of force. Force proper refers to the
intensive center (force as cause), force expressed to force as
KALKAVAGE
75
“there” in the perceptible world (force as effect). These moments,
Hegel says, are self-canceling [135]. Force proper must negate its
inwardness in order to be external or manifest, and, as we saw
earlier, force expressed must negate its outwardness in order to be
the expression of force proper. This self-cancellation on the part
of both moments of force is what it means to say that force is a
movement. We phenomenological observers see this dialectical
truth in the movement of force, but understanding does not. It
clings to the safety of stable distinctions and assumes that the
movement from inner to outer occurs simply, that is, without any
negation or self-otherness.
Force can do what thinghood cannot: it is a deeper, more
potent category. Why, then, does it self-destruct? To answer this
question, we turn to the phenomenon of interaction, the realworld event in which force meets force. As we proceed, we must
bear in mind that understanding claims not merely that there are
forces at work in the world, but that force is the absolute truth of
things—their abiding substance. Hegel will show, to our
amazement, that “the realization of force is at the same time the
loss of reality” [141]. Like the thing, force will fail to be
substantial.
The self-annihilation of force results from what Hegel calls
the “play” of two forces: active and reactive. This play is implicit
in Newton’s Third Law: “To every action there is always opposed
an equal reaction.” Force is spontaneous and impulsive but not
self-inciting. It must be inspired by the presence of another force
in order to express itself [137]. Hegel here borrows terms that
Leibniz uses in his analysis of collision. One force solicits, the
other is solicited: one is active, the other passive or re-active.10
This is like the human situation in which I voice my opinion,
translate my inner thought into outer speech, thereby inciting you
to respond with a verbal expression of your thought and opinion.
Perhaps the forcefulness of my expression prompts you to an
equally forceful counter-expression—an equal and opposite
reaction.
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
The play that is essential to force can be maintained as
logically stable only if the difference between active and passive
force, soliciting and solicited, remains clear and distinct. We must
be able to say: “This force is active, that one passive.” Hegel
proceeds to show that this is not the case. The two opposed determinations of force—soliciting and solicited, active and passive—
become identical, or pass into each other. Once this happens,
force as the solid substance of things vanishes. It loses its status
as a self-subsisting entity and becomes merely ideal, what Hegel
calls a moment.11
To see how this evaporation of force as substance comes
about, imagine banging your fist against a wall. When you hit the
wall, the wall hits back: it re-acts. At first, it seems that your fist
is active and soliciting, the wall passive and solicited. But you
could not hit the wall unless, at the moment of impact, the wall
acted on you and solicited the hardness of your fist. This hardness
is just as much solicited by that of the wall as the hardness of the
wall is by that of your fist. Fist and wall have exchanged determinations, like actors who reverse their roles in mid-scene, and it
is impossible to call one of them only active and the other only
reactive. Each is both. Soliciting is a being solicited, and being
solicited is a soliciting.
Let us recapitulate the story of force. Force starts out as a
mere concept in the mind of a subject who claims to know
absolute truth: it is in itself or implicit, a theoretical good
intention. Then it is put to work as the substance of things: it
becomes for itself or actual. But in the act of making itself real, it
becomes evanescent and unreal: the distinction on which its reliability as substance rests becomes a play or interchange of nowfluid determinations. As force leaves the stage of the solidly real,
it assumes a new role. It reverts to being inward or conceptual,
retreats from the world and goes back inside the thinking subject.
We may imagine this as the act in which understanding experiences the dissolution of force, internalizes what it has experienced, and then comes up with a revised perspective. As Hegel
observes, force does not return to its original ideality but
KALKAVAGE
77
advances to a new state [141]. Force falls but does not simply fall.
Paradoxically, it falls up. In negating itself, it becomes a new and
improved universal, a new object that stands over and against the
thinking subject. This higher object, which force has generated, is
the deeper inner of things.
II. Law
The dialectic of law will lead us to the inverted world. Law, our
newly postulated absolute, will prove unstable. It will fall. This
fall is more dramatic than anything we have witnessed so far in
the Phenomenology. It is the collapse of the very citadel of
objective truth, truth that is grounded in objects.
In the fall of force and the rise of law, consciousness experiences a new relation to its object. Hegel calls it a mediated
relation. Understanding now “looks through [the] mediating play
of forces into the true background of things” [143].12 In other
words, understanding sees rest within motion, sameness within
difference, form within flux. Law is the eternally abiding, purely
intelligible “look” or ἰδέα of the always-changing world. Verstand
at this point is even more recognizable as the modern scientific
understanding, which seeks laws of nature so that it may gaze
upon change under the aspect of eternity.
Our new object, law, is the imperturbable base and depth of
the world. World, here, refers to the unstable play of forces, the
role-reversal of our soliciting and solicited “actors.” This play is
appearance, as opposed to law, which constitutes the world’s
essence. In its perpetual self-otherness, appearance recalls the
elusive “matrix” of Plato’s Timaeus, where the powers of body—
earth, air, water, and fire—constantly turn into each other, play the
game of self-cancellation (49B-C). Law is different from the
objects we have seen so far: the sensuous This, the thing of
perception, and force as individual substance. It is a world unto
itself, separate from but also governing and shining through the
world of appearance. Law opens up a supersensible world set
over and against the sensible world. Hegel calls it an “abiding
Beyond above the vanishing present”—a Jenseits or Over There,
as opposed to the Diesseits or Over Here [144]. Unlike the
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turbulent realm of sense, this Other World is “restful” [157]. It is
the heaven of scientific theory.
This two-world thesis will be the death of understanding. As
Hegel will show, the waywardness of appearance, the to and fro
of change, invades theoretical heaven: the Beyond will collapse
into the very realm from which it was to be strictly distinguished.
It will become an aspect of appearance. The certainty of understanding is that there are two worlds: the truth will be that there
is only one. Intelligibility is not separate from change, like a law
or a platonic Form, but is change—change as dialectical logic or
what Hegel calls the Concept. The clue, then, to the discovery of
concrete truth is not in some other world but in this one, not in
motionless being but in unstable becoming, where opposed determinations flow into each other. This inverts our normal
perspective on things, governed as that perspective is by the sober
teachings of Verstand. As we think our way through the inverted
world, we are inverted.
The conclusions I have sketched are already present in what
Hegel says just before his analysis of law. He reflects on the
nature of appearance, in effect telling us where the dialectic of
understanding will end up. Understanding mis-understands
appearance and the intelligible essence that supposedly governs it
in another world. From the perspective of understanding, law is
an eternal thing-like object that grounds and “saves” the appearances. But this object, the supersensible Beyond, has in fact been
generated by appearance [147]. Appearance is the dialectical
father, law the offspring. What understanding calls law or essence
is in fact, Hegel says, appearance as appearance.
To grasp the meaning of this utterance, we must observe that
appearance is not sensuous presence: it is neither the This of
sense-certainty nor the thing of perception. Appearance is process
and play, flash and shining forth. It is not presence but fleeting
presence—presence that constantly cancels itself to become
absence.13 It is becoming as the unity of coming-to-be and
passing away. In his Philosophy of Nature, Hegel defines time as
“that being which, inasmuch as it is, is not, and inasmuch as it is
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not, is; it is intuited becoming.”14 Time is appearance in its most
rudimentary form. It is the same process of self-negation that we
saw in the Now of sense-certainty. When the Now negated itself
to become the next Now, it gave birth to universality as the Now
of Nows, say, an hour of minutes [107]. Appearance, through its
self-negation, also begets a universal, as we have seen. This is
law.
Appearance, like time, is a process of self-transcendence,
self-beyonding. The understanding erroneously treats this selfbeyonding, which it has glimpsed in the self-contradictory play of
force, as a Beyond that is objectively there. It reifies process. But
essence, here identical with the supersensible, is the intelligible
truth of appearance, the truth that the play of force has itself
generated and brought to light. As Hegel puts it, “the supersensible is…appearance as appearance” [147]. The meaning of this
pivotal sentence, to which I alluded earlier, is that essence and
appearance, inner and outer, are identical. As one commentator
puts it: “The essence of essence is to manifest itself; manifestation
is the manifestation of essence.”15 Appearance, in other words, is
not a low but a high category. It is the self-otherness of essence,
the instability of sensuous things that has come out into the open
as their higher and deeper truth. In this revelation appearance
proves to be not something in need of being “saved.”
Hegel’s critique of the supersensible Beyond recalls Plato’s
Forms and the problem of separateness. This problem is
highlighted in the dialogue Parmenides, where the old Eleatic
stings young Socrates with the absurdities of his two-world
theory. How is it that a Form, a separate entity off in its own
world, is nevertheless manifested in its sensuous instances? Why
are we able to see the original in the image? Law is like a platonic
Form in that it is eternally self-same and purely intelligible. But it
is unlike a Form in being a universal that governs movements,
events. Law is the eternal self-sameness of perpetual selfdifference. Consider Galileo’s law of free fall. Expressed as an
equation, this is the familiar s = 1/2 gt2, where s is the distance a
body traverses as it falls, g the gravitational constant, and t the
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time during which the falling takes place. For our purposes,
however, the more revealing form is s ∝ t2: distance varies as the
square of the time. This expresses a constant difference or
otherness, as opposed to a mere identity. It helps us see what
Hegel means when he says that law is “universal difference” and
“the simple in the play of force” [148]. Things as such don’t come
into the picture. As far as Galileo’s law is concerned, it makes no
difference whether the falling object is a cow or a cannonball.16
What matters is the motion, the event. Galileo’s law is the simple
universal in this event. It is the perfectly general, purely intelligible form of falling.
Let us now turn to the dialectic of law. Understanding has, we
recall, a mediated relation to its supersensible realm of law. It
looks through the medium of becoming, as through a veil, to
glimpse being and truth in the unchanging forms of change. It
imagines that it will in this way take hold of absolute knowing.
Problems will emerge when understanding tries to explain how its
universal laws fit the actual determinate content of appearances.
Up to this point, law is only a good idea. This idea must now
prove itself in the act of governing. Law must become actually
true or what Hegel calls for itself.
To uncover the actuality of law, we turn once more to Galileo,
this time to his experiments with the motion of a ball rolling down
an inclined plane. Assume that we have found the law that
governs this movement and have expressed it mathematically. We
say: “This is true; it is the law.” But it isn’t absolutely true. Air
resistance, surface friction, and the phenomenon of rolling as
opposed to sliding all come into play to qualify the law. In order
for a law to be true, it must, as Hegel puts it, “fill out the world of
appearance” [150]. This can happen only if there are many laws
that apply to a given case. Here we have a sign of trouble to come.
Law, by definition, is sheer universality; its glory is to be above
cases and particulars. But the events to which law must apply if it
is to be actual truth involve cases and particulars: phenomena
have a determinate content that must somehow be subsumed
under law. The world is not movement in general but this
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movement in these circumstances. The problem can be stated as
follows: law, though stable, is general or empty, while appearances, though shifty, are full and differentiated. To overcome this
asymmetry, to unite the universal and the particular, law must be
on more intimate terms with the phenomenal world if it is to be
the truth of that world.
A single law, as we have seen, is not enough to “fill out” the
appearances. We need many laws to prevent law from being an
empty inner. These must be organized into one law that unifies
them—a mega-law. Hegel here refers to Newton’s inverse square
law of attraction, which unifies the laws of planetary motion and
those of ordinary mechanics. But this mega-law is, alas, the
victim of its triumph over specificity. By transcending the
difference among the many different laws, it becomes utterly
abstract. Hegel calls it “the Concept of law itself,”17 that is,
lawfulness as opposed to a law [150]. But then, what to do about
all the different ways in which lawfulness manifests itself in
nature? To address this problem, understanding interprets
lawfulness, the pure form of law, as the “inner necessity” of all the
different laws [151]. This inner necessity results in a new, more
abstract version of force—force as such [152]. Earlier, force was
differentiated as active and passive; law was the simple universal.
Now force is the simple or undifferentiated, and law is the source
of difference [152]. Gravity, for instance, is just plain gravity, a
simple force of nature, whereas the law by which a body falls
involves difference as distance traversed and time squared. So
too, electricity is just plain electricity, whereas the law of
electricity expresses the difference between positive and negative.
The assumption at work here is that law will express the
necessary action of simple forces. Hegel shows that this
assumption is false. Force and law are in fact “indifferent” to each
other, that is, fundamentally unrelated [152]. Electricity indeed
manifests itself as positive and negative, but not because of any
inherent necessity. The law does not express causal connection
but rather what Hume called “constant conjunction.”18 It does not
reveal the origin of difference, but simply states difference as a
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fact. It sidesteps the primordial act by which electrical force as
such divides into its two opposite forms. The result, Hegel says,
is that “necessity here is only an empty word” [152].19
Indifference shows up in yet another way for the scientific
understanding. The very elements that the law combines in its
formulas lack necessary connection with each other. Galileo’s law
of free fall, for instance, expresses a constant conjunction of
distance and time. But it sheds no light on why these should be
connected at all, let alone connected in this particular way. There
is nothing in the concept of distance traversed that necessarily
implies the concept of time squared, and nothing in time squared
that implies distance traversed. As mathematical variables, s and
t are logically indifferent to each other. They are quantitatively
conjoined in a ratio but not conceptually united in a λόγος.20
The necessity that understanding craves, we must note, would
be achieved if in its world-view there were a place for inner
difference, that is, the immanent self-differentiation of the
absolutely simple. That would account for why electrical force
necessarily, out of its own nature, divides itself into positive and
negative. Law, in that case, would be the Concept or dialectical
truth. But understanding is no dialectician. It likes its identities
neat and its distinctions restful. And so, to prevent simple force
from becoming (in its view) compromised, understanding takes
difference into itself [154]. Necessity now acquires a new
meaning. It ceases to be causality in the phenomena and becomes
instead the necessity at work in the human subject’s act of
theorizing.
III. Explanation
We are on the threshold of the inverted world, which is a second
supersensible world [157]. Understanding will reach this extreme
point of its effort once it is revealed that explanation is nothing
more than the propounding of tautologies—differences that make
no difference. Explanation, here, is not scientific account-giving
in general but rather a species of bad argument that regularly
occurs in physical science. It is the act in which understanding
propounds a law that supposedly governs an appearance but ends
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up being identical to the appearance. In explanation, ground and
grounded become the same.
We saw earlier that force is the absolutely simple (electricity),
whereas the law of force expresses a difference (positive and
negative). Understanding uses explanation to bridge the gap
between force and law, simplicity and difference. But its effort is
sophistical: it distinguishes force and law, and then “condenses
the law into force as the essence of the law” [154]. Hegel uses
lightning to illustrate his point. Lightning occurs: it is a
phenomenon. Indeed, as a flashing forth, lightning functions as
the symbol for appearance as such. Understanding explains
lightning by enunciating a law that supposedly expresses how the
force of electricity works. Force is assumed to be simple, but the
process of explaining involves positive and negative. The explanation purports to the necessary ground of the phenomenon. But
in fact, it just repeats what happened at the surface of the
phenomenon. It says: “There was a strong electrical discharge
because of positive and negative electricity.” This simply says all
over again what lightning as a phenomenon is. It is not something
new and different, but same: a tautology. Understanding posits
differences and then, once these differences disappear in the
phenomenon (in this case, once the electrical discharge subsides),
allows the differences to sink back into an undifferentiated simple
force—mere electricity. A distinction is made only to be
withdrawn.21 In other words, the distinction is merely an artifact
and formality of the process of explanation.22
Explanation, for Hegel, borders on the absurd, or at least the
comic. Why does electricity divide into positive and negative?
Because that is its law. And why is that its law? Because
electricity divides into positive and negative. When we ask understanding why something is the case, it pretends to show us some
underlying ground but in fact only repeats the appearance that
prompted our question in the first place. This sleight of hand is not
confined to physics. Why are human beings the way they are?
Because of their genes. What are genes? That which makes us
who we are. Or, to shift to the world of Molière: Why does opium
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induce sleep? Because it has a “dormitive virtue.” These are all
tautologies masquerading as etiologies, accounts of cause. In the
earlier version of his system, Hegel summed it up nicely. All
explanation, he says, ultimately reduces to the deflating
admission: “That is just how it is.”23
We might be tempted to accuse Hegel of oversimplifying
explanation in order to make his case. But Hegel is right. We are
surrounded by explanations that purport to reveal a law, a
necessary ground, for how the world works—or how the mind
works, or how language and culture develop—which, when
examined more closely, prove to be nothing more than
tautologies. I point this out to remind us that, in reading those
parts of the Phenomenology that are critical of theory-building,
we must allow our scientific, as well as our pre-scientific or
natural, perspective to be inverted.
Hegel, we must note, inverts what we ordinarily mean by
tautology. Tautology, for him, is not a static A=A, but rather the
dialectical movement in which a difference is posited and immediately canceled [155]. This recalls the play of force, in which
active and passive were posited as different and then became
identical. The movement of tautology is a turning point in the
dialectic of understanding. It is the point at which the shiftiness of
appearance “has penetrated into the supersensible world itself”
[155]. In the platonic analogy, motion becomes part of the once
restful realm of the Forms.
IV. The Inverted World
Who among us has not wondered: What if the world as it is, is the
exact opposite of the world as it appears? What if what we call
real is really nothing but a dream, and dream reality? What if
good people are in themselves bad, and bad people good? What
if, in obedience to some perverse cosmic law, being reverses
seeming, inner reverses outer? To pose such questions is to set
foot on the terrain of Hegel’s inverted world.
The dialectic of understanding is a series of postulated
objective inners. The first was force. When force as the substance
of things vanished, a new inner appeared: the restful realm of law.
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But law led to the sleight-of-hand called explanation, where
differences make no difference. This movement of tautology
generates another inner: the inverted world, which is the inner
truth of the first supersensible world [157].24 Hegel has taken us
on one long journey into the interior of appearance. But the
inverted world brings us full circle, confirming the truth of La
Rochefoucauld’s maxim: “Extremes touch.” The inverted world
will obliterate the Beyond. It will collapse the distinction between
essence and appearance, and make appearance the standard to
which law must conform.25
Inversion is our new principle, according to which, “what is
self-same repels itself from itself” and “the not self-same is selfattractive” [156]. Hegel’s language of repulsion-from-self and
attraction-to-other recalls the magnet, which soon emerges as the
paradigm of inversion.
The first thing Hegel tells us about the inverted world is that
it completes the inner world opened up by understanding [157].
We saw earlier that law failed to “fill out” the world of
appearance: it lacked a principle of change or alteration. As an
inverted world, the supersensible realm acquires this principle. It
becomes an exact replica of the world we actually live in. This is
the irony of the inverted world. Strange seeming at first, this
world in fact restores what is familiar to us and what had been lost
in the abstractions of understanding. It lets our world be as fluid,
playful, and self-contradictory as it seems.
This is our perspective, not that of understanding, which
clings to its abstractions and continues to think in terms of a
supersensible Beyond, where every restless appearance finds its
restful double. The inverted world is what the world is implicitly
or inwardly, what it is in itself. Hegel offers a broad range of
examples. The first ones he cites are suited to the theoretical bent
of understanding. Like, under the law of the first supersensible
world, becomes unlike under that of the second, inverted world;
black in the first is transposed to white in the second; the north
pole of a magnet in the first world is south in the second; the
oxygen pole of the voltaic pile becomes the hydrogen pole, and
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the hydrogen the oxygen [158]. But then Hegel goes beyond
theory. Revenge on an enemy in this world turns into selfdestruction in the other; crime in the first turns into punishment;
guilt into pardon; disgrace into honor.26
It would be highly instructive to think through all of Hegel’s
examples of inversion. Let us focus on one: the magnet. This
remarkable object will help us make the transition from inversion
as understanding represents it to the philosophic Concept of
inversion.
From the perspective of understanding, the poles of a magnet
are inverted in the sense that each pole has reference to a
separately existing and opposite in-itself. This in-itself—the home
or, in Gilbert’s phrase, the “true location”27 of the magnet’s
poles—is the Earth, the Ur-magnet that orients our mini-magnets.
It seems strange to regard the Earth as a Beyond, but this view
makes sense if Earth is the Earth of scientific theory. That the
Earth is a body in no way detracts from its theoretical function as
the locus of magnetic essence divorced from the things whose
essence it is. In our current usage, which was also prevalent in
Hegel’s day, the north pole of a magnet is called north because it
points to the magnetic north pole of the Earth. But as Hegel
argues in his Philosophy of Nature, it is more accurate to call it
“south,” since, by the law of magnetism, it must point to its
opposite.28 With this in mind, we can say that each pole of our
mini-magnet points to, and is defined by, the opposite pole of the
Earth-magnet. North “here” has its inner truth in South “there,”
and South “here” has its truth in North “there.”
Hegel calls this approach “superficial” [159]—superficial
because non-dialectical. Through its ingenious idea of inversion,
understanding, to its credit, hits upon a great principle of nature:
polar complementarity.29 But it fails to grasp the true meaning of
this principle; its two-world thinking gets in the way. In truth, a
magnet’s inversion is not to be found anywhere but in itself. The
magnet is self-inverting, which is to say that it contains negativity
within itself, or is self-other. How do we know? Because any
attempt to isolate a pole fails. If we chop off one of the poles, it
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simply reappears in the now-smaller magnet. “Pole” is not a
material chunk of a body but one term of an opposition. In the
Phaedo, Socrates tells an Aesop-like fable about how god, seeing
that Pleasure and Pain were always quarreling, tied their heads
together, so that where the one was the other was bound to follow
(60B). The same moral can be inferred from the magnet, where
each “head” always entails its opposite.
The magnet illustrates what is true in all cases of inversion. In
its true meaning, the inverted world is not a Beyond but rather the
intelligible form of the actual world. Inversion in this sense
undoes the superstition of understanding, according to which
things exist in one world but have their intelligible essence in
another: “antitheses of inner and outer, of appearance and the
supersensible, as of two different kinds of actuality, we no longer
find here” [159].30 Magnetic north, as I indicated earlier, is not
south somewhere else but right here: “the north pole which is the
in-itself of the south pole is the north pole actually present in the
same magnet.” Similarly, in the moral sphere, crime calls down
on itself the law’s judgment and correction, invokes its nemesis as
its fulfillment, not in some other world, but right here. Crime and
punishment are the inseparable poles of the moral magnet—a fact
well known to Dostoevsky. Moral self-inversion is at work even
when we don’t get caught. Having done something wrong, we
suffer the torments of conscience and punish ourselves: we strain
to negate our negation.
Let us sum up what we have seen so far. Understanding
embraces the principle of inversion as the true inner meaning of
its supersensible law. According to this principle, a given determination finds its truth in its opposite: it is the law of all determinations to be transposed into their opposites, to move. But understanding regards this shift in a static way, as mere reference to
another object-like world, another substance or medium. We see
what it does not: that inversion defines appearance as such. It is
the essence of all determinations in the realm of appearance to be
self-inverting, to summon their opposites in a new version of the
play of force.
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The precise meaning of the inverted world, and the corresponding critique of the supersensible Beyond, lead us to the
metaphysical primacy of motion. Understanding treats motion or
change as though it needed to be saved by transcendent principles
and mathematical formulas, as though rest alone were intelligible.
But motion, as the inverted world has revealed, is the intelligible
as such, the Concept as the unity in which opposites flow into
each other. In the Philosophy of Nature, Hegel makes this point
with respect to our friend, the magnet: “For the magnet exhibits
in simple, naïve fashion the nature of the Concept, and the
Concept moreover in its developed form as syllogism.”31 He adds
in a note: “If anyone thinks that thought is not present in nature,
he can be shown it here in magnetism.”32 Magnetism, as opposed
to the thing we call a magnet, is a movement of poles toward and
into each other. It is the logically structured fluency of opposite
determinations present in a simple object.
To think the inverted world, then, is “to think pure change or
think the antithesis within the antithesis itself, or contradiction”
[160]. The inverted world, our second supersensible world, is not
alongside the first, but has in fact “overarched the other world and
has it within it…; it is itself and its opposite in one unity” [160].
The inverted world, rightly understood, generates what Hegel
calls “inner difference.” This act of immanent self-differentiation
is the genuine necessity that was lacking in understanding’s effort
to connect force and law.33 The simple force of electricity divides
itself into positive and negative because, as a simple force, it is
inwardly tense, polarized with respect to itself [161]. Difference
isn’t something tacked on as an explanatory construct but is
inherent in unity. To be one is to be self-divided, to contain rather
than exclude opposition. In revisiting electrical force, Hegel
applies the wisdom of the magnet: positive and negative
electricity “animate each other into activity, and their being is
rather to posit themselves as not-being and to cancel themselves
in the unity” [161]. This is our familiar play of force, which,
having been constrained by static principles and mathematical
formalism, now rises up against understanding to proclaim: “I, in
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my instability, was the truth all along! I, pure change, am the
essence of law!”
V. Infinity—And Beyond
Hegel gives inner difference an evocative name: infinity [161].
Infinity, here, is not indefinite ongoing-ness, which Hegel calls
“bad infinity” [238]. It is neither the potential infinite of Aristotle
nor those limitless mute spaces that terrified Pascal. It is rather the
logical process by which opposites flow into each other. Infinity
is transition as such. It is the self-negation of a finite determinateness. The magnet, with its inseparable poles, is the sensuous
symbol of infinity in this sense of the term.
Infinity sums up the dialectical movement we have already
seen in tautology. It is the “absolute unrest of pure selfmovement, in which whatever is determined in one way or
another…is rather the opposite of this determinateness” [163].
This flow of opposites into each other inverts the perspective of
understanding, which is infatuated with rest and wants to keep its
terms clear and distinct. Hegel makes the striking claim that
infinity “has been from the start the soul of all that has gone
before.” It is the energy of self-negation that was implicit in all
the finite shapes of consciousness that have appeared so far—and
will continue to appear. When one of these finite shapes selfdestructs, refutes itself, it is experiencing the infinity, the selfopposition, that it holds within. In suffering contradiction, it is
getting in touch, so to speak, with its inner magnet.
Hegel identifies infinity with what he calls “the absolute
Concept” [162]. Infinity and Concept both embody the self-differentiation of the self-identical, which for Hegel is truth. This selfdifferentiation appears in its purest form in Hegel’s Logic. Here in
the Phenomenology, Hegel calls infinity as Concept “the simple
essence of life, the soul of the world, the universal blood” [162].
Infinity, he says, “pulsates within itself but does not move,
inwardly vibrates, yet is at rest.” It is Hegel’s version of the Logos
of Heraclitus—the Fire that enlivens, pervades, consumes, and
unifies all things.
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Life, soul, blood. These words suggest that the force-world
we are now transcending, the world that seemed so eventful and
alive, was not really alive at all. To be sure, there was motion, but
not life—vis viva, but not organic being.34 Understanding is
prejudiced on behalf of physics. This is no doubt largely because
the phenomena of physics, unlike those of biology, are readily
reducible to the homogeneity of mathematical formalism, that is,
equations. Life is the scandal of Verstand because the determinations of life are fluidly interconnected and defy rigid boundaries.
To appreciate this fact, we have only to think of how animal
organisms, in their embryonic development, exhibit spontaneous
self-differentiation, develop their different organs and systems,
wondrously, from within.
Infinity, which has been generated by the inverted world,
brings us to self-consciousness. This step had already been taken
in the phenomenon of explanation, our internal movement of
differentiating what is simple or self-same [163]. Explaining
things, Hegel observes in passing, is fun—a holiday of the mind.
The reason, he says, is that in the act of explaining why the world
does what it does consciousness enjoys conversation with itself,
Selbstgespräch [163]. To explain is ultimately to enjoy the play of
our own inner movement, our self-consciousness.
Inversion, inner difference, infinity, explanation all converge
in self-consciousness, which now officially comes on the scene in
the Phenomenology. The truth of the magnet was the repulsion of
the self-same and the attraction of the self-different. This truth is
now fully revealed as the self. To be self-conscious, to be aware
of myself as myself, is to be tautologous in Hegel’s sense of the
word. It is my act of generating inner difference that is immediately canceled or negated. Hegel describes self-consciousness as
follows:
I distinguish myself from myself, and in doing so I am
directly aware that what is distinguished from myself is
not different [from me]. I, the self-same being, repel
myself from myself; but what is posited as distinct from
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me, or as unlike me, is immediately, in being so distinguished, not a distinction for me [164].
Hegel compares this movement of self-identity with the axial
rotation of a sphere [169]. As the sphere turns, it continually
generates different positions in space and continually cancels
them. It is constantly returning out of the self-otherness that it
constantly begets. Every move “away” is a move “toward” and
back home.
Hegel stresses that self-consciousness was behind the drama
of consciousness all along. It was the energy of self-divisiveness
that was the living soul of sense-certainty, perception, and understanding. Now it is revealed that, just as infinity is the true inner
of all objects, self-consciousness is the truth of consciousness. In
other words, external things are and are true only insofar as they
are and are true for a thinking subject or self. “True” means “true
for me.”
VI. From the Play of Force to the Drama of Man
How does Hegel get from the paradoxes of physics to the fight for
recognition with which the drama of self-consciousness begins?
This will be my closing question.
I begin by observing that force is already on the verge of selfconsciousness. Once physics takes force as its central concern,
once it identifies force with nature itself—as happens most
dramatically in the physics of Boscovich—it invites a connection
between the spontaneity of inanimate bodies and the inner state of
human beings.35 Nature and human nature find their common
source, their essence, in impulsiveness, or what Hobbes was the
first to call conatus, striving. Force, seen in this light, is protowill.36 If we keep in mind this connection between force and will,
it becomes less surprising that Hegel’s chapter on understanding
begins with force and ends with self-consciousness, which, for
Hegel, is our impulse or drive to self-affirmation.
As I suggested earlier, the dialectic of understanding
generates life as well as self-consciousness. Life and selfconsciousness come on the scene together. Both exhibit infinity as
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the process of self-differentiation. But for the self at this nascent
stage of its development, the mingling of life and selfconsciousness poses a problem. On the one hand, the self is aware
of itself as being beyond body and finitude. To be an inwardly
turned being is, in a sense, to experience myself as the absolute, a
god. But I am also immersed in organic life, the necessary
condition for self-awareness: I am aware of myself only because
I am alive, rooted in this living body, which is the immediate
object of my desire, care, and anxiety. And so the self is burdened
with a double being. It is both a transcendent or pure self, the self
in its glory, and an empirical self caught up in the mortifying
contingencies of the flesh. This incarnation of inwardness, this
unhappy unity of the divine and the mortal, is the contradiction
that self-consciousness must somehow resolve, the riddle of its
existence.
In the fight for recognition the self seeks to transcend its
animality or life. “Self-consciousness,” Hegel says, “is in and for
itself when, and by the fact that, it is so for another; that is, it is
only as a being that is recognized” [178]. Recognition, here, is not
blank awareness but honor. In winning the recognition of another,
I confirm the absoluteness that I experience within. This recognition is my self-recognition, my certainty of myself as absolute,
made concrete, out there, really existent. I use this other
individual to accomplish my goal, which is to achieve selfcertainty through the negation of my self-otherness. But this
other, who is also at my stage of raw self-consciousness, wants to
use me for the same reason. And so there is a fight for recognition.
In this fight I seek to negate the presumed absoluteness of this
other individual who confronts me. I also risk my life. I do so in
order to show myself and my alter ego that I am more than an
animal. I show that I am a pure self, a self that is worthy of being
recognized as absolute.
The two individual selves are thus bound together in what
Hegel calls a “double movement” [182]. It is double because two
selves are involved and because the negation each performs on
itself it also performs on the other, which is itself. This reciprocal
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action recapitulates the dialectic of force, in which the opposed
determinations of active and passive, soliciting and solicited,
came to be lodged in each of the separate forces: “In this
movement [of selves] we see repeated the process which
presented itself as the play of forces, but repeated now in
consciousness. What in that process was for us, is true here of the
extremes themselves” [184]. In other words, self-consciousness,
as a collision of interacting selves, is force made self-conscious.
In the Phenomenology Hegel mounts a critique of force. But
the poverty of force is also its potency, its impulse to develop into
self-consciousness, and, after many inversions, into the mutual
recognition that is spirit. Spirit, for Hegel, is the spirit of the
Greek polis, the spirit of the Roman Empire, the spirit of the
French monarchy, and the spirit of the German Reformation. This
last, which posits the absolute testimony of the heart, sets the
stage for Kant’s moral world-view, conscience, and the beautiful
soul. Each of these worlds is an attempt on the part of selfhood to
incarnate itself so that it may know itself as the shared truth of a
concrete community of selves. This communal selfhood Hegel
calls the “‘I’ that is ‘We’ and ‘We’ that is ‘I’”[177].
What, then, is the dialectic of force in Hegel’s
Phenomenology? It is the Prelude to the Great Fugue of conceptualized history, which begins with the fight for recognition and
ends in absolute knowing.
Endnotes
1
A lecture delivered at St. John’s College in Annapolis on 15 October 2010.
The first version of the lecture was given at the Spinoza Society in
Washington, DC on 8 March 2010.
2
Fyodor Dostoevsky, in The Dream of a Ridiculous Man and Other Stories
(West Valley City, Utah: Waking Lion Press, 2006), 16.
3
The Encyclopaedia Logic, trans. T. F. Geraets, W. A. Suchting, and H. S.
Harris (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991), 125. Hegel extols understanding in the
Preface of the Phenomenology, where he calls the analytic “force” of Verstand
“the most astonishing and mightiest of powers, or rather the absolute power”
[32].
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KALKAVAGE
What pure labor of fine flashes consumes
Many a diamond with imperceptible foam,
And what peace seems there to be conceived!
When over the abyss a sun reposes,
Pure works of an eternal cause,
Time scintillates and the Dream is to know.
4
Hegel identifies force with relation, Verhältnis, in the so-called Jena Logic
(The Jena System, 1804-1805: Logic and Metaphysics, trans. John W.
Burbidge and George di Giovanni [Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University
Press, 1986], 47).
5 Leibniz is the father of this idea: “Substance is a being capable of action”
(Principles of Nature and Grace, G. W. Leibniz, Philosophical Essays, trans.
Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber [Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989], 207).
6
A thing’s property, for Hegel, is a universal, but one that is bedingt: conditioned or be-thinged. Force, by contrast, is unbedingt—an unconditioned or
unbe-thinged universal [132]. In other words, force is purely thinkable. It is
not, like color, qualified and limited by a material medium.
7
See Newton’s Principia, Definition 3, where body or mass is identified with
the force of resistance or vis inertiae.
8
See Jena Logic, 54.
9
“Force thus expresses relationship itself and the necessity to be within itself
even in its being-outside itself, or to be self-equal” (Jena Logic, 56).
10
“A Specimen of Dynamics” in Leibnitz, Principles of Nature and Grace,
121.
11 In the Philosophy of Nature, Hegel at one point offers what is perhaps his
most deeply revealing critique of force. This is in the context of his argument
that Kepler’s account of planetary motion is philosophically superior to that of
Newton (Philosophy of Nature, Part Two of the Encyclopaedia of the
Philosophical Sciences, trans. A. V. Miller [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970],
65-83). He remarks: “Seldom has fame been more unjustly transferred from a
first discoverer to another person.” (Ibid., 66.) Hegel’s detailed critique elaborates the three aspects of scientific theorizing that we see in the
Phenomenology: force, law, and explanation.
12
Italics Hegel’s. Throughout his analysis of force and law, Hegel refers to the
syllogism. The middle term of the syllogism mediates between the two
extremes, not as a distinct and static tertium quid, but as the dialectical identity
of the extremes. For a fuller account of the syllogism, see Hegel’s Science of
Logic, trans. A. V. Miller (New York: Humanities Press, 1976), 664 ff.).
13
In his poem “The Cemetery by the Sea,” Paul Valèry precisely captures
appearance as the dazzling unity of shining forth and evanescence:
Quel pur travail de fins éclairs consume
Maint diamant d’imperceptible écume,
Et quelle paix semble se concevoir!
Quand sur l’abîme un soleil se repose,
Ouvrages purs d’une éternelle cause,
Le temps scintille et le songe est savoir.
95
14
Hegel, Philosophy of Nature, 34.
15
Jean Hyppolite, Genesis and Structure of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit,
trans. Samuel Cherniak and John Heckman (Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 1974), 125.
16
Throughout this part of his discussion, Hegel’s word for “thing” is Sache,
not Ding—that is, a generalized “matter at hand” or πρᾶγμα, as opposed to the
thing of perception.
17
Miller’s English translation reads “the Notion of law itself.” In all citations
from Miller the word Notion is changed to Concept wherever it appears.
18
Hegel cites his agreement with Hume on this point in the Jena Logic, 52-53.
19
The pseudo-necessity of scientific theory re-appears at the level of observational reason. For example, so-called “psychological necessity” (the supposed
necessity of psychological laws) proves to be “an empty phrase” [307].
20
Λόγος means both ratio and account. In the Philosophy of Nature, 59, Hegel
gives a genuinely conceptual λόγος of Galileo’s law of free fall.
21
More examples occur in the Jena Logic, 51. Why is the soil wet? Because it
rained. What is rain? Falling moisture. Which is to say that the soil is wet
because of wetness. In his Science of Logic, 458-466, Hegel identifies explanation with the sophistical “arguing from grounds.”
22
Berkeley had made a similar claim: “Force, gravity, attraction and terms of
this sort are useful for reasonings and reckonings about motion and bodies in
motion, but not for understanding the simple nature of motion itself or for
indicating so many distinct qualities” (De motu, 17, trans. A. A. Luce in
Berkeley’s Philosophical Writings [New York: Collier Books, 1965], 255).
23
24
Jena Logic, 61.
Donald Verene suggests that Hegel’s phrase was inspired by a play of that
name by Ludwig Tieck (Hegel’s Recollection: A Study of Images in the
Phenomenology of Spirit [Albany: SUNY Press, 1985], 39). The inverted
world is, in German, die verkehrte Welt. Verkehrt means either upside down, or
twisted and perverse. Hegel uses the term with the latter meaning in a section
entitled “The Law of the Heart and the Frenzy of Self-Conceit” [377]. Scholars
disagree as to whether, in the context of the inverted world, verkehrt means
perverse as well as upside down. Gadamer makes an interesting case for the
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double meaning (Hegel’s Dialectic: Five Hermeneutical Studies, trans. P.
Christopher Smith [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976], 35-53).
25
This fits the analysis of the inverted world in the Science of Logic, 509: “In
point of fact, it is just in this opposition of the two worlds that their difference
has vanished, and what was supposed to be the world in and for itself is itself
the world of Appearance.” Hegel adds (510): “the world of Appearance is thus
in its own self the law which is identical with itself.”
26 An otherworldly inversion occurs in Sophocles’ Antigone. When Creon
accuses Antigone of having bestowed equal honor on both her brothers, even
though one was the enemy of his city and the other its defender, Antigone
responds (l. 521): “Who knows if down there this is holy?”
27
William Gilbert, De Magnete, trans. P. Fleury Mottelay (New York: Dover,
1958), 26.
28
Philosophy of Nature, Addition, 166. Hegel here follows Gilbert, De
Magnete, 27.
29
“There has been a lot of talk in physics about polarity. This concept is a
great advance in the metaphysics of the science; for the concept of polarity is
simply nothing else but the specific relation of necessity between two different
terms which are one, in that when one is given, the other is also given. But this
polarity is restricted to the opposition” (Philosophy of Nature, 19).
30
The first supersensible world was a theory of transposed essence, the second
that of transposed reversed essence. The transposition of essence is the theoretical analogue of what Hegel calls self-estrangement (Selbstentfremdung). In
the realm of pure theory, things have their essence in another world. In the
more advanced, praxis-oriented stages of spirit, man’s essence, the meaning of
his life, will be outside of and beyond his actually present world: “In the
Phenomenology, Hegel repeatedly discusses the duality he wishes to surmount,
a dualism which expresses the torment of spirit obliged to live in one world
and to think in the other” (Hypollite, Genesis and Structure, 382).
31
Hegel, Philosophy of Nature, 163.
32
Ibid., 165.
33
Inner difference first appeared when force split into two interacting forces
[138].
34 The closest we got to life was with magnetism, which Gilbert regarded as a
kind of soul: “Wherefore, not without reason, Thales, as Aristotle reports in his
book De Anima, declares the loadstone to be animate, a part of the animate
mother earth and her beloved offspring” (Gilbert, De Magnete, 312). Hegel, in
a similar vein, praises magnetism in the Preface: “Even when the specific
determinateness—say one like Magnetism, for example—is in itself concrete
or real, the Understanding degrades it into something lifeless, merely predi-
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cating it of another existent thing [the Earth], rather than cognizing it as the
immanent life of the thing, or cognizing its naïve and unique way of generating and expressing itself in that thing” [53].
35
In order to save continuity in nature, specifically in the phenomenon of
collision, Roger Boscovich argued that the repulsive force mutually exerted by
two colliding bodies is exerted before the actual collision. All action is action
at a distance, and there is never any actual contact between two bodies. Max
Jammer puts it succinctly: for Boscovich, “‘force’ is consequently more fundamental than ‘matter’” (Concepts of Force: A Study in the Foundations of
Dynamics [New York: Dover, 1957], 178).
36 Schopenhauer goes even further by simply identifying force and will:
“Hitherto, the concept of will has been subsumed under the concept of force; I,
on the other hand, do exactly the reverse, and intend every force in nature to
be conceived as will” (The World as Will and Representation, Vol. 1, trans. E.
F. Payne [New York: Dover, 1969], 111).
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The Work of Education
Jon Lenkowski
Good morning to you, ladies and gentlemen, students, colleagues,
distinguished guests, family and friends; and, most particularly, to
the current graduates who will receive master’s degrees today.
While it is customary at commencements to be congratulatory
and encouraging, I’m not going to do that, at least not primarily.
Rather, I’m going to try to address the following two connected
questions: What exactly have you been doing here? and What
have you learned? The first of these two questions goes to the
peculiar nature of the work we have tried to get you to do here;
the second looks easier, but may also require further consideration. Having spent a certain time with us, these seem to be the
very same questions you have to be asking yourselves; and they
are not very easy questions to answer. I’m going to go over some
old ground and I want to assure you that, while I’m enjoying
myself, I promise not to keep you very long.
To say that you have spent a certain number of semesters here
and read a certain list of deep and important books, and have had
conversations about them, is not really to say enough, because it
does not capture the essence of the specific work you have been
doing. It is true that we read a lot of books. But we view this not
really as an end, but as a beginning, since we hope and expect that
you will return to these same books, and others like them, again
and again throughout your lives. And therefore what you have
been doing here must be properly called a commencement—that
is, only the beginning of an activity that will just continue in you
as an essential and constant part of your lives. But this can happen
only insofar as the books that we have read here together have
already gotten a sort of permanent hold on you. Thus our hopes
Commencement address to the Graduate Institute of St. John’s College in
Annapolis, Maryland, 14 August 2009. Jon Lenkowski is a tutor at St. John’s
College.
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for your future are inextricably linked to what we assume has
already taken root in you here. Let’s try to think through the
implications of this.
First of all, it would have to mean that you have not kept the
books at arm’s length, but have allowed them to enter into you in
deep and essential ways. In other words: that you have made the
books your own. This looks different from something like
memorization—say of songs or even certain verses of poetry—
which is also a sort of internalization. Memorization might look
like making something my own, but really I’ve only made it
always readily available to myself. I can now repeat the song
anytime the mood strikes me—but it is still kept at a distance and
is in no way active in me. On the contrary, it is our great hope that
what you have read, studied and discussed here will stay with you
in an active way; will continue to reverberate and resonate in you;
will remain active in the sense that these matters will forever
make demands on you, will continue to inform and remain central
to your lives and to whatever you think and feel as human beings.
This also distinguishes what we have you do here from
merely technical and professional studies. It is true that these also
make demands on us, but only in our capacity as professionals of
one sort or another, not as human beings as such. So while they
may be active in us in our professional work, they are compartmentalized and only kept off to the side, without touching us as
human beings, without being allowed to become, or without
being thought of as, central to our lives. Our hope here, on the
contrary, is that what we have you study will make deeper and
more thoroughgoing demands on you, simply as human beings
and as citizens.
Thus to say that you make the books your own is to say that
you carry your education inside yourselves, where you continue
to let it work on you. This is then what we expect you to have
been doing here: making the books your own, or—what is the
same thing—bringing your education within yourselves. To see
how completely appropriate this way of speaking is to what we do
here in particular, you have only to consider what you have
studied: the philosophy, politics, language and literature, history,
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mathematics, and science you have studied here are not simply
making claims in the abstract, are not merely certain subjectmatters over there, alien to me. Rather, we make the book our
own. We enter the book and make ourselves part of the book’s
world. Or, maybe better: we allow the book to enter us; we internalize the book and let it inform and illuminate the ways we look
at ourselves. Whether a political teaching centers on Athens in the
fifth century BC or on Florence in the sixteenth century, it is
always—immediately and directly—drawing my attention to my
own political situation. Whether it is Plato’s version, or Freud’s
version, of the tripartite soul, my attention is drawn—immediately and directly—to the phenomena of my own inner life. If this
were not the case these books could at most be only of antiquarian
interest. These books are always making such demands upon us,
saying things about us, demanding that we turn toward
ourselves—so that to read the books thoughtfully and intelligently is always to be turning toward ourselves.
This turning toward oneself has two aspects. First there is the
question of the unity or unification of the various things we study.
And here I would remind you that both our undergraduate
program and our graduate program, despite the variety of subject
matter in both, claim to be unified programs. So where is the unity
to be found? This question is addressed vividly in Book VII of
Plato’s Republic at 537b-c, where Socrates says:
And the various studies acquired without any
particular order by the children in their education must
be integrated into a synopsis, [or seeing-together,]
which reveals the kinship of these studies with one
another and with the nature of what is.1
This seeing-together (σύνοψις in Greek) is directed first of all to
the integration of what are there called gymnastic and musical
education, but then subsequently also to what is called the higher
musical education, or what we might call the liberal arts. It is the
“seeing-together that reveals the unity of these studies.” Only in
turning inward, toward ourselves as the locus of these various
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studies can we achieve this synopsis or seeing-together, for it is in
me, in my “seeing them together,” that these various studies find
their unity, gather and integrate themselves and do their work.
And this leads me to the second aspect of this turning inward
toward oneself: as the books become your own and enter into
your souls, they continue to work upon you and upon your view
of all things, including your view of yourselves.
This does not mean that what we read is simply believed or
swallowed whole or uncritically. It’s more that claims and
counter-claims—or even nuance and counter-nuance—vie with
one another; that what were fixed, and maybe dearly-held, views
get unsettled and become questionable. This is the work done by
the books and by our conversations about them. And all of this is
going on in us. Thus our attention is quite naturally, even effortlessly, drawn inward.
But we are not mere observers here; rather we become active
participants in this, our own inner drama. A certain activity or
work on our part seems to kick in almost automatically. Or it
could be said that the work that the books do elicits, and is
completed by, a certain corresponding work on our part. But
though this might initially arise automatically, a certain effort
seems required to sustain it and make it work for us. This
sustained effort at turning inward, turning toward yourselves, is
the peculiar and proper work we have been intent on getting you
to do. The tasks of reading the assignments and participating in
class, while necessary and important, are really only a first step,
preparatory to this more essential activity. We might name this
activity rumination, or simply thinking, and it consists in carrying
on a conversation within one’s own self, as the ideas take hold
and confront one another.
In Book I, Chapter 2 of the Politics (1253a8 ff.) Aristotle talks
about the importance of language for man, the political animal:
Now it is evident that man is more of a political
animal than bees or any other gregarious animal.
Nature, as we often say, makes nothing in vain, and
man is the only animal that has speech. And whereas
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mere voice is only an indication of pleasure and pain,
and is therefore found in other animals (for their
nature reaches as far as the sensing of pleasure and
pain, and the communication of these to one another,
and no further), the power of speech is intended to
articulate what is advantageous and what is disadvantageous, and therefore similarly what is just and what
is unjust. And it belongs to man that he alone among
the animals has any sense of good and evil, of just and
unjust and the like, and the association of living
beings who have this sense constitutes a household
and a city.2
Language is different from mere vocal sound and thus sharply
distinguishes human beings even from other social animals. What
is so important about the power of speech, according to Aristotle,
is that it is language that allows us to consider matters of justice
and injustice, good and evil, and—we would add—other matters
of the same order. We must note here that, while it is speech that
clearly distinguishes man from other animals, Aristotle himself is
more interested in the specifically human activity that speech
alone makes possible for us. It is this activity of thinking and
considering that really makes us human; it is this that is the
specifically proper activity of human being as such.
And this has been our principal aim in your time here with us
that, along with internalizing the books, and carrying your
education within yourselves, you have accustomed yourselves to
this turn inward, this rumination, this conversation with
yourselves, as the proper and essential work, or being-at-work
(ενέργεια in Greek) of human being as such—and to such an
extent that this activity becomes simply a part of your lives. This
is the principal aim of the education we offer you, and may well
be the essential and intrinsic goal of education as such.
To help me make the case for this last claim, let me return
briefly to Book VII of Plato’s Republic. I will read from 518b6d7, abbreviating the passage slightly. Socrates says:
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[T]herefore education is not what the professions of
certain men assert it to be. They assert that they put
into the soul knowledge that isn’t in it, as though they
were putting sight into blind eyes.... But the present
argument indicates that this power is already in the
soul of each and that, just as an eye is not able to turn
from darkness to the light without the whole body
turning, so also the instrument with which each learns
must, together with the whole soul, be turned around
from becoming, until it is able to look at what is....
And therefore there would be an art of this turning
around, concerned with the way in which this power
can most easily and efficiently be turned around: not
an art of producing sight in it, but rather, this art takes
as given that sight is there, but not rightly turned, nor
looking at what it ought to look at.3
So: education is not a matter of taking knowledge that is already
in the teacher’s soul, and then transposing it to the soul of the
learner. Rather it is a sort of turning of the power of seeing that is
already in the learner’s soul, in the right direction—a turning
brought about by a certain art (τέχνη) called the art of turning
around (περιαγωγή, μεταστροφή).
Book VII begins with an image of our education—that is, our
rise from ignorance to knowledge—depicted as the gradual ascent
of released prisoners from within a dark cave up to the light of
day. At each stage the released prisoner is torn away from what he
had been looking at, and what he had implicitly trusted as real, to
now confront something entirely new which conflicts with what
he had previously seen. This confrontation compels him to turn
inward—that is, to weigh the one against the other, and also
against all of the other views he had once held at stages already
passed through, each one of which had also made truth-claims
and had at one time been simply and implicitly trusted and
believed in. He is now forced to “see all of these together”
(συνορᾶν, the infinitive of συνοράω—that is, σύνοψις, synopsis)
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and carry on a conversation with himself, in which each of these
has its say.
The description of the release from shackles and of the
violent turning around of these prisoners at the beginning of the
Cave passage might suggest the necessity of some external agent
(a Socrates, for instance), but even the simplest reflection on the
passage quickly gets one to see that this process can occur entirely
within a single soul—in other words, through a conversation with
oneself. Such an inner dialogue, in which one “talks right through
something” is in Greek called διαλεκτική, dialectic, from the verb
διαλέγειν, where λέγειν means “to speak” or “to talk,” and the
prepositional prefix διά means “right through.” So someone who
finds himself in the same situation as this released prisoner would
have to effortfully “talk right through” this panoply of claims and
counterclaims upon him that he now finds in his soul. This is
captured nicely in the middle voice of the verb, where διαλέγεσθαι
often has the sense of talking with oneself. A bit further on in
Book VII, at 532b4-5, the release from bonds and the turningaround connected with it are identified with dialectic.
This, then, is the picture of education given in the Republic.
It is supposed to culminate in light, or in genuine knowledge. But
whether this culmination is ultimately a real resolution, and
whether all of the antagonisms in the soul between claims and
counterclaims are ever really left behind, seems difficult to assess,
especially since what the Republic claims to be the ultimate
moment of this journey upward—namely, the Good or the Idea of
the Good—is explicitly said to be beyond being (Book VI, 509b).
But however this turns out, we in the meantime accomplish
something of enormous significance:
First: This turn inward, turn toward the self, where the
synopsis or seeing-together occurs, could be called, or likened to,
a kind of conversion, since we have been turned around and
turned inward toward ourselves.
Second: Furthermore, and as a consequence of this, whatever
progress we make here toward knowledge seems at the same time
to also be a progress toward self-knowledge. So here knowledge
and self-knowledge seem to come together or coincide.
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Τhird: If we persist in this turn inward and allow it to develop
into a full-blown conversation with oneself, we are making actual
within ourselves the proper and essential work (ἔργον)or being-atwork (ἐνέργεια) of human being as such.
Fourth and finally: This dialectical movement of the soul
within itself, which is the essential work and the very heart of the
education we have tried to provide for you here, is at once the
inner essence of education as such.
Postscript
The inward turn talked about here might invite comparison with
the concept of Er-innern, Er-innerung in Hegel (cf.
Phänomenologie des Geistes, VIII: Das Absolute Wissen, the very
last paragraph), and importantly revived by Gadamer (cf.
Wahrheit und Methode, Erster Teil, Sec. II, 2, d, penultimate
paragraph), as well as the concept of Er-eignen, Er-eignis in
Heidegger (cf. Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), passim).
In ordinary German, the verb erinnern normally means “to
remind,” and with sich in the reflexive form “to remember,”
though Hegel and Gadamer take the word more literally to mean
something like “to interiorize”—an easy enough connection via
the adverb inne (English “within”) in the verb root. The verb
ereignen normally means “to happen” and the noun Ereignis
means “an event.” The standard etymology (cf. Der Grosse
Duden, Bd. 7: Etymologie) traces ereignen, through a shift in the
root, to the archaic eräugnen, carrying the sense of showing
(itself) before the eyes (Augen in German). The connection
between this and “to happen” seems clear enough. But Heidegger,
true to his fierce independence, takes the verb in an entirely
different direction, linking ereignen through the root directly with
the adjective eigen (English “own” or “one’s own”)—a
connection that Duden explicitly warns against. Heidegger’s
insistence on linking ereignen to eigen, together with the
particular stress he puts on the motive power of the prefix er-,
leads him to take er-eignen to mean something like “on the way
to appropriating,” or “on the way to ownness.” (The current
LENKOWSKI
107
standard way of rendering this in English is “en-owning,” which,
while neither German nor English, tries to capture both the sense
and flavor of Heidegger’s usage.) Of course, there is an agenda
behind this reading. And yet it seems too simpleminded to dismiss
Heidegger’s interpretation as just bad philology. Should not the
presumption at least be that he has seen into something hidden
and essential which has allowed him to look beyond the everyday
and obvious?
Notes
1 The
Republic of Plato, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1968),
216. Translation slightly altered and emphases added by the author.
2 Translation
3
by the author.
The Republic of Plato, 197. Emphases added.
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Falstaff and Cleopatra
Elliott Zuckerman
I
Falstaff and Cleopatra do not look alike. We all have a mental
picture of Falstaff, and most of us think we can visualize
Cleopatra. Yet it is surprising how few words in their plays are
devoted to their physical descriptions. Falstaff comes upon us
unannounced in the second scene of Henry the Fourth Part One.
At the same moment we move suddenly from formal verse into
prose. If we envision as a whole the four plays of Shakespeare’s
mature history cycle—Richard the Second, Henry the Fourth
Part One and Part Two, and Henry the Fifth—then it is in that
scene that Falstaff begins his domination and transformation of
the two middle plays. After the regular verse that we have heard
so far, both Falstaff and the prose come as something new. They
announce that the messy world of London lowlife will be exposed
to us, inserted below the arena of dynastic rivalry and war. To put
it impressionistically into color and sound, it is as though the
greenish white and the glitter of Richard the Second have been
replaced by the rich browns of smelly taverns and Spanish sherry,
later to be succeeded by the golden brass of Henry the Fifth.
At the end of two full acts all we are actually told about
Falstaff’s looks is that he is old and that he is fat. We also learn
that he has wit, but wit, so far as I know, is not limited to a
physical type. As it happens, all three of these definitive words—
fat, old, and wit—are used by Prince Hal in the opening phrase of
their first exchange. But it is Falstaff’s habitual drink that Hal
calls old, and it is his wit itself that he calls fat:
Thou art so fat-witted with drinking of old sack…1
A lecture delivered on 2 April 2010 at St. John’s College in Annapolis. Elliot
Zuckerman is a tutor emeritus.
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Later on, Falstaff will famously tell us that he is not only witty in
himself but the source of wit in other men. But here the Prince is
not referring to the expanse of Falstaff’s humor or the infectiousness of his intellect. In his banter Hal is calling his
companion thick-witted, the opposite of what we might call a
“rapier” wit. Yet isn’t it remarkable that in his opening words Hal
uses the three words—four, if we add sack—that signify what
may be most important in Falstaff’s being? Fat, Wit, Old, Sack—
it is one of those marvelous details in Shakespeare about which
we wonder whether he placed them there strategically in premeditated design, or whether they simply turned up, self-generated by
genius.
As for Cleopatra, all hints about her looks are eclipsed by
something said about her that beggars all description. It may be
the greatest compliment ever paid anyone:
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety: other women cloy
The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies.2
Perhaps such hyperbole is necessary not only because she tempts
one of the greatest Roman heroes to betrayal, emasculinity, and
death, but also because—in the company of Juliet and Cressida,
Rosalind and Viola, Imogen and Isabella—she is played by a boy.
I think she is the only heroine who explicitly refers to that
convention, when, near the end, she evades the captivity in which,
as she says, some squeaking actor will “boy” her greatness.
(Among her countless talents, Cleopatra is good at transforming
nouns into verbs.)
Cleopatra is not only associated with crocodiles and snakes,
but she is expanded into a personification of Egypt and the Nile.
We see her playing the capricious monarch and the jealous rival.
My favorite among her various guises is in her scene as music
lover. She calls for music by echoing the opening line that this
audience ought to know well:
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111
Give me some music, moody food
Of those that trade in love.
[Music is called for. After a performance of whatever
length, she interrupts:]
Let it alone, let’s to billiards. 4
By replacing music with billiards, Cleopatra demonstrates her
infinite variety.
In an instructive anthology of French prose, designed for use
in the language tutorial of the college, there are samples of the
short character sketches of La Bruyère. Each paragraph is a list of
personal and sartorial characteristics, and ends with a declaration
of what the person is: il est riche, il est pauvre. Such generic tags
cannot be attached to the great people in Shakespeare. There is
only one Hamlet, one Rosalind, one Lady Macbeth—only one
Falstaff and only one Cleopatra. Why, then, did I put those two
together in the title of this lecture, and why have at least some of
you already guessed why they deserve to be paired? Whether for
good or for ill, the Fat Wit and the Serpent of the Nile, each in his
or her respective world, represent a counterpoise and a threat to
what is going on politically.
The History Tetralogy has the bones of a Morality Play. In the
line of legitimacy, Prince Hal lies between Richard the Second,
who was legitimate but weak, and the Henry the Fifth that Hal is
to become, who will legitimize the crown his father wears
uneasily. Meanwhile there is a gamut of Honor, ranging from
Falstaff, for whom it is a mere word, to Hotspur, for whom it is
everything. Hotspur, by the way, is the only rival to Falstaff in
liveliness and language. In Part Two the underlying schematism
is further personalized by the introduction of the Lord Chief
Justice, representing the moral order for which the future king
must eventually reject Falstaff. Falstaff is also the Prince’s
surrogate father—a role that is memorialized in a long and
separate scene.
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Richard II
{
Falstaff
Henry IV
HAL
Hotspur
Lord Chief
Justice
Henry V
Prince Hal is at the center of four triads, which at their most
neutral should give him—and us—the wherewithal for a proper
political and moral choice. The trouble is that Shakespeare in his
fecundity has endowed Falstaff with so much being that the scales
are, so to speak, outweighed.
Falstaff cannot be a measurable factor within the world when
he is already a world in himself. As he tells the Prince in the
peroration of a play within the play:
…banish Peto, banish Bardolph, banish Poins—but
for sweet Jack Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack
Falstaff, valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore more
valiant, being as he is old Jack Falstaff, banish not
him thy Harry’s company, banish not him thy Harry’s
company, banish plump Jack, and banish all the
world.5
The Prince answers truthfully but mysteriously in a tone the actor
must think up for himself: “I do, I will.”
Cleopatra, too, despite her pairing with Antony, also has her
separable world. This is paradoxically most evident in the manner
of her death, which is sharply divided from the death of Antony.
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113
All the other Shakespearean tragic heroes die at the end of their
plays, but after the succession of Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and
Macbeth, it is in Act Four that Mark Antony has his prolonged
suicide in the presence of Eros. The playwright needs an entire act
for something new: the exotic and polysemous apotheosis of
Cleopatra. That redemption looks forward, I think, to the final
plays, often called Romances, that follow, in which old dissensions are harmonized, lost children are found, and statues come to
life. When Cleopatra embraces the asps she is showing the tragic
hero how such things ought to be done. All the boyishness is gone
in this triumph of the woman. And it is accomplished amidst
verbal music that rivals the sensuality of that other triumphal
woman, Isolde, who, twenty minutes after the suicide of her
lover, achieves her first and final sexual climax.
Most of the Romans can’t understand Cleopatra, and are
persistently fascinated with her and with Egypt. Even Antony has
what she calls “Roman thoughts,” but unfortunately not often
enough. The most extremely Roman of them all—I refer to
Octavius Caesar, who is an undisguised boy marching in from the
arena of Coriolanus—seems to be unable to recognize her attractiveness. That is, anyway, how I interpret his entry, near the end
of the play, into her room in Alexandria. “Which is the Queen of
Egypt?” he asks.7 He was only the adoptive son of Julius.
I mention Julius because I want to tell a brief anecdote about
what happened some years ago in a Graduate Institute preceptorial. At the end of the first act we came to Cleopatra’s famous
reference to her youth:
My salad days,
When I was green in judgment, cold in blood...8
I asked what she could have meant, and an elderly man in the
class observed that she was referring to a Caesar salad. I thought
the interpretation was entirely Shakespearean. This addition to all
the other meanings of the salad metaphor would have seemed to
him apt and irresistible.
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II
Cleopatra’s arrival on the barge at Cydnus is a celebrated passage
of English verse. It is also a powerful example of how
Shakespeare can transform his sources. In this case the source is
the good prose of North’s translation of Plutarch. The speaker is
Enobarbus, who earlier spoke the lines describing Cleopatra in
general. He has one of the most privileged roles in Shakespeare.
The transformation from good prose to great verse, and then from
great verse to great poetry, is worth a lecture of its own. It is
certainly worth a Tutorial of its own. Here I can only point to a
detail or two that have been added to the description. They have
been italicized in the example:
The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne
Burn’d on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were
silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes.
*****
Antony,
Enthron’d i’ the market-place, did sit alone,
Whistling to the air; which, but for vacancy,
Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,
And made a gap in nature.8
I have italicized the places where the winds, the water, and
the air itself are in love. Cleopatra has seduced Nature itself. And
as I transcribed these passages I felt obliged to insert a plea for the
restoration of this play—I am tempted to say this poem—to a
more secure place in the program. Not only should it be a seminar
reading, but it contains a detail that entitles it to be the very last
reading of the senior year. For—as my colleague Mr. Kutler likes
to point out—somewhere in its text it contains the word UNSEM-
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115
INARED.
The word unseminared—which refers to the deprivation of
something even more important than the Seminar—is used only
once in Shakespeare’s works. There are many thousands of such
words. When they occur in Ancient Greek we may assume that
other instances haven’t survived. In Shakespeare they tell us that
his genius had at its disposal a language that was rich in transitional flux. It could be said that Elizabethan and Jacobean English
displayed a variety that rivaled Cleopatra’s; or that, like Falstaff,
the language was fat and witty in itself.
When talking about iambic pentameter, or blank verse, I like
to show its remarkable range by quoting pairs of lines that as
neighbors highlight the immense contrasts possible in both the
language and what had become its characteristic dramatic
medium. Some of you already know the following lines as my
favorite example, from Hamlet’s dying injunction to Horatio:
Absent thee from felicity awhile
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain
To tell my story.9
The first line is Latinate and quick-syllabled, leaving unrealized
two or three of the metrical stresses. The second is Anglo-Saxon
and monosyllabic, realizes extrametrical stresses, and even
provides clusters of consonants—“this harsh world”—that slow
the line down further, and that are unimaginable in, say, Italian
verse. Here is another such line, from Macbeth:
The multitudinous seas incarnadine
Making the green one red.10
Each of the two lines could belong to a different language. (If, by
the way, you don’t see that all but the last of these lines are legitimate and unarguable lines of iambic pentameter, please ask me
to show you—at the risk that I’ll actually do so!)
Such extravagance is in sharp contrast with the economy of
the other great modern dramatist we study here. According to one
set of tallies, Shakespeare’s lexicon is almost ten times that of the
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sparse and highly selective lexicon of Racine. (As the students
know, most of Racine’s vocabulary compensates for its brevity by
being untranslatable!) The difference is of course reflected in the
difference of the action. In answer to the on-stage horrors of
Shakespeare—even Sophocles would not have allowed the
audience to witness the gouging-out of eyes—the typical action
of the Racinian queen is to go off into the wings and then return,
having slightly changed her mind. The so-called unities of time
and place are usually ignored in Shakespeare, no more blatantly
than in Antony and Cleopatra, where Act Four has as many as
fifteen scenes. Those scene-numberings are, by the way, entirely
editorial. It is a delightful fact that in the First Folio, our only
original text, the heading of the play is Act One, Scene One—and
then there are no further act and scene divisions. Perhaps a
careless omission, but it is nicer to think that the first editors
realized that this play ought to flow on unimpeded, like the river
Nile—or like the overflowing dotage of Antony, which is
mentioned in the opening lines.
There is something about the richness of Shakespeare’s
language that is not always approved: his propensity for punning.
One of the great classical critics of Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson,
played right into my hands when he wrote about it. “The quibble,”
he said—in his day a pun was called a quibble—“is the fatal
Cleopatra for which Shakespeare lost the world.”11 Just as for
Antony the world was well lost, so Shakespeare’s attraction to
wordplay is happily inseparable from his love of the word.
Tonight there is no time to discuss the wonders of
Shakespeare’s quibbling, for, as you’ll hear, there is a rarer and
more hidden aspect of his wordplay to which I shall devote a few
minutes. But recently I have been reading learned discussion of
the pun—there are such things—and have been confirmed in
something I have always suspected: that an investigation of the
pun must lead to a discussions of language itself. But even when
you hear an everyday pun, let it be enough to remember
Shakespeare’s predilection when you automatically groan. If the
groan is simply to let the punster know that you “got it,” a smile
of appreciation is a better indication. But if it is a groan of
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117
reproach, the practice of our greatest poet requires that you at
least take the time to decide whether the pun is a good one.
But more broadly you might remember that there are petrified
puns at the roots of our words—a Platonic dialogue is devoted to
quibbling etymologies, strongly countering the now popular
notion that the form of words is merely conventional. Punning is
related to rhyming and to metaphor. Bear in mind the dangerous
double-meanings of the Delphic oracles, where the wrong choice
of interpretation might mean one’s death. Remember that it was
with a quibble that Odysseus escaped from the Cyclops. Much of
the sense of music depends upon the ambiguities of what can
fairly be called tonal punning, for every modulation pivots on a
pun. And above all consider what you are doing when you dream.
The other aspect of wordplay I just referred to is the
Anagram, and it is the occasion for my second anecdote. The
anagram got me into trouble in my early years of teaching at St.
John’s. In a language tutorial we were reading one of the sonnets,
which I present here. I’ll read the whole sonnet, but I’m afraid
that I shall talk about only line eleven, which I have italicized:
SONNET 64
When I have seen by time’s fell hand defaced
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age,
When sometime lofty towers I see down razed,
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
And the firm soil win of the watery main,
Increasing store with loss and loss with store,
When I have seen such interchange of state,
Or state itself confounded to decay,
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate:
That time will come and take my love away.
This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
But weep to have that which it fears to lose.
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There can be little doubt that the poet is asking us to hear the
connection between RUIN and RUMINATE, and I think he is
also asking us to see the connection in the printed text. We did so
in that class, long ago, noticing that when we removed RUIN
from RUMINATE we were left with a bereft MATE. We didn’t
stop there, but went on to look for more anagrams. We found
TIME, which is the theme of the sonnet, and words related to that
theme, such as MINUTE, MATURE, and REMAIN. Someone
happily discovered NATURE. There are more, but I’ll let you find
them for yourselves.
At a dinner-party that evening, I boasted of what we had
discovered in class. I was overheard by one of the elderly
members of the faculty, who later took me aside and told me that
at St. John’s College we don’t do such things. Perhaps he thought
I also counted up the letters in all my texts, in order to discover
what was at the dead middle.
It is now fashionable to include anagrams among the
treasures one seeks in the sonnets. I know of recent major studies
that do so. When the poem is printed out and non-dramatic, there
is an invitation for anagram hunting. But what about the plays,
which were presented without a text to follow, to an audience not
all of whom could read? Are we to find literal wordplay in the
spoken text?
For a test case, I seek the help of Iago. In most of the action
of Othello, we watch with fascination and dread the virtuoso
performance wherein Iago, malignantly and I think motivelessly,
brings to destruction a great hero and his innocent wife. He does
so by means of a handkerchief. His performance begins with what
is almost a whisper: “Ha,” he says, “I like not that.”12 What am I
to make of the fact that HA—that H and A—are the first two
letters of HANDKERCHIEF? What are you to make of it? Did
Shakespeare make anything of it? Did Shakespeare even notice
it? Does his intent matter, despite the warnings that there is
something called the Intentional Fallacy? Isn’t the richness and
variety of the play enough, without the need to pile up
superfluities?
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ZUCKERMAN
I think similar questions must be asked about any such
discovery, particularly when its attraction feels irresistible. Their
discovery is only a preliminary to the criticism of the poem.
Criticism begins with the attempt to decide whether what is
discovered is properly there.13
III
One reason why Shakespeare the Poet and Shakespeare the
Dramatist vie for supreme beauty is that the poetry spreads
itself—leaks out, so to speak—into the action. I am referring to
what, for want of a better name, I call Enacted Metaphors. The
poetic trope is staged for us. Cleopatra, on the upper level of the
storied stage, has the wounded Antony reeled up to her, and she
observes that fishing is a great sport. The blind Duke of
Gloucester thinks he is jumping off a cliff, but only falls from one
step of the stage to another. In a speech filled with other sublimely
monosyllabic lines, Othello extinguishes a lamp while on his way
to smother Desdemona:
Put out the light, and then put out the light.14
Whole scenes can be large figures of speech. The unweeded
garden of England, with a gardener named Adam. The Forest of
Arden, which always has Another Part. Lady Macbeth twisting
her spotted hands while wandering in disturbed sleep.
Falstaff stages his own resurrection. True to his denigration of
Honor, he plays dead in battle. When he gets up, he has the chance
to celebrate his ebullience in more than speech. Then, to make the
act entirely outrageous, he carries off the body of Hotspur, dead
from Honor, in order to claim the victory as his own. When
Falstaff was lying in pretended death, we heard an impromptu
eulogy from Prince Henry, which is in great contrast to the repudiation of Falstaff at the end of the play. Falstaff’s pretended death
is comic; his true death is pathetic, and it comes when he is still
alive. Cleopatra also keeps dying, and her deaths and recoveries
bring on the death of Antony and his brief resurrection. Her final
death, carefully staged, is, in the largest sense of the word, comic.
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About Falstaff’s actual death, there is an aspect I have never
seen mentioned in the books I have read. In two significant ways
the very end of his life parallels the death of Socrates. As you
know, when Socrates is about to die he refers to a debt he owes to
the demigod Asclepius—who, as I interpret it, cured him of
Becoming. Falstaff, right after his rejection, refers to the money
he owes Justice Shallow. More important, both Socrates and
Falstaff die from the bottom up. The effect of the hemlock starts
at the feet. And in her description of Falstaff’s death, Mistress
Quickly notices that the final coldness began at his feet. I asserted
earlier that one of the duties of criticism was to try to judge
whether an anagram, say, was admissible. A similar attempt at
discernment should be brought to bear on the significance of such
classical parallels.
The most magnificent of all the staged metaphors must be the
death of Cleopatra. She herself stages it. She nurses the asps, like
the mother of death. She readies herself to meet Antony again,
and her ladies follow her, to assist in the seduction:
The stroke of death is as a lover’s pinch,
Which hurts, and is desir’d.15
But this operatic love-death is not that of the singing divas. They
depend upon the easier effects of passionate music. Cleopatra’s is
the triumph of clarity and wit.
Epilogue
In the Folio version of King Lear, shortly after the five Nevers
that hammer out the culminating despair of the negative action,
the King, with the dead Cordelia in his arms, imagines that his
daughter is about to speak. As a staged metaphor, it might remind
us of Cordelia’s initial refusal, five acts earlier, to speak more than
a single repeated negative. At the end of the play she is saying
nothing. At the beginning she had uttered the word Nothing, and
with that word she seems to have released the army of uncanny
evil manned by her sisters and their allies.
Cordelia, who seems to be Grace itself, and who takes upon
herself a redeeming forgiveness, must be eliminated from the
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121
world. Nothing could be more perverse than the eighteenthcentury happy ending, in which she survives and is married off to
Edgar. This is not only absurd; it is, in another sense, not absurd
enough. From the point of view of stagecraft, it is easy enough to
save Cordelia. Shakespeare makes that obvious, so that we see
that the killing of Cordelia is of the utmost importance. While we
are all reasonably hopeful that there is still time to save her, he has
Edmund delay until it is too late the casual word that would have
meant rescue. It is being asserted, I think, that in order to
eliminate the extreme evil, the extreme good must also go. At the
end of this tragedy, and I think most of the others, the world must
be deprived of both Grace and Evil, leaving us with the merely
good and the merely bad.
I’ll go one rash step further and draw an analogy with my
chief subject. Both Falstaff and Cleopatra reveal a seductive
amorality that also, like Grace and Evil, must be purged. England
and Rome are left with the ordinary, the political, the moral, and
the livable.
1
Henry IV, Part I, I.1.4.
2
Antony and Cleopatra, II.2.278-81.
3
Ibid., V.2.262
4
Ibid., II.51-4
5
Henry IV, Part I, II.4.457-63.
6
Antony and Cleopatra, V.2.135.
7
Ibid., I.5.86-7
8
Ibid., II.2.230-58
9
Hamlet, V.2, 361-63
10
Macbeth, II.2, 77-8
11
Samuel Johnson, A Preface to Shakespeare, §44
12
Othello, III.3.37
13
I once gave a lecture on the opening note of “Dove sono,” the great C-major
aria of the Countess in Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. It was only while
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speaking the lecture that I realized that the first syllable of the Italian text, DO,
was also the DO of the C-major scale.
PORTRAITS OF THE
IMPASSIONED CONCEPT
Peter Kalkavage, The Logic of
Desire: An Introduction to Hegel’s
Phenomenology of Spirit.
122
14
Othello, V.2.7.
15
Antony and Cleopatra, V.2.343-44.
Paul Dry books, xvi + 537 pages, $35.
Book Review by Eva Brann
Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is an enthralling “picture
gallery” (447)* of the successive incarnations in which human
consciousness appears in the world; it is also a repellant trudge
through the abstract dialectic by which its concept develops. I
would claim that until you’ve undergone the complementary
experiences of delighting in the imaginative recognition of the
various “pictures” and of suffering the pains of thinking through
the logic, you haven’t quite lived—if living means having
plumbed the possibilities of passionately driven thought in search
of self-awareness.
Like all great classics of philosophy, the Phenomenology is
written for all of us, the amateurs of thinking no less than the
professional philosophers (451), provided we have this single
qualification—that we are Hegel’s contemporaries in the sense of
living with him at the end of time, when consciousness has come
to full self-realization as spirit. More mundanely put, the
Phenomenology presupposes only “some familiarity with the
history of philosophy” (xii), and that can be supplied by any of
the good commentaries available.
Nonetheless, the book is a nest of labyrinths at whose every
turn we readers meet, in Peter Kalkavage’s words, a monstrous
Minotaur, a “Demon of Difficulty” (xi). To overcome each new
Minotaur we need help of a more global sort than even the best of
*
Page numbers in parentheses refer to The Logic of Desire.
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paragraph-by-paragraph commentaries can provide. This is
exactly what Kalkavage gives us in The Logic of Desire. It is a
full-scale narrative, a readable yet faithful retelling of Hegel’s
story. It has several serious predecessors (which are given full
credit in a brief analytic biography), but is in a class of its own for
its engaging, distinctly American-flavored accessibility, its downamong-the-readers and do-it-yourself egalitarianism. Indeed, an
early reader of the book wrote to me to praise it as “a popularization of the right kind, explicating the thinking of Hegel in its
own terms, while constantly watching the mind of the potential
reader to see whether that mind is taking it in.” The Logic of
Desire intends to lead us “into the thick of Hegel’s arguments”
(xii), not from a commentator’s outside view but from the
position of a reader venturing into the labyrinth. That is, of
course, what an “introduction” should do – bring us into a text.
The Logic of Desire is, so to speak, a friendly doppelgänger of the
Phenomenology that steadily accompanies it (being as long as the
text) without ever eclipsing it.
Kalkavage presents Hegel’s book as one of a quartet of great
books on education, together with Plato’s Republic, Dante’s
Divine Comedy, and Rousseau’s Émile. All four of these works
present the drama of the soul’s development and liberation, as
Hegel puts it, from consciousness’s “immediacy” (its unreflectively natural familiarity with its world) to its “mediated” (that is,
conceptualized) appropriation of that world as fully selfconscious spirit. The Phenomenology is the story of the epochs in
the education of spirit, the life changes self-generated by its
“passionate self-assertion,” its spirited longing, its desire, to come
into its own. This eventful journey of consciousness’s becoming
spirit is a tragic drama, because the spirit-to-be “cannot become
wise without making a fool of itself. An extremist at heart, spirit,
our human essence, is fated…to learn through suffering” (2). The
journey that consciousness drives itself through is a logical one –
hence the title The Logic of Desire.
This logic is new upon the scene of rationality. Hegelian
dialectic is a living, developmental logic. It is not the work of
individual human understanding passing judgment on this or that
EVA BRANN
125
by reference to a fixed set of categories, but rather the work of
Thought itself—“the Concept” in Hegel’s language. This
energetic Concept drives itself in a violent, dialectical (that is,
self-antithetical) motion from continuously new “self-positings”
through inevitable “self-otherings” to ever current and ever
collapsing self-reconciliations, until an ultimate consummation of
mutual absorption by self and other is reached. In the hackneyed
and unhelpful language of some Hegel-explications, this rising
and plunging onward motion of the spirit is referred to as thesis,
antithesis, and synthesis, but Kalkavage does not use this terminology in his inside chronicle of spirit’s way. He finds fresh
language for every “moment,” every station of consciouness’s via
dolorosa.
In the self-motion of dialectical logic, two elements are
compounded: desirous striving and spirited assertion. Here one of
the accepted translations of the German Geist as “Spirit” (the
other is “Mind”) proves serendipitous, for it alludes to “spiritedness,” that proud self-assertion and other-negation which the
Greeks called thymos. The desire that drives the dialectic is thus
shown to be a powerfully negative and destructive force, and it
reincarnates itself in a succession of figures—that portrait gallery
of impassioned concepts by which spirit drives itself to cancel,
keep and raise (the three main meanings of the well known
Hegelian verb aufheben) all significant oppositions. The
paradigm of all these oppositions is that of subject and object, self
and other.
The Logic of Desire presents an exemplary attitude for a
reader to adopt toward a book. To use a fancy term, it embodies a
“hermeneutic,” a principle of interpretation. The most respectful
such hermeneutic rule I know is the so-called “principle of
charity”: give the text a chance to make maximum sense.
Kalkavage outdoes this principle by embracing a “principle of
appreciation”: savor and learn from the text to the utmost of your
ability. The principle of appreciation is to the principle of charity
as awed generosity is to squint-eyed tolerance—a way of treating
a book with magnanimity rather than with mere civility.
Thus it is not until the last pages, in the epilogue, that we
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
learn that Kalkavage could not possibly be a whole-hearted
Hegelian, that the book that has captivated him has not captured
him. The main sticking-point is that very condition mentioned
above, that coloring of spirit’s eros, of its desire to know itself, by
thymos—spirit’s aggression toward its other. “Desire here is not
other-affirming but self-affirming and other-negating” (454).
Thus, if Hegel succeeds, he will—and this is in fact his aim—
have killed philosophy, the love of wisdom, not only by the
combative self-positing of consciousness (which is discordant
with the open inquisitiveness of philosophy), but also by the
claim that the curriculum of self-development can be completed;
for, once Absolute Science, the knowledge that has absorbed all
its conditions, has been attained, philosophy is superseded.
Kalkavage’s approach is therefore a welcome counterweight to a
mode that is all too prevalent in contemporary philosophy: to allot
living space only to those problems and solutions currently within
the consensual range of the philosophical profession. The Logic of
Desire teaches the lesson of non-credulous admiration.
Does it follow from this way of reading that Kalkavage’s
Hegel must be either left-leaning or right-leaning? Hegel students
on the left—notably Marx—interpreted his work as atheistic
because God becomes man and is his congregation, while on the
right this entry of God into his people was thought to preserve
some transcendence. Kalkavage says that “what Hegel no doubt
intended is that each is absorbed into the other. God must be
humanized in order to be self-conscious, and man divinized in
order to enjoy absolute self-knowledge” (509, n. 2). This view,
certainly supported by the text itself, compounds right and left
Hegelianism. The Phenomenology is neither a theology nor an
anthropology but a theoanthropology.
There remains, however, the question of Hegel’s politics. In
some final advice to the now-engaged reader about which book to
tackle next, Kalkavage recommends Hegel’s Elements of the
Philosophy of Right as “the most deeply philosophic political
work of modernity, which contains his most powerful critique of
modern liberalism” (452). But since the liberalism Hegel was
critiquing has much in common with contemporary conservatism,
EVA BRANN
127
here too, the right-left question has no bold solution. Hegel’s
conservatism is too sui generis to fall neatly under any predetermined rubric. And yet, perhaps we can find a pidgeon-hole for
him. There is among Hegel’s epochal portraits a figure called “the
beautiful soul.” It is described by Kalkavage as being afflicted
with “spiritual narcissism,” as being “miserable in principle”
(345, 348); it is too pure to be practical, and is, on top of that, a
harshly unforgiving judge of those who are doers. Kalkavage
points out that Hegel himself is, in turn, a particularly harsh judge
of this beautiful soul (507, n. 28; 509, n. 48). In this portrait,
Hegel paints a wickedly true-to-type likeness of a liberal intellectual—thereby revealing himself to be the “right” Hegel after
all.
I might add here that Kalkavage recommends, as another next
reading after the Phenomenology, The Science of Logic. It
postdates the Phenomenology by five years, and yet it is an everfascinating question whether the former comes “before” or
“after” the latter. For the Logic (or its shorter, more accessible
version, often called the “Lesser Logic”) is in fact God’s pretemporal life-plan for the spirit in the world—that is, its purely
logical unfolding told through the abstractly dialectical moments
of the Concept. When this ideal plan, this Concept, enters time, it
takes on appearances. Hence “phenomenology” is the account of
the phenomena, the appearances of the Concept in a dialectal
sequence of forms. In Kalkavage’s more accurate and eloquent
rendering: “[P]henomenology, as the prelude to science, is spirit’s
rational communion with itself in its manifold appearances in
history” (108). Then the question for us readers might well be:
Does Hegel know the Concept through its appearances or the
converse? Does experience of the appearances precede the logic
that makes it rational, or is the dialectic plan prior to any comprehension of the shapes that invest it (516, n.10)? Kalkavage opts, I
think, for the first case, and that decision puts the Phenomenology
first in Hegel’s system and first for us readers.
Kalkavage has, as I said, done an end-run around the leftright controversy. And yet, as he leads us to listen to Hegel’s
language, to savor his symbolism, to follow his figures, we come
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
to see Hegel as an uncircumventably religion-bound writer. If the
structure of the Phenomenology is dialectical, its pathos is
religious. The above-mentioned “beautiful soul” is one of a
myriad of examples. When, as its dialectic demands, this
judgmental, holier-than-thou bystander is finally reconciled with
the doer (the Phenomenology is a roman à clef that names no
names, to which Kalkavage often supplies the key; in this case,
the man of action is Napoleon) they come together in mutual
forgiveness “Spirituality no longer consists in life-denying
judgmental inwardness, and the world is no longer God-forsaken
and vain” (357). Kalkavage’s rendering captures the spiritual
aspect of the event.
But more—he catches and conveys at once the pervasive
Christianity and the self-willed heresies of Hegel’s book. For
example, the religious drama of the Phenomenology culminates
not in the Resurrection of Easter Sunday, but in the Passion of
Good Friday. It is this “speculative Good Friday” that images the
conceptual ultimate reconciliation of man with God, the
revelation that God needs man in order to be fully God. The
Passion of Jesus (who is never named) already contains, has
conceptually collected and recollected within itself, the resurrection of the spirit, which is not a separate ascent but just “man
in history” (449-50). For it is in history that man and God are
united, and this union culminates in the infinite sadness of God’s
death which is also the first moment when spirit knows itself as
spirit. Philosophy must “go down” in order genuinely to “go up”
into the eternal Now of Absolute Science. (This moment of
consummation is far more complex, of course, than my account
of it.) Kalkavage accompanies his presentation of this bold
tampering with the climactic events in the calendar of the church
year by a remarkable list entitled “Hegel’s Heresies” (398). This
list on the one hand leaves me convinced that Hegel was indeed
the ultimate heretic; on the other, however, I remain mindful of
the fact that “heresy” (Greek for “choice” [hairesis]) is, after all,
a version of faith—though perhaps a willfully original one.
Indeed, the Phenomenology exhales such awe before the events of
EVA BRANN
129
God’s appearance on earth that it is palpable even to a nonChristian.
The Phenomenology is complex beyond summary but
without loose ends, and labyrinthine but without cul-de-sacs. The
complexities and abrupt corners, the startling turns and sudden
familiarities, the space-inversions and time-loops that mark the
Concept’s path are lovingly—and clearly—traced out in The
Logic of Desire. Near the center of the book an “Interlude” is
devoted to schematizing these movements and their achieved
moments, without letting us forget that conceptual thinking is
essentially unpicturable and that the Phenomenology speaks with
a forked tongue. The phenomenal picture gallery is an aid to be
continually subverted; its visualizable images are countermanded
by its sightless logic. For images are “out there,” since they are
objects, and thinking is within us, since we are subjects. To keep
the reader on the conceptual track, Kalkavage continually recapitulates—as Hegel does, but often very abstrusely—the purely
logical progress. But Kalkavage also asks the question of
questions about this text: “What, possibly, is lost in the move
from picture to Concept?” (518, n. 30.) He has, in fact, given an
answer, intimated above. What is lost is the element of positive
love animating philosophy when it welcomes some sort of vision.
This autobiography of the spirit is, then, the recollection of its
continually morphing recognition of itself both in and as the
world, of the moments of reconciliation between self and other, of
the mutual “mediation,” the bridging of the gap, between subject
and object. As in any autobiography, time is essential, and indeed
the latter is spirit’s ultimate definition: time is spirit’s intuition of
itself, meaning that its self-othering and self-finding, its
projection of itself into an object and its consequent seeing itself
in that object, is the motion, the dialectical flux of appearances,
that we call time. But this time is not necessarily chronological.
The time-loops mentioned above testify that spirit’s phenomenal
progress is not a mathematical continuum, a succession of linear
befores and afters. For example, Newton’s force of attraction,
which holds together the world filled by bodies, appears chronologically much later than God’s power which unifies the creation
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
inhabited by souls. Yet Hegel regards the latter as more conceptually complex, more replete with dialectical reconciliations, and
so, as Kalkavage points out, it appears later in Hegel’s account
(77). The grades of spirit’s self-education are not always consecutively numbered.
Consciousness, self-consciousness, reason, and spirit, are the
beings whose experiences, whose successive times, are recollected in the Phenomenology. By whom? Who is the true teller of
the tale? All the Peoples of the Book, Jews, Christians, and
Muslims, are familiar with this enigma of authorship, which no
amount of textual analysis can solve. For suppose that numerous
hands are discerned—the question remains, Who guided the
hands? Just two centuries ago, in 1807—Kalkavage’s book
celebrates this bicentennial—Hegel, a professor of philosophy at
Jena, published his book. And yet, scandalous as it may seem, it
is not he but the spirit that guided his hand, the hand of one who
knows “conceptually grasped history,” who recalls the Golgotha
where spirit completed its suffering and became absolute—that is
to say, fully itself and self-sufficient. “[T]he Phenomenology,
strictly speaking, is the work of spirit rather than the work of
Hegel” (267; 494, n. 12). The willingness to utter such words is
testimony to a readiness to take this terrific book and its demands
seriously; it is what gives The Logic of Desire its own intensity.
Who or what, then, constitutes this gallery of impersonal
persons, from consciousness to spirit, that exhibits the unnamed
but identifiable human shapes of history? Logically, as concepts
in thought, they are the immature moments of the pure Concept;
temporally, as individuals on earth, they represent Everyman
(521, n. 71), the various human embodiments of the appearing
Concept that we readers, participating in Hegel’s “inwardizing”
(the literal translation of the German word for recollection,
Erinnerung) can still find within ourselves. For the spirit’s autobiography is also ours, and we now recognize the struggles which,
though opaque to our predecessors, have brought us to our
common modern humanity, to the community that has grasped its
history conceptually (449).
EVA BRANN
131
This consummation of Hegel is, I think, as dubious as it is
high-toned, but on the way there are many moments of wonderful
down-to-earth plausibility, and The Logic of Desire reports them
with down-home humor. I don’t know where else Hegel would
find himself so appreciatively joshed, in accordance with the
Socratic wisdom that playfulness can levitate dead earnestness
into live seriousness. (I should point out, though, that there is also
weighty evidence that Hegel himself has a sense of humor.) An
example of Kalkavage’s wise levity is a section called “Artful
Dodgers” that recounts a moment in the life of consciousness—a
moment in my history, recapitulable within me—when I no longer
find myself in external works and objects but shift suddenly to
being immersed in “the heart of the matter” (die Sache selbst).
That shift, however, lands me, by a convoluted evolution, in a
drama of deceit that leads to an inevitable downfall by selfnegation. For this project, to dwell with the true matter, is my
cause, and to my fellow workers it connotes a loss of the objectivity they were led to expect of me. Say—this is Kalkavage’s
example—I was a molecular biologist trying to discover the gene
for self-consciousness. Having become engaged with the matter
itself as it matters to me, I become irritated by other researchers
taking up my interest; my scientific “objectivity” shows its limits.
Since I can’t reappropriate my matter, I take my cunningly noble
revenge by interesting myself in theirs: I write a best-seller called
Genes Are Us (222). Thus I take part in a “pathology of appropriation”; for in praising the work of other laboratories I praise my
own. I am the Great-Souled Biologist.
Whoever has some small familiarity with modern institutional research will laugh out loud at these insights into the
mutual invasion of different scientists’ “techno-space” (221). Yet
who would have thought of this psychological episode as being a
way-station to the reconciliation of subject and object? But so it
is, for what consciousness learns at this moment is that
“subjective me-ness and objective this-ness are both essential to
the matter itself” (223).
Finally, for all the human intensity of The Logic of Desire, it
is a narrative kept as free as possible of personal opinion. Such
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
obiter dicta are relegated to the endnotes, which consequently
abound in concise illuminations and suggestive queries. Here is
Kalkavage on the beautiful soul: “Sensitive types are often
merciless judges” (508, n. 39). And a few notes later, he asks a
question incited by Hegel’s harsh condemnation of this same
beautiful soul and other condemned types hanging in his picture
gallery: How do such judgments fit into his scheme of mutual
forgiveness and the ultimate reconciliation of oppositions? “[W]e
wonder about the connection of reason and judgment in
philosophy. Is the philosopher allowed to condemn, or does
genuine rationality preclude all condemnation?” (509, n.48.)
This is a version of the unabashedly strange question—asked
of us not as an academic exercise but as a living perplexity—
whether Hegel the philosophy professor and Hegel the spirit’s
secretary quite coincide. It is also an example of the engaging
directness with which Peter Kalkavage leads us into one of the
wonders of the West.
�
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Pastille, William
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Hunt, Frank
Sachs, Joe
Van Doren, John
Williamson, Robert B.
Zuckerman, Elliott
McClay, Barbara
Sachs, Joe
Druecker, Robert
Kalkavage, Peter
Lenkowski, Jon
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The St. John’s Review
Volume 52, number 2 (Spring 2011)
Editor
William Pastille
Editorial Board
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Frank Hunt
Joe Sachs
John Van Doren
Robert B. Williamson
Elliott Zuckerman
Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant
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�Contents
Essays
Reading Landscapes: Maternal Love in
Classical Tamil Poetry ....................................................1
Anne David
The Tocquevillean Moment ................................................19
Wilfred M. McClay
On Seeing Aspects ..............................................................45
John Verdi
Reflections
Full Fathom Five: A Tutor’s Sea Change ...........................73
Louis Petrich
Reviews
John Verdi’s Fat Wednesday:Wittgenstein on Aspects ........83
Eva Brann
Paolo Palmieri’s A History of Galileo’s Inclined Plane
Experiment and its Philosophical Implications............91
Curtis Wilson
�1
ESSAYS
READING LANDSCAPES:
MATERNAL LOVE IN
CLASSICAL TAMIL POETRY
Anne David
Pu!an"#$!u 2781
The old woman’s shoulders
were dry, unfleshed,
with outstanding veins;
her low belly was like a lotus pad.
When people said
her son had taken fright,
had turned his back on battle
and died,
she raged
and shouted,
“If he really broke down
in the thick of battle,
I’ll slash these breasts
that gave him suck,”
and went there,
sword in hand.
Turning over body after fallen body,
she rummaged through the blood-red field
till she found her son,
quartered, in pieces,
and she rejoiced
more than on the day
she gave him birth.
This poem was composed nearly two millennia ago in
Tamil Nadu, South India. It belongs to a corpus of more than
Anne David is an alumna of St. John’s College and the University of Chicago, and is
currently a research scientist at the University of Maryland’s Center for Advanced
Study of Language, where she works on South Asian Languages.
�2
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
two thousand exquisite, tightly constructed lyric verses written in the Tamil language. Tamil is one of the two classical
languages of India; the other is Sanskrit. Along with Greek
and just a handful of other languages, Tamil has among the
longest continually attested written traditions in the world,
one that began around the second century before the
Common Era, when literature flowered in South India in the
form of these lyric poems of love and war.
They are called the Cankam2 poems, from the belief that
they were composed at a legendary center of art and learning, a Cankam, that was patronized by the south Indian
kings. What we now call the Cankam period of classical
Tamil extended until about the fifth century CE. We have
well over two thousand of these poems, ranging in length
from three lines to about eight hundred, probably only a
fraction of what was actually composed. They were preserved on palm leaf manuscripts, which are susceptible to
humidity, fire, and insects; and because of their largely secular and often erotic content, they have also been subject to
human negligence and even malice. We also have a contemporaneous grammar, the Tolk"ppiyam, which describes
both the language of the poems and the elaborate semiotic
and aesthetic system on which their descriptions draw.
There were about four hundred poets, of whom some two
dozen were women; though still small, this proportion is
unusually high among classical corpora.3
The poem above depicts a mother’s elation when she
learns her role in society has been fulfilled because her son
has died with honor in battle. Her triumph is underscored by
the stunning image of her standing in a blood-soaked field
of bodies. Vivid portraits of battlefields are common among
the Cankam poems, where setting is integral, and they are
often depicted through metaphors of other landscapes:
agrarian, desert, sea.
ESSAYS | DAVID
3
Classical Tamil poetry has two genres. Poems of
romance and eros are classified as akam, meaning ‘inside,
interior’, while poems on all other subjects are called
pu!am, meaning ‘outside, exterior’. Akam poems address
our inner life, the life of heart and home. Pu!am poems
address all aspects of public life: they praise kings, recount
battles, sing of famine and death, lament the dire poverty of
poets.
Manifest in the Cankam works is a tension between
these two worlds—public and private, political and domestic. We gain insight into both kinds of poem, their
language of landscape, and the tension between them, when
we examine the one female character who, in Martha
Selby’s words, “may cross the membranous boundary between akam and pu!am,”4 who alone has been given a voice
in both genres—the Mother. We see the mother as a
powerful voice in both the akam and pu!am poems, facing
two kinds of maternal loss: that of her daughter to a young
man and that of her son to the warpath. While prominent in
the akam poems, the mother is a rarer character in the
pu!am world; nevertheless, she is fiercely present in a small
pu!am sub-genre on mothers and warrior sons.
The civilization that produced this exquisite lyric poetry
of love, war, and kingship was suffused with savagery. At
the turn of the first millennium of the Common Era, South
India was dominated by three great dynasties reigning over
many smaller leaders—a world of kings and chieftains who
patronized the arts and waged brutal wars against each
other. Poetry served as a vehicle of patriotic persuasion.
Through the voices of the pu!am poets, the ancient Tamilians glorified courage and ferocity. They regarded death in
battle as a moral obligation, and as the greatest of honors.
One pu!am poem, spoken by a mother, is a lyrical list of
�4
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
societal duties: her duty is to bear sons, the father’s duty is
to make them noble, the blacksmith’s to furnish them with
arms, the king’s to exemplify good conduct—and the son’s
duty is to make war.5
In other verses we hear how the bodies of stillborn sons
and the elderly male dead were slashed with swords so that
they too might carry the honor of battle-wounds into the
afterlife. One poem describes a frenzied hero on the battlefield thus: “Like an elephant in chains, he is hindered only
by the guts that are entangling his feet.”6 Still other poems
describe a post-victory ritual in which the conquerors build
a hearth of severed heads, then boil the remains of the vanquished dead. And there are poems like the one above
whose common theme is the prideful, bloody-minded mother of a slain warrior.
But the pu!am anthologies also include poems celebrating life, poems about hospitality, drunkenness, the joy
of fatherhood. So we see in this literature a society struggling with this universal human dilemma: how do we live
well and raise happy families in a world filled with peril?
And in these poems, no figure embodies the conflict between a desire for domestic tranquility and an ethic that
glorifies slaughter more than that of the king. Kings are
central to the pu!am poems. They are vital to the world they
rule. One poem says, “Rice is not the life of this world nor
is water the life! / The king is the life of this world!”7 A king
was expected to be brave and ferocious against the enemy,
but kind and magnanimous to his people.
George Hart has talked about the Tamil king as the
mediator of sacred power: the modern Tamil word for
temple, k%yil, is etymologically ‘place of the king’, and the
indigenous Tamil word for ‘god’, i!aivan (literally, ‘he who
is highest’) originally referred to the king.8 The king’s
ESSAYS | DAVID
5
power extended both to taking and giving life; his control
over the sacred depended on his ruling justly.9 Likewise, the
fertility of his land and the well-being of his people depended on his maintaining that connection to the sacred.
So these violent warrior kings are also praised as loving,
nurturing givers of life: the king is called the life-breath of
the kingdom;10 other poems liken him to the sun. And he is
explicitly compared to a mother: an adoring subject is
drawn to the powerful king “like a child that runs to suck his
mother’s flawless breast.”11 The two landscapes of his kingdom—martial and agrarian—often merge into one, as fields
of battle are likened to fields of harvest. The poems startle
with metaphors of soldiers tilling the earth with their spears
and piling up haystacks of corpses, or of an elephant’s head
rolling along the soil “like a plow.”12 Even the warrior with
enemy guts entangling his feet is compared in the next line
to a mother cow defending her calf, as he fights for his comrade.
The family is in some ways a mirror of the kingdom.
Like kings, women were also regarded as vessels of sacred
power, power that was no longer benevolent if they cast off
their chastity and domestic virtue within marriage, just as
royal sacred power was harmed by kingly vice.13 And just as
a virtuous king brought prosperity to his people, a virtuous
wife brought fortune and fertility to her family. Where a superior king is compared to the sun, a wife who has produced
a male child is said to “light up the house” like a lamp.14
The family appears most frequently in the akam poems,
which are love poems composed under the guidelines of an
intricate and highly structured rhetorical system. The poet
always speaks in the persona of one of the characters in a
generic love story: a young woman or her lover, her friend
or his friends; her mother or nurse; occasional passersby; or,
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
in the poems that take place after marriage, the husband’s
mistress. Each poem depicts one of five stages of love, as
well as certain moods, emotions, and situations that are
characteristic of those stages.
No one is ever named in the akam poems; the characters
are all types, abstractions of the sort of people commonly
caught up in any tale of young, romantic love. (Pu!am
poems always identify kings and eminent personages by
name; for that reason they are more useful for dating the
poems.) The hero and heroine are known simply as the
talaivan and talaivi, the ‘main man’ and ‘main woman’.
This anonymity emphasizes the universality of the events
and emotions depicted in the poems.
Each poem is a single soliloquy, spoken to one of the
other characters or sometimes to the world at large—never
to us. We, the audience, are always in the role of eavesdropper. The focus is usually on the woman’s experience of
love; the most frequent speakers are the heroine and her
girlfriend confidante. Common themes are her grief, anxiety, suffering, and most of all her helplessness in the absence
of her lover. The poems make it clear, however, that her
helplessness arises from societal constraints; hers is not an
emotional or physical helplessness. She has to stay put most
of the time: we see her confined by village gossip, parental
control, and later, motherhood.
Paradoxically, it is these akam poems that are most imbued with representations of the objects of the outer world.
Highly stylized rules associate the exterior landscape with
the interior landscape of human passion. Such associations
transform the different Tamilnad landscapes—desert and
seascape, wilderness and paddy, mountain and plains—into
an entire poetic language, where all the plants, animals, and
human beings not only connote, but often denote the emo-
ESSAYS | DAVID
7
tions and situations that engulf their two young lovers.
Here’s an example:
Ku!untokai 35615
A man who wears a hero’s anklet
keeps her safe as she hurries
through scant, dry lands
where the shade shrinks and dies.
At the bank of a scorched pool,
she sips at muddy, steaming water.
Where does she find the strength,
this girl, soft as a sprout,
with her tiny, curving bracelets?
She had refused even to touch milk,
mixed with fine puffed rice
in a bowl clad in blushing gold
that I’d held out for her,
saying that it was too much.
There are three important elements in this lyric vocabulary. The first is landscape, of which there are five types.
This poem’s landscape is p"lai, the wasteland, which conveys a theme of hardship and separation. The second key
element is the native constituents of that landscape: flora,
fauna, local people, and gods. These two elements—the
landscape and its denizens—constitute the setting and
evoke the third element, the mood or situation. So when a
love poem mentions stagnant water, midday heat, lizards,
cactus, or bandits, the experienced reader recognizes the
desert wasteland, and knows that the situation here is elopement—two young lovers are enduring danger and deprivation for the sake of being together.
The speaker is the young heroine’s mother or wetnurse.
There are several of these desert elopement poems in which
the mother reminisces about feeding milk to the daughter
now lost to her. Typically she contrasts the girl’s youth and
delicacy with the hardships she is surely suffering in the
�THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
8
barren waste where the couple has fled. In all five akam
settings, the mother of the young lovesick heroine worries
for her daughter’s safety, happiness, and reputation:
Ainku!un$!u 37916
United with the man
with the gleaming white spear,
is going through the forests
where herds of bull elephants roam
on dew-covered slopes
sweeter to her
than the pleasure
of a good marriage
in the company of her dearest friends,
I wonder?
The forests, elephants, and dew-covered slopes tell us
that this poem’s landscape is kurinji, the cool, wild hillcountry, the setting for premarital love and secret midnight
trysts. These kurinji poems, of course, tend to be the most
sexual of the poems, although the eroticism is implied
through proxies; for instance, her lover’s gleaming spear.
The roaming herds of bull elephants also suggest uncontrolled male lust; the mother is implying a contrast between
what her daughter has chosen and a “good marriage,”
approved by those who truly care for her. (Most comparisons
in Cankam poetry are by implication. Subtlety is the norm.)
In the pu!am poems, we see the mother of a young
warrior grumbling about her loss of control over him:
Pu!a#"n$!u 8617
You stand against the pillar
of my hut and ask:
Where is your son?
9
ESSAYS | DAVID
I don’t really know.
This womb was once
a lair
for that tiger.
You can see him now
only on battlefields.
But more often she has lost him utterly, in poems exhorting mothers to proper pride and joy at his brave death. The
message: it was her duty to produce him and her culminating duty to give him up to war. But these are highly sophisticated poems, and as the exterior and interior landscapes of human life speak to each other in them, there are
sometimes signs of ambivalence towards the desirability of
death on the battlefield.
Earlier I alluded to a pu!am poem that lists people’s duties—the mother bears sons, the father teaches them nobility, and so on—ending with the son’s duty to make war. That
poem is more complicated, however, than I suggested.
Whereas everyone else gets one duty and one line of verse,
the son’s battle-duties are several and take up two lines: the
mother enjoins him to wage war with his shining sword, kill
enemy elephants, and come back home, not seek death in the
field. In a similar vein, a mother defiantly rejoices at the safe
return of her son as she recounts the warriors’ ritual drink
before battle:
Pu!a#"n$!u 28618
Like white goats, the young men surrounded him
and a cup was passed above the heads of many
to my son and yet it did not lead to his
being laid out on a legless bed
and covered with a pure white cloth.
And in another poem, we see a mother beholding her
badly wounded son, who has been laid out on his shield. As
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10
he denies that he can feel the arrow in his flesh, she remembers his childish fear when she had once scolded him for not
drinking his milk. These lines directly recall the bereft
mother of the akam poems who compares her daughter’s
stoicism in the desert with her childish distaste for milk.
This allusion in the mouth of the mother bending over her
wounded son suggests that she is not proud, but grieving
and bewildered.
A marvelous intersection of interior and exterior landscapes occurs in the following pu!am poem about a slain
warrior’s garland:
Pu!a#"n$!u 27819
The chaste trees, dark-clustered,
blend with the land
that knows no dryness;
the colors on the leaves
mob the eyes.
We’ve seen those leaves on jeweled women,
on their mounds
of love.
Now the chaste wreath lies slashed
on the ground, so changed, so mixed
with blood, the vulture snatches it
with its beak,
thinking it raw meat.
We see this too
just because a young man
in love with war
wore it for glory.
So a warrior has been killed—killed so brutally that the
wreath he wore on his head looks to a vulture like bloody
flesh. This powerful poem uses the image of leaves in
several ways to blend akam and pu!am themes. First, the
poet invokes the landscape of akam poems by reminding us
that nocci leaves, used here as battle attire, also cover young
ESSAYS | DAVID
11
women’s sexual parts. Those leaf garments were believed to
protect chastity,20 and elsewhere in the poems, the image of
destroyed garlands and other plants can signify that a sexual
act has taken place.21 We have a similar metaphor in English: the blood on the leaves suggests here the deflowering
of a virgin, reminding us of the akam mother’s worries for
her daughter’s virtue. Further, the leaves of the nocci tree are
a common motif in akam poems, where the mother of the
lovesick heroine remembers her little girl in happier times,
playing by a nocci tree.
So again a pu!am poem about a wounded young warrior
invokes an akam poem about a nostalgic mother grieving for
her lovelorn daughter. This is how the Cankam poems speak
to one another. To an audience steeped in this imagery, the
mixing of akam and pu!am through the juxtaposition of a
bloody battle wreath with images of happy little girls and
chaste, bejeweled young maidens would be both obvious
and jarring.
All these poems gainsay the poems that glorify combat,
extol ferocious kings, and speak of inflicting sham warwounds on males who die in peacetime. Moreover, they
challenge the implicit injunctions on mothers to desire and
celebrate the death of their sons in battle.
With this in mind, let us look at one last poem:
Pu!a#"n$!u 29522
There, in the very middle
of battle-camps
that heaved like the seas,
pointing at the enemy
the tongues of lances,
new-forged and whetted,
urging soldiers forward
with himself at the head
in a skirmish of arrow and spear,
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
cleaving through
an oncoming wave of foes,
forcing a clearing,
he had fallen
in that space
between armies,
his body hacked in pieces:
when she saw him there
in all his greatness,
mother’s milk flowed again
in the withered breasts
of this mother
for her warrior son
who had no thought of retreat.
This poem is by Auvaiy!r, one of the two most famous
of the Cankam poets, and one of the few women among
them. Auvaiy!r also wrote the poem of the mother rejoicing
that her son has not come back on a cloth-covered bier, so
we have some idea where her sympathies lie. On the
surface, this poem seems yet another portrait of the proud
mother of a dead war hero. If we examine this joy more
closely, however, we will find that the poem suggests a different theme.
Let us look first at the prosody. This poem is full of the
sound of grief. Tamil poetry uses internal rhyme: in the transcription of the poem provided in the appendix, you can see
that the poet has a quadruple internal rhyme in lines four,
five, and six, and further, that the vowel sound in that
rhyme—/ai/—is frequent throughout the poem. (An unscientific sur-vey of a few nearby poems of similar length
shows that the sound /ai/ occurs about 30 percent more
often in this poem.) You can also see that its long-voweled
counterpart /!i/, a much rarer sound in Tamil, occurs three
times, and the long vowel /!/ seven times—also higher
counts in comparison with other poems. A common Tamil
ESSAYS | DAVID
13
interjection for grief and pain, still used today, is the word
aiy%, which contains /ai/. Even cross-linguistically, these
three sounds, /ai/, /!i/, and /!/ are onomatopoeic sounds of
wailing.23
Now let’s turn to the poem’s diction. The other poems
depicting proud mothers of dead sons all use the word
ci!uva# for ‘son’. Outside of those poems, this word is a
relatively uncommon locution for a ‘boy-child’; its literal
meaning is ‘little one (male)’. It is otherwise used sentimentally to refer to actual little boys. So the battle-death
poems are actually describing a mother’s joy at seeing her
“little one’s” body scattered all over the battlefield. Here
sentimentality has turned maudlin. Auvaiy!r has taken care
to avoid this tone by pointedly not using the word in her
poem. I say “pointedly” because first, everyone else uses it,
and second, because it would have been more metrically
suited to the line. Her choice of vi&alai ‘youth’ over ci!uva#
‘little boy’ means that the final syllable must be long by
position rather than by nature, because in Tamil prosody, /ai/
is considered short.
Let us look next at the imagery. The poem begins with
the word ‘sea’ (ka&al) and ends with the word ‘mother’ (t"y).
The oncoming armies are twice likened to the rising, heaving ocean, while the mother’s breasts are initially described
as v"&u ‘withered’—a word associated with the desert. But
then her breasts begin to spring or flow, and after that, to
gush or surge, like the wide, swelling, deep sea. The word
used to describe her son’s body, citai ‘scattered’, refers elsewhere in the poems to sand on a beach. So the mother starts
out like a desert and then, as the poem culminates, she
becomes like the ocean, which reclaims scattered sand as it
surges forth.
Linking an ordinary human being with vast and
powerful landscapes such as the desert and the sea is almost
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
unheard of in the language of these poems. People are
frequently compared to things in the landscape, especially
animals: young men are often likened to tigers or elephants,
young women to does, flowers, or ripe fruit. But integral
parts of the landscape are reserved for the king, who is
compared, for example, to the sun. We are reminded again
that both the king and the virtuous mother are vessels of
sacred power. Her flowing milk is a further reminder of this,
because mother’s milk has sacred powers; indeed, husbands
are portrayed as fearful of being touched by it.
So this breastfeeding imagery itself, rather than conveying the standard image of a joyful, patriotic mother, supports
an interpretation of this poem as iconoclastic. For if the conventional reading is the only one, then this female poet is
taking liberties with the biology of maternal love. The old
mother’s breasts spurting forth milk at the sight of her dead
son portrays the let-down reflex that all nursing mothers
know. It is triggered inexorably in mothers by their baby’s
cry, and powerful sense-memories of it linger years after
weaning. The image is first of all an allusion to other
Cankam portraits of grieving mothers nostalgic for the longgone days of milk-fed little ones. This mother is neither
pleased nor proud her son has died. Furthermore, any mother knows that the maternal let-down reflex is not accompanied by joy or pride, but by anxiety for the baby, together
with an intense desire to soothe the infant, and to banish its
hunger, sadness, fear, or pain. As her grief cries out in the
sounds of the poem, this mother’s despair amplifies her
sacred powers in response to a futile wish to succor her lost
son.
The raging mother of our first poem is certainly not a
weak or passive figure as she echoes her son’s war deeds,
rampaging through corpses on the battlefield, sword in hand.
But in her violent mania and ultimate joy, she is complying
ESSAYS | DAVID
15
with society’s expectations. In contrast, all the authorial
choices of this last poem—weaving the sounds of grief
throughout the verse, rejecting histrionic clichés, attributing
uncharacteristic primal powers to the mother—suggest that
it is a subversive rejoinder to Pu!an"#$!u 278 and the other
poems that share its bellicose theme. While a sanguinary
attitude towards maternal loss prevails in the pu!am genre,
the mother’s anguished voice in this poem and a handful of
others offers a compelling counterweight to the glorification
of war those poems celebrate.
�THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
16
ESSAYS | DAVID
17
NOTES
APPENDIX: TRANSCRIPTION OF Pu!a"#n$!u 295
1
Translation in Ramanujan 1985, 182.
Pronounced sung-gum. Sometimes transliterated as Sangam.
3
Dr. Stephanie Nelson, private communication.
4
Selby 2000, 101.
5
Pura 312.
6
Pura 275; Hart’s translation in Hart and Heifetz 1999.
7
Pura 186; Hart’s translation in Hart and Heifetz 1999.
8
Hart 1975, 13.
9
Hart 1975, 15.
10
Pura 186.
11
Pura 379, Hart’s translation in Hart and Heifetz 1999.
12
Hart 1975, 32; Hart and Heifetz 1999, xix; Pura 19, 342.
13
Hart 1975, 93ff.
2
ka"al
SEA
ki#ar-nt-a$$a
vent-u
BE.HOT-CVB
t("u
CROWD
ka""%r
v!y
EDGE
ukai-ttu
DRIVE-CVB
varu-pa"ai
COME-ARMY
i"ai.p-pa"ai
MIDDLE-ARMY
n!ppa&
MILITARY CAMP
RISE-PTCP-LIKE
MIDDLE
va"i-tt-a
v'l
SHARPEN-PST-PTCP
e)u
RISE
tar-%u
GIVE-CVB
p()n-tu
PASS.THROUGH-CVB
a)uva-ttu
DEEP.SEA-OBL
ci*appu"ai.y-!#an
SUPERIORITY-POSSESSOR
talaippeyar-i
SPEAR APPROACH-CVB
tura-ntu
DRIVE-CVB
e*-i
SHOOT-CVB
v!yppa"-a
FIND.A.WAY-INF
citai-ntu
BE.SCATTERED-CVB
m!&pu
GLORY
ka&-"u
SEE-CVB
DESTROY-CVB
v'*!k-iya
BE.SEPARATED-PTCP
aru#-i
REJOICE-CVB
mulai
%*-i
BREAST
FLOW-CVB
cura-nt-a$a
WITHERED
oo"-!
p%"kai
vi"alai
t!y-kk-'.
STRENGTH
YOUTH
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
3PL:
CVB:
DAT:
EMPH:
INF:
OBL:
NEG:
PST:
PTCP:
third person plural
converb
dative
emphatic
infinitive
oblique
negative
past tense
participle
BATTLE
vila+k-i
v!"u
FLEE-NEG
ñ!"pi$
GUSH-PST-3PL
MOTHER-DAT-EMPH
14
15
Pu!a 314; Aink 405.
Translation in Selby 2000, 194-5.
16
Translation in Selby 2000, 193.
17
Translation in Ramanujan 1985, 184.
18
Translation in Hart and Heifetz 1999, 168.
19
Translation in Ramanujan 1985, 186.
20
Hart 1975, 93.
21
Hart 1975, 172.
22
Translation in Ramanujan 1985, 183.
23
These three sounds are highlighted by red type in the transcription
of the poem.
REFERENCES
Hart, George. (1975). The Poems of Ancient Tamil: Their Milieu and
their Sanskrit Counterparts. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Hart, George and Heifetz, Hank. (1999). The Four Hundred Songs of
War and Wisdom. (Translation) New York: Columbia University
Press.
Ku!untokai. (1983). A classical poetry anthology edited with
commentary by U.Ve. C!minataiar. A&&!malainakar: A&&!malai-pPalkalai-k-Kalakam. [In Tamil].
Lehmann, Thomas. (1994). Grammatik des Alttamil. Stuttgart: Franz
Steiner Verlag.
�18
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Lehmann, Thomas and Thomas Malten. (1992). A Word Index of Old
Tamil Ca(kam Literature. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.
Mahadevan, Iravatham. (2003). Early Tamil Epigraphy: From the Earliest Times to the Sixth Century A.D. (= Harvard Oriental Series 62)
Chennai: Cre-A and Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University.
Pu!a#"n$!u, Vol. I (1962) and Vol. II (1964). A classical poetry
anthology edited with commentary by Auvai Cu. Turaic!mi-p Pillai.
Fourth ed. Chennai: South India Saiva Siddhanta Works Publishing
Society.
Rajam, V.S. (1992). A Reference Grammar of Classical Tamil Poetry.
Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society.
Ramanujan, A.K. (1985). Poems of Love and War: From the Eight
Anthologies and the Ten Long Poems of Classical Tamil [translation
with commentary]. New York: Columbia University Press.
Selby, Martha Ann. (2000). Grow Long Blessed Night: Love Poems from
Classical India. (Translation) New York: Oxford University Press.
Selby, Martha Ann. (2003). Circle of Six Seasons: A Selection from Old
Tamil, Prakrit and Sanskrit Poetry. (Translation) India: Penguin.
Shanmugam Pillai, M. and David E. Ludden. (1976). Ku!untokai: An
Anthology of Classical Tamil Love Poetry. (Translation) Madurai:
Koodal Publishers.
Tamil Lexicon. (1982). Madras: University of Madras. 6 vols.
Zvelebil, Kamil. (1973). The Smile of Murugan on Tamil Literature of
South India. Leiden: Brill.
ESSAYS
19
THE TOCQUEVILLEAN
MOMENT
Wilfred McClay
I am delighted and honored to be back at St. John’s again,
and to have the privilege of addressing this community of
which I feel so enduringly a part, a community built around
a great shared enterprise: the serious reading and re-reading
of old books. Returning to the College is always a pleasure
because it is a return to my intellectual and moral roots, and
to the themes that have preoccupied me ever since I graduated. Few things are more renewing, more rejuvenating.
I find that the word “rejuvenating” is particularly apropos, provided that you understand what I mean by it. I am
not using it as one does when talking about taking a pleasant stroll down memory lane, waxing sentimental about the
past. I am using it in its original etymological sense of
“being made young again.” Returning to the College can be
rejuvenating in that sense because of something that you
tend not to realize when you are a student here (although you
might catch a glimpse of it), but that becomes much clearer
with the passage of time. As you get older, you come to see
that the deep appeal of old books is not only that they are
wiser than us, but also that they are younger than us. Let me
explain this seeming paradox. The word “archaic” is generally used as a pejorative meaning “out-of-date” or “obsolete.” But as every Johnnie knows, the word comes from the
Greek arch', which refers not only to the antiquity of things
A lecture delivered at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland on 12 November
2010. Mr. McClay is an alumnus of St. John’s and Professor of History at the
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where he holds the SunTrust Bank Chair of
Excellence in the Humanities.
�20
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
but also to their foundational character. An arch' is a deep
spring from which all else emanates. The truest form of
“archeology” would not be merely a search for what is older,
but a search for what is primary, for what is closest to the
origins, for what undergirds and sustains us, even if sometimes it is buried or otherwise hidden from our sight.
Hence at St. John’s “the shock of the new” has never
been the specialty of the house. After all, the shock of the
new can be had any hour of the day, and indeed can hardly
even be avoided in today’s world. In fact, expressing one’s
admiration for the shock of the new has become so routine
that it has acquired the aspect of a solemn bourgeois obligation. I have even read letters of recommendation from staid
dissertation advisors who praise their doctoral students for
having written “highly transgressive” doctoral dissertations.
I am not sure what that means. But I am confident that it is
not really very shocking. Instead, what you seek and savor
here at St. John’s is the shock of the old, that electric and
uncanny sense of communion, across space and time, with
countless others who have shared our human condition. And
that can be very shocking indeed, because it is so often a
strange and unpredictable encounter, an interplay between
what is familiar and what is unfamiliar.
Let me give an example of what I mean. In the 1930s,
journalist Rebecca West and her husband described their encounter with remote Yugoslav tribesmen who still sang and
recited oral epics in the Homeric fashion. These bards recounted actions that “must have been made a million million
million times since the world began,” but in each new telling
seemed “absolutely fresh.” Thus, when one reads in the Iliad
of a man drawing a bow or raising a sword, “it is,” West
wrote, “as if the dew of the world’s morning lay undisturbed
on what he did.”1 An “archaic” book, such as the ones upon
ESSAYS | McCLAY
21
which you lavish your attention here, draws its abundant life
from its greater closeness to the origins of things.
I deviated somewhat from the true path by becoming a
historian—but not really very much. I never aspired to be a
prodigal son. Indeed, from the very beginning I appreciated
the fact that my tutelage at St. John’s would keep me safe
from the worst temptation of my field, which is to reduce
ideas, writers, and artists—and more or less everything else
worthwhile—to being nothing more than a product of their
context. In that sense, I remember a moment in my
graduate-school days at Johns Hopkins in which it became
clear to me that I would always be different from my
historian peers in firmly rejecting such reductionism. It was
a seminar on a paper dealing with the art and life of El
Greco, and I was stopped short by a casual, slightly apologetic comment from the distinguished paper giver: “Of
course, the point of studying El Greco so closely is for the
insight it affords into the Toledo in which he lived.” I realized in a flash that, of course, he was entirely wrong. In fact,
he had it precisely backwards. So far as I was concerned, the
point of studying Toledo was the insight it gave one into the
life, and ultimately the work, of El Greco. Having come so
firmly to that conviction, I have stuck to it ever since. And
the firmness of that conviction is something I almost certainly owe to St. John’s. The study of history, for me, should
always strive not to reduce ideas but to dramatize them, to
put them up on the stage of life and put them into motion, to
make vivid the ways that certain extraordinary individuals
have wrestled with the conditions of their existence and
have attempted to order them and make sense of them—
with a view to how we might do the same.
I have tried to follow that pattern in these remarks on the
great French writer Alexis de Tocqueville. His work can
certainly be read profitably without very much reference to
�THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
22
the particulars of his life. But the work takes on even greater
importance, I believe, when understood dramatically, as an
instance of precisely the sort of wrestling that I have just
described. My title, “The Tocquevellean Moment,” refers to
a moment that he both described and experienced. It is the
moment of profound social transition, in which entire ways
of life are in the process of being transformed inexorably,
but in which also the precise manner, character, and extent
of the transformation are yet to be determined. In what
follows, therefore, it will be both useful and valuable for me
to mingle historical and biographical elements with my
discussion of Tocqueville’s ideas.2
*****
Tocqueville (1805-1859) was one of the most eminent
European social and political thinkers of the nineteenth
century, and is still regarded today as an incomparable
analyst of the prospects and pitfalls of modern democracy.
He was the child of an aristocratic French family, some of
whose members had suffered death or devastation as a result
of the French Revolution. Consequently, he was haunted all
his life by the fear of revolutionary anarchy, and by the
specter of ideological tyranny that such a sweeping social
revolution leaves in its wake. But such fears never led him
to advocate the wholesale restoration of the pre-revolutionary French social order. He was an aristocrat at heart, but he
was never a reactionary. Instead, those fears led him to look
closely at the change that was coming, in hope of finding a
way to direct it toward a more felicitous end.
A concern with the characteristics of modern democracy
is the guiding preoccupation of his Democracy in America
(1835-40), the work for which he is best known among
American readers.3 It was, of course, the product of a visit.
ESSAYS | McCLAY
23
Tocqueville was only twenty-six years old when, accompanied by his friend and sidekick Gustave de Beaumont, he
came to America in 1831.4 He was ostensibly being sent
here on official business for the French government, to study
the American prison system. But that was a ruse and a
pretext. In reality, he came to America intent upon “examining, in detail and as scientifically as possible, all the mechanisms of the vast American society which everyone talks of
and no one knows.”5 Tocqueville was extraordinary in the
extent of his ambitions, as in everything else, and it is clear
that he always intended to write a large and groundbreaking
book about America, which he hoped would make his reputation and launch a successful political career.
After touring the country for nine months, he returned
home with a bushel of notes and a head full of ideas. The resulting book, Democracy in America, which would be published in two successive volumes in 1835 and 1840, turned
out to be perhaps the richest and most enduring study of
American society and culture ever written. If one were permitted to read only one book on the subject, Democracy in
America would almost certainly be one’s best choice, even
more than a century and a half after its initial publication.
In this book, Tocqueville envisioned the United States as
a nation moving in the vanguard of history, a young and vigorous country endowed with an extraordinary degree of
social equality among its inhabitants, and without any feudal or aristocratic background to overcome. In America, he
believed, one could see embodied, in exemplary or heightened form, the condition toward which all the rest of the
world, including France, was tending. In America, which
was the only example the world then afforded of a large republic, one could gaze upon “the image of democracy itself,
of its penchants, its character, its prejudices, its passions.”
And having so gazed, one could perhaps take away lessons
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that would allow leaders to deal more intelligently and
effectively with the democratic changes coming to Europe.6
He was firmly convinced that the movement toward
greater social equality represented an inescapable feature of
the modern age, a hard fact to which all future social or
political analysis must accommodate itself. There would be
no going back. Indeed, one could say that the one great idea
in Tocqueville’s writing was this huge sprawling historical
spectacle, the gradual but inexorable leveling of human
society on a universal scale, a movement that he identified
with the will of God, so pervasive and so unstoppable did it
seem to be. Even those who try to impede it or reverse it end
up contributing to it all the more. Listen to his description:
Everywhere the various incidents in the lives of peoples
are seen to turn to the profit of democracy; all men have
aided it by their efforts: those who had in view cooperating for its success and those who did not dream of
serving it; those who fought for it and even those who
declared themselves its enemies; all have been driven
pell-mell on the same track, and all have worked in
common, some despite themselves, others without
knowing it, as blind instruments in the hand of God.
The gradual development of equality of conditions
is therefore a providential fact, and it has the principal
characteristics of one: it is universal, it is enduring,
each day it escapes human power; all events, like all
men, serve its development.7
The entire book, he confessed, was written “under the
pressure of a sort of religious terror in the author’s soul,
produced by the sight of this irresistible revolution. . . . To
wish to stop democracy would then appear to be to struggle
against God himself.”8
*****
ESSAYS | McCLAY
25
Aristocracy’s day was done, then, however lamentable that
fact might seem to those who shared Tocqueville’s background. He accepted equality as a modern condition, even if
he never warmly embraced it. For although Tocqueville was
a keen analyst of democracy’s unlovely or dangerous features, he insisted that the most effective response to them
was not sullen withdrawal, but the development of a “new
political science,” designed not to reverse democracy’s progress, for that would be futile, but instead to refine democracy’s crudities and counter its pathologies.9
The book, then, was no mere work of travel literature,
and in fact, the narrative elements of the book are probably
its least interesting parts. Instead, Tocqueville was sketching
out a philosophical framework for the understanding of democracy, and for that reason, arguably deserves to be considered alongside such political philosophers and theorists
as Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Marx. It would be a stretch, I
believe, to call him a philosopher himself, since he was
neither systematic nor comprehensive, and left largely
unexamined many of the traditional objects of philosophical
inquiry. In fact, the book’s relatively casual style of organization is part of its appeal for many present-day readers; you
can pick it up almost anywhere, and profitably read a short
chapter in complete isolation from the book as a whole.
But one should not be misled by that casualness.
Tocqueville was interested in far more than the relatively
narrow subject of American democracy in its political
forms. He argued that a democratic regime would manifest
its effects in every facet of human life: not merely in procedural and institutional ways, but also in family life, in literature, in philosophy, in manners, in language, in marriage, in
mores, in male-female relations, in ambition, in friendship,
in love, and in attitudes toward war and peace. It was not
just the outward forms of democracy that concerned him. He
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was an especially acute analyst of democracy’s innermost
effects, finely attuned to the ways in which a society’s political arrangements are not matters that merely skate on the
surface of life, but are in fact influences that reach deep
down into the very souls of its inhabitants.
He accomplished this analysis, mostly in the book’s
second volume, by contrasting the different forms assumed
by each of these phenomena in aristocratic societies and in
democratic societies. Those two terms, “aristocratic” and
“democratic,” represented for him what are sometimes
called “ideal types” because, although they are generalizing
abstractions that rarely occur in anything approaching their
pure state, their sharpness and coherence make them highly
effective as analytical tools.
For Tocqueville, an aristocratic society was one governed by a small, privileged class, a society that insisted on
the necessity of social hierarchy grounded in the authority of
tradition; a society in which one’s status was ascriptive,
assigned at birth, retained for life, and bound up in the identity and place of one’s family; a society in which families are
permanent fixtures in the social firmament; a society in
which there was a permanent diversity of types and classes
of persons.
In the ideal democratic society, however, matters are
quite different. There one finds a general “spirit” of equality;
the people are sovereign and the right to vote is widely extended; hierarchies are disestablished and any legal status or
privilege extended to the well-born few is abolished; rights
are universal, or tending toward universality, as is literacy
and access to education; families are comparatively weak
and mutable, even ephemeral; there is a constant pressure
toward the dispersion of inherited wealth, aided by laws that
break up large estates and large fortunes; and there is a
resulting tendency toward social and economic leveling,
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ESSAYS | McCLAY
together with a fading of class distinctions—all leading to
universal sameness and homogeneity.
Although the two volumes of the Democracy differed in
significant ways, taken together they presented a coherent
and memorable image of a distinctively democratic American social and individual character. Tocqueville’s America
was a strikingly middle-class society: feverishly commercial
and acquisitive, obsessively practical-minded, jealously
egalitarian, and restlessly mobile—a constant beehive of
activity. Tocqueville saw many things to admire in this
energetic, bumptious democracy, but also much to fear.
Chief among the dangers was its pronounced tendency
toward individualism. Tocqueville saw in America the peril
that citizens might elect to withdraw from involvement in
the larger public life, and regard themselves as autonomous
and isolated actors, with no higher goal than the pursuit of
their own material well-being. He acknowledged that in a
modern commercial democracy, this was a particularly
strong possibility, since self-interest would inevitably come
to be accepted as the chief engine of all human striving. But
where then would the generous and selfless civic virtues
needed for sustaining a decent society come from? How
could the individualistic Americans of the 1830s prevent
self-interest from overwhelming all considerations of the
public good, and undermining the sources of social cohesion?
*****
Before trying to answer that question, it will be helpful to
flesh out more fully Tocqueville’s understanding of individualism. It differed in subtle ways from what generally goes
by that name. It was closer to what today might be called
privatism, a complete withdrawal from public life and
society at large in favor of almost exclusive involvement
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with a small personal circle of family and friends. As such,
it was quite distinct from the age-old vice of egoism or
selfishness. It was not merely a prevalent emotion or
passion, but a settled, more or less consciously held attitude
in the moral outlook of Americans.
In aristocratic societies, things were different. Families
remained in place for centuries. Every man remembered his
ancestors and anticipated his descendants, and strove to do
his duty to both. Paternal authority was formidable. And yet
such families were not private enclaves set apart from a
larger public world, but crucial and visible elements in the
makeup of society as a whole. The different classes of
society were distinct and immobile, and citizens occupied a
fixed position in the social pecking order, with tight bonds
to those in their same social niche. So enmeshed was the
individual person in this comprehensive social order that it
was literally nonsensical to imagine him or her apart from
it—as implausible as swimming in the air, or breathing
beneath the waves.
In democratic societies, however, where the principle of
equality dictated a more generalized and fluid sense of
connection, such duties and fixities were lost. Tocqueville
describes this new condition hauntingly in one of the most
unforgettable passages in the Democracy, conjuring the
specter of an individualism carried to its barren logical limit:
In democratic peoples, new families constantly issue
from nothing, others constantly fall into it, and all those
who stay on change face; the fabric of time is torn at
every moment and the trace of generations is effaced.
You easily forget those who have preceded you, and
you have no idea of those who will follow you. Only
those nearest have interest. . . . Aristocracy had made of
all citizens a long chain that went from the peasant up
to the king; democracy breaks the chain and sets each
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ESSAYS | McCLAY
link apart. . . . As conditions are equalized, one finds a
great number of individuals who . . . owe nothing to
anyone, they expect so to speak nothing from anyone,
they are in the habit of always considering themselves
in isolation, and they willingly fancy that their whole
destiny is in their hand.
Thus not only does democracy make each man
forget his ancestors, but it hides his descendants from
him and separates him from his contemporaries; it
constantly leads him back toward himself alone and
threatens finally to confine him wholly in the solitude
of his own heart.10
One should add, too, that the prospect of this atomized
condition, in which families, neighborhoods, communities,
and all other forms of intermediate human association are
rendered weak and listless, leads Tocqueville to express, at
the book’s conclusion, a fear of democratic despotism, an
all-embracing “soft” tyranny which relies upon dissolving
the bonds among its members, and their consequent inability to act together as citizens, to smooth the way toward
a massive bureaucratic state that would rule over every feature of their lives.11
*****
So we return to the question that we left dangling a moment
ago. How does a democratic society, in which all the formerly reliable defenses against anarchy and anomie have
been lost or removed, still find a way to order itself, and
produce the kind of virtuous behavior and commitment to
the common good that is required for it to be cohesive,
successful, and free? Or to phrase the question in a slightly
different way: Can a society in the grip of a massive and
inexorable change nevertheless find ways to import into the
new order some of those things that were most estimable in
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the old, while leaving behind the elements that were either
pernicious or inadequate? Does great historical change require that the slate be wiped entirely clean? Or is there a way
that the best of the past can be carried over into the present
and future?
This is, it seems to me, a question of the first importance
to those of us who believe so fervently in the importance of
reading old books. And it is also a question that provides the
optimal opportunity to explain more fully what I mean by
“the Tocquevillean moment.” It is the moment when an old
order becomes conscious of the imperative to give way to a
new one—and the particular dilemma that this change
presents to thoughtful individuals, like Tocqueville, who
seem destined to ride the crest of a monumental transformation knowing full well both what is passing and what is
to come. The Tocquevillean moment makes two contradictory demands: first, that it is essential to accept the inevitability of sweeping changes, however difficult that acceptance may be; and second, that it is equally essential to find
ways of incorporating into the emerging new order that
which was wisest and best in the passing order, no matter
how much the new order may resist.
This way of looking at things makes several important
assumptions. It assumes the fact of contingency, and the
possibility of free and meaningful choices. Tocqueville was
emphatically opposed to any and all forms of determinism,
partly because they sapped the will and extinguished the
spirit of liberty, and partly because they simply failed the test
of truth. All is not foreordained, and there are clearly better
and worse ways of managing the transition to democracy.
The outcome depends upon the ways in which change is
directed, and that in turn depends upon the prudential
judgment of wise and skilled leaders.
ESSAYS | McCLAY
31
Let me make what I am saying clearer by offering another example of what I am calling “the Tocquevillean
moment” taken from outside Tocqueville’s work and his
immediate context. A similar moment of profound political
and social transition is described with great vividness in
Giuseppe di Lampedusa’s great novel The Leopard.12 The
book relates the story of a proud Sicilian prince, Don Fabrizio, who is thoroughly steeped in a venerable and traditional
social order at whose apex he stands, but who must nevertheless find a dignified way to accept and yield to the winds
of change. When the Risorgimento, the movement for
Italian national unification, intrudes upon his island world,
he is surprised to discover that his well-born, talented, and
ambitious young nephew Tancredi has decided to sign on
with the revolutionaries, who have set their sights on the
overthrow of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and its replacement by the Kingdom of Italy. Why, the Prince wonders, would a young nobleman like Tancredi desert his king
and stoop to make common cause with a ruffian like Garibaldi and his mob of redshirts?
But Tancredi is moved by more than a young man’s hotblooded desire to be in on the Big Event. He also has a persuasive explanation for his choice. Change was inevitable.
But without the participation of the older elite classes, the
nationalist movement could well be taken over or supplanted by something immensely more destructive, a radical
republicanism that would sweep away every vestige of the
life that the Prince had known. “If we want things to stay as
they are,” said Tancredi, “things will have to change. D’you
understand?”13
And yes, the Prince did come to understand, and the
book is about his gradual and methodical accommodation to
the new order, albeit one laced with intense melancholy and
regret, and occasional doses of cynicism. That process of
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accommodation culminates in his embrace of a marriage
between Tancredi and the beautiful daughter of Don
Calogero, a man of lowly birth, who had made himself into
a wealthy landowner and influential businessman, and who
was a strong supporter of the nationalists. Don Calogero
perfectly embodies the emerging democratic order in all its
callowness and vulgarity. The very idea of linking his family
to Don Calogero’s was a change that the Prince’s ancestors
would never willingly have contemplated, and it was certainly a change that the proud Prince would rather not have
had to make. But he recognized that there was much good
that could be salvaged in some areas, if only he were willing
to make a strategic retreat in others. Such a union would
allow him to retain his social authority and the prestige of
his house, and along with it the commitment to refinement
and culture that were the distinguishing mark of his class,
since Don Calogero and his offspring would now have an
equal stake in the perpetuation of these things. Some things
changed, precisely so that other things could stay the same.
This story neatly encapsulates what is meant by “the
Tocquevillean moment.” It involves discerning those cases
in which change is inevitable and accepting that inevitability, while also recognizing the possibility of carrying over
what is essential or desirable—just as Aeneas fled from his
ravaged Troy with his household gods and with his father
Anchises on his shoulders, carrying the most precious relics
of the past with him as he struggled toward the founding of
something new and unprecedented.14 It involves recognizing that the change can occur in many ways and understanding that, within certain limits, many things are possible.
There is no one way for history to flow. So much is contingent and uncertain. So much is up to us.
ESSAYS | McCLAY
33
Many of Tocqueville’s contemporary readers failed to
see this aspect of his work. In particular, the reception of the
second volume of the Democracy was a tremendous disappointment to Tocqueville. Reviewer after reviewer criticized
the book, or praised it only blandly. Evidently its ambitiousness, its scope, and its abstractness put them off. Only John
Stuart Mill, whom Tocqueville had come to know during a
visit to England, seemed to grasp the book’s intentions. His
long and careful review of the book brought forth a grateful
letter from Tocqueville, one that showed how deeply the
book’s poor reception had stung and frustrated him.15
Another letter Tocqueville wrote to an uncomprehending
French reviewer is worth quoting at length, because it offers
a remarkably clear explication of Tocqueville’s goals and
beliefs, and tells us much about the dilemmas that an intelligent and high-minded political Frenchman faced in his time.
We do not know for certain whether this letter was ever received, or even sent. But it is as clear a statement as Tocqueville ever provided of precisely what he was up to with the
Democracy:
I cannot help expressing to you the painful impression
[your review] has made on me. It does not do justice to
the most important point, the principal idea, the
governing thought of the work. . . .
I had become aware that, in our time, the new social
state that had produced and is still producing very great
benefits was, however, giving birth to a number of quite
dangerous tendencies. These seeds, if left to grow
unchecked, would produce, it seemed to me, a steady
lowering of the intellectual level of society with no
conceivable limit, and this would bring in its train the
mores of materialism and, finally, universal slavery. I
thought I saw that mankind was moving in this direction, and I viewed the prospect with terror. It was essen-
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tial, I thought, for all men of good will to join in
exerting the strongest possible pressure in the opposite
direction. To my knowledge, few of the friends of the
Revolution of 1789 dared point out these very frightening tendencies. . . . Those who saw them and were not
afraid to speak of them, being the sort of men who
condemned in one fell swoop the entire democratic
social state and all its elements, were more likely to
irritate people than guide them. The intellectual world
was thus divided into blind friends and furious
detractors of democracy.
My aim in writing [my] book was to point out these
dreadful downward paths opening under the feet of our
contemporaries, not to prove that they must be thrown
back into an aristocratic state of society . . . but to make
these tendencies feared by painting them in vivid
colors, and thus to secure the effort of mind and will
which alone can combat them—to teach democracy to
know itself, and thereby to direct itself and contain
itself.16
It would be hard to imagine a fuller expression of what
I am calling the Tocquevillean moment, the moment when
social change arrives at a crossroads, and awaits further
direction. Two things are particularly worth noting. First,
Tocqueville’s words make clear how uncomfortable he felt
having to choose between the hard-right monarchism of his
aristocratic friends and the hard-left republicanism of his
democratic ones; neither of these options, he believed,
offered hope for the preservation of liberty—and the preservation of liberty was, for Tocqueville, the highest and most
fundamental of political goods. Second, the letter gives the
lie to those critics who attribute to Tocqueville a fatalistic
view of democracy as inevitable decline, a view reflective of
his ingrained elitism. It simply wasn’t so. For one thing,
Tocqueville had the asceticism that most great thinkers
ESSAYS | McCLAY
35
share, the ability to think against his own sentiments in the
pursuit of the truth. But more importantly, he always wrote
with the idea of contingency, and of the freedom of man’s
will, firmly in mind. The Tocquevillean moment is a
moment of decision—a decision conditioned and structured
and hedged about by large social changes, but a consequential decision nonetheless. In this respect, Tocqueville’s
view was dramatically different from that of his younger
contemporary Marx, for whom the relationship between
large structures and individual action was hopelessly
muddled. Tocqueville was an ardent foe of any and all determinisms, and he would never have countenanced the view
that his writings discredited democracy in toto.
Indeed, a fundamentally Christian view of man’s freedom was at the heart of Tocqueville’s vision. As he wrote at
the very end of the second volume of the Democracy:
I am not unaware that several of my contemporaries
have thought that peoples are never masters of themselves here below, and that they necessarily obey I do
not know which insurmountable and unintelligent force
born of previous events, the race, the soil, or the
climate.
Those are false and cowardly doctrines that can
never produce any but weak men and pusillanimous
nations. Providence has not created mankind entirely
independent or perfectly slave. It traces, it is true, a
fatal circle around each man that he cannot leave; but
within its vast limits man is powerful and free; so too
with peoples.
Nations of our day cannot have it that conditions
within them are not equal; but it depends on them
whether equality leads them to servitude or freedom, to
enlightenment or barbarism, to prosperity or misery.17
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36
The Tocquevillean moment calls forth all the capacities
we possess for coming to terms, not only as individuals but
also as citizens and societies, with that fatal circle.
*****
Now we can give a fuller answer to our long-dangling
question: How did Tocqueville believe that the Americans of
his day had managed to counter the dangerous aspects of
democracy and create a relatively free and vibrant society?
He identified a number of factors. First, he gave credit to the
pervasive influence of religion in American life, noting to
his astonishment the numerous ways in which American
religion supported democratic values and free institutions.
Such a development seemed particularly surprising, coming
as it did at the very time when educated Europeans were
abandoning religious faith and practice, in the mistaken
belief that the “spirit of liberty” was incompatible with the
authoritarian “spirit of religion.” Tocqueville’s visit to
America convinced him that the opposite was true. In
America, religious beliefs and institutions restrained selfassertion in ways that made the exercise of freedom more
stable and more effective. Although religion took no direct
or official role in governance, it was, he declared, “the first
of [Americans’] political institutions,” for all Americans
regarded it as indispensable to the maintenance of republican government.18
Tocqueville was always deeply concerned about materialism, connecting acquisitive materialism—the unrestrained
desire to possess more and more things—with philosophical
materialism—the belief that the soul is perishable and only
matter truly exists. As a social philosopher committed both
to the power of free will and to the ideal of self-rule,
Tocqueville found the deterministic implications of philosophical materialism intolerable, and condemned it force-
ESSAYS | McCLAY
37
fully as a “dangerous malady of the human mind.”19 Fortunately, he believed, the Americans had so far proven
resistant to its temptations. But without the countervailing
force of religion, and in particular, without a belief in the
moral responsibility of an immortal soul, democratic institutions could easily be overwhelmed by their own tendency
to beget an uncontrolled passion for physical gratifications.
And there were other factors that he believed countervailed against democracy’s dangers. Tocqueville applauded
Americans for their talent in forming voluntary associations,
and for their federal institutions, both of which tended to
disperse pow er and encourage the involvement of citizens
in the activity of governing themselves—and both very
much in contrast to the centralizing tendencies of French
politics. “Local freedoms,” he wrote, “which make many
citizens put value on the affection of their neighbors and
those close to them, therefore constantly bring men closer to
one another, despite the instincts that separate them, and
force them to aid each other.”20
As this description implies, such a scheme did not depend upon selflessness. Indeed, the axiomatic principle that
made effective political and social association in America
possible, he believed, was the principle of self-interest rightly understood or well understood (l’intérêt bien entendu). To
ask an American to do virtuous things for virtue’s sake was
quite possibly to waste one’s breath. But the same request
would readily be granted if the prospect of some personal
benefit could be shown to flow from it. The challenge of
moral philosophy in such an environment, then, was demonstrating repeatedly the ways in which “private interest and
public interest meet and amalgamate,” and how one’s
devotion to the general good would therefore also promote
his or her personal advantage. Belief in that conjunction—
belief that one could do well by doing good—was exactly
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what Tocqueville meant by the “right understanding” of
self-interest.21
The prevalence of this belief could be seen in the characteristic forms of moral discourse Tocqueville encountered in
America. In the United States, he wrote, “it is almost never
said that virtue is beautiful. They maintain that it is useful
and they prove it every day.” They do not care about virtue
for its own sake, but are completely convinced that it is in
the interest of every man to be virtuous.22
Tocqueville was quite willing to accept this deal in much
the same spirit that the Prince accepted Don Calogero. After
all, the Tocquevillean moment involves making a calculation, whereby the transition into the new democratic order
could be effected with the least possible loss of what was
precious and estimable in the old ways. “I shall not fear to
say that the doctrine of self-interest well understood seems
to me of all philosophic theories the most appropriate to the
needs of the men in our time,” because self-interest was
destined to “become more than ever the principal if not the
unique motive of men’s actions.”23
Hence, it was imperative to educate citizens to understand this. “Enlighten them, therefore,” wrote Tocqueville,
“at any price; for the century of blind devotions and instinctive virtues is already fleeing far from us, and I see the time
approaching when freedom, public peace, and social order
itself will not be able to do without enlightenment.”24
Lamentable as the loss of these older virtues seemed to be,
their loss was not the end of the story for Tocqueville. The
American example made him hopeful that there might be
ways for the principle of self-interest to be so channeled,
hedged about, habituated, and clothed as to produce public
order and public good, even in the absence of older and
more venerable motives.
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*****
“Enlighten them, therefore, at any price.” Éclairez-les donc
à tout prix. Or, as the older Phillips Bradley translation
expressed it, “Educate them, then.” This exhortation brings
us full circle, back to where I began in reflecting on what is
being done here and now at this particular college. For
whatever else we may believe about the applicability of
Tocqueville’s ideas to the present day, and there is a lot of
room for debate there, we can be in no doubt that he was
right in his emphasis upon education. But not just any kind
of education. He is talking about liberal education, in the
strictest sense of the term, meaning an education that is
designed to make men and women capable of the exercise of
liberty, and of doing so within the context of the particular
society in which they find themselves. Such an education is
likely to require a serious and sustained encounter with old
books.
Modern Americans are likely to assume that the value of
such an education is mainly contemplative. And I say this
without any hint of disparagement. Many of us believe that
an education aimed at contemplative truth is a very high and
worthwhile endeavor. I don’t think I need to make that case
here at St. John’s. But I do want to argue that such an education also commends itself on very practical grounds, for
reasons that seem to me quite thoroughly Tocquevillean.
For, to borrow from the very words Tocqueville used in his
letter to his French critic, liberal education is the kind of
education that seeks to teach democracy to know itself, and
thereby to direct itself and contain itself. Such an education
can help equip us to negotiate, with both intelligence and
wisdom, the multitude of Tocquevillean dilemmas that are
presented to us by our times—changes that are too formi-
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dable to be resisted entirely, but at the same time too fluid
for us to refuse the challenge of influencing their direction.
This only serves to underscore the profound importance
of that process I described at the beginning, the process
whereby we pass on to the present and to the future the most
worthy and enduring elements of human ages that have
passed or are passing away. This is why the theory of strict
historicism is so wrongheaded and impoverishing, because
it denies us that very benefit by demanding that everything
be perpetually bound to its immediate context—as if every
cargo had to remain forever in the hold of the ship that transported it, and as if no child could ever make his parent’s
legacy into something of his own.
When, for example, we accord Plato’s Republic our high
respect as a great text warranting a lifetime of study, this
does not imply that we approve or ignore the many defects,
cruelties, and inequities of the Athenian society in which it
was produced—let alone that we prefer such a society to our
own democracy. We do not study the Republic merely for
what it tells us about Plato’s Athens. We study the Republic
partly, and far more importantly, because its criticisms of
democracy remain enduringly valid and troubling—and
because in reading it, we are teaching our democracy to
know itself better, thereby contributing to its ennoblement.
It is neither elitist nor ahistorical for us to seek to perpetuate,
not a way of life that is past or passing, but the things in it
that remain estimable and enduringly valuable.
There is much reason for hope, then, in this vision of
things. And yet, to be faithful to Tocqueville, I have to end
on a somewhat more somber note. Tocqueville was himself
prone to melancholy, and worried that the task of democracy’s ennoblement would prove too difficult, too exacting,
and too exhausting to perform. There is always in his work
the sense of an uphill challenge, with the issue very much in
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doubt. And it does not take much imagination to find, in his
description to his French critic of the “downward paths
opening under the feet of our contemporaries,” a description
that applies very much to our own democracy today.
But what remains still, both in Tocqueville and in the
present day, is the imperative of freedom. Remember his
words at the end of the Democracy: “[Providence] traces, it
is true, a fatal circle around each man that he cannot leave;
but within its vast limits man is powerful and free; so too
with peoples.”25 It is hard at any given time to know where
our containing circle is drawn, and we are just as likely to
err in presuming to cross over the line as we are in shying
away from it out of timidity and fear. Yet Tocqueville clearly
thought the danger of the latter outweighed that of the
former, and that we have far more power to shape our lives
and our destinies than we allow ourselves to believe. That is
why the Tocquevillean moment is, at bottom, an occasion
for the exercise of the profoundest human freedom.
It is not an unlimited freedom, of course. But what could
such a thing mean? What, after all, is a radically unconditioned state, other than a state of utter randomness and
inconsequentiality? “To live without let or hindrance would
be life indeed,” observed George Santayana, “Yet there is a
snare in this vital anarchy. It is like the liberty to sign
cheques without possessing a bank account. You may write
them for any amount; but it is only when a precise deposit
limits your liberty that you may write them to any purpose.”26
No, the difficult and complex freedom of the Tocquevillean moment is precisely the sort of freedom for which we
humans were made, and it provides the opportunity for our
finest qualities to flourish. The fatal circle is also the ground
of our freedom, the horizon that gives focus and purposefulness to our efforts. History may delimit our choices, but
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it does not dictate what we should do with what is set before
us. For that, Tocqueville asserted, we must look to ourselves. It is bracing but encouraging counsel.
NOTES
1
Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey through
Yugoslavia, 2 vols. (New York: Penguin Classics, 2009), 1044.
2
The reader who is interested in knowing more about Tocqueville’s life
and times can consult two excellent English-language biographies:
André Jardin, Tocqueville: A Biography, translated by Lydia Davis with
Robert Hemenway (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988); and
Hugh Brogan, Alexis de Tocqueville: A Life (New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 2006).
3
De la Démocratie en Amérique is the book’s French title, a title that
conveys far better than its English translation the fact that Tocqueville’s
greater interest was in “democracy” rather than in “America.” I have
used the scrupulously literal and reliable recent translation by Harvey C.
Mansfield and Delba Winthrop, Democracy in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), and all quotations and page numbers
refer to that text. I confess to retaining a fondness for the often more
graceful (if less accurate) translation by Phillips Bradley, based on the
Henry Reeve text as revised by Francis Bowen, published by Alfred A.
Knopf in 1945 and still widely available, which was generally considered the standard English translation until being supplanted by the
appearance of the Mansfield/Winthrop edition. There are other worthy
English translations in circulation, including a most welcome bilingual,
French-English, historical-critical edition edited by Eduardo Nolla,
translated by the distinguished Tocqueville scholar James T. Schleifer,
and published in four volumes in 2010 by Liberty Fund.
4
On Tocqueville’s journey, see George Wilson Pierson, Tocqueville and
Beaumont in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1938).
5
Tocqueville to Eugène Stoffels, Paris, February 21, 1831, cited in
James T. Schleifer, The Making of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America,
second edition (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2000), 3. Schleifer’s
book is a meticulous and fascinating account of the book’s composition.
6
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 13.
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7
43
Ibid., 6.
Ibid., 6-7.
9
Ibid., 7. Here I acceded only reluctantly to the Mansfield/Winthrop
translation of une science politique nouvelle as “a new political science,” which is literally accurate but seems to me to run the considerable
risk of being conflated with the use of the term “political science” as the
name for a particular academic discipline that did not exist in Tocqueville’s time. The Bradley/Reeve/Bowen translation, “a new science of
politics,” is less literal but seems less liable to that confusion.
10
Ibid., 483-4.
11
Ibid., 661-73.
12
Giuseppe di Lampedusa, The Leopard, translated by Archibald
Colquhoun (New York: Pantheon, 1960); originally published as Il
Gattopardo (Milan: Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore, 1958).
13
Ibid., 40.
14
Cf. Aeneid, Book 2, 624-804.
15
Mill’s review, which appeared in October 1840 edition of the
Edinburgh Review, is described in Jardin, Tocqueville: A Biography,
274-5.
16
This unpublished letter written by Tocqueville to Sylvestre de Sacy is
in the Tocqueville family archives but has been translated and quoted at
length in Jardin, Tocqueville: A Biography, 272-3. Brogan also refers to
this same item, characterizing it as a “blistering letter” which “it is to be
hoped that he sent,” given the fact that “here, in a couple of sentences,
he expresses the central concern which drove his investigations . . . and
explains why posterity has argued over them ever since.” See Brogan,
Tocqueville, 368-9.
17
Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 675-6.
18
Ibid., 280.
19
Ibid., 519.
20
Ibid., 487.
21
Ibid., 500-503.
22
Ibid., 501.
23
Ibid., 503.
24
Ibid.
25
See note 17.
26
George Santayana, Dominations and Powers: Reflections on Liberty,
Society, and Government (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1995), 241.
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45
ON SEEING ASPECTS
John Verdi
Introduction
If philosophy, which seeks to encompass all of being in
thought, has a question as its source and its guiding principle, that question might be, What is there? To this question
we can give a disarmingly simple and obviously true answer: What is there? Everything. There are particles and
waves, brains and consciousness, nations and peoples, Hamlet and Hamlet, and on and on. There is . . . everything. The
“everything” answer—which in the end may show itself to
be the only true universal answer available to us—delegates
to various disciplines and modes of thinking the task of determining what there is, each in its own way. The physicist,
the psychologist, the historian, the poet: each receives his
share, with perhaps nothing left over for the philosopher.
Somewhat like Meno’s paradoxical question to Socrates
about the futility of seeking either what one does or what
one does not know, the “everything” answer tries to silence
philosophy at it source.
But we philosophers retain the belief, perhaps even the
conviction, that in spite of everything the effort to comprehend the unity of things is still worthwhile. Philosophy’s
subject matter is precisely not one thing among many others,
but rather the interrelatedness of all that is. We philosophers
believe that the fundamental questions—beginning with the
question, What is there?—can continually bring into light
the inexhaustible being of things and can place us, as thinkers, squarely in its presence. The essence of these questions
is to open up possibilities and to keep them open. This is
John Verdi is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis. This essay was first
presented as a lecure on 28 October 2005.
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why there is philosophy in life. In this essay I would like to
show, in a very preliminary way, how the concept of aspects, and especially our experience of seeing aspects, can
help us think about being, and about the meaning of philosophy’s opening question, What is there?
We can turn to Aristotle for an entry into the idea of
aspects. In On Memory and Recollection, he raises a question about what goes on when we remember something. For
Aristotle all perception involves an image of some kind,
present right now, in the soul. He call such an image a phantasma. The question of how the past can be present is the
problem of memory. Aristotle writes:
[I]t is clear that one must conceive the sort of thing that
comes about in the soul as a result of sense perception
. . . as something like a picture (z%graph'ma), the active
holding of which we assert to be memory. . . . But if
what goes on in the case of memory is of this sort, does
one remember this experience or the one from which it
came about? For if it is this one, we would not
remember any of the things that are absent, but if it is
the earlier one, how, while perceiving this later one, do
we remember the absent thing that we are not
perceiving (450a25-31, 450b13-16).
So if what I have now is a present image, a phantasma, how
is it that this image can be of the past?
To overcome this impasse Aristotle distinguishes phantasmata from eikones, that is, images from representations
or likenesses. (We see this also in Plato’s Sophist [240b12c2], and passim throughout the Republic.) He says:
For example, the picture drawn on a tablet is both a
picture (z%on) and a likeness (eik%n), and one and the
same thing is both of these, although what it is to be
these two things is not the same, and it is possible to
behold it both as a picture and as a likeness; so too one
ought to conceive of the image that is in us as being
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47
itself something in its own right, and as being of something else (450b21-26).
We can say that the memory image I have of something I
experienced in the past can display at least two aspects, depending on whether we see it simply as a phantasma, that is,
as an image fully present in its own right at this moment, or
as an eikon, a reminder or pointer to something else—something that may in fact no longer even exist.
One reason, then, for investigating the seeing of aspects
is that we might come to understand how it is possible for
something absent to be represented by something present.
Put in broader terms, how can one thing stand for another
and be its representative? In the broadest terms, we might
ask how anything comes to have meaning at all.
I have had another, more personal, reason for getting
involved with aspects. Some years ago I had occasion to
read and discuss Augustine’s Confessions both in one class
during the summer and in another class the following fall. I
was profoundly moved by these encounters with Augustine,
who at the time he was writing would have been about the
same age I was while reading. I felt certain that if I were to
read the book yet again soon after I would begin to see
things in the world—things I hadn’t seen before or had
stopped seeing long ago. I felt sure I would experience some
sort of change, both in what I would see and in the way I
would see it. Whether it was from prudence or cowardice—
I still don’t know—I did not pick up the Confessions again
until years later. But my near encounter with conversion left
me wondering what conversion is and how it comes about.
I’ve come to suspect that conversion, whether religious or
otherwise, sudden or gradual, toward or away from, has the
power to change what one sees in the world—perhaps even
to change one’s answer to the question, What is there?
Whether I come to see the world as “charged with the grandeur of God,” as Hopkins says, or I say along with Words-
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worth that “the things which I have seen I now can see no
more,” in either case, my world becomes different.
This essay is in three parts. In the first part, I will look at
some pictures and discuss some of the apparently simple
phenomena associated with aspect-seeing. In the second
part, I will present the beginnings of an account of aspects
and their significance to the question of what there is. In the
last part, I will examine a painting by Caravaggio, The
Calling of St. Matthew. There is also one joke in the essay.
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ESSAYS | VERDI
This is the duck-rabbit.
Figure 3
Part One: Ducks and Rabbits
This is a duck.
We can see the duck-rabbit either as a duck or as a rabbit. When we see it as one or the other we are seeing one or
the other of its aspects. When we see it first as a duck and
then as a rabbit, we experience a change of aspect. It is also
possible that a person might never see anything but a rabbit
in the picture. That person could be said to be seeing the
rabbit aspect continuously (PI, 194).
Here is another example of aspect-seeing and change of
aspect.
Figure 1
This is a rabbit.
Figure 2
Figure 4
Figure 4 is called the Necker cube. Look at it for a moment. Do you notice a change in the cube while you are
looking? Most people will see the cube jump, seeming for a
while to have its front side pointing down to the right, and
then for a while to have its front side pointing up to the left.
If you’re still not seeing this change of aspect, you might be
helped by Figure 5, in which the two ways of seeing the
cube are emphasized by dots.
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Figure 5
First imagine the black dot as closer to you than the
white dot. Then reverse this relationship and try to imagine
the white dot as closer. Now look one more time at the original cube. Even with the assistance of the dots, there may
still be some people who do not see the cube jump between
aspects.
Consider next Figure 6. How many cubes are there? The
correct answers are six or seven, depending on which aspect
one sees while counting—six if the black squares seem to be
on the tops of the cubes, seven if they seem to be on the
bottoms. Those who can count only six or only seven may
be helped by the additional drawings in Figure 7.
Figure 7
Figure 6
The paradoxical quality of these examples lies in the
awareness that what is seen has not changed at all, and
nevertheless what is seen is quite different. In what does this
difference consist? If I asked you to draw what you saw in
both instances, and you were to represent both by exact
copies—and wouldn’t those be good representations?—no
change would appear, because the copies would be congruent (PI, 196). If I see the duck-rabbit as a duck, I might
ESSAYS | VERDI
51
point to other pictures of ducks, and say that I’m now seeing
something like that. This, however, is not a description of
what I see, but rather an expression of it.
These simple examples raise once again the question,
What is there? What is seen are contraries: rabbits that are
not rabbits, corners both closer and not closer, cubes both
six and seven. These apparent contradictions can lead us
into a dialectical inquiry. In Book XII of the Metaphysics
Aristotle suggests that dialectic begins not from what there
is, but from contrary assumptions about what there is (1078
b25). The object of our concern itself opens a road of
inquiry for us, and coaxes us along the path (984a17-20).
If the difference between what is seen before the change
of aspect and what is seen after it did not lie in some sense
in the object I was looking at, we might be tempted to think
that our eyes and heads are responsible, that something has
changed in us. While the new aspect seems to appear suddenly out there, we nonetheless feel that we must have had
something to do with it. The image on my retina, the way my
eyes follow the figure, the organization of impulses in my
brain: any one of these might be the source of the change of
aspect. But the fact remains that what I see is still out there.
Seeing an aspect is not like having a hallucination, because
it is a true seeing of something that is, even if we can’t all
see it simultaneously, and even if some of us may never see
some aspects of things. Furthermore, I am not aware of what
is going on in my eyes and brain while aspects change. So,
while these physiological events may be causally related to
my experience, they necessarily fail to get at what I mean by
change of aspect and what I mean by seeing aspects. Neither
a physiological account of aspect-seeing, if one could be
provided, nor any other causal account can satisfy us any
more that Socrates was satisfied by the causal accounts of
Anaxagoras. In the Phaedo, Socrates tells his friends that
Anaxagoras at first seemed to say that “Mind puts the world
in order and is responsible for all this” (97c), but in the end
he assigns only physical causality to things. Socrates says
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that Anaxagoras was like someone who gives an account
based on the relationship of bones and sinews to explain
why Socrates is sitting in prison awaiting death, rather than
providing the account that Socrates himself finds most
convincing: “Since the Athenians judged it better to condemn me, so I for my part have judged it better to sit here
and stay put and endure whatever penalty they order” (98de). The physical account fails to answer the question of what
Socrates’ time in jail means, just as a physiological account
would fail to tell us what our seeing of aspects might mean.
Consider now what happens when I contemplate a face,
and then suddenly notice its likeness to another. I see that
the face has not changed, and yet I see it differently. I have
noticed an aspect of the face (PI, 193). The aspect is not a
part of the face as is the nose, nor a part as is its color or
shape. And yet I see the resemblance of this face to another;
I do not infer it or reason it through. I am struck by a similarity I had not before noticed, as if the being of the resemblance asserts itself, and I cannot help but see it. What is it
suddenly to notice what has been there all the time? Or has
it really been there all along? Perhaps it has come into being,
or perhaps I have been thrust into its presence. Or consider
the case of meeting someone I have not seen for years; I see
him clearly but fail to recognize him. Suddenly I know him,
and I see the old face in the altered one. I believe I would
paint a different portrait of him, if I could paint, now that I
have seen the old in the new. Is this a special sort of seeing?
Is it a case of both seeing and thinking, or an amalgam of the
two? (PI, 197.)
Seeing an aspect or change of aspect is not like seeing an
optical illusion. Optical illusions, such as those shown in
Figure 8 through Figure 10 appear to be what they are not.
In the case of the two diagonal lines of Figure 8, ab and bc,
it appears that ab is greater than bc, but in fact they are of
equal length, as a measurement would show us. In the illu-
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ESSAYS | VERDI
Figure 8
Figure 9
Figure 10
sion of Figure 9, all the vertical lines are parallel to one
another, as are all the horizontal lines, which we could determine by placing a straightedge against them, or looking at
them close up. And in the illusion of Figure 10, the squares
labeled A and B are actually the same shade of gray. Some
kind of light meter might help to show this, even though we
cannot see it. Many optical illusions are understood when
we learn something about how the eyes and brain work. An
optical illusion is a kind of trick that can be of value in understanding how we see, in the causal, physiological sense.
The questions raised by illusions are limited, and their answers tend to bring an end to wonder. Aspect-seeing is of
interest precisely because it is a kind of seeing whose concept is not explicated through physiology, not because we
don’t yet know enough about the eyes and brain, but because it is not a concept whose place in our thinking can be
made any clearer through such an approach.
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55
Figure 11
In the image of Figure 11, those who do not see a
change in aspect will be helped by something I am about to
say. This picture is of interest because it demonstrates that
speech can encourage a shift in aspect that might not otherwise occur. If speech can play a role in aspect-seeing, and if
what someone says can affect what we see, then there might
be some connection between speaking and seeing. Figure
11 represents the letter E.
Now here is a more complex image. To most people, the
image in Figure 12 seems to lack any unity. That may be
because it is upside down. If we turn it right side up as in
Figure 13, some people will see something they did not see
before. Most of the rest will be helped by a verbal description to see something like a late medieval representation of
Jesus.
Figure 12
Figure 13
The upper margin of the picture cuts the brow, so the top of
the head is not shown. The point of the jaw, clean-shaven
and brightly illuminated, is just above the geometric center
of the picture. A white mantel covers the right shoulder. The
upper sleeve is exposed as the rather black area at the lower
left. Do you see it now? Some people never see it, but for
those who do, dark marks have become human eyes, and
blobs of black and white have become an expressive human
face. How did that happen and why might it be important?
Part Two: The Being of Aspects
The distinctive mode of being characteristic of aspects is in
question here, and in particular we are now asking the question, What is there? The pictures we have examined so far
have engaged us in a form of dialectic and have brought us
to some kind of impasse. It is the peculiar characteristic of
our relationship to pictures that we see into them the very
objects they depict. We regard the picture, the drawing, or
the photograph as we regard the object itself, and so in a
sense we see what is there and what is not there simultaneously, in much the same way as, in Aristotle’s account of
memory, we recall things by considering a present image as
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pointing to the past. In a picture we see lines, shapes, paints,
colors; but we also see ducks and rabbits.
If we had in front of us the
original of this portrait of Descartes by Frans Hals, we would
be able to see brush strokes and
paint thicknesses. But our description of this canvas as a
portrait of Descartes will include
elements that do not belong to a
description of the picture as a
purely physical object. Descartes’s eyes look out at us; we can
study the expression on his face
and wonder what it reveals about Figure 14
him. In this paint-covered canvas we see a human being. (It
is perhaps not surprising to learn, then, that in Greek, the
same word, z%on, does double duty for both “living thing”
and “picture.”)
The reason that we hang pictures on our walls at all, I
think, is because we can see into a picture the very thing of
which it is a picture. We also hang snippets of text (PI, 205).
There is, of course, also a sense in which Descartes is not
really there in the picture. The dual nature of aspects—that
what we see both is and is not there—allows the picture to
make a demand on us and to ask us the question, What is
there? Our seeing itself is made questionable. By raising the
question of being, the aspects of the picture also raise the
question of truth. What is true about a picture?
The kinship between pictures and aspects may be put
this way: An aspect of something—that is, what I can see it
as—is what it can be a picture of, or more generally, what it
can stand for or represent: the image I now see can represent, or be seen as, an image of the past; the triangle I draw
on the chalkboard can represent the triangle of the proposition I am demonstrating. I see the duck-rabbit as a duck
57
ESSAYS | VERDI
when it is placed in a field of pictures of ducks. It can be a
picture of a duck. In a field of pictures of rabbits, I see it as
a rabbit. It can be a picture of a rabbit. You could imagine
the image in Figure 15 appearing in several places in a
book.
Figure 15
In the text surrounding the different appearances of the
figure, a different object could be under discussion in each
case: here a glass solid, there an inverted open box, there a
wire frame, there three boards forming a solid angle. We see
the illustration now as one object, now as another (PI, 193).
What we seem to be doing in these various cases is both
seeing and thinking—seeing because I have an illustration
in front of me, thinking because I am guided by the description to see it as one thing or another. It may take something
like imagination or a conscious act of interpretation to see
the drawing as now this, now that. When, by contrast, I view
the portrait of Descartes or see the duck-rabbit in a field of
duck pictures, I needn’t consciously engage the imagination.
And yet I am still inclined to say that imagination—or is it
thought?—suffuses itself throughout my seeing in all these
instances.
When aspect-seeing does not involve the sort of interpretation necessary to see the schematic solid as many different objects, it is more like ordinary seeing in this way:
when I see the duck-rabbit as a duck, my seeing is immediate and non-inferential—though it is still full of mind in
some way. In seeing the duck, I do not draw a conclusion
from a line of reasoning, such as “This must be a duck because all the others are ducks.” It could be said that mind
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reaches through the world of my knowledge and experience
to give shape to my sight. This is not to say that aspectseeing is two things, thinking and seeing, any more than
playing a piece of music with expression involves both the
playing and the expression. Rather, our seeing is one form
that thought takes in our lives, and it is only in a world of
thought that there can be aspects (RPP I, 1029). We have
thinking eyes and we see thinkingly. In De Anima, Aristotle
shows that all aesthesis, all perception, tends towards a universal, even if every sense has its own specific field, so that
what is immediately given is not universal. The fact is that
we see particulars in relation to something universal. We see
not merely a white patch, but a man. Merleau-Ponty, in his
book The Phenomenology of Perception, restates Aristotle’s
position, giving it a linguistic turn. He says that “language
intervenes at every stage of recognition by providing possible meanings for what is in fact seen, and recognition
advances along with linguistic connections” (131). In this
sense, seeing can be a direct and immediate grasp of the
meanings of things.
Can there then be a connection between a pathology of
mind and a pathology of seeing? What would it be like to be
aspect-blind? What would the world of the aspect-blind person be like? The eyesight of such a person would not be defective in any ordinary sense, but he would be unable to see
a picture jump from one aspect to another. He would not, for
example, see the Necker cube switch from first pointing
down to then pointing up, though he might be able to reason
that the existence of two aspects is a possibility. Furthermore, he might be blind to the expression on a face. He
might not see the picture face of Descartes as proud or pious
or cheerful, though he might be able to learn to deduce from
its features that it expressed these characteristics. In general,
his attitude toward pictures would be quite different from
that of a person who is able to see aspects (RPP II, 49). It
might be like the attitude most of us have toward a blue-
ESSAYS | VERDI
59
print: it needs to be figured out. He would not see motion in
the picture of a runner, though he would know that the picture was meant to represent motion. Aspect-blindness would
be akin to lacking a musical ear.
Oliver Sacks, in the title case study of his book The Man
Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, describes a distinguished
professor of music, Dr. P., who gradually loses the ability to
recognize faces and even quite ordinary objects. On first
meeting him, Sacks doesn’t understand why he has been referred for treatment, because he seems normal. Sacks then
opens for him a copy of National Geographic and asks him
to describe some of the pictures in it. Sacks writes:
His responses here were very curious. His eyes would
dart from one thing to another, picking up tiny features,
individual features. . . . A striking brightness, a color, a
shape would arrest his attention and elicit comment—
but in no case did he get the scene-as-a-whole. . . . He
never entered into relation with the picture as a
whole—never faced, so to speak, its physiognomy. He
had no sense whatever of a landscape or scene (10-11).
While he could recognize abstract shapes, such as the five
regular solids, he could identify a face only if he could find
in it some distinctive feature, from which he could draw the
conclusion that this must be so-and-so’s face. Nor could he
any longer identify the expressions on faces. He could see
the features, but could not see the face. As Sacks writes:
It wasn’t merely that he displayed the same indifference to the visual world as a computer but . . . he construed the world as a computer construes it, by means
of key features and schematic relationships. The
scheme might be identified . . . without the reality being
grasped at all (15).
There is also the case of young man named Schneider,
who suffered a brain injury during World War I. He was
studied by the psychologists Kurt Goldstein and Adhemar
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Gelb. In most respects Schneider appeared to be quite
normal, with undiminished language ability, intact intelligence, and adequate visual acuity. But Goldstein and Gelb
discovered that Schneider was unable to identify certain
words and objects when they were exposed briefly on a
special viewing apparatus called a tachistoscope, a device
that displays images for a specified length of time. If letters
or pictures were shown him with their contours obscured or
their interiors marked by cross-hatching, he was unable to
recognize them. Even the difference between straightness
and curvature escaped him. The doctors eventually learned
that he could read words and recognize objects and pictures
only through a series of slight head and hand movements,
which could be frustrated if several lines led away from a
single point.
Away from the laboratory and out in the real world,
Schneider managed to find his way around only by using
cues to deduce what things were. He was able to distinguish
a tree from its shadow because the shadow was darker. He
could distinguish men from vehicles because men were
narrow and tall, whereas vehicles were long and wide.
Merleau-Ponty says that he had lost “the symbolic function”
(123). For him the world no longer had any physiognomy,
no characteristic look or feel. Schneider had also lost the
ability to see things as representations, and consequently
could no longer wonder, for wonder is possible only when
we can see in something both that it is and that it is not. He
could himself no longer recognize the power of images to
express meaning and to point beyond themselves. MerleauPonty remarks that “it was through his sight that mind in
him was impaired” (126). It seemed that mind no longer
informed his eyes. The best his eyes could do was to send
information about what was in front of him to his mind,
which would then reason about what there was. In a sense,
his eyes could no longer see.
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These pathological cases suggest that there exists a deep
connection between aspect-seeing and meaning. The human
world—our world—is full of meanings. Pictures, words,
objects point away from themselves and towards other
things through an endless web of connections. Meaning
arises and spreads out through our recognition of the fundamental interconnectedness of things, the unity of being. In
this regard, aspects are themselves meanings, and as such
they belong, I would suggest, to human experience. Neither
beasts nor gods see aspects, at least not as fully as we do.
Animals for the most part appear to be unable to see something as something else. A dog might mistake a stick for a
bone, but it cannot see the stick as a bone. The Homeric
gods seem to live in a world almost devoid of representations except for language. They do not create representative
works of art for themselves, though Hephaistos does make a
shield for Achilles (Homer, Iliad, 18: 478-608). Do they
delight in poetry or music? Do they find meanings in the
objects of the world? Perhaps they simply see what truly is
and stand in no need of the suggestiveness of art. All this is
merely to say, in slightly different words, what Diotima says
in the Symposium: The gods do not philosophize (204a1).
The condition of aspect-blindness also suggests a
connection between aspects in general and what we might
call “experiencing the meaning of a word” (PI, 214). What
would you be missing if you never could experience the
meaning of a word—if, for instance, you could not feel that
a word loses its meaning and becomes mere sound when it
is repeated ten times over? A word has a familiar physiognomy; it arouses a feeling that it is an actual likeness of
its meaning. We manifest these feelings by the way we
choose and value words and by the care we take to find the
“right” word. The meanings of words are like the aspects of
visual representations: a sentence can resemble a painting in
words; an individual word in a sentence can resemble a picture (PI, 215).
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As an example, consider the two ideas “fat” and “thin.”
Would you be inclined to say that Friday was thin and
Thursday fat, or the reverse? Which one feels right to you?
Here “fat” and “thin” are not metaphors. Someone who does
not understand what is being asked here would be at a loss—
but not because he did not understand the primary meanings
of the four words. In fact, it is just because he does understand these meanings that the question might seem like
nonsense to him. These people exhibit a kind of meaningblindness, or perhaps meaning-myopia, as most of us do to
some degree. For these people, “finding the right word”
often involves thinking things through, figuring them out,
rather than listening for the right fit. They might have a hard
time appreciating poetry and certain kinds of humor, especially puns. This reminds me of a cartoon I once saw, showing a man in a business suit with a briefcase, standing in his
kitchen presumably after a long day at the office (or in the
classroom), with something like a scowl on his face. His
wife cheerfully asks: “Did you have a nice day, dear?” To
this he responds: “Of course I did. You told me to, didn’t
you?” The humor turns in part on our grasping at once the
dual aspects of the expression “Have a nice day,” usually
meant as a hortatory subjunctive, but grammatically equivalent to an imperative. (But I know it’s impolite to explain
jokes.)
Part Three: The Calling of St. Matthew
Seeing different aspects and experiencing multiple
meanings play important roles in our understanding and
appreciation of visual art, music, and literature, especially
poetry. Consider the representation of King William in
Figure 16 and imagine that we have the actual painting in
front of us.
We can see this image in at least three ways. That is, we
can see at least three of its aspects. First, we can see it as a
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ESSAYS | VERDI
Figure 16
physical object. It is a canvas nearly eight feet high and five
feet long, surrounded by a frame of wood, rather heavy,
covered with paint of different colors and thicknesses,
applied probably by different brushes with different strokes
by Sir Godfrey Kneller sometime in the late seventeenth
century.
Second, we can see it as what we might call a geometrical object. We can focus on its composition, on how the
shapes and colors blend or contrast, on which lines point in
which directions, and on how our eyes are guided through
the picture by its geometrical and optical qualities. Finally,
we can view it as a portrait of King William III. We can
study his facial expression and his posture. We can notice
his eyes looking down at us, and his left hand encircling the
handle of his sword while it gently holds his cloak. We see
his power; perhaps we can see his justice. Our seeing of the
painting as King William is continuous. We don’t see it now
as King William, now as paint on canvas, though one might
make an effort to do so. But no effort is needed to see it as
a representation of a living human being.
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Figure 17 shows another painting, The Calling of St.
Matthew by Caravaggio. It was painted around 1600 and hangs
in a small corner chapel in the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi
in Rome.
Figure 17
It is about eleven feet on each side. On the other two walls
of the sanctuary hang two other depictions by Caravaggio
from the life of St. Matthew. It is impossible to view this
painting head-on without entering the sanctuary, so most
people see it at an angle from the left, as shown in Figure
18.
As we know from Scripture, the painting is a representation of a conversion, that is, a turning. Levi (the pre-conversion name of Matthew) becomes Matthew—and the world
ESSAYS | VERDI
65
changes for him. He sees what he had not seen before.
Caravaggio’s painting attempts to reveal this moment of
conversion, or what we might call a sudden change in
aspect. We can examine the painting under three or four
aspects.
In its aspect as a physical
object, the painting is a large
square. Caravaggio has applied the
paint thinly to the canvas, using
only a small number of colors. A
very close inspection would reveal
brush strokes that to the trained eye
could indicate the size of the
brushes Caravaggio used, and perhaps even the haste or care with
which the paints were applied.
When we consider the geometrical aspect of the painting, we see
Figure 18
that it is divided into two parts. The
standing figures on the right form a vertical rectangle; those
gathered around the table on the left, a horizontal block or
triangle. The two groups are separated by a void that is
bridged by a pointing hand. There is a grid pattern of verticals and horizontals that serve to knit the picture together:
the window, the table, the finger of the bearded man sitting
at the table, a stool, a line running up the wall in the upper
left. The contrast of light and shadow serves to guide our
eye across the painting from right to left.
When we turn out attention to the content aspect of the
painting, we notice that the setting seems ordinary, unremarkable. Perhaps it is a room in a tavern or, if the scene is
outdoors, a courtyard. And yet, even if we did not see it
hanging in the chapel, we might see at once that it is a religious painting. The languid, pointing hand of Jesus commands assent in a way that might exceed mere human
authority. The light streaming in from the right over the head
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of Jesus draws our attention to his face and hand. There is
also an urgency and a dignity about the painting that suggests there is other work to be done than counting money.
Some people might come to see this as a religious painting
only with help from cues—for example, the halo over the
head of Jesus. Others will recognize this aspect right away.
It is perhaps only or largely through created images and
words that the divine becomes picturable, and so enters the
world. Religious paintings, therefore, play a special role in
revealing the power of pictures in general to disclose what
there is.
The bearded tax-gatherer, Levi, is seated at a table in the
center of a corolla consisting of himself and four others,
perhaps his assistants. Coins litter the table, and the
hunched-over figure on the left appears to be counting some
of them. The group is lighted by a source at the upper right.
Jesus, his eyes veiled in shadow, with a halo hinting at his
divinity, enters alongside Peter. A gesture of his right hand
summons Levi, who is surprised by the intrusion of these
bare-footed men, and perhaps dazzled by the sudden light
from a just-opened door. Levi draws back and gestures
toward himself, as if to ask, “Who, me?” while his right
hand remains pressed onto some coins. The two figures to
the left are so concerned with counting money that they are
oblivious to the arrival of Christ, and so symbolically deprive themselves of the opportunity he offers for salvation.
The two boys in the center do respond, the younger one
drawing back as if to seek Levi’s protection, the older, with
his sword hung conspicuously, leaning forward somewhat
menacingly towards Peter, who seems to freeze him in place
with a finger. For the moment captured in the picture, no one
does anything. In another second, Matthew will rise up and
follow Jesus and his world will be forever different. The
painting captures the very moment of Matthew’s turning.
This brief account of the painting is much like what you
would find in many art books, and has been an accepted
version for many years. It is both revealing and compelling.
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67
But we know that there a fourth aspect to this painting,
along with its being a physical object, a geometrical object,
and a representational object. The painting is itself derived
from a representation in words, a Gospel story. Here are the
accounts of Matthew’s calling from his Gospel, and also
from the Gospels of Mark and Luke. First Matthew:
As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called
Matthew sitting at the tax office; and he said to him
“Follow me.” And he rose and followed him (Matt.
9:9).
Mark writes:
And as he passed on, he saw Levi the son of Alphaeus
sitting at the tax office, and he said to him, “Follow
me.” And he rose and followed him (Mark 2:14).
And Luke:
After this he went out, and saw a tax collector, named
Levi, sitting at the tax office; and he said to him,
“Follow me.” And he left everything, and rose and
followed him (Luke 5:27-28).
The accounts are bare and simple, merely hints of what
might have taken place. What strikes us, however, is what
the stories do not say. No account suggests that Matthew
hesitated or questioned before leaving his collection table
when summoned by Jesus. Of course, Caravaggio’s understanding of the story may be that it is fully human to doubt
and question and ask, so that, despite the Gospel narrative,
the bearded man sitting at the table, whose finger points
questioningly, almost unbelievingly, is very likely Matthew.
But if this is not the case, if his own finger is not pointing at
himself, who is Matthew? Jesus does not seem to think that
he’ll need to stay long to answer questions, because his foot,
seen in the lower right, is already turned to leave. Is it clear
at whom Jesus is looking and pointing? If we follow the arc
of his finger, is it not met by the body of the hunched-over
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young man, whose back curves up and whose head leans
towards Jesus? His eyes are the only ones of the five at the
table that are not illuminated by the bright light from the
right. We are drawn toward both pairs of shadowed eyes—
the young man’s and those of Jesus—not because they are
focal points of lines of light, or because they are centrally
placed. They are human eyes in shadow and they beckon us
because we want to know who they belong to and what they
imply. If the young man is Matthew—and I offer this with
many reservations—then the painting depicts a turning or
conversion without hesitation, without questioning, without
delaying at Kierkegaard’s stage of infinite resignation before
arriving at faith (Fear and Trembling, 46)—an unexpected
and undeserved grace. It is a conversion that Matthew experiences as a sudden change of aspect, for which no preparation was required, or even possible.
We take interest in works of art such as Caravaggio’s
Calling of St. Matthew in part because they seem to affirm
their own being, even while they exist as representations.
They compel us to wonder about how true they might be.
But because the unity of a work of art is never completely
and simply given, that is, because it requires our seeing and
talking to bring it continuously into being, it questions us
and engages us in dialectic, much as great books can do. As
we talk about—and with—a work of art, it may reveal to us
its aspects, which can be thought of as its possible unities,
and therefore its possible modes of being as an object and as
a representation.
In music we also recognize the importance of aspecthearing in the instructions given on how to listen or how to
play. Not merely “louder,” “softer,” “faster,” “slower,” but,
as Wagner does in Tristan und Isolde, “ever more animated,” or “with elevation,” or “with enthusiasm.” Tchaikovsky asks the pianist to play the opening theme of his first
piano concerto with “much majesty.” Instructions like these
must make sense; they must click in some way. When I am
ESSAYS | VERDI
69
told to hear these measures as an opening theme, how am I
to obey this order? I might be able to be taught exactly why
this other theme is a variation on the opening, but unless I
hear it as one, I will remain deaf to some aspect of the
music. Instructions like: “Think of it as a march, then you
will play it right,” or “You must hear this section as a
response to that one,” or “Hear this as in the Phrygian mode,
then you will get the ending”—these ways of guiding are
common and useful and not metaphorical. They can bring us
to hear aspects and not merely to reason our way to them.
As for poetry, I feel I have little insight. We might perhaps improve our reading of poetry by paying more attention to the experience of a word’s meaning. The tempo, too,
at which one reads a poem seems to be as important as it is
in music, and may be analogous to the distance at which one
views a painting. There may be a reading speed at which a
poem is most at home, most itself. I don’t know how one
comes to hear what this tempo would be, or how exactly the
tempo affects the life of the poem, but I am pretty sure that
some people possess this sense as much as others possess a
sense for the right tempo of a piece of music. Perhaps studying music helps one’s reading of poetry. I think also that
someone who knows the meter of a poem hears it differently, and would read it differently, from someone who does
not know the meter. If we think of the poem as a living
thing, we’ll understand that hearing its integrity requires that
we attend to the aspects of both meter and tempo.
The ability to experience the meanings of words plays a
critical role in appreciating metaphors and similes. There are
what may be called “secondary” senses of words, which can
be used and understood only if the primary meaning of a
word is already understood. If I say, “For me the vowel ‘a’
is red,” I do not mean “red” in a metaphorical sense, because
I could not express what I want to say in any other way than
by means of the idea “red” (PI, 216). A secondary sense is
something like an aspect, and those who are deaf or insen-
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sitive to secondary meanings will be less able to get into a
poem and feel their way around in it. They might of course
still learn to analyze, how to recognize to some degree what
the poem is saying and how, but they won’t be able to hear
the poem in the same way as those to whom secondary
meanings are alive. “Sorrow is like a leaden gray sky” is
either heard and acknowledged or else analyzed into submission. A poem can awaken a secret life in ordinary words
that seem used up, exhausted of meaning. Since we find
much of our experience to be equally ordinary and unremarkable, a poem can help us see new aspects of our experiences, by calling into question our usual ways of describing
them.
Let me close with the suggestion that coming to see new
aspects—and thus perhaps to answer the question What is
there? differently—is a central part of one’s experience
while a student at St. John’s, and can remain so throughout
life. Conversations can provide occasions for changes of
aspect in both our seeing and our thinking, as long as we
keep in mind that not every question requires an answer. In
seminar we all make the effort to understand why others say
what they say. We also ought to try our best to see what they
see. Questions are often requests that we look at things
differently, and that we try to find the maximum amount of
common ground with others.
And finally, I must return again to that writer I cannot
escape. When St. Augustine, in tears and almost in despair,
hears the voice of a child while he sits in the garden, he
takes the voice as a command from God to open the first
book he comes across and to begin reading. He hears the
voice as a command and he obeys it. When he later leaves
the garden, the world he enters is completely different for
him, and yet nothing in it has changed. We can imagine that
he hears the voice the way he does because he has received
grace. Perhaps such graces grace our own lives too, and—
who knows?—perhaps we can come to see the duck-rabbit
as a paradigm for the miracle.
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REFERENCES
PI
PP
RPPI
RPPII
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford:
Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception
(London: Routledge, 2002).
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Philosophy of
Psychology, Volume I (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1980).
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Philosophy of
Psychology, Volume II (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1980).
Howard Gardner, The Shattered Mind (New York: Vintage, 1976).
Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, trans. Edna H. Hong and
Howard V. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1983).
Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception (London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., 1962).
Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (New York:
Harper and Row, 1970).
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REFLECTIONS
73
FULL FATHOM FIVE:
A TUTOR’S SEA CHANGE
Louis Petrich
I send my hearty greetings to the community of St. John’s College
from the Caribbean island of Bonaire (part of the Netherlands
Antilles, 50 miles north of Venezuela), where, after seven years as
a tutor, I am privileged to be spending my first sabbatical. There
is no place I prefer to St. John’s for finding my satisfaction in this
life. I don’t need to specify its forms—you know them. But you
must also know what one American writer said after he found his
calling and happiness at a pond outside Concord, Massachusetts:
“Thank Heaven, here is not all the world.”
I am exploring and learning the ways of another world—the
underwater world. I wish I could show this world to you. Maybe
then it would not seem puzzling that I would choose to dive these
warm coral reefs for a whole year rather than immerse myself in
all those good, non-Program books I have collected over the
years, but never have time to read at the College. I could show
you some photos that I have taken of the marine life in the
southern Caribbean, including one of a unicorn filefish (Aluterus
monoceros), which is almost as rare here as a unicorn. But I don’t
think you would be that impressed. Rareness by itself does not
signify beauty, or even inspire wonder. So let me instead try to put
into words an impression of what my island life is like.
It is strange for me to make this effort, since one of the
pleasures I take in diving everyday—often twice, and usually
with my wife or eleven-year old son as a partner—is not having
to talk much about it. We have gained that pleasure with
experience. During the dive, we may point at special things or
exchange a few hand signals, and in an emergency we can bang
on our tank and hope for immediate attention. But otherwise,
Louis Petrich is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis. He sent this open letter
to the college community from his sabbatical during the 2009-2010 academic year.
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diving delights me as a speechless activity of beholding the
myriad forms of life and their busy behaviors. To call them
“fantastical” is no exaggeration. Were it not for the limited supply
of air and the loss of body heat over time, I am not sure that my
activity of beholding would come to an end. The bulk of these
lines were written during an extended interval on the surface,
which is necessary to allow the nitrogen absorbed under pressure
to escape from my blood and tissues before I can safely return to
the deep, where I would otherwise linger and marvel as if present
at the fifth day of Creation—and that day were enough.
On the surface, Bonaire is not sublime. It is a small and
simple island, about five miles wide and twenty-four miles long,
shaped like a crescent, and home to about fifteen thousand
people—Antilleans, Dutch, and foreign residents like me. There
are no traffic lights on the island, no stop signs, no buses, no horns
blowing except to say “hello,” no theaters or cinemas, no long
stretches of white sandy beaches packed with oily sunbathers (the
beaches are rocky), no hotel or restaurant chains, no malls—
nothing, really, worth shopping for (the island produces only
salt)—and no fall, winter, or spring. There is always a breeze to
satisfy the windsurfers and kitesurfers and to make the hot sun
feel dry and light. Parrots squawk and some fifty other species of
birds sing at dawn to wake us up. Iguanas warm themselves on
the rocks, while wild donkeys and goats go marauding through
the dusty yards and fields, where our bare feet have acquired
calluses. Our hair has grown longer and lighter-colored,
toughened by the salt of the turquoise sea, which is never far from
view. Pink flamingos by the hundreds paint themselves on inner
landscapes, wherever the water pools. The capital of the island,
Kralendijk, can be traversed in about five minutes—a fact that has
led many a cruise ship passenger to wander off in conspicuous
confusion, looking for things that Bonaire simply does not have.
We point them back toward their ships and their buffets. What
Bonaire does have, most emphatically, is the freest and easiest
diving in the entire world, on healthy coral reefs that can be
reached from shore after a five- to ten-minute snorkel from almost
any point on the island. The surrounding sea, down to 250 feet, is
REFLECTIONS | PETRICH
75
a protected national park. Fishing is forbidden. Divers must pay a
park entrance fee and pass a buoyancy control test before being
permitted to dive. No gloves allowed. The reefs and animals may
not be handled, but they may be watched very closely, at any hour
of the day or night, according to one’s interest and pleasure.
The biologists I have met all testify that there is no place on
earth where a person can have such unmediated access to abundant animal life as one finds on Bonaire. Perhaps, they tell me, the
species count in tropical jungles is similar, but the jungles do not
offer free and easy access. In just the first minute of a descent to
forty feet, I have learned to identify thirty species on average (and
that’s just the fish)—one species every two seconds. My son
Louie can do better, since his vision is still acute at all distances.
If we were to include the coral and the other invertebrates and the
aquatic plants, the species count would double. This abundance of
life satisfies a passion that is not only taxonomical. O Lord, how
manifold are thy works! In wisdom hast thou made them all: the
earth is full of thy riches. So is this great and wide sea, wherein
are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts
(Psalm 104: 24-25).
Bonaire’s “things creeping innumerable” are mostly small
(under a foot in length) or medium-sized (up to three or four feet).
Yes, there are leviathans out there: the whale shark (up to fiftyfive feet), the great hammerhead shark (twenty feet), and the
goliath grouper (eight feet), but these creatures are very rarely
sighted on Bonaire’s reefs. (Once I did encounter a goliath
grouper, also known as a “jewfish.” At first I thought he was a big
boulder. He was sleeping on the bottom at 106 feet and barely
budged when I poked him in the side. If he had felt that his meal
were being threatened, he might have charged me like a bull.
Some scripture commentators say it was a goliath grouper that
swallowed Jonah. I cannot dismiss the claim.) So I dive with a
magnifying glass in hand, very slowly, becoming one with the
seeing of my eyes. Ideally, a gentle current carries me, and my
muscles do no work except to turn my head, point my glass, and
breathe. I feel no gravity so long as I remain neutrally buoyant, a
state I maintain by proper breathing, as fish do by adjusting the
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volume of their air bladders.
To be free of gravity several hours a day, every day, has
become for me almost a need. I think this is one reason I see quite
a few obese scuba divers. They have discovered the only earthly
dispensation from having to carry their bodily burden. I wonder,
when I observe my large fellow humans, why the first forms of
life to emerge from the sea would have given up their freedom to
be oppressed by weight. When my air is running low and I make
my exit to shore, the first several steps on the sloping rocky coast
under the renewed pull of gravity are very difficult to take. I have
to concentrate on how to walk; otherwise, I would tumble, and the
surf would dash me on the rocks. This has happened more than
once. This forgetting how to walk, especially with all that extra
scuba gear to carry on my back, poses the most likely peril of
daily multi-diving.
Yet the physical pleasure of freedom in diving is only secondary. The primary pleasure lies in learning to recognize all those
“somethings” in the water as the very things that are imitated and
described in my field books. The impression of random motion by
innumerable, nameless forms of life begins to make sense as I
learn to see the fish “perform their parts” time and again. My
eyes, instead of darting around to be entertained by colorful
shapes in motion, come to rest on the actions of one fish, or on the
distinct parts of a fish, until the essential aspects, which are often
inconspicuous, acquire meaning. A tiny line under the gills, a pinhead spot next to the eye, the height of the dorsal fin, or some
other precise marking, contour, or motion—which the fish somehow read reliably—can mark the difference between two species.
As I become more acclimated to their element, as my body’s
vibrations become unobtrusive to their senses, the fish let me get
closer. Slowly they reveal more of their forms and purposes, and
if they could talk, I almost believe they would tell me their names.
Then, perhaps, I could do without the imitations.
Until then, let us imagine a six-foot long, green moray eel,
thick as a young pine tree. Its jaws, lined with razor-sharp teeth,
keep opening and closing—an ominous sight even to those who
know that by this action the moray moves water through its gills
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77
to breathe. This is not a threatening gesture, the books say. (Why
can’t it be both threatening and respiratory?) I approach very
slowly, head-on, to stare into its face. If you touch its tail, the
moray, feeling “mugged,” may turn round, bite, and not let go
until its teeth have ripped off whatever they have seized.
Approached from the front, however, they hold steady and
breathe ominously, not recognizing me as either prey or predator.
But if the moray sees his green reflection in my camera apparatus,
he may poke his snout into the housing. In this way, while he gets
acquainted with a puzzling stranger, I get an extraordinary photo.
I have also seen one divemaster scratch a green moray under the
gills; the moray appeared to enjoy this, as if he were being
cleaned by a little sharknose goby.
I save my scratching for creatures who breathe with their
mouths shut. Who would have thought that if you scratch a
hawksbill turtle vigorously on its shell—especially on the underside—he will spin round and round, driven wild with the pleasure
of it? I have done this only a few times. The turtle conservationists of the island (who tag, track, and protect the endangered sea
turtles) patrol assiduously for trespassers on the turtle breeding
grounds, for turtle chasers, and for turtle ticklers. Not all turtles
are brave enough to defy this mafia and submit to the tickling, and
only a few divers even know about this secret pleasure.
The Caribbean reef octopus is said to be a “curious” animal;
some even pronounce him “intelligent.” Not because he changes
his colors, instantly and dramatically, to camouflage himself
against any background or to intimidate his opponents. Many reef
fish and creatures change their colors as admirably as he does.
(How do they change so expertly, I wonder? And do any of them
have a “true” color?) The reef octopus appears curious and keen
because you can see him take various objects with one or more of
his eight arms, bring them under his head, and, after a period of
scrutiny, either discard them or carry them back to his den, where
he breaks mollusks open to eat. Reaching out to take various
things in hand (or in arm) for further investigation and possible
eating looks a lot like what the more intelligent animals do.
I put my metal tank banger within reach of the octopus, to see
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if he will take it under his head to test its nature. He grabs it with
three arms and starts to glide off toward the protection of a
crevice. I want that tank banger back. It’s mine. I kick hard to
chase the octopus, while reaching out with one arm, hoping he’ll
drop the banger. He turns entirely white, blows himself up to
twice his former size, and extends his eight arms in a circle
around his body, hovering above the banger. I keep at a respectful
distance and estimate my chance of winning a tug of war with this
inky octopus over a fourteen dollar tank banger. That is what
intelligent animals do. I decide to let him keep it.
I said earlier that diving is primarily a visual, not a tactile
experience. But now I find it necessary to say this differently.
When I take my four-year old daughter, Abigail, down to fifteen
feet on my spare regulator hose, and we swim around the bottom
together for forty-five minutes, she wants to touch everything she
sees. I have to teach her what to avoid by holding her back with
my hands. She learns the hard way, too. Once, having picked up
a pink, fuzzy, caterpillar-like thing, she signaled me urgently to
surface. “My fingers are burning, daddy,” she cried. “When will
they stop?” “In a short while,” I replied. “You picked up a fireworm.” She sometimes surprises the flounders—overconfident in
their camouflage—with a poke from her finger: “They’re slimy,
daddy, and their eyes are funny.” (She likes to talk about all her
doings.) She tirelessly turns over rocks to uncover urchins and sea
stars; and she enjoys picking up sand to drop on the heads of
parrotfish as they busily scrape up algae. “They drop sand on us
when they poop, so it’s only fair,” she says. All her instinctive
touching of things is how we get to know those things better: we
have learned by the reactions of sea creatures to our touch how
stunningly changeable they are, and how thoroughly they associate being touched—being known—with being eaten.
Most predators on the reef swallow their prey whole (sharks
and barracudas being two notable exceptions). But if a piscivore
happens to take a fish in the wrong position for swift swallowing,
it will pitilessly bash on the rocks whatever protrudes from its
mouth, until it can safely let go to swallow its prey again—whole.
It has to perform the bashing very quickly, because the other
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predators will notice the commotion and try to seize the halfswallowed prey from its mouth, devouring whatever pieces they
can. Feeding happens so quickly that one seldom sees it performed at all. The reef may thus give an impression of a peaceful
commingling of hundreds of species, who are content, for the
most part, to observe one another. But the reason that the little fish
live among the corals is to hide, and the reason that the bigger fish
cruise the corals is to hunt the littler ones—and hide from even
bigger ones. If the corals do not tell the whole story, they tell at
least the deadly part of it that Darwin says is difficult but necessary for us to bear in mind constantly if we are to understand “the
face of nature.”
I like the reefs no less for their quiet pitilessness, and in fact
I like them all the more for bringing into focus the ultimate
concerns of the poetry that I could have been studying on this
sabbatical:
Cast a cold eye
On life, on death.
Horseman, pass by!
—W.B. Yeats
Yet it is not always easy to pass by these scenes coldly while
riding the warm currents of the Caribbean. On moonless nighttime dives, it is pitch black in all directions, save where my divelight is pointed—at the red squirrel fish and cardinal fish, the most
common night-hunters. I love their vibrant red colors and black
eyes—overly large in order to admit the scant rays of stars that
barely penetrate the deep. Suddenly, a six-foot-long silvery tarpon
swoops across my right shoulder, brushing his caudal fin against
me. Then there is another one, shooting forward from directly
below my chest, with a sharksucker attached to his side. They are
using my light to hunt.
They have used me thus hundreds of times, but my heart still
quickens when hungry creatures as big as I swim past me, abruptly and intimately, from out of the darkness. I join the party of the
hunter, coldly shining my light on the sleepy ocean surgeonfish
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(whom I don’t much care for), and I watch the tarpons try to
swallow them up before they slip away into the recesses of the
coral. The tarpons’ mouths open widely, creating an audible
suction that draws their prey from a foot away into their maws,
quicker than I can see. A jolt of satisfaction passes when they
catch their prey—or rather, when we catch our prey. Questions
arising from my partisan participation in this sea hunt intrude on
my breathing and my buoyancy. When the jaws of death open
wide for me, will I slip away into a dark, secret place for all time?
Or will a light be held to mark my drawing into that sudden,
irresistible openness?
The night-prowling tarpons always make a big impression on
divers, but they are nothing compared to the little longfin damselfish, three inches in length, that spend their lives (up to ten years)
aggressively guarding a patch of algae the size of a doormat. If I
get within a few feet, they’ll charge directly into my mask or nip
at my hands. It feels like a little pinch. You can see them routinely
drive away fish ten times their size, because no one likes being
nipped at incessantly; and besides, there is always some place else
to go on the reefs for food or shelter. If the damselfish were as
large as the fish they attack, the reefs would not be swimmable. I
thank the Creator for making the most aggressive animal in the
Caribbean so small.
One of the highlights of my diving sabbatical occurred during
the two coral spawning periods, a week after the full moons of
September and October. The reefs became cloudy with gametes,
released in unison at night by hosts of invertebrates. The touchme-not sponges emitted their seed like smoke from chimneys.
The always-recumbent tiger tail sea cucumbers stood up vertically and spewed forth stuff that looked like breath in cold air.
The star corals released their little balls of DNA nonstop, like
bubbles from a carbonated beverage. This sea of fecundity staggered the senses. It went on for three successive nights, while
most of the fish that would have eaten the gametes slept. I felt awe
to see how these creatures beat the bad odds of the ocean by
means of a coordinated, all-out emptying of themselves, twice a
year.
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Fish are spawning all the time, though it takes patient observation to notice it. In the late afternoons, you may spy peacock
flounders gliding three feet off the bottom like Frisbees, risking
their lives to signal a readiness to mate. When the male and
female Frisbee-flounders come together like two hands in prayer,
they shoot up toward the surface and release their gametes near
the top of the water column, where the gametes’ predators are
least abundant. Then they separate and return at once to the
bottom, making themselves indistinguishable from the sand or
rocks. Those four seconds of jetting upward look so unlike the
behavior of flounders that I wonder if this joint activity is when
they are most at-work-being-themselves, or most possessed by
something outside themselves. As my daughter, innocent of philosophy, would say, “It’s freaky, either way.”
Each evening at dinner we watch the sun set over the Caribbean from our seaside patio dining room. We look for the proverbial “green flash” at the very instant of the sun’s disappearance
below the horizon. We have yet to see it. To be honest, more often
than not these passing days, we forget to look. Some of the old
and experienced divers I have met have grown tired of looking for
new things on the reefs, and don’t seem to think it is worth the
effort anymore to go deep. Of our “brave new world, that has such
creatures in it,” they would say (if they knew their Shakespeare),
“’Tis new to thee.” Can we not find ways to keep this world new?
When we have our diving friends to dinner, we sometimes
find it pleasant to play a game of “sea charades.” The children
start it off by acting like their favorite fish. Even the tired, old
divers enjoy the renewed experience of not quite knowing what in
the world they’re looking at: Abigail wiggling around on her back
is . . . a fairy basslet, which can swim belly up; Louie sticking out
his stomach and pulling at his nose in the corner is . . . a sharpnose
puffer that inflates itself when there is no escape. When it’s my
turn, I go to the refrigerator and take out the most unappetizing
leftover I can find and eat it. I am . . . an angelfish, which has
evolved to eat certain things that no other fish will eat (sponges)
because they taste bad. In fact, I have adapted myself to occupy
this niche in our family, as a matter of economy. But to see the
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familiar things in life as tasteless leftovers is not a fine, or even
fitting, use of either our senses or their things. Let it always be
worth the effort, I pray, to go down deep, again and again, into
this world of sensuous things. That is the simple meaning of this
sabbatical, put into words.
I was afraid at one time that by revealing my free and easy
occupations in this “Divers Paradise” (the official motto of the
island), I would cause there to be sent a “messenger of Satan” to
molest my breathing and my buoyancy. That messenger has long
since come to the occupants of the air-breathing world, even here
on Bonaire; but not even the omnipresent internet together with
all its beeping, vibrating, pocket-sized accomplices can reach me
underwater—yet. So then, as my surface interval comes to a
close, I end these impressions of my island life without fear of the
new or the old, but with gratitude for the existence and easy availability of this underwater world that is not all the world, and with
praise to the College for granting its tutors this time of rejuvenation to keep us up with youth and its joys—and in touch with
things of beauty and wonder. Fare you well, as to the elements of
the isle I go free, unwearied, changed, to see things rich and
strange.
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FAT WEDNESDAY
John Verdi, Fat Wednesday:Wittgenstein on
Aspects.
Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2010, xii + 296
pages.
Book Review by Eva Brann
I’ll reveal my own predilections and aversions up front: I trust
Socrates—without completely believing him—and I distrust
Wittgenstein, without thinking him completely wrong. In fact,
I’m in some respects terminally puzzled by both, but more so by
Wittgenstein, whose main book, as John Verdi tells us on the first
page of Fat Wednesday (the title will be explained below and has
a purely coincidental relation to “Fat Tuesday,” Mardi Gras),
contains 784 questions of which only 110 are answered, and 70 of
those wrongly—on purpose. Now 744 unanswered questions
seems to me an overplus of perplexity; I am especially sensitive
to such erotetic overload (from erotesis, “question”), since I have
heard it said of our college that we accept students who know
nothing and graduate them now knowing that they know nothing.
So I was a grateful member of a faculty study group on this
question-laden work, the Philosophical Investigations, which
John Verdi led in the spring of 2009, as he was writing his own
book, with the resigned calm of a man who does believe in this
author and is, for that very reason, unwilling to proselytize. Under
his guidance and in conversation with my colleagues I learned a
lot, enough to formulate two judgments. One concerned the
reason for my near-constitutional incomprehension of Wittgenstein’s project: he is the only non-fiction writer I know whose
outlook on life is systematically—and rousingly—askew of mine.
The other judgment was that Verdi’s book would likely be a most
trustworthy introduction to this strange thinker’s upending of all
that seems humanly sensible. And so it proved.
Eva Brann is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis.
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In Fat Wednesday, Verdi approaches Wittgenstein through
two notions central to his later thinking: aspect-seeing and experiencing the meaning of words. The first three chapters explicate
these, while the last two introduce Verdi’s own development and
applications of these two topics. So his book introduces us both to
Wittgenstein and to the world his work implies. It seems to me
that, considering Wittgenstein’s relentless the-proof-is-in-thepudding attitude toward human mentation, this organization is
faithful to Wittgenstein’s intention, since it shows what one can
do with his way of seeing and speaking.
What then is aspect-seeing and why is it crucial to Wittgenstein? Such “seeing” is based on an ineradicable ambiguity: one
shape, objectively self-same, is seen alternately in one way and in
another. Since such ambiguity arises primarily in the absence of
context, deliberately devised drawings instigate it best. The most
famous of them (Verdi illustrates several) is the “duck-rabbit,” a
figure showing two forked protrusions, devised to look now like
a duck’s open bill, and then again like a rabbit’s laid-back ears.
The picture is one, but the aspect “goes about hither and thither”
(Verdi points out that this is the etymology of the word ambiguity), so that we cannot help “seeing” the picture flip between
resembling a duck and resembling a rabbit. This raises the question, What is resemblance?
Here I confess that I have two misgivings of my own about
Wittgenstein’s project. One is that aspect-seeing is not a novel notion, as Wittgenstein seems to suggest, but is related, rather, to an
old, old question—the one-over-many problem in metaphysics,
where it is precisely the aspect (a fair translation of eidos, that is,
looks or form) that is one, and the appearances, the phenomena,
that are many. (So why, incidentally, does Wittgenstein write as if
philosophical investigation began with him?) The other misgiving, less born of irritation, is that I have little faith in basing inquiry on special and devised cases, which are essentially distinct
from the ideal cases that I would rather look to. These ideal cases
may go fuzzy at the edges, but are probably substantial at the
center. But then, it is just this center that, as Verdi confirms, Wittgenstein wishes to attenuate.
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Wittgenstein’s aim is to establish the centrality of resemblance: family resemblance is to replace essence. Verdi [12]*
quotes Wittgenstein’s account of this point:
[F]or the various resemblances between members of a
family . . . overlap and criss-cross in the same way.
[W]e extend our concept . . . as in spinning we twist
fibre on fibre. And the strength of the thread does not
reside in the fact that some fibre runs through the
whole length, but in the overlapping of many fibres
(Philosophical Investigations, §67).
So we are not to ask, What do the phenomena to which we
naturally give one name have in common? Instead, we are to look
for a sequence of resemblances; the first and last of these must
perforce be quite unlike each other or there will be, after all, a
thread of sameness. In the old ontology (set out in Plato’s Sophist)
resemblance or likeness is sameness conjoined with otherness.
But, true to his program, Wittgenstein does not engage in nailing
down centralities but in clarifying concepts: “Conceptual (linguistic) questions ground casual questions, not the other way
around” [5].
(This is the late Wittgenstein. I want to take the opportunity
here to express a personal fascination. Wittgenstein recanted—
how deeply is a matter of debate—his early Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus, a hard-edged view of a world consisting of logically connected facts exactly pictured by our language, which is
similarly structured, so that reality is explicable by a logical
analysis of language. To me it is an absorbing question whether
there are systematic differences between thinkers who develop by
absorptive tweaking and those whose maturity comes through
degrees of self-refutation. Is the latter a mark of unflagging vigor
or of suspect instability?)
The crucial word of Verdi’s sentence is in parentheses: Wittgenstein seems to equate the terms conceptual and linguistic. A
concept is not, as we were brought up to think, a cognitive entity.
*
Page numbers in brackets refer to Fat Wednesday.
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As resemblance was construed anti-essentially, so concept is
understood anti-cognitively—if cognition is thought of as an
internal eventuation: Conceptual questions do not ask for interior
states discerned by introspection, but demand observation of the
external phenomena of linguistic usage—just enough such observation to discern how people actually use words. This notion
establishes the transition from Verdi’s first chapter, “The Aspects
Family,” to the second one, “Aspects and Words.”
“Seeing,” for example, has two uses [25]. One use can be
accompanied by pointing to the picture of the ambiguous duckrabbit. But pointing is not possible for the second use, for a duckrabbit is not a this, but rather it flips from a this to a that. Something similar holds for any seeing of resemblance. You can’t point
to a resemblance, though you can point it out, that is, make useful
observations in words.
Wittgenstein means something much more radical than to say
that words can be useful. He invites us to “think of words as
instruments characterized by their use” [44]. In fact, the analogy
is to a toolbox; the “functions of words are as diverse as the functions of these objects” (Philosophical Investigations, §11).
Here are my misgivings on this point. This way of analyzing
language should depend not only on a receptive ear for the phenomena of speech, but on conceding our fellow human beings’
primary competence to know what they mean. I have long had my
doubts about Wittgenstein and his language-analytical progeny in
regard to the first point. As for the second, there is little doubt that
Wittgenstein means to correct my sense of which meanings are
acceptable and to control my claim that overt words express
interior events, that I often have a thought or feeling for which I
subsequently labor to find the word, and moreover, that this
language is really only residually private, because I cherish a faith
(and, finally, what else is there?) that human souls, with all the
particularity that embellishes their being, are ultimately alike—
even when they willfully plead ultimate diversity. Or to express it
in the relaxed logical mode of real thinking: we have our privacies
in common. These opinions of mine are questioned in form, but
proscribed in effect, by Wittgenstein.
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Privacy and sociality are central issues for Wittgenstein, since
we operate, he thinks, with words as if we were playing languagegames. These games are governed by socially established rules
that we must learn; the rules tell me what the words, the gamepieces of language, do and what moves are permitted, just as the
rules of chess govern that game. “One would not say,” as Verdi
neatly puts it, “‘I know what a bishop does. Now tell me what it
really is’” [45]. It is a neat formulation because it raises the
question-hackles. Does it mean “would not” or “should not”? I for
one would ask, meaning I might like to think about, “What, really,
is a lusory bishop, a piece of ecclesiastic anthropomorphism (like
a nautical nun-buoy)? What causes its possibility, beyond its
being enmeshed in a game?” Can I be talked out of that predilection?
The rest of Verdi’s second chapter fleshes out, in lucid detail,
Wittgenstein’s disabling of the “what is it?” question—not in
terms of an argument against it, for that would be an admission of
its admissibility, but by the circumscription of an alternative way
of being in and with our world. It is a way that consigns the inner
human being to terminal opaqueness, for which it then compensates by undertaking a persistent and critical analysis of behavior,
both gestural and linguistic. This way of abstemious philosophizing has at least one tremendous virtue: it raises our sensitivity to
how we learn and what we say [106]. In particular, it attunes our
ears to distinguishing how people speak before misguided ratiocination has tempted language into useless utterance.
Here Verdi stops to consider the very condition I touched on
before, that there might be a real division among people’s experiences, and that some people might be “aspect-blind.” In the third
chapter, he considers a group of true pathologies that afflict
patients with the inability to see ambiguities. They are literalists
of vision and language, and so miss crucial aspects of the world.
They lack experiences of meaning.
“Fat Wednesday” itself is an example of such an experience
[150]. “Fat” here is not a metaphor, since there is no sensible relation of obesity to Wotan’s Day. Unless it seems perfectly nonsensical to you, it will evoke a meaning, an “emergent” meaning. I
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think of it as a meaning-aura, a strong one for me. For in the Nazi
Germany of my childhood, Wednesday was the day of mandated
one-pot suppers (the resultant savings to be dropped into the collection can of a visiting storm-trooper)—and one-pot meals tend
to be greasy. This “secondary meaning,” this emergence, is a
startling development since it seems to be an overt intimation of
interiority. As words have emergent meanings, so aspects can
emerge; the inside will be outed.
Emergent meaning governs the fourth chapter, “Aspects and
Art.” It begins with a reflection on a portrait of Descartes by Franz
Hals, a reflection addressed to the basic ambiguity of all pictureviewing: that there is, in one aspect, a piece of canvas with
splotches of paint that we can point to, and in another, a likeness
of something, here the man, that we can’t reach by following the
laser line from our index finger. (I might point out here that this
analysis of physical images was an abiding preoccupation of
Husserl, his student Fink, and Sartre, but I also want to retract my
complaint about Wittgenstein’s willful aboriginality. Much better
not to be too entangled in conceptual indebtedness!)
Here Verdi puts his Wittgensteinian sensibility to work on objects ranging from paintings (Verdi “sees” some arresting alternative aspects in well-known works) to music, to—and here it becomes wonderful—wine tasting, in the section entitled “Emergent
Meaning and Wine.” Verdi plucks out, from notes on wine tasting
in Wine Spectator Magazine, a group of enologically descriptive
words that are candidates for emergence, including “velvety,
chewy, taut” [201]. He observes that these terms of praise can’t be
metaphorical. Who wants to run his tongue over something
velvet-like? Instead the words carry emergent meanings, which
are shared by other people and, he implies, widen our sensibility.
If I don’t get it, I am (non-pathologically) aspect-blind. If I do, “I
can better make my way in the world of wine-tasting and describing” [203].
The last chapter, provocatively entitled “Ethics and Aesthetics are One,” is a real culmination. It considers the discovery of
new science as a form of aspect-shift, and the letting-be of others’
religion as a form of aspect-seeing. The latter case exemplifies the
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chapter title. Verdi is as far as possible from the despicable central
European aestheticism that once permitted murder by day if only
the nights were spent listening to Schubert Lieder. Doing right
and seeing multivalently are one, to be sure, insofar as we must
be aesthetically (that is, sensorily) adroit in order to be ethically
(that is, morally) good. The former is not, however, so much a
condition for the latter as it is the same with it—an attitude
realized in a skill. Both are our very own; both are acquired by
attentive learning. Verdi calls this disposition “active tolerance”
[259]. Just as he is far removed from mere aestheticism, so too is
he worlds apart from the essentially disrespectful, because inattentive, tolerance of “I’m OK, you’re OK.” Active tolerance is a
subtle, sophisticated version of the ability to see both—or even
many—sides of an issue. Where Socrates says, “Virtue is knowledge,” Verdi’s Wittgenstein says, “Ethics is aspect-seeing,” an
ingrained appreciation of alternate possibilities and the respect
that goes with it.
Let me indulge in a final cavil, then, one which I’ve already
intimated. Wittgenstein’s probing, pushing, and pulling feel to me
like a clearly offered and cagily retracted condemnation: statements of absolute value are respectfully denominated nonsense
by him [242]. So is Verdi’s deeply liberal conclusion still Wittgenstein, or has it become more Verdi? If the latter, I would, at
risk of paining him, take Verdi over Wittgenstein anytime.
If Wittgenstein has got under your skin, or if you want him to,
read this book.
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MONSTER AM I
Paolo Palmieri, A History of Galileo’s
Inclined Plane Experiment and its
Philosophical Implications
Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press,
Forthcoming, 2011, 220 pages.
Book Review by Curtis Wilson
The project of this book, Palmieri tells us, emerged slowly, in
close relation with the attempt to reenact certain of Galileo’s experiments, in particular the inclined plane experiment. Galileo’s
adventure with balls rolling down inclined wooden beams was
not a single event to which a date can be assigned, nor yet a set of
operations described in sufficient detail to admit of mere copying.
It was a sequence of explorations lasting nearly a lifetime, involving difficulties and puzzles that Galileo struggled to resolve, with
less than uniform success. A love affair, Palmieri calls it.
Our author seeks to touch the very nerve of Galileo’s endeavor. He challenges the assumption—beguiling to some Galileo
scholars—that armchair philosophy can plumb the complexities
that Galileo met with in the inclined plane experiment. He seeks
to put himself in Galileo’s actual problem-situation, with its puzzles on both the experimental and the theoretical side. Experimental work and theoretical explanation, carried on in tandem,
pose questions of each other. The result, Palmieri reports, is liberating: the experimenter-theoretician-scholar probes more feelingly, with a new intensity. He becomes a participant in a revolutionary endeavor.
The earliest writings we have in Galileo’s hand appear in
Volume I of the Edizione Nazionale under the title Juvenilia,
which was assigned by the editor, Antonio Favaro. He took them
to be a compilation from unidentified sources (they remain unidentified today). Their late-medieval character is striking. Paragraphs frequently begin with Advertendum quod. . . (“It is to be
Curtis Wilson is Tutor Emeritus at St. John’s College in Annapolis.
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noted that. . .”), a scholastic verbal tic implying that the following
sentence is accepted on authority. Is our scribe a mere copyist?
Palmieri detects indications to the contrary. In places Galileo
appears to be paraphrasing or summarizing; here and there he
leaves blank spaces as though for later comment or elucidation.
Included in the Juvenilia is a discussion of “the intension and
remission of forms,” a much-treated topic in scholastic discussions from the fourteenth century to at least the early sixteenth
century. It concerns increase or decrease in the intensity of a
quality. The hotness or hardness of a body may vary from point to
point or from instant to instant at a point. There is no evidence that
the fourteenth-century schoolmen attempted actually to measure
such variations, but they introduced language for describing them
as measurable secundum imaginationem. One of the qualities thus
dealt with was the speed of a moving body.
To the uniform variation of the intensity of a quality, the
schoolmen applied a special rule, now dubbed “the Merton rule”
after the Oxford college where it seems to have originated. It
states that a quality varying uniformly in intensity over a spatial
distance or interval of time is equivalent to the unvarying or
uniform quality of the mean degree stretching over the same
extension, spatial or temporal. Suppose, for instance, that the
hotness of a body varies uniformly from two degrees at one end
of the body to eight degrees at the other, the degree being an
imagined unit of intensity. This “latitude of form” was said to be
equivalent to a uniform hotness of five degrees from one end of
the body to the other.
Applied to the intensity of motion or speed, the Merton Rule
was interpreted as saying that the distance traversed in a motion
uniformly accelerated from an initial to a final speed was equal to
the distance traversed in a uniform motion having the same
duration and the mean speed of the accelerated motion. Compare
this with the crucial first proposition of Galileo’s treatise “On
Naturally Accelerated Motion” in the Third Day of his Two New
Sciences (1638)—do not both come to the same result? The
Merton Rule is not mentioned in the Juvenilia or in any of Gali-
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93
leo’s writings. Nevertheless, a number of historians of science,
Pierre Duhem and Marshall Clagett prominently among them,
have concluded that Galileo’s theorem was a redaction of the
Merton Rule.
The jury, Palmieri objects, is still out: no evidence has yet
turned up to show that Galileo actually encountered the medieval
enunciation of the Merton Rule. Palmieri suggests that such influence as the medieval discussion may have had on Galileo was
likely indirect, through the Geometry of Indivisibles (1635) of his
friend Bonaventura Cavalieri. The trajectory of Galileo’s thinking, Palmieri urges (following Favaro), is best determined from
his writings and the experiments he sought to carry out.
At the very time Galileo was writing the Juvenilia, and thus
becoming acquainted with the scholastic conception of the natural
world, he was also annotating Archimedes’ On Sphere and Cylinder, a strict deduction of mathematical consequences from premises. The analytical thrust of Archimedean thinking, Palmieri
believes, peeps through the text of the Juvenilia. Galileo sweats to
understand the medieval four-element physics of the sublunary
realm, and how all qualities are to be derived from the four “prime
qualities” or “alterative qualities,” hot, cold, dry, and wet. Are
motive qualities and speeds grounded in this fundamental Aristotelian ontology? The question is not explicitly addressed in the
Juvenilia, but shows itself in Galileo’s De motu, dating from ca.
1590.
The De motu, Palmieri observes, is polemical. Galileo denounces his teachers for the way they teach. When introducing the
elements of physics, they bring in Aristotle’s other works, quoting
from De anima, De caelo, or Metaphysics, as though their pupils
already knew everything or else will accept all on faith. Galileo
pledges to proceed differently, following the mathematicians in
advancing solely by deductive steps derived from explicit premises.
A central question posed in the De motu is: How do the
weights and speeds of the same body, descending along planes
differently inclined but of equal elevation, differ? By considering
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the forces needed to equilibrate the weight on the different planes
as weights applied to a lever, Galileo shows that the forces are inversely as the lengths of the planes. (Unbeknownst to Galileo at
the time of the De motu, this same result had been given in the
thirteenth-century Scientia de ponderibus attributed to Jordanus
de Nemore.)
Galileo in the De motu also attempts to deal with the question
of why a falling body accelerates. The body’s heaviness is a virtus
impressa (impressed force) that acts downward. Were it acting
alone, Galileo assumes that it would produce a constant speed of
fall. But to this impressed force downward, Galileo adds an
accidental lightness or levity, imparted to the body when we raise
it from the earth. When we release it, its motion downward accelerates because the impressed lightness exhausts itself over time.
The downward acceleration is thus explained in terms of the Aristotelian qualities of heaviness and lightness, with the important
additional assumption that the accidental lightness decays with
time. Galileo is here entangled in the fundamental ontology and
categories of the Juvenilia, along with a misconception, widely
accepted up to the time of the publication of Descartes’s safari,
Principles of Philosophy, that every velocity has to be maintained
by an impressed force. How did he free himself—as he unquestionably did—from the medieval mindset and its stultifying questions?
Palmieri proposes that certain life-worldly learning experiences—among them, finding how to make glass goblets sing and
brass plates howl—taught Galileo a lesson about the fine structure of nature. By patiently repeated experimentation, the young
Galileo learned how to attend to and control the fine detail of
what happens in the production of these effects. The beginnings
were in the workshop of his father, Vincenzo Galilei. During the
1580s, Vincenzo, a professional lutist, engaged in musicological
controversy. Opposing the Pythagorean claim that numerical
ratios are the cause of musical intervals—that the ratio 2:1 is the
cause of the octave, the ratio 3:2 the cause of the fifth, and so
on—he claimed that these intervals are to be determined by the
ear alone. One of his prime exhibits was the singing glass, a
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goblet containing water which, on being struck, gave forth a
musical tone. The pitch depended on the amount of water. Years
later Galileo Galilei in his Two New Sciences told of a further
result, not previously reported: the goblet could be set singing if
its rim were stroked with a wet finger-tip. Concomitantly, a standing wave was produced on the surface of the water. Sometimes
the tone shifted up an octave, at which moment the number of
waves per unit length in the standing wave doubled.
Palmieri—apparently the first among Galileo commentators
to do so—has replicated this experiment. Success requires practice, and it is best to begin with a large goblet (Palmieri used a
brandy snifter). One must rub the rim rhythmically, while repeatedly wetting the finger and watching for the evanescent wave
pattern. The wave pattern is more readily produced in the brandy
snifter than in a smaller goblet, but Palmieri found it possible to
obtain Galileo’s result also with the latter.
The howling brass plate is another of Galileo’s experiments
that Palmieri has replicated. As Galileo reports in the Two New
Sciences, while scraping a brass plate with a chisel to remove
stains, he found himself producing sounds. Sometimes they were
musical tones, and in such cases the chisel left evenly spaced
marks on the plate. On one occasion two tones sounded in succession, forming the interval of a fifth. In the two sets of marks
formed on the plate, the numbers of marks per unit length were as
3 to 2. Getting these results was helped by a bit of practice, but
was easier than obtaining the standing wave in the glass goblet.
A correct interpretation of these experiments presupposes the
physics of sounding bodies, which Galileo himself lacked as have
some of his recent commentators. A sounding body vibrates predominantly with certain frequencies that depend on the shape and
mechanical properties of the material. These frequencies are the
body’s “natural modes” of vibration. For a body of regular and
relatively simple shape, the predominant frequency modes are
harmonically related, e.g. as octave or fifth, etc. The vibrations
are reflected from the boundaries of the body, and the reflected
waves, combining with the original train of waves, form a standing wave pattern. For a given speed of propagation (which is de-
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
termined by the medium), the wavelength is inversely as the frequency, and thus the wavelengths of two standing waves have ratios inverse to the integral numerical ratios of the corresponding
natural modes. The natural modes therefore account for the emergence of the Pythagorean ratios in these two experiments. By
confirming Galileo’s experimental results, Palmieri has put them
beyond doubt. They form a beautiful early confirmation of the
theory of natural modes.
Important as this conclusion is, it is a different point that
Palmieri aims primarily to make. Galileo’s experimental results
are obtained only with patient attentiveness to the fine structure of
experience. They yield an experience in which hearing, touching,
and seeing are integrated—a holistic experience. Such experience
can direct consciousness away from false expectations and
toward new facts. This kind of learning, Palmieri proposes, assisted Galileo in liberating himself from the medieval mindset with
its pre-established categories.
What about the inclined plane experiment? Here also, besides
the visual sight of a ball rolling down the plane, a complex of
other sensory data is offered—sounds, vibrations that can be
sensed through skin and bone as well as the ear, changes in sound
as a bronze or wooden ball descends along the wooden track. Did
Galileo attend in a focused way to these effects? We know only of
the cases already cited, in which he focused on the details of
experimental happenings with attentiveness and care. In the Third
Day of the Two New Sciences, in the section On Naturally
Accelerated Motion, he focuses on the kind of acceleration that
nature employs for descending bodies—on this, its consequences,
and not on causes. The latter question as posed by the schoolmen
has been set aside:
[W]e decided to look into [the properties of this kind
of motion] so that we might be sure that the definition
of accelerated motion which we are about to adduce
agrees with the essence of naturally accelerated motion.
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It is this that he is now seeking the essence of—naturally accelerated motion itself.
Galileo’s adoption of this new focus, Palmieri believes, could
have been triggered by the very intensity of the auditory and
vibratory experience of the ball rolling down its inclined track. To
receive this nonvisual experience as fully as possible, Palmieri
placed his forehead in contact with the underside of the beam
serving as inclined plane, and grasped the beam with his hands
around its sides so that his fingertips could sense the upper side of
the beam. An assistant then released a ball to roll down the
inclined plane. As it rolled, Palmieri’s fingertips picked up the
vibrations induced in the beam, which were also transmitted
through his cranial bone, and he heard the sound through his ears
as well.
The resulting experience Palmieri calls holistic auscultation.
It is no mere juxtaposition of different effects, but an integrated
effect. It powerfully suggests that through our senses we can
delve deep into the fine structure of physical reality. The experience is markedly stereoscopic. The experimenter, hugging the
plane at a particular location, is first aware of the ball’s starting to
move far up behind his head, then hurtling close by, and finally
fading away in the distance. The descending ball produces a
sound that varies as the ball speeds up. Sound and speed grow
uniformly together, and this togetherness takes center stage. The
arresting character of this experience, Palmieri proposes, could
have derailed the young Galileo’s ambition to reduce changing
speed and sound to effects of the qualities dubbed primary by
Aristotle and the schoolmen.
In the scriptorium [where the Juvenilia were produced], the hot-cold-dry-wet chemistry of pitch and
speed can only be thought-through. But it is possible
to leave the scriptorium, visit workshops, and turn life
into a tastier affair. . . . We reach a new balance between knowledge and values when we learn how to
reconfigure life-worldly objects while letting our
senses be affected by them.
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
In The Two New Sciences Galileo stresses the simplicity of the
means nature adopts—in the case of descending bodies, the increase of speed in proportion simply to time elapsed. Reenactments of Galileo’s inclined plane experiment, however, yield at
best rough confirmations of this relation. In multiple repetitions
of the experiment, Palmieri and his students used a water clock of
the type Galileo describes, weighing the water released during the
duration of the descent to obtain a measure of elapsed time. In a
descent of the whole plane, compared with a descent of one
quarter of it, the expected ratio of the times is 2:1. In five trials of
a bronze ball one inch in diameter, running on the groove cut by
a router into the beam (so that the ball was running as though on
rails), the numbers obtained were 2.18, 2.19, 2.15, 2.09, 1.97,
averaging to 2.12, hence with 6 percent error and a root-meansquare dispersion from the mean of 0.08. In five trials of a bronze
ball seven-sixteenths of an inch in diameter, running in the
groove, the numbers obtained were 2.04, 1.90, 1.95, 1.90, 1.84,
averaging to 1.93, hence with 3.5 percent error, and a root-meansquare dispersion from the mean of 0.067.
Palmieri records twelve more sets of five trials each. The
errors are dramatically larger for decreased inclinations of the
plane, especially in the case of smaller and thus lighter bronze
balls. Five trials with a bronze ball seven-sixteenths of an inch in
diameter and an inclination of 1.36 degrees gave an average of
2.74, hence with 37 percent error; but five trials with a bronze ball
one inch in diameter and the same inclination yielded an average
of 2.17, hence with 8.5 percent error. An increase of the inclination to 3.8 degrees for these two balls reduced the errors to 18
percent and 6 percent respectively.
The deviations from expected theoretical ratios do not easily
admit of a detailed explanation, nor does Palmieri attempt one. Of
the factors likely to be operative we mention two. Human reflexes
cannot be relied upon to open the water-clock precisely when the
ball is released to start rolling, or to close it precisely when the
ball hits the stopping block. And, throughout the run, friction is no
doubt operative. Friction is an action at or between surfaces.
Seeking to find what schoolmen were saying in Galileo’s day
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concerning friction, Palmieri examined the Juvenilia and a book
on natural philosophy by Galileo’s contemporary, the Paduan
professor Giacomo Zabarella (d.1589). He found discussions of
“reaction” and “resistance,” but not of friction. The presumptive
role of friction in the inclined plane experiment, Palmieri believes, was a potent riddle leading Galileo to abandon scholastic
explanations in favor of an atomistic ontology. Galileo knew and
undoubtedly consulted Lucretius’s De rerum natura. It gives a
psychophysical explanation of pleasant and unpleasant tastes in
terms of smooth and rough or hooked atoms. The shapes of atoms
could similarly account for friction in the sliding or rolling of one
surface over another. Friction would thus be a “fight” between
particles of different shapes. The amounts of friction would no
doubt differ with the extent of contact between ball and trough,
with the shapes of atoms, and with the speed of the ball. Such
factors may be the causes of the deviations between observed and
expected time ratios above reported. But it is hard to imagine how
this hypothesis could be tested quantitatively. Besides, Galileo
may have shied away from openly entertaining a hypothesis
deriving from Lucretius’s philosophy—such a move on his part
could have led to a new charge of heresy.
One of Lucretius’s doctrines appears to have played a seminal
role in Galileo’s thinking about falling bodies. Lucretius states
that, since bodies falling in the void meet with no resistance, all
fall with the same speed. He attributes the observed differences
in the rates of fall to the checking action of the medium, which
hinders the motion of lighter bodies more than that of heavier
bodies. Galileo in the Two New Sciences will reach an analogous
conclusion, but with a crucial difference: all bodies falling in the
void fall, not with the same speed, but with the same acceleration.
We recall that earlier, at the time of the De motu, Galileo had
thought that the rates of fall would be as the specific gravities
(weights per unit volume) of the bodies. That assertion differed
from the Aristotelian position, which made the speed of descent
proportional to the body’s weight. Galileo rejected the latter
position on the basis of the following argument. He hypothesized
that any heavy body that falls has its speed, or (if accelerated) its
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
degrees of speed, fixed by nature, so that the speed or the acceleration cannot be increased or decreased without violence. (Thus
the argument applies whether the body falls with a constant or an
accelerated speed.) He then imagined two bodies equal in volume
and weight, e.g., two bricks. If let fall together, their speeds or
accelerations are equal, and they remain side by side. If tied
together so as to form the double weight, the result does not
change: they still fall with the same speed or acceleration, neither
“burdening” the other. Hence speed of fall cannot be proportional
to weight.
By the time he wrote the First Day of The Two New Sciences
(probably in 1634), Galileo had concluded that all bodies that fall
begin by accelerating, and he was hypothesizing that all bodies in
the void, independent of their specific gravities, accelerate with
the same acceleration. The reasoning leading to this conclusion,
as given in the Postils to Rocco (marginal notes on a work in
which Antonio Rocco attacked Galileo’s arguments in Two New
Sciences) proceeds as follows. He imagines two equal spheres,
one of gold and the other of cork, that are let fall from the same
height. Since both are surrounded by air, both are buoyed up by
the same force, equal to the weight of the volume of air they
displace (the buoyancy effect identified by Archimedes). Each
body in its motion will also be slowed by the viscosity of the air,
and this effect, since it derives solely from a property of the air,
would likewise be the same for both. Friction, which Galileo
explains as due to the sticking of particles of the medium to the
asperities of the body’s surface, can also be imagined to differ
negligibly in the two bodies (both could be covered by the same
surface material).
Finally, there is the resistance to the speed of each body,
which is greater for greater speeds. Galileo does not imagine that
this resistance can be eliminated practically (as it was a few years
later, after Galileo’s death, in experimentation with Torricelli’s
mercury barometer and with von Guericke’s air pump). But experience, Galileo tells us, suggests that this resistance is entirely
an effect of the medium. In a fall of the gold and cork spheres
through 100 braccia (150 feet?) in air, the gold, he asserts, will
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101
precede the cork by two or three braccia. In a fall of 1 or 2 braccia
the difference all but disappears. If in a thin medium like air, differences of speeds all but disappear, then, Galileo claims, we are
entitled to hypothesize that in a vacuum the speeds would be
identical. For this conclusion, we note, Galileo can claim only a
hypothetical status.
Galileo’s Third Day of his Two New Sciences is in one respect
strange—even peculiar! The First and Second Days, dealing with
the strength of materials, are clearly about real material bodies.
The Fourth Day, likewise, deals with real projectiles, actual
bodies moving through the air and resisted by it in their motion.
The mathematical part of the Third Day, by contrast, is presented
as about points descending along inclined lines. Real bodies are
absent, as are real planes along which they could descend. Friction is nowhere mentioned. The idealization of bodies is at least
as drastic as that in Euclid’s Elements. Galileo’s adoption of this
extreme idealization may owe something to the seeming impossibility of eliminating the effect of the medium, and the difficulty
of quantifying the effects of friction.
Among the numerous theorems proved in the Third Day is
the “expansion theorem”: points falling simultaneously along
variously inclined lines starting from a single point as origin are
all at each instant on the surface of an expanding sphere. Galileo
has the interlocutors of his dialogue engage in a considerable
discussion of this theorem. It may be, Palmieri suggests, a relic of
an earlier project to elaborate a Lucretian cosmogony starting
with point-atoms—another dangerous project which Galileo may
have relinquished to avoid further conflict with the papacy.
Early in his book Palmieri cites John Dewey’s Experience
and Nature for its “take” on Galileo’s quest for a science of
nature. To Dewey, Galileo’s turn to active, controlled experimentation represented a radical challenge to the Graeco-Christian
spectator-theory of knowledge. In Aristotle’s philosophy, as coopted by Christian philosophers like Thomas Aquinas, high value
was placed on detached contemplation of the world. The human
being was seen as situated at the center of the cosmos, empowered to survey and understand its parts. But in Dewey’s pragma-
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
tist perspective, true knowledge can be gained only by intervening in the world and attempting to bring disturbing or confusing situations under control. Detached contemplation is “out of
touch,” powerless to penetrate the intricate mysteries of the
world. Only by intervening, risking mistakes and failure, can we
begin to learn the world’s ways.
Was Galileo self-conscious about the revolutionary break he
was making with the methodology of earlier natural philosophy?
Palmieri in his Chapter 7 adduces three pieces of evidence
suggesting that he was.
During his three-year professorship at the University of Pisa
(1589-1592), Galileo had as friend, tutor, and colleague the
professor of Platonic philosophy, Jacopo Mazzoni. Mazzoni was
a syncretist, seeking to show the compatibility of Plato and
Aristotle with each other and with Christianity. He was, indeed,
the very model of a late sixteenth-century Graeco-Christian philosopher. Yet there was one opinion, apparently shared by Plato
and Aristotle, that Mazzoni took issue with, the opinion that
theoretical mind was categorically distinguishable in kind from
practical mind. Every branch of philosophy, Mazzoni insisted, has
both a theoria and a praxis. Each of these incorporates operations
directed toward particulars. In theoria such operations are for the
sake of propping up the truth; in praxis they are for the sake of
attaining the truth, and of finding the essence of things in the
order of existence. Such praxis Mazzoni saw as dangerously rushing toward particulars, plunging the seeker after truth into the
perilous world of the unstable, of the disturbed situation where
action can make the difference between failure and success. In
this characterization Galileo, struggling to make sense of his
results in the inclined plane experiment, might have recognized
himself.
Another glimpse into Galileo’s discomfort with the suffering
of experiential learning may be gathered from his Considerazioni
al Tasso. This consists of notes criticizing Tasso’s epic poem,
Gerusalemme liberata. The publication of the poem in 1581 had
sparked a lively debate among Italians as to its merit relative to
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Ariosto’s Orlando furioso (1516). Pro-Ariosto by taste, Galileo
was vehemently anti-Tasso. He rejected Tasso’s treatment of the
human passions. Whereas in Ariosto’s poem there was a metamorphosis of res into verba, leading to a satisfying outcome,
Galileo judged Tasso’s poetry to lack poetic inspiration, and to
end up cobbling together fragmented concetti (imaginations)
lacking continuity and reciprocal dependence. The result was thus
like marquetry, in which colored pieces of wood are fitted together, and the border lines between pieces always remain sharp
and crudely distinguishable. Tasso had failed to realize that the
passage from res to verba must be dynamic, transformative.
Aficionados of Tasso found in his poetry a new conception of
human feeling: feeling as a force originating from deep sources in
the senses and the body, so strong at times as to overwhelm the
mind. Imitating the pathos in Tasso’s poetry became a project for
composers of madrigals like Monteverdi. The resulting works
were among those sharply criticized by Galileo’s father Vincenzo.
Vincenzo saw “modern music” as mixing together voices and
modes, diverse words (in polyphony), different rhythms and
tempos, and thus giving rise to disparate and confusing emotional
reactions in the intellect of the listener. The future of music,
Vincenzo urged, lay in resolving the polyphonic “confusion” of
voices of the madrigal into a monodic style of singing.
Vincenzo’s criticism of polyphonic music as fragmented and
unintelligible is closely parallel to the younger Galileo’s criticism
of Tasso’s poetry as marquetry. Palmieri sees Galileo’s disdain for
Tasso as a disdain for “the real, oblique, polyphonic nature of
experiential learning.” Galileo’s preference for Ariosto is “a preference for an ideal of experience in natural philosophy in which
he had been inducted by Mazzoni’s teachings.” But “Galileo’s
radically new practice of philosophy . . . had brought him face to
face with the reality of experiential learning.” A deep rift runs
through Galileo’s mind, as Palmieri reads him: on the one hand,
Galileo ardently strives after a science of nature—which requires
dealing with the reality of experiential learning; on the other
hand, he would like that science to conform to the ideal sketched
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104
by Mazzoni. Perhaps, Palmieri suggests, Galileo was salvaging
something of Mazzoni’s ideal in his sanitized accounts of his
experiments.
Finally, Palmieri adduces a sonnet written by the dying
Galileo, giving it both in the original Italian and in a translation
by Dennis Looney. The latter runs as follows:
Enigma
Monster am I, stranger and more misshapen
than the harpy, the siren, or the chimera.
There is not a beast on land, in air or water
whose limbs are of such varied forms.
No part of me is the same size as any other part;
What’s more: if one part is white, the other is black.
I often have a band of hunters behind me
who map out the traces of my tracks.
In the darkest gloom I take my rest,
For if I pass from the shadows to bright light,
Quickly the soul flees from me, just as
The dream flees at the break of day.
And I exhaust my discombobulated limbs
And lose my essence, along with life and name.
Palmieri interprets the sonnet as a meditation on experiential
learning, caught between the polarities of individuality and universality. The metaphor of the monster captures the jagged contour of experience. The darkness is Galileo’s blindness, physical
as well as metaphorical. The hunters are his persecutors, real and
imagined. Only after death, with the loss of individuality, will the
light of truth shine forth. Thus Galileo recognizes that knowledge
is not coextensive with human experience. His sonnet refracts as
through a prism his lifelong pursuit of truth; an active engagement with the life-world, turning up more difficulty and more
unsolved conundrums than he has been able to cope with. The
strife, the tension, as he still relives it toward the end, is tragic in
its intensity. The only resolution is limitless relinquishment.
�
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Pastille, William
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Hunt, Frank
Sachs, Joe
Van Doren, John
Williamson, Robert B.
Zuckerman, Elliott
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Sachs, Joe
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McClay, Wilfred M.
Verdi, John
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The St. John’s Review
Volume 53, number 1 (Fall 2011)
Editor
William Pastille
Editorial Board
Eva T. H. Brann
Frank Hunt
Joe Sachs
John Van Doren
Robert B. Williamson
Elliott Zuckerman
Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant
Deziree Arnaiz
The St. John’s Review is published by the Office of the Dean,
St. John’s College, Annapolis: Christopher B. Nelson, President;
Pamela Kraus, Dean. All manuscripts are subject to blind review.
Address correspondence to The St. John’s Review, St. John’s
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ISSN 0277-4720
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The St. John’s Communications Office
Current and back issues of The St. John’s Review are available online
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�THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Contents
Essays
Reading the Constitution as a Great Book............................1
William Braithwaite
Platonic and Jewish Antecedents to ...................................33
Johannes de Silentio’s Knight of Faith
Jacob Howland
Kant’s Rational Being as Moral Being ...............................47
Joseph Smith
Reflections
What Did You Learn? .........................................................73
Lise van Boxel
Poem
To the New Recruits............................................................81
Elliott Zuckerman
Reviews
Delphic Examinations
A Review of David Leibowitz’s The Ironic Defense of
Socrates: Plato’s Apology ............................................83
David Bolotin
Toleration
A Review of Eva Brann’s Homage to Americans.............101
Janet Doughterty
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1
Reading the Constitution as a
Great Book
William Braithwaite
Our national political conversation is just now being much
exercised in a deliberation about the Law and the Divine:1 on
one side, those who hold sacred a certain place in New York
City, because of those who died there; on the other, those who
plead the cause of religious freedom. Jews, Christians, and
Muslims have spoken on both sides. These circumstances can
remind us that the horrific brutalities we human beings
continue to inflict upon one another often arise somehow from
what we believe about the Divine: either that it is, and the
disputes over what it is, or that it is not, and the disputes over
what, in this event, we should look up to, if anything. These
questions are so ancient, universal, and persistent that they
appear rooted in some primal dividedness of the soul. Politics
and law cannot, it seems, escape the Divine; nor we, our own
double nature.
In Book I, Chapter 1 of the Physics, Aristotle observes the
most natural path of inquiry starts from what is familiar.
Especially to those Americans who have grown up with it, the
Constitution is familiar. But if this makes us think we already
know what it says, we might fail to read it with the care that a
great book deserves. We can study the Constitution with this
kind of care even while suspending judgment on whether it
truly is a great book. We then avoid the error that is committed
when, for example, one reads Euclid while assuming he has
been made obsolete by Algebra—looking down, from a place
of assumed superiority. We cannot know a priori whether
William Braithwaite is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis. This article was
originally a lecture delivered at the College in Annapolis on Constitution Day,
September 17, 2010.
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Euclid’s Elements, Aristotle’s Physics, or the Constitution, is
outdated, and we disable our judgment if we begin by looking
down on what we may come to learn we should look up to.
Diminishing its magnitude in relation to ourselves, we distort
what it presents to us. We will not see it for what it is.
Other obstacles besides familiarity can get in the way of
reading the Constitution well. It is short; so we may suppose,
mistaking its brevity for lightness, that it doesn’t need much
time. It can be taken to belong to a special discipline, the law;
lacking expertise, we read it without confidence that we can
understand very much. It’s political; since it touches issues we
may care passionately about, we search it for what we want it
to say, and can fail to notice that what it does say might not
agree with our partisan inclinations, or even when it does
agree, that its grounds may be different from our presuppositions.
This essay has five parts. In the first, I will suggest why I
think the Constitution can usefully be read as the preeminent
chapter, one of four, in what we might call the Book of the
Constitution. The second and third parts deal, from two
different points of view, with the distinctively American
experience of trying to form a political union based on an idea,
rather than on blood ties or religious beliefs. In the fourth part,
I will propose a way of thinking about the Constitution’s
Article VI, which contains the well-known “Supremacy
Clause,” providing that the Constitution “shall be the supreme
law of the Land.” In Part V, to conclude, I will suggest brief
and tentative answers to two questions: Is the Constitution
really a great book? Who can understand it best?
I
The Constitution is arranged into a Preamble, seven Articles,
and at the very end, formulaic legal words attesting authenticity. Some Articles are divided into numbered Sections. Parts
of Sections, or of Articles with parts not separately numbered,
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are called Clauses. These are either paragraphs, sentences, or
parts of sentences.
The Preamble: “We the People of the United States, in
Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure
domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,
promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessing of
Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish
this Constitution for the United States of America.”
The grammatical skeleton is: “We the People . . . ordain
and establish this Constitution”—a subject, two transitive
verbs, and one direct object. “We” is plural; “the People” can
signify one or many. If we wanted to translate this sentence
into Ancient Greek, should the verbs be singular or plural?
Should the aspect of the verbs be aorist, to signify something
completed? Was the American Founding over and done with,
once and for all, when the Constitution was ratified, in 1789?
A verb of progressive aspect would signify that the ordaining
and establishing are continuous; they may still be going on.
Would the verbs be active voice, middle voice, or passive
voice? It makes a difference—doesn’t it?—whether the lawmaker says (active voice): I ordain and establish a constitution,
a regime of laws, and you choose to accept it? Or (middle
voice): I choose to obey, for my own reasons, only the laws I
make for myself? Or (passive voice): I make the laws, and you
have to accept them, like it or not?
“The People” are “of the United States.” A State is more
than a geographical place—land and water. The New York
mosque controversy reminds us that there are sacred and nonsacred places, garbage dumps and burial grounds. What kind
of place is a State of the United States—Maryland, for
example? What does it mean to say that places are “united”?
We all know that churches, temples, and mosques are sacred
places. Do legislatures and courts partake of the sacred also?
Those who serve there do take an oath, to uphold the law
(Article VI, last Clause). Why do we require this?
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The Preamble says that “the People” “ordain and establish”
the Constitution. “Ordain” means put in order; “establish”
means make firm. But political things seem to be disorderly
and always in flux. How is it possible that what is always
changing can be arranged so that it is stabilized?
In the Physics, Aristotle leads us through a long inquiry
into this question. Among his elemental ideas are place, form,
and material. What material do “the People” work on when
they “ordain and establish” a Constitution? And what is the
form of a constitution? Is it found in the words? If the Constitution has a place, where is it? In the national and State
capitals, and halls of city government? In ourselves? When
people speak of a “living Constitution,” where do they think
the Constitution lives?
The Preamble states six aims: union, justice, domestic tranquility, common defense, general welfare, and securing the
blessings of liberty. What is the principle of order here? Did
the men who wrote the Constitution believe, for example, that
without union, justice would be harder to achieve? That without tranquility at home, Americans would be less well prepared
for common defense against threats from abroad? That
liberty’s blessings are secure in proportion to the general welfare of all Americans?
The Preamble speaks of a “more perfect” union. Some
kind of union already existed, and it was deficient, less perfect.
It is named, in Article VI, “the Confederation.” This was the
union ratified in 1781, though first proposed in the Continental
Congress in 1777, ten years before the Philadelphia Convention proposed the Constitution we now have. The predecessor
constitution we know as the Articles of Confederation. If the
Constitution was a maturation, then it matters to know what it
grew out of, just as it matters, if you want to know a tree or
fish, to know how and from what it came to be what it is when
it is full-grown. To read the Constitution well, we must read
also the Articles of Confederation. I will say more about the
Articles later.
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The Preamble may be the best-known part of the Constitution. We turn now to the least-known part, at the very end,
the Attestation Clause. It says: “done in Convention by the
Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day
of September 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 In witness whereof We
have hereunto subscribed our Names.” Thirty-nine signatures
follow.
Constitution Day is September 17 because this is the day
the Delegates signed it, attesting what they had done; it is the
Constitution’s “birthday.” But why should its birthday be the
day it was written, rather than the day it became legally
effective? The 39 men who signed were the ones who proposed
it, but under Article VII, only “the People” could make it law,
by ratifying it in State Conventions. Is the Constitution’s
birthday the date of publication, rather than the date of ratification, because publishing the words was more its coming into
being than the actions of ratification which made it law?
The Attestation Clause dates the Constitution from two
beginnings: the beginning of the Christian religion and
calendar (“Year of Our Lord”), and the beginning of the
Americans as a separate people (“of the independence of the
United States of America the Twelfth”). As the beginning of
the Constitution implicates the Articles of Confederation, its
end implicates the Declaration. To read the Constitution well,
we must also read the Declaration, out of which it somehow
grew.
The words of the Declaration came into effect on October
19, 1781, when the commander of the main British army, General Cornwallis, acknowledged military defeat by his surrender
at Yorktown, Virginia. But Americans celebrate their independence on July 4, the anniversary of the signing of the Declaration in 1776. Were the words more the beginning of the
United States than the deeds of war necessary to make them
effective?
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The Constitution is a plan of government. The Articles of
Confederation were a treaty, agreeing to a “league” among
thirteen independent, sovereign States. The Declaration of
Independence is neither of these. It is an argument. Its aim is
to justify the action of Great Britain’s American Colonists in
separating themselves from the Mother Country. It has an
argument’s five-part formal structure: Introduction, Statement,
Proof, Refutation, and Conclusion.
An introduction is what leads us into. Here is the Declaration’s: “When in the course of human events, it becomes
necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which
have connected them to another, and to assume among the
Powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the
Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent
respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should
declare the causes that impel them to the separation.”
The Colonists appeal to Law, from three sources. Two are
mentioned here; the third we will get to shortly. “Laws of
Nature” points us back toward Aristotle’s Physics, the first
sustained inquiry into the regularities and patterns we can see
in the world around us. He shows that the phenomena of the
natural world are not chaotic and jumbled, but on the contrary,
have characteristic regularities and patterns, ways of being and
working. Nowadays we would say they change, grow, and
move according to laws—for example, the laws of force,
which, as Newton demonstrates, govern the motions of the
planets. If “Nature’s God” refers to the God of the divinely
created order of the world described in the Book of Genesis,
then this phrase points us back toward the Bible. In the
Declaration, law comes ultimately from the Divine, by way of
Nature, or from Nature as a manifestation, a showing forth, of
the Divine.
The Declaration does not “dissolve” all ties with Great
Britain—only the political ones. Ties of blood, language, religion, and law, along with common culture, history, and habits
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remain. In the Refutation, the Americans call those in England
“our British brethren.” The American War of Independence
was in some sense a war within the family, a war of brothers.
It thus recalls stories of other, more ancient animosities among
kindred: Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau; Polyneices and Eteocles, the sons of Oedipus; Romulus and Remus. How do we
reconcile the apparent inevitability of war with the shedding of
kindred blood, which seems to be one of the most unnatural of
human actions?
Thucydides claims that his History of the Peloponnesian
War is the only book we need to read about war. It recounts the
war of the Athenians and the Spartans, both of them Greek
peoples, who once were united in resisting invasion by the
Persians, an earlier war recounted by Herodotus. In the later
war, they turn against each other. The paradigm of war,
according to Thucydides, is the killing of kindred, the people
of one’s own kind.
In their War of Independence, 1776-81, the thirteen
American States united against their “British brethren.” Three
generations later, the Americans fought another war, also
against kindred—our Civil War of 1861-65. Both wars were
between people related by blood, or “consanguinity,” as the
Declaration puts it. Both were wars about the words of the law:
the earlier war was about who may speak words of law (only
those who speak with “the consent of the governed”); the later,
about what the words of the law meant (are all men created
equal, and if so, in what politically relevant ways are they
equal?).
Both wars were also about Equality and Liberty: the
American Colonists wanted to free themselves from a lawmaking power in which they had no equal voice; the American
South, calling itself “the Confederacy,” wanted to be free to
tell the negro slave and his descendants that they would never
have any voice in making the laws to which they were
subjected.
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The proposition to be proved in the Declaration’s Proof
section is that “the present King of Great Britain” (he is
nowhere named) is a tyrant. This Section begins: “To prove
this, let Facts be submitted to a candid World.” Eighteen
complaints follow, and more than half deal specifically with
the power to make laws. Throughout this 18-count
“indictment” of the King, the Americans speak as if claiming
no more than their rights under established English law. This is
the third source of law they appeal to—not new rights, but
traditional ones, belonging to them as Englishmen. The King is
a tyrant because he has abused these traditional rights. Exercise
of the powers of government without the consent of the
governed is tyranny, the Americans argue. This is the startingpoint of their argument; it is found in the Declaration’s second
part, which begins with the famous “self-evident truths.” There
it is asserted that the only just powers a government has are
those “derived from the consent of the governed.”
That a government’s just powers derive from consent of
the governed depends on prior premises. The first of these is
asserted in the Declaration’s most famous words—“That all
men are created equal.” This is the philosophical source of the
American people’s claim that to be ruled rightly, they must be
ruled by their own consent, by laws they themselves have
made. “All men are created equal” are the words under contention during the Civil War, in which my own ancestors were on
opposite sides. Whom did the Declaration’s authors intend to
exclude, if anyone, from the words “all men”? Did they mean
to exclude negro slaves and their descendants? In 1857, the
Supreme Court of the United States, in Dred Scott v. Sanford,
said Yes. Did the Court read the Declaration rightly and well?
Do the Declaration and the Constitution exclude negroes from
citizenship? I will say more about this question later. Many
people seem to believe that the Constitution is about rights,
mainly. It isn’t. What they are probably thinking of is the first
ten Amendments, which we now call, collectively, the Bill of
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Rights. These were added later, in 1791, after the original
Constitution was ratified. The Articles of Confederation and
the Constitution are about powers; the Declaration and the first
ten Amendments are about rights. According to the Declaration, the powers are derived from the rights, and the rights are
derived from “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”
Rights are primary, because they are the source; powers are
derivative, because they pre-suppose rights. Thus the soul of
American law is the Declaration, for it is there that the organic
bond between powers and rights, or between government and
nature, is made explicit. As the beginning and end of the
Constitution implicate the Articles of Confederation and the
Declaration of Independence, the powers in the Constitution
implicate the rights asserted in the Declaration and the Bill of
Rights. To read the Constitution well, we must also read the
Bill of Rights.
With the Bill of Rights in mind, we have become accustomed to speaking of “individual” rights. The Constitution
never does. Throughout the Constitution proper and the Bill of
Rights, the standard language is “person,” “persons,” or “the
people.” The Third Amendment does refer to “the Owner”; the
Sixth, to “the accused”; but these terms are used nowhere else,
I believe. The Sixth also uses three masculine pronouns, but
for reasons that I will spell out later, with respect to the
Rendition Clause, I believe it doubtful that these refer only to
males. What is the difference, if any, between “individual”
rights and rights of “persons,” or “personal” rights? Does the
difference matter?
“Person” comes from Latin persona, meaning mask, especially one worn by an actor. Our persona is our public face, the
one we put on, for example, when we mask our private feelings
from strangers or acquaintances we don’t know very well.
Good manners require that we sometimes do this. Does politics
require it too? What do people mean when they say “All politics is personal,” or “The personal is the political”? “Personal”
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seems nowadays sometimes to mean “private.” What are the
real differences, the ones that matter, between our public or
political lives and our private lives? Does the Constitution
suggest which things belong to which? Should it?
The use of “person” in the Constitution was not motivated
by an effort to find what some call today “non-sexist”
language. “Person” is a technical term in law; it means human
beings in their public, or political, capacity. This usage came
into English law from Roman law, and is directly traceable to
the codification of twelve centuries of Roman law that was
ordered by the Emperor Justinian in the sixth century. The
language of “individual” rights began, I believe, to be more
common and customary in American law during the middle of
the twentieth century, when the now-extensive body of court
opinions on the Bill of Rights was developing. “Individual,”
like “persona,” is also Latin in origin, but its meaning and
connotations are quite different. It is cognate with “indivisible,” that is, with the unit, the monad, the atom. This carries
implications of the uniquely private—that which makes each
of us, as each snowflake is said to be, absolutely different from
every other of the same kind. Has the elemental language of
mathematical physics crept unawares into our understanding of
the law? Our vanity, pride, and ego certainly prefer “individual” rights. We cannot help wishing to be special; most of us
do seem to have a deep longing to be loved for no other reason
than that we are who we are. But what the Constitution secures, in law, is “personal” rights, not “individual” rights. In
exchanging the former for the latter, what have we gained, and
what have we lost?
We now have a book of four parts: the Declaration of
Independence of 1776, the Articles of Confederation of 1781,
the Constitution of 1787, and the Bill of Rights of 1791. This
is the Book of the Law for a self-governing people. To read
well its pre-eminent “chapter,” the Constitution, we must read
the whole of which it is a part. The theoretical first principles
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of this people are Equality and Liberty; these are mediated by
Justice. The practical first principles are Prudence and
Tolerance; these are mediated by Law.
Among this self-governing people, all persons are politically equal. Each has equal right to speak freely in public
places about all that relates to the common good. Each has,
also, equal right to worship freely in his own church, temple,
or mosque. It is the work of the law (among other things)
constantly to mediate, heedful of prudence and tolerance,
claims to these fundamental rights and to other rights derivative from them. Which, if either, is primary—the right of
freedom of religion, or the right of freedom of speech? Both
are mentioned in the First Amendment, ratified in 1791, and
both are in the foreground of our national political conversation today. How are these two rights related?
II
To be one and whole is a human yearning. When our heart says
yes, and our head says no, we say we are conflicted. We are at
war with ourselves. We are not one and whole. In friendships,
the things of each are common to both, says Phaedrus in
Plato’s dialogue of that name (279c). In marriage, the Hebrew
Bible’s teaching (Genesis 2:24), inherited by the Greek Bible
(Mark 10:7-8), is that a man and woman become “one flesh.”
Modern biology and genetics confirm this. So does Aristophanes, in Plato’s Symposium (189c-193e). What would a
community that is one and whole look like? Might much of its
law not need to be written? This would be the law of custom.
In English legal history, unwritten or customary law was called
the common law. The American Colonists inherited this law,
and, consonant with its animating spirit, they reshaped it to
their own circumstances. We learn the common law by living
in it. We abide by the law, and it abides in us. It becomes a
second nature, and eventually we may feel as if it were natural
simply. At home in our community, we feel one and whole,
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both in ourselves and in relations with others. We have a place.
We know who we are. To be one nation and whole, a true political union, has been what Americans have aimed at since the
beginning. It has therefore been our greatest political problem
as well. Is it also the greatest political good and the greatest
political problem simply?
After their War of Independence, from 1775 to 1781, the
Americans, recently united against a common foe, tried to
establish a political union among themselves. Their first
attempt, the Articles of Confederation, failed. Their second attempt, the Constitution, has stood the tests of 225 years. What
made the American Union under the Articles “less perfect”?
Both the Articles and the Constitution aimed at union. The plan
of government each designed toward this end was different,
however. This difference is apparent on the face of the two
documents. The Articles are wordy and legalistic. Their substance is marred by excessive precision through avoidable
repetition, the spelling-out in detail of cumbersome procedures
for resolving differences among the States, and the political
asymmetry of imposing obligations on the States without giving the national government powers to enforce them. Article
IX (of thirteen Articles) spells out the powers of the Confederation Congress. It is over 1,400 words, in nine lengthy, unnumbered paragraphs. It would take over ten minutes to read it
aloud, at a brisk pace.
About two-thirds of Article IX deals with two subjects,
boundary disputes and raising “land forces,” that is, an army.
The complicated procedure for settling boundary disputes between States is set out in a single sentence of about 400 words.
This sentence piles one dependent clause on top of another:
three clauses begin with “if,” or “but if”; two others, with
“provided that.” It is a labor to read and understand it. The
provision for raising land forces gives the Confederation Congress power to request a proportionate quota of soldiers from
each State. These requisitions “shall be binding,” but the Arti-
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cles give Congress no legal power to enforce them. This is true
also of Congress’s power to collect contributions from the
States to “a common treasury” and to pay expenses for “the
common defence or general welfare.” Consequently, there was
no national army and no national treasury, except insofar as the
States chose voluntarily to comply with Congress’s quotas and
requisitions.
The different aims of the Articles and the Constitution are
revealing. The Constitution’s Preamble, we recall, states six:
union, justice, domestic tranquility, defense, general welfare,
and securing the blessings of liberty. The Articles, in Article
III, state three: defense, security, and general welfare. Notably
absent are justice and domestic tranquility. That the Articles’
primary object was defense against foreign enemies is
indicated by that part of Article III in which the States agree “to
assist each other, against all force offered to, or attacks made
upon them, or any of them.” The vulnerability felt by the
American States in 1781 is understandable. They were militarily weak, having just fought an exhausting five-year war.
They had won only with the help of the French and good luck.
England, Spain, and others still coveted further possessions in
the New World. The Americans had won their independence;
now they had to keep it.
The Confederation’s “union” was “less perfect” in being
more for defense against attack from outside than for political
union within, and in being more detailed on paper than feasible
in practice. The States agreed to a mutual defense treaty, but
did not empower Congress to raise a national army through
legally enforceable quotas of soldiers from each State. The fear
of foreign enemies was counterbalanced by an equally
powerful fear of yielding local powers to that genuinely
national government which some thought necessary for true
political union. Fear breeds, and is bred by, distrust. A sign of
the States’ fear and mutual distrust was their uncertainty about
what to call their relationship. In the Articles of Confederation,
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the introductory “Whereas” Clause and the Attestation Clause
at the end call it “a perpetual union.” Article I calls it a
“confederacy,” Article II a “confederation,” Article III, “a firm
league of friendship.” Perhaps they could not find the right
name because they were not yet sure what they wanted to
name. “League” may have been closest to the truth, in its sense
of coming together for a common purpose. History has
decided, however, to call our first, “less perfect” Union “the
Confederation.” This fits, because “to federate” means to come
together in a league. In another way, it does not fit. The Latin
root of “federate” and “federal” is related to fides, meaning
faith or trust. What is missing from the spirit of the Articles of
Confederation trust is mutual trust. A coming together for a
common purpose is not yet a union.
III
What drives us apart, makes us decide to separate? What are
the differences that get in the way of forming a real and lasting
union? Are there natural kinds, natural differences that inevitably have political consequences? Male and female seem to be
different kinds by nature. Aristotle argues in Book I of the Politics that some men are naturally slaves, or slavish. Linguistic
and cultural differences can feel almost natural. Whatever the
source of whatever differences there are, political arrangments,
if they are to be decent and sensible, will have to take account
of them. Which differences matter most, politically? How do
they matter, and to what extent? We now consider some differences of kind that are implicated in the Constitution.
In 1972, it was proposed to amend the Constitution to
provide that “Equality of rights under law shall not be denied
or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of
sex.” The intent of the Equal Rights Amendment was to prohibit, with the force of written law, discrimination against women. The main argument for it was the claim that the Constitution “excluded” women, because the only sex-specific pro-
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nouns in it are masculine. It is true that the Constitution’s text
does not anywhere use feminine pronouns. Does this signify
intent to exclude women from the rights of citizenship and the
holding of public offices?
Article II vests the Executive Power of the National
Government in a President and specifies requirements of age,
citizenship, and residency. It says, “No Person” shall be eligible to the office without these requirements. “Person” is neuter in grammatical gender, and does not exclude women. This
Section further provides, with respect to the President, “Before
he enter on the Execution of his office, he shall take the
following oath or affirmation” (emphasis added). Do these
masculine pronouns exclude women? The conventions of
English grammar, both in 1787 and in 1972, allowed masculine
pronouns to refer to the female sex. Whether a particular
masculine pronoun was presumed to include females, or
intended to exclude them, was to be determined by context.
Supposing that the Constitution as a whole is the proper
context, let us look at other uses of masculine pronouns to see
if they exclude women.
An example is in Article IV. Its Section 2 includes what is
called the Rendition Clause. It says that a criminal fugitive
who flees from the State where he committed a crime “shall on
Demand of the Executive Authority of the State from which he
fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having jurisdiction of the Crime.” If we read the “he” in the phrase “the
State from which he fled,” to refer only to men, here is the
result: A man who robs a grocery store in Maryland and is later
discovered by Maryland authorities to be in police custody in
Virginia, is constitutionally required, by the Rendition Clause,
to be “delivered up” to Maryland police. But his female
accomplice is not, because she is not a “he.” It seems to me
unlikely that the authors of the Constitution intended this
result.
The Equal Rights Amendment came close to being ratified
before the time to do so ran out in 1982. How should we under-
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stand the American people’s declining to ratify it, after more
than ten years of public deliberation about it? No serious
argument seems to have been raised, during the Democratic
primary-election campaigns of 2008, that then-Senator Hilary
Clinton was constitutionally ineligible for the Presidency because the ERA had not been ratified. The question remains,
nevertheless, whether there are differences between men and
women of such a kind that the law can properly make distinctions between them for some purposes, such as combat duty in
military service.
We turn now to another common misreading of the
Constitution. Among some Americans, both black and white,
an opinion persists that it favors, or supports, slavery. Three
specific provisions deal with this subject directly, two others
indirectly. None uses the words “slave” or “slavery.” Used
instead is “Person” or “Persons.” It should seem odd that a law
said to approve of slavery fails to name its subject plainly and
correctly. What could account for such reticence? Article II
vests the National legislative power in a Congress consisting of
a Senate and House of Representatives. Section 2 provides that
each State shall have not more than one Representative in the
House for every 30,000 of its population. With exceptions not
relevant here, population includes “the whole Number of free
Persons, . . . [and] three fifths of all Other Persons.” No one
disputes that by “Other Persons,” the Constitution’s authors
meant slaves.
Does the phrase “three fifths of all Other Persons” mean,
then, as some people continue to believe, and to say publicly,
that according to the Constitution, the negro is three fifths of a
Person? Such an opinion would be consistent with the opinion
that the phrase “All men are created equal” in the Declaration
of Independence was intended to mean “All white men,” and
therefore to exclude negro slaves and their descendants (this is
the reading of the Declaration by the Supreme Court in the
Dred Scott case). Often not noticed by those who say these
things is that the Three-fifths Clause deals not only with repre-
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sentation in the House, but also with taxation. The relevant
language says, “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States” according to population,
counted according to the formula just noticed.
From each State’s point of view, representation in the
House and direct taxation have opposed incentives. To get
more seats in the House, the Slave States wished to count all
their slaves; to pay less taxes to the National Government, they
wished to count none of them. The Free States, on the
contrary—those in which slavery was forbidden—wished to
have the Constitution count no slaves for representation in the
House. This would give the Free States greater power there,
increasing the prospect that Congress could eventually abolish
slavery. But for taxation, the Free States would have been glad
to agree to count all slaves. This would increase the tax contributions required from Slave States to the National Treasury. In
this controversy over representation in the House, what the
Free States wanted was that the Constitution not prohibit or
impede the eventual abolition of slavery; what the Slave States
wanted was its constitutional preservation. These opposed
interests were compromised by joining the opposed incentives
of gaining political power and reducing taxation. More House
seats meant more taxes; paying less tax meant fewer House
seats, and less political power.
In Mathematics, three one-fifth parts of 100 is the same as
100 three-fifths of each unit. But the dispute in the Constitutional Convention addressed by the Three-fifths Clause was
not about counting parts of slaves. It was about whether to
count all slaves as whole Persons, or some of them, or none.
Has the Three-fifths Clause been read in the mode of mathematics, rather than with a proper understanding of the language
of the law? Reading the Constitution in the mode of mathematics is consistent with thinking of individuals, of ones or
monads; but as we noticed earlier, the Constitution speaks of
“persons,” not of “individuals.” Ones can be fractionally
divided; “persons” cannot. What the Constitution says is that
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three-fifths of the total slave population were to be counted as
“Persons” and two-fifths were not to be counted at all. Did the
authors of the Constitution mean to say, by these words, that
out of every 100 slaves, sixty were Persons, and forty were
property? Which ones were which?
If the text obliges us to acknowledge that the Constitution
acquiesces in counting two-fifths of the slave population as
property, then we must concede that it also counts three-fifths
of that population as Persons. More slaves are constitutionally
recognized as human beings than are not so recognized. Is this
pro-slavery or anti-slavery? It seems more just to the text to
say that the Constitution looks up to the ultimate good aimed
at—placing slavery “in the course of ultimate extinction,” as
Lincoln was to put it—more than it looks down at the political
constraints that made this good temporarily unachievable in
1787. Would negro slaves have been better off in 1787—would
we be better off today—if the opponents of slavery in the
Convention, acting on high-minded principle, had simply
refused to consider any compromise whatever with the slave
interests? (This was the stance, later on, of the Radical
Abolitionists.)
We have taken note of two differences that American
Constitutional Law has had to deal with: man and woman,
master and slave. The first difference is natural. Slavery,
according to Aristotle’s Politics, has two forms, one natural,
the other conventional. In American law, slavery is against
natural law, or natural right. “All men are created equal.”
Slavery existed here, legally, only by convention, by positive,
written law. It could therefore be abolished, without injustice,
if the lawmaker changed the law. The Slave States saw, and
feared, that Congress would do exactly that. They were
willing, in consequence, to fight a Civil War to keep what they
claimed as their freedom, or “natural” right, to hold the Negro
in bondage. In the decades leading to that war, the Southern
legal arguments turned more and more to the assertion that “the
Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” made Negro slavery
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lawful because it was both natural and consistent with the
Bible. The slave interests felt these claims to be vindicated
when the Supreme Court decided the Dred Scott case in 1857.
So the war came.
It can be tempting to view the Union victory in the Civil
War as a victory for the jurisprudence of natural rights, on
which the Constitution is founded. With different political
leadership, and if President Lincoln had not been assassinated,
perhaps the victory might have had some chance to become
that. But it didn’t. What the South lost on the battlefield, it won
in politics and the law. One visible sign of the South’s triumph
was racial segregation—that vestigial remnant of slavery
which the most unregenerable elements in the South clung to,
in defeated rage, dragging down with them their decent and
moderate, but timid, compatriots. This was the South in which
I grew up, in Virginia, during the 1940s and 1950s.
The triumph of Southern jurisprudence involves, and is
involved with, the story of what we today call “judicial
review,” and this story belongs to a third difference for our
examination—the different aspects of sovereignty. The specific
question is this: what distinguishes the making of law,
legislative power, from the interpretation and application of it
in particular cases, judicial power?
The Constitution, in Article I, vests the law-making power
in Congress. The power to decide “Cases and Controversies” is
by Article III vested in “a Supreme Court and such inferior
courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and
establish.” What we seek is to discern how these two powers,
aspects of sovereignty, differ. We cannot, on this occasion,
make an adequate inquiry into this question. I offer, instead,
some observations we might draw upon, in order to begin
thinking about how a judge differs from a legislator.
“Judicial review” refers to the Supreme Court’s power to
act as a kind of super-legislature by declaring Acts of Congress
“unconstitutional,” which is taken to mean, “not lawful,” or
not law. Is judicial review consonant with the spirit of the
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Constitution? What is the source of the Supreme Court’s power
to overrule the deliberate will of “the People,” expressed in
laws passed by Congress? What is at stake here, in the words
of the Declaration, is the “consent of the governed.” The
Declaration accused the British King of the arbitrary exercise
of power. What are the differences, with respect to “consent of
the governed,” between an arbitrary king, an arbitrary Congress, and an arbitrary Supreme Court? If “arbitrary” means
unreasonable and willful, then all three are forms of unjust
rule, even if different in formal appearance and practical
consequences. Are an arbitrary Congress and an arbitrary
Supreme Court dangerous in equal degree? This may depend
upon the remedies available to the People, and on the kind of
harm either branch might do by its willfulness. Senators’ terms
are six years; House Members’ terms, two; the constitutional
power to remove them belong to the People, and can be
exercised at the ballot box. Supreme Court judges serve,
constitutionally, “during good behavior”; they seldom resign
voluntarily. With good health, most serve as long as physically
and mentally able. The most recent retiree was ninety years
old. The Chief Justice and the newest Associate Justice are
both about 50; they are likely to serve for several decades.
Bad or questionable laws enacted by Congress may be
more accessible to correction, both constitutionally and in
practice, than abuses of power by the Supreme Court. The
Court decided Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, holding
that racial segregation of negroes and whites in public schools
was unconstitutional. To reach this result, the Court had to
overrule its own prior decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. Plessy
was decided in l895. Both Brown and Plessy involved state
legislation, not an Act of Congress, so these two decisions
were not, technically, exercises of the power of judicial review.
But the jurisprudential progenitor of Plessy, insofar as it addressed racial segregation, the remnant of slavery, from the
perspective of positive law rather than of natural law, or natural
right, as affirmed in the Declaration, was the Court’s decision
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in Dred Scott v. Sanford, which did involve an Act of Congress.
Dred Scott was decided in 1857. There Mr. Chief Justice
Taney held that Congress had no power to exclude slavery
from United States Territories not yet admitted to the Union as
States. On the way to this conclusion, Taney opined that the
words, “All men are created equal” were intended by the
Declaration’s signers to mean only white men. “The Negro has
no rights a white man is bound to respect,” he said. I believe
this to be a misreading of the Declaration; if it is, Taney’s opinion “de-natures” the Constitution by poisoning its seminal
source in the Declaration’s doctrine of natural right, tranforming its vital principle from the sovereignty of reason into the
will of the sovereign. Beginning with the Dred Scott decision,
and its repudiation of the political principle that “All men are
created equal,” the Supreme Court’s prestige and authority
stood behind the legally sanctioned and publicly tolerated policy of racial segregation for a hundred years, until the Brown
decision in 1954.
By contrast, efforts to change legislation enacted by
Congress can begin, if the People choose, after the next
election. The Civil Rights Movement of the l960s can be seen
as a “bottom-up” citizens’ effort (assisted by a better-instructed
Supreme Court) to make this ballot-box power effective
against those Members of Congress who held influential
committee chairmanships that made it possible for them to
impede, stall, or stop civil rights legislation in the National
legislature. A bad law is sooner corrected than a corrupted
understanding of the law itself. In the most important moral
controversy ever to divide this country, the Supreme Court was
on the wrong side for a century. Dred Scott was the first time
the Court effectually exercised the power of judicial review. In
doing so, the Court abandoned, in order to assert the political
power of a “super-legislature,” what might have been its
proper role as law teacher to the nation.2 It also prepared the
groundwork for suffocating the natural-right source of
American law in the Declaration of Independence. Without
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22
natural law, or natural right, the highest thing in American law
is the power of the sovereign. By asserting the power of
judicial review, the power of exercising a veto over Congress,
the Supreme Court declared itself first sovereign. We are under
a Constitution, a Chief Justice of the Court said in 1907 (and
repeated in 1908), but the Constitution means what the Court
says it means.3 This understanding of law seems to take as its
essence the political (and sometimes military) force that is
certainly necessary to make law effective in practice, rather
than that ultimate good which law looks up to, aims at, and
constantly strives toward. This good, according to the
Preamble, is to “establish Justice.”
IV
What is law for us? This is Socrates’ opening question in
Plato’s short dialogue Minos. The Constitution, I suggest,
answers Socrates’ question for Americans in the way I shall
now crudely sketch out; for a fuller answer, we would need of
course to read Plato’s Laws, to which the Minos is propaedeutic, and some other books as well.
Article VI in the Constitution has three unnumbered
Clauses. The first requires that the National Government honor
“Debts and Engagements” made under the Articles of Confederation. The obligation to perform contracts continues, notwithstanding a change in the external form of government.
This first Clause gives constitutional recognition and stature to
the principle of keeping your promises. This is a moral
principle, because a promise invites reliance, and to ask
reliance is to accept moral responsibility. Promise-keeping
nurtures trust. When our words invite others to rely firmly on
what we say, we vitalize our personal, social, and commercial
relations. Our expectation that most people, most of the time,
will generally do what they promise, governs such commitments as “I’ll meet you at the Dining Hall at 11:45” and my
marriage vows, as well as our commitments to friends and all
the buying and selling we do everyday, including the commer-
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23
cial contracts we enter into by e-mail and telephone with
people we have not met, don’t know, and will never see. The
law of promise-keeping is very ancient, its origins obscure.
Abraham relies on it when he buys a burial place for Sarah;
Jacob relies on it when Esau sells him his birthright. This law
was for a long time unwritten, residing in the habits and
customs of people’s ways of dealing with one another. In
England, it was one element in the nurturant soil of what came
to be called the common law.
The second Clause of Article VI is the famous Supremacy
Clause. It provides that the Constitution, laws enacted pursuant
to it, and treaties made by the United States, “shall be the
supreme Law of the Land.” This Clause makes the Constitution the highest written, or positive, law for the American
people. Unlike the law of promise-keeping, the Constitution
and its Supremacy Clause are recent in time, and its authors are
known by name. All peoples have laws of promise-keeping.
But only the Americans have “this Constitution,” ordained and
established by themselves.
The third Clause of Article VI requires all members of
Congress and the State legislatures, and “all executive and
judicial officers” of the United States and of the several States,
to bind themselves “by Oath or Affirmation” to support the
Constitution. This requirement resonates with the tones of the
closing lines of the Declaration of Independence: “And for the
support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the
Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each
other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” These
closing lines recall, in turn, the Declaration’s beginning, with
its reference to “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.”
The three Clauses of Article VI ascend hierarchically. They
move from the law of promise-keeping that has grown up
spontaneously and been preserved among all peoples by
custom, to the highest law of a particular people, to the laws
that are highest simply, the Laws of Nature and the Laws of the
Divine, however understood. The written Constitution referred
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to in the Supremacy Clause is in the middle of Article VI,
placed between the unwritten laws of custom and the unwritten
laws of the Natural and Divine orders.
Is the being of the Law to be found more in its stability,
which may be most manifest in its written and unchanging
words, or more in what the Law is grounded upon and in what
it looks up to? The structure of Article VI suggests that what
we hold, or ought to hold, most solidly to be Law is the ways
and usages, of unremembered origin, that give identifying
character to us as a particular people. This, according to the
Declaration of Independence, is the English common law (with
its reliance on natural right), as we have adapted it to American
circumstances. The structure of Article VI suggests, as well,
that what American Law looks up to is the relation between
Nature and the Divine. The Divine is referred to in the
Declaration four times: as “Nature’s God” and the “Creator,”
the source of “unalienable rights,” and hence of the just powers
of government, and of law; as “divine Providence”; and as
“Supreme Judge of the World.” As presented in the Declaration, the Divine could appear to be the transcendent original
form of which the National Government’s three branches—
legislative, executive, and judicial—are the earthly image and
shadow.4 Such a view seems consistent with the Biblical
testimony that Man is created in God’s image (Genesis 1:27).
What does this way of reading Article VI suggest about
reading the Constitution as a great book?
Reading the Constitution as a great book entails trying to
see what is in it, not only expressly, but also implicitly. I have
suggested that both women and blacks are “in” the Constitution, as potential citizens—human beings who were not
citizens in 1787, but whom the Constitution did not legally bar
from becoming citizens. Women are “in” because they are
“Persons,” and the men who chose the Constitution’s masculine pronouns knew these pronouns could be understood as
including women. Women are in the Constitution because they
are not out—they are nowhere excluded, expressly or by impli-
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25
cation. Blacks are “in” because even if the Constitution grudgingly acquiesces in treating 40% of negro slaves as not
countable in the population, it affirmatively treats 60% of them
as countable “Persons,” that is, as potential citizens, as “men”
politically within the meaning of “All men are created equal.”
It is best to interpret the words and intentions of the
Constitution and the law in the same way we want our own
actions interpreted, that is, in the way we should try to interpret
the actions of others—by the good that is aimed at, rather than
by the necessities, circumstances, and human weaknesses that
impede or hobble the practical realization of our better hopes
and dreams.
Reading the Constitution as a great book entails trying to
see, also, what lies under it—a Western tradition of over two
thousand years, accessible to us in a few hundred surviving
books. But much of what underlies the Constitution and the
law is not in books. It was, and is, unwritten. No express words
in the Constitution command us to be just, prudent, and
tolerant. We learn such things, to the extent we do learn them,
by living with, and among, others.
Reading the Constitution as a great book also entails trying
to see what is above it, what it appeals and aspires to—Nature
infused with the Divine, the Divine as the First and the Final
Cause of Nature. To read the Constitution most deeply, we
have to read the Bible and Plato’s Laws, Aristotle’s Physics
and Metaphysics, Aquinas’s Summa, and much more.
Reading the Constitution as a great book entails, finally,
trying to see what is behind it, the background out of which its
thought emerges. This background begins to reveal itself when
we ask the questions, Does it make a difference that the
Constitution was written in English? Could its meaning be
expressed in German, or French, or Chinese? Perhaps what is
particular in it could not be. But what about the things in it that
are universal? Which things are these? If it makes a difference
that the Constitution was written in English, then, for the same
reason that reading Homer illuminates the background neces-
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26
sary for reading Plato, reading Shakespeare illuminates the
background for reading the Constitution.
To begin to know what the Constitution and the law are—
this is the work of a lifetime.
V
A great book, for me, is one that speaks with the authority
of depth and weight about serious questions that really matter
to me. Friendship is such a question. Who are my best friends?
Surely those who want for me the highest good I am capable
of. How do I know who these are? Aristotle’s Ethics might help
me to know. Whom can I love? Whom can I trust with the
innermost thoughts and secrets of my heart? Who, or what,
should I love and trust the most? Plato and the Bible, Jane
Austen and George Eliot, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky have a lot to
say about these questions.
A great book, for others as well as for me, is one that
speaks with coherence and insight about questions that will
matter a lot to most of us throughout our lifetimes. Work is
such a question: What should I do with my life? What work am
I most fit for?
Aristotle’s Politics and Tocqueville’s Democracy in
America can help us think about how to find a place in the
American polis where we, all and each of us, may thrive with
the talents we have by nature and the good habits we can
acquire by care and self-discipline.
A great book simply, for all human beings, speaks with
clarity, harmony, and proportion about questions that stay with
mankind always. What is Law? Does God exist? If God is not,
where are we? What is the soul? Is it immortal?
The Constitution was not a great book for me when I was
in law school, or during the 25 years of law practice and law
teaching that followed. Nor was it a great book for me when I
came to St. John’s College in 1995. But, for me, it is now.
Whether or not it is in itself a great book, I have found that it
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27
has always been a doorway and a path for me to the questions
in the greatest books. What I had not known before was how to
read it. Can the Constitution be a great book for you? Yes, if
you choose to let it. But no book can matter very much for any
reader who is not ready, or able, to accept as a genuine possibility that he may always have to be stretching upward in order
to approach its meaning.
Who can read the Constitution? Anybody willing to make
the effort. But as with all other difficult and worthy activities,
some people are likely to be able to do this better than others.
A book published fifty years ago has something to say on this
point. Its title is The People Shall Judge. The Preface begins
this way:
This book expresses the faith of one American
college in the usefulness of liberal education to
American democracy. If the United States is to be a
democracy, its citizens must be free. If citizens are
to be free, they must be their own judges. If they are
to judge well, they must be wise. Citizens may be
born free; they are not born wise. Therefore, the
business of liberal education in a democracy is to
make free men wise. Democracy declares that “the
people shall judge.” Liberal education must help
the people judge well.5
If a liberal education helps us read the Constitution better, then
those with such an education have an advantage over those
who lack it. It is unhappily the fact that most lawyers and
judges today lack a liberal education, since one is to be had in
only a very few colleges.
Perhaps the most discerning readers of all will be those
with much leisure who are able to use it well in reading the
greatest books. Probably it would help to have had some direct
experience of politics or war. The opportunities for such a life
are infrequent, however, and the men and women few who can
make the most of such opportunities when they are available.
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BRAITHWAITE
29
The rest of us must do the best we can with whatever gifts we
have, trusting in the indemonstrable premise that one evanescent glimpse of something high, even from a great distance,
may be worth more than the solid worldly goods always
tempting our grasp from nearby.6
EPILOGUE
The artist of the work depicted in these four images is Albin
Polasek. He was born in 1879, in Moravia, now the Czech
Republic, and apprenticed as a wood-carver in Vienna before
emigrating to the United States at age 22, later becoming an
American citizen. He was head of the Sculpture Department of
the Art Institute of Chicago for nearly 30 years.
At age 28, while still a student in sculpture at the
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, he made
the work shown here. It is one of his most famous. Its title is
Man Carving Out His Destiny. (Later he made the following
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female companion piece called Unfettered, an exquisite nude
in bronze, with blue-green finish:
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NOTES
1. At the time of this lecture, public debate was raging over whether
a community center proposed by a Muslim organization should be
built near the site of the attack on the World Trade Center in New
York City.
2. See George Anastaplo, The Constitution of 1787: A Commentary
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 135.
Unlike Milton’s Eve in Paradise Lost, Polasek’s Woman directs her gaze exuberantly upward.)
The first two views of Man Carving Out His Destiny show
the work in progress, initially as a small-scale plaster model,
then in full size, in stone, in a version that very likely was
preliminary—compare the positions of the right arm in the
studio and outdoor versions. The last two views show two perspectives of the finished work.
As you see, the work of the Man whom the sculpture depicts is not finished. If we take this statute to represent a selfgoverning people shaping themselves by means of the law,
then the verbs in our Greek translation of the Preamble should
be progressive in aspect, not aorist: self-government is never
over and done with, because our own lives are always a work
in progress. So far as “the living Constitution” dwells within,
to “ordain and establish” it is up to us.
3. “We are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the
judges say it is, and the judiciary is the safeguard of our liberty and
of our property under the Constitution.” Charles Evans Hughes,
“Speech before the Elmira Chamber of Commerce, May 3, 1907,” in
Addresses of Charles Evans Hughes, 1906-1916, 2nd ed. (New York:
G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1916), 185. “Congress may pass laws, but the
Supreme Court interprets and construes them, and determines their
validity. The Constitution, with its guarantees of liberty and its grants
of Federal power, is finally what the Supreme Court determines it to
mean.” Charles Evans Hughes, “Address Delivered at Youngstown,
Ohio, September 5, 1908,” ibid., 307.
4. Cf. Anastaplo, The Constitution of 1787, 26.
5. The People Shall Judge: Readings in the Formation of American
Policy, Vol. I, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), vii.
6. Cf. Plato, Phaedrus 279c.
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Platonic and Jewish Antecedents
to Johannes de Silentio’s
1
Knight of Faith
Jacob Howland
As very young children, we tend to engage the world with the
joyful expectancy and unimpeded capacity for delight that
spring from a trust as yet unbroken. But repeated experiences
of loss and disappointment almost inevitably cool our enthusiasm for life, and teach us the usefulness of detaching
ourselves from what Kierkegaard in Either/Or calls “the fair
wind of hope.”2 According to Johannes de Silentio, the pseudonymous author of Fear and Trembling, Abraham was an
exception to this rule: through “the wonder of faith,” Abraham
remains “young enough to wish” and “preserve an eternal
youth.”3 Fear and Trembling begins with the story of a man
whose ever-increasing admiration for Abraham was proportionate to the degree to which “life had separated what had
been united in the child’s pious simplicity.”4 Silentio thus
announces the central question of his book: how can a mature
understanding of the ways of the world coexist with a childlike
love of life?
Silentio is neither the first nor the last to pose this question.
The associate between wisdom and resignation is something of
a commonplace. In the Greek tradition, it appears as early as
Aristophanes’ Clouds, in which Socrates, who is portrayed as
the ascetic head of a school into which men have withdrawn
from the city in order to devote themselves to philosophical
studies, is called “miserably unhappy” by Pheidippides.5 In the
Hebrew Bible, the same sentiment occurs in the Book of
Ecclesiastes: “I set my mind to study and probe with wisdom
Jacob Howland is McFarlin Professor of Philosophy and past Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the University of Tulsa.
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all that happens under the sun.—An unhappy business, that,
which God gave to men to be concerned with! I observed all
the happenings beneath the sun, and I found that all is futile
and pursuit of wind.”6 In modern literature, this theme is
expressed by Goethe’s Faust:
True, I am more clever than all the vain creatures,
The Doctors and Masters, Writers and Preachers;
No doubts plague me, nor scruples as well.
I’m not afraid of devil or hell.
To offset that, all joy is rent from me.
*****
Hemmed in by all this heap of books,
Their gnawing worms, amid their dust,
While to the arches, in all the nooks
Are smoke-stained papers midst them thrust,
Boxes and glasses round me crammed,
And instruments in cases hurled,
Ancestral stuff around me jammed—
That is your world! That’s called a world!
And still you question why your heart
Is cramped and anxious in your breast?
Why each impulse to live has been repressed
In you by some vague, unexplainèd smart?7
Three decades after the publication of Fear and Trembling,
Friedrich Nietzsche would argue that loving life is inconsistent
with understanding it; wisdom produces nausea, while the
appetite for life can take root and grow only within an atmosphere of illusion.8 For his part, Silentio insists that there is a
solution to the problem of the unity of youthful enthusiasm and
adult knowledge, the name of which is “faith.” But while
Silentio does not doubt the actuality of faith—particularly as
exemplified in Abraham’s readiness to sacrifice Isaac—he
cannot satisfactorily explain its possibility, much less
reproduce its movements in his own life.
The subtitle “A Dialectical Lyric” announces that Fear and
Trembling is simultaneously a philosophical and a poetic
HOWLAND
35
work—one that employs intellect and imagination to
illuminate its subject. Yet Silentio is unwilling to accept without qualification the title of “poet” or “philosopher.” More
precisely, in denying that he is a philosopher, he affirms that he
is a poet, and in denying that he is a poet, he affirms that he is
a philosopher.9 If, as this contradiction seems to imply, he both
is and is not a poet and a philosopher, we might be entitled to
assume that he both does and does not know what he is talking
about. We are thus invited us to identify and ponder the potentially fruitful inconsistencies in Silentio’s discussion of faith.10
Here is one such inconsistency. Silentio states: “I can very
well describe the movements of faith, but I cannot make
them.”11 But if the movements of faith are wholly internal, and
so invisible to others, how could Silentio know them without
having experienced them? Caveat lector: Silentio’s explanation of the internal structure of faith—in particular, his
assertion that faith involves a movement of finitude that
follows a movement of infinite resignation12—deserves critical
scrutiny.
I. Silentio’s Flat-Footed Knight
The clearest description of the phenomenon that Silentio is
trying to understand in Fear and Trembling is contained in his
imaginative description of what he calls the “knight of faith.”
Silentio’s first encounter with this knight is inauspicious.
“Dear me!” he exclaims, “Is this the person, is it actually him?
He looks just like a tax collector.”13 In Silentio’s imagination,
the knight of faith is literally and figuratively “pedestrian.”14
We watch him as he strolls around the city and makes his way
through the week. At work, he labors with the precision of an
“Italian bookkeeper”; at church, he is “impossible to distinguish from the rest of the crowd”; at leisure, he resembles a
“mercenary soul.” He walks like a “postman,” talks of food
like a “restaurateur,” plans construction projects like a
“capitalist,” and relaxes with his pipe like “the local tradesman . . . vegetating in the twilight.” In brief, Silentio detects in
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the knight of faith not the slightest “crack” through which one
might catch sight of the infinite: “He is solid through and
through. . . . He belongs entirely to the world; no bourgeois
philistine could belong to it more.”15
But Silentio’s imagination goes beyond appearances, for
he also tells us what the knight of faith thinks and feels. From
this perspective, it is clear that he is free of the bourgeois
philistine’s social ambition, restless anxiety, and slavish
adherence to convention. Although he is poor, he “thinks about
an appetizing little dish of warm food his wife surely has for
him when he comes home.” Indeed, he “firmly believes that
his wife has that delectable dish for him,” and to see him eat
this meal would be an “enviable” and “inspiring” sight. But if
she doesn’t have it, “oddly enough—it is all the same to him”;
whatever he may find on his plate, so to speak, leaves him
deeply satisfied. He runs into a stranger at a building site; “in
no time he erects a building, having at his disposal all the
resources required for that purpose.” For “if it came to that,” he
thinks, “I could easily get it.” The knight of faith evidently has
an active imagination—for how can a man who “does not have
four beans” afford delicious delicacies, much less finance a
building project? What is more, “he enjoys and takes part in
everything”; “everything that happens—a rat scurrying under a
gutter plank, children playing—everything engages him with a
composure in existence as if he were a girl of sixteen.” In a
word, “he lets things take their course with a freedom from
care as if he were a reckless good-for-nothing.”16
Silentio remarks in passing that the knight’s appetite is
“heartier than Esau’s.”17 This statement cuts two ways. Jacob
purchases Esau’s birthright for a bowl of stew, and later steals
his brother’s paternal blessing. Like Esau, the knight of faith,
in his simple contentment and guileless freedom from care,
must be an easy mark for more cunning men. But unlike Esau,
the knight of faith is always blessed in life, because he receives
everything as a blessing. And this is the main point. To the man
for whom “life had separated what had been united in the
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child’s pious simplicity,”18 Abraham presents a paradox. Just
so, the knight of faith presents a paradox to Silentio, for whom
“God’s love, both in a direct and inverse sense, is incommensurable with the whole of actuality.”19 Silentio supposes that
the movement of faith comes after that of infinite resignation;
faith makes whole what life has fractured. But his imaginative
description of the knight of faith tells a different story. While
this knight knows the difference between actuality and possibility, reason and imagination, he combines them in his day-today existence in such a way that each augments the other: he
enjoys the products of his imagination as if they were actual,
and the actual conditions of his existence as if they were what
one could wish for in imagination. Silentio claims that the
knight of faith is “not a poet,”20 yet we see that his love of life
is essentially poetic and authorial.21 Inasmuch as he “enjoys
and takes part in everything,”22 God’s love has furthermore
never appeared to him to be “incommensurable with the whole
of actuality.”23 The knight of faith is thus no more familiar with
Silentio’s conception of resignation than he is with his Godforsaken conception of actuality, because the former is
dependent on the latter. The knight of faith, to repeat, is “solid
through and through”;24 there are no cracks, because he has
never been broken.
Let me put this point another way. Although Silentio does
not explain why he thinks that God’s love is incommensurable
with the whole of actuality, this is evidently a general
conclusion that he has drawn from experience. On the whole,
and setting aside particular exceptions, men act as if they did
not love God, and events proceed as if God did not love man.
Now this conclusion rests on the inherently uncertain presupposition that inductive reasoning gives one access to the nature
of actuality as a whole. Silentio accordingly envisions faith as
the solution to a problem that his intellect has posed.25 This
problem, however, is entirely foreign to the knight of faith.
Like Alyosha Karamazov, and unlike Alyosha’s brother Ivan,
he has always loved life “before everything else,” and in
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particular, before its “meaning” and “logic.”26 And because
love has always come first for him, he has never felt the weight
of the incommensurability that comes to light when one is
guided primarily by the mind rather than the heart. Unlike
Silentio, the knight of faith never renounced the world, so he
does not need faith to get it back.
II. Philosophers and Fools
The differences between Silentio and the knight of faith can be
delineated more clearly by looking at two antecedents to the
latter—one from Athens, the other from Jerusalem. The first
suggests that there may be more than one way to combine a
youthful passion for life with a mature understanding of it,
while the second suggests that the problem as Silentio understands it—namely, how to make the movement of faith after
the movement of infinite resignation—may be insoluble.
Plato’s Socrates resembles the knight of faith both externally and internally. Like Silentio’s knight, Socrates is poor; if
anything, he is even more carefree in his poverty inasmuch as
he does not work at all.27 Like Silentio’s knight, he is just as
satisfied in times of scarcity as in times of plenty. Alcibiades
explains in the Symposium that, during military campaigns,
Socrates put up with hunger better than anyone, yet he alone
was able to enjoy his meals when food was abundant.28 This
last detail suggests Socrates’ equanimity in the face of death,
something he amply demonstrates during his trial and execution.29 Like Silentio’s knight, Socrates is superficially pedestrian, and not just because he lacks the financial resources to
attain any higher rank than ordinary foot-soldier. “He speaks of
pack-asses and blacksmiths and cobblers and tanners, and
seems always to say the same things in the same ways,” Alcibiades observes.30 But as with the knight of faith, the inner is
not the outer: anyone who opens up his speeches or is vouchsafed a glimpse of his soul finds a sublime beauty beneath his
quotidian exterior.31 Like the knight of faith, Socrates’ appar-
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ent simplicity exposes him to the schemes of more cunning
men. Callicles accordingly warns him that he runs the risk of
being put to death by his enemies.32 But again, Socrates simply
is not afraid of death—a fact that has caused some commentators to infer that Socrates hates life, or, in Silentio’s terms,
that he embraces death with a kind of infinite resignation.33
This inference, however, flies in the face of his earnest and
energetic engagement with the essential tasks and opportunities of a human life. As Socrates makes clear in the Apology,
his watchword is wakefulness, not sleep.34 And yet, he takes
leave of life without apprehension and without regret.35
Socrates’ relationship to the world could be described as
one of engaged detachment. He approaches life in a manner
analogous to an athlete who “leaves everything on the field,”
but who nevertheless immediately forgets the result and is
utterly gracious in defeat as well as victory. In my view, it is
philosophical eros—which Socrates regards as even more
essential to the philosopher than intellectual capability36—that
sustains his attitude of engaged detachment. Socrates’ philosophical eros relates to a conception of actuality that differs
both from Silentio’s inductive disappointment and from the
poetically augmented conception of the knight of faith. Silentio describes a youth whose love for an unattainable princess is
“transfigured into a love of the eternal being.”37 Here we have
something like Socrates’ philosophical love of the Ideas or
Forms, except that Silentio associates this love with a movement of resignation that springs from an intellec-tual acknowledgment of the disappointing character of actu-ality. But
Socrates’ longing for wisdom is not a consequence of his
understanding of the world, and is not born of frustration.
Rather, it is nothing less than the most dedicated and persistent
love of the whole of actuality—and here actuality must be
understood not as the dispiriting way of the world or the
tedious limitations of human life (whether real or imagined),
but as that which most fully is, in the distinctive integrity of its
being.38
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The second antecedent of Silentio’s knight of faith that I
would like to consider is the Hasidic fool in Rabbi Nachman of
Bretslav’s influential story “The Clever Man and the Simple
Man.”39 Nachman’s tale is a religious allegory about two childhood friends who follow separate paths in life. “Determined to
conquer the world,”40 the clever man travels extensively,
becomes an expert in “every artistic achievement,”41 and
ultimately “penetrates the heart of everything in nature and in
the soul of man.”42 He becomes “enormously rich and wise,”43
yet his wisdom serves only to make him miserable: “a violent
disgust at the imperfection of life drove him from place to
place, and he nowhere found rest.”44 This is consistent with
Silentio’s assertion that God’s love is incommensurable with
actuality. But the clever man goes further than Silentio, for
when he is summoned by the king, he reasons—and tries to
convince others as well—that the king does not exist.
The simple man remains at home and learns the humble
trade of shoemaking. He is a clumsy craftsman and lives in
great poverty, yet he does not suffer from the spiritual anorexia
that afflicts his clever friend. Indeed, he is “joyous and in good
spirits from morning till evening.”45 Like the knight of faith, he
uses his imagination to enhance his experience, and so savors
everything that life sets before him. His wife gives him bread
and water, but he delights in these as if they were the finest
meat and wine: “Thus he seasoned the scanty bites with gay
fancies . . . and while he ate he really tasted all the choice
dainties of which he spoke.”46 He rejoices in his “shabby
sheepskin” as if there were no “nobler garment.”47 People
often make fun of him and attempt to dupe him, but their
insults and tricks have no effect on his good humor. “Ay,
friend,” he is accustomed to answer, “just see how foolish I
am! You can be a good deal cleverer than I and still be a proper
fool.”48 And when the king calls for him, he answers immediately, responding to this unexpected bit of good fortune estatically: “the joy of the simple man was overpowering.”49
It is significant that the simple man’s happiness is not
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41
purchased at the price of ignorance. Because the simple man
“had passed his life without intrigues, he knew how to see into
the heart of right and wrong.”50 In the person of the simple
man, this essential moral knowledge is inseparable from the
knowledge of how to live joyfully, come what may. In
Nachman’s story, it also pays off by conventional standards.
Valued by the king for his “virtue and simple understanding,”51
the simple man becomes the governor of his province and
finally the king’s prime minister. Meanwhile, the clever man
becomes impoverished due to his unwavering devotion to
exposing the “madness and delusion” of those who continue to
believe in the king’s existence.52 One day he meets the simple
man, and tries to prove to him that he, too, has been fooled
about this fundamental matter. The simple man cannot counter
his arguments, and does not even attempt to do so. Rather, the
story ends with the simple man declaring to his friend, “You
will never receive the grace of simplicity!”53
Rabbi Nachman’s tale recapitulates the main themes of
Silentio’s imaginative encounter with the knight of faith. Both
narratives trace the practical and theoretical problem of resignation to the sovereignty of the intellect in the soul.
Conversely, both teach that equanimity, together with the
ability to live joyously, springs from the poetically productive
love of a trusting and grateful heart. But Nachman’s story does
not merely confirm that Silentio’s problem of how to repair
what life has fractured is foreign to the knight of faith, for it
also warns that there may be a point beyond which what the
intellect has broken cannot be made whole. Measured by the
exacting standards of the intellect, the world manifests an
ineluctable imperfection. The “violent disgust” elicited from
the clever man by this imperfection convinces him,
furthermore, that there is no king—and such a repugnant world
is utterly inconsistent with the hypothesis of intelligent rule.
The simple man rightly refuses to challenge this inference,
because logical argumentation cannot address the deeper issue
of the clever man’s profound spiritual and emotional
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incapacity. How could one who regards every blessing as a
curse learn to feel joy? By the “grace of simplicity,” on the
other hand, the simple man is able to experience life as a
blessing, and it is this experience that leads him thankfully to
acknowledge God—the melech ha’olam, or “King of the
Whole,” who is the ultimate source of all blessings.
III. A Very Brief Conclusion
Rabbi Nachman’s simple man is wiser in his foolishness than
the clever man is in his wisdom, for only the simple man has
attained knowledge of himself and others. In this respect, the
simple man resembles Plato’s Socrates, who is also wrongly
considered by more cunning and worldly men to be deluded.
Like the knight of faith, Socrates and the simple man understand intuitively that love precedes cognition in the wellordered soul. This is a secret that Silentio makes available to
his readers, even if he himself fails to grasp it. But unless we
readers either love the whole or can learn to do so, our
knowledge will be of no more value than Silentio’s ignorance.
NOTES
1. This article was originally presented at the Sixth International
Kierkegaard Conference at St. Olaf College in June of 2010. I would
like to thank David Possen for his critical comments, and Ed Mooney
for his encouragement.
2. Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Part I, ed. Howard V. Hong and
Edna H. Hong (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 292.
3. Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, ed. C. Stephen Evans and
Sylvia Walsh (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 15.
4. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 7.
5. Aristophanes, Clouds, l. 104 in Four Texts on Socrates, trans.
Thomas G. West and Grace Starry West (New York: Cornell
University Press, 1998), 120.
6. Ecclesiastes 1:13-14. JPS Hebrew-English Tanakh, 2nd ed.
(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1999), 1766.
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7. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, trans. George Madison
Priest in Great Books of the Western World, ed. Robert Maynard
Hutchins and Mortimer Adler, vol. 47 (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1952), Part I, ll. 366-370 and 402-413.
8. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Advantage and Disadvantage of
History for Life, trans. Peter Preuss (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1980), 814.
9. “The present writer is not at all a philosopher; he is, poetically and
tastefully expressed, a free-lancer” and “I am not a poet and go about
things only dialectically.” Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 5 and
79.
10. This is not the only indication that Fear and Trembling presents
us with a partial and incomplete understanding of its subject, yet one
that nevertheless enables a discerning reader to glimpse more than its
author has seen, and thus to begin to correct his mistakes. As Stephen
Evans observes in his Introduction to Fear and Trembling, the book’s
epigram—“What Tarquin the Proud communicated in his garden
with the beheaded poppies was understood by the son but not by the
messenger”— invites us to see Silentio as a messenger who is
unaware of the deeper significance of his own message
(Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, x). But because we do not know
whether this is the point of the epigram as Silentio understood it, we
also cannot know whether Silentio himself understands that he says
more in Fear and Trembling than he knows.
11. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 31.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid., 32.
14. Ibid., 34. The Danish word is Pedestre.
15. Ibid., 32-33.
16. Ibid., 33-34.
17. Ibid., 33.
18. Ibid., 7.
19. Ibid., 28.
20. Ibid., 33.
21. The word poet comes from the Greek poiētēs, which derives from
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the verb poiein, meaning to make or to produce—clearly apposite in
reference to the knight of faith. The word author comes from the
Latin auctor, which, among other things, signifies an authority, a
creator, a principal cause, a founder of a people. Note, too, that
Silentio consistently emphasizes the fruitfulness of faith as
exemplified in “father” Abraham, the auctor generis or progenitor of
the people.
22. Ibid., 32.
23. Ibid., 28.
24. Ibid., 32.
25. His relationship with God is mediated by his intellect: it is not
God’s love that makes him “unspeakably happy,” but the “thought”
that God is love. Ibid., 28.
26. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Richard
Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (San Francisco: North Point Press,
1990), 231.
27. Plato, Apology, 23b-c.
28. Plato, Symposium, 220a.
29. See Alcibiades’ description of his exemplary composure in battle
in Symosium. 220d-221c. Alcibiades also makes it clear that Socrates
has no desire for conventional honors, which others pursue as a
means of overcoming the oblivion associated with death—cf. 220de and 208c-d.
30. Plato, Symposium, 221e-222a.
31. Plato, Symposium, 216e-217a.
32. Plato, Gorgias, 486a-b.
33. See “The Problem of Socrates” in Friedrich Nietzsche, The AntiChrist, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, and Other Writings, ed.
Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2005), 162.
34. Plato, Apology, 30e-31a; cf. Republic, 476d.
35. Plato, Phaedo, 117-118.
36. In explaining who the philosopher is, Socrates accordingly begins
not with the philosopher’s intellect but with his desire: he is a lover
of the whole of wisdom. See Republic, 475b).
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37. Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 36.
38. See especially Republic, 476a-d.
39. Martin Buber, The Tales of Rabbi Nachman, trans. Maurice
Friedman (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 1999), 71-94. On the
significance of this story within the context of Yiddish literature, see
Ruth R. Wisse, The Schlemiel as Modern Hero (Chicago and
London: University of Chicago Press, 1971).
40. Buber, Tales, 72.
41. Ibid., 74.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid., 78.
44. Ibid., 74-75.
45. Ibid., 75.
46. Ibid., 76.
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid., 78.
49. Ibid., 85.
50. Ibid., 86.
51. Ibid.
52. Ibid., 90.
53. Ibid., 94.
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47
Kant’s Rational Being
as Moral Being
Jay Smith
In the Preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure
Reason Kant writes:
This discussion as to the positive advantage of critical
principles of pure reason can be similarly developed in
regard to the concept of God and of the simple nature of
our soul. . . . Even the assumption—as made on behalf of
the necessary practical employment of my reason—of
God, freedom, and immortality is not permissible unless at
the same time speculative reason be deprived of its pretensions to transcendent insight. . . . I have therefore found it
necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for
faith. The dogmatism of metaphysics, that is, the preconception that it is possible to make headway in metaphysics
without a previous criticism of pure reason, is the source
of all that unbelief, always very dogmatic, which wars
against morality.1
As evidenced by the Critique of Practical Reason and other
works such as Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, the
simple act of limiting the excessive and dogmatic claims of
speculative metaphysics in order to secure morality proved
more contentious, difficult, and complex than the passage
above suggests. The situation of practical reason changes in
radical and complicated ways as it emerges out of the shadows
of speculative reason to become the primary faculty that determines our rational being. I will first discuss the context established for practical reason and morality in the Critique of Pure
Jay Smith is a tutor at St. John’s College in Santa Fe. This article was first delivered
as a lecture at St. John’s College in Santa Fe on April 10, 2009.
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Reason. Then I will try to show how pure practical reason is
connected to rational faith in the Critique of Practical Reason.
This examination will uncover the uncanniness of pure practical reason, an uncanniness hidden in part by Kant’s commitment to, and transformation of, a traditional view of pure
reason. The uncanniness is caused by the operation of a power
that is beyond, or out of, the normal course of nature—a power
that differs from natural powers. This essay tries to show that
Rational Being, for Kant, is Moral Being, and that this equivalence preserves a higher dignity for human beings than is
compatible with the mere pursuit of secure and comfortable
living.
I. Practical Reason and Rational Faith in the Critique of
Pure Reason
Kant connects a concept of knowledge with a synthesis made
possible by the reception of givens under the forms of sensibility, namely, space and time. By synthesis, Kant means an
activity that produces a unity. These sensible givens are made
ready for further synthesis by the productive imagination. Finally, by the exercise of synthetic judgments, the worked-up
impressions are brought under the unity of the categories of
the understanding, so that an object of experience is constituted. This constitution is possible only because these spatiotemporal givens worked up as presentations or representations
are accompanied by the formal ‘I think’—they are prehended
and apprehended by the same mind. It is this assertion of the
necessity of an overarching unity, a transcendental unity of
apperception, that is Kant’s response to Hume’s claim that the
mind is only a bundle of impressions. Without this ‘I think’
belonging to a persistently identical self-consciousness, the
subject would not recognize all these presentations as its own,
and, immersed in the stream of lived happenings, would
simply forget itself.
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49
Let me give an example as a way to explain this process
without getting too bogged down in Kant’s technical details. I
am standing in the kitchen, I hear a loud noise, I turn, look out
the window, and see a motorcycle going by. These impressions—hearing the loud noise and seeing the motorcycle—
arise in a temporal sequence and are spatially arranged: I was
standing by the refrigerator when I heard the noise, and then I
turned my head to look out the window and see a motorcycle
going by. These happenings, even given in a spatial and
temporal arrangement, are not yet an experience in the Kantian
sense. There is as of yet no constituted object of experience. To
have an experience it is necessary that these two happenings be
brought into unity—in this case, under the category of cause
and effect: the loud noise is the backfire of the motorcycle.
To be able to constitute an experience out of these happenings, I must be able to temporally and spatially rearrange these
happenings, cutting their ties to the way I happened to notice
them while standing in the kitchen. This rearrangement, which
prepares them to be taken up into the categories of the understanding, is the work of the productive imagination. The sound
I heard before I saw the motorcycle is not the cause of the
motorcycle but vice versa. Our mind in this way rearranges
these happenings to give us an objective experience, an experience in which the subject who has the experience—namely the
transcendental subject who spontaneously produces the ‘I
think’ that marks these happenings as happenings of the same,
constant mind—also posits a correlative transcendental object
of experience, a bare x, a placeholder as it were. The happenings become an experience, are constituted into an object of
experience, when the reference point shifts from the subject of
the happenings to the posited placeholder, so that the
happenings are experienced as centered on an object over and
against the subject. “Oh, that loud noise was the backfire from
the motorcycle.”
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This concept of knowledge and this description of how our
experience is constituted—that is, how we shape experience
and give it unity—are easily grasped by us and, for the most
part, accepted. For instance, here is a common puzzle: we
present someone with a series of, say, six pictures—six different stages of a person chopping down a tree. These pictures
are presented in a random order with the expectation that
everyone will reorder them in the same way. In Kantian terms,
we would say that each person can synthesize these
happenings into an objective experience valid for everyone.
Why is this concept of knowledge important for a
discussion of Kantian morality? First, because all objective
experience is constituted in this way, even what we take to be
our internal experience is given under a form of sensibility,
namely time, worked up by the productive imagination and
subsumed under the categories of the understanding. What we
take to be our inner experience, our inner selves, our deepest
and truest desires, are constituted and conditioned in this
manner. Kant calls this inner self the empirical or phenomenal
self. We have no speculative access, no intellectual intuition
either into the thing-in-itself that is the self or into a putative
“real” or “authentic” self—which Kant labels the noumenal
self. This lack of speculative access into the self has significant
repercussions on our discussion of morality and on what is
demanded from practical reason.
Kant’s concept of knowledge also produces a second, more
complicated consequence for our discussion of morality. Kant
seeks to reject the sort of speculative thought that emerged
from mythical thinking when we began to claim access to a
universal unity, a One. This One could be seen as the cause and
the ground of the Many; in the light of this One, the Many
could be conceived as a whole, a totality.
In striving for such a conception, the human mind marks
out for itself an extramundane point of reference in which the
flow and jostle of concrete events and phenomena are joined
together in a stable whole. In this distancing view, one is able
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to differentiate between the totality of what is and individual
entities, between the world and what occurs within it. Things
are understood not in their particularity but in what underlies
them. They are understood as ideas, as essences, as forms or
substances; that is to say, they are understood in regard to what
connects them back to the One. As part of this cognitive stance,
of this bios theōrētikos, the soul, in striving for an intellectual
intuition of the cosmos, forms itself as it becomes conscious of
itself in the recollective and reflexive intuition of the One. The
uniting of the knower with the One is both an ecstatic selftranscendence and a reflexive self-assurance that enables one
to see and live his or her life from this extramundane point of
reference. Within this self-assurance, fears of death, of
isolation, of frailty, of contradiction, of surprise, and of novelty
can be faced.
Kant provides a universal unity as well, but of an entirely
different stripe. He begins with the transcendental unity of the
knowing subject which, in relating itself to itself, requires, as a
posited correlate, a symmetrical concept of everything that
stands over and against the subject—that is, a transcendental
concept of the world as the totality of all appearances. Kant
calls this correlate a Cosmological Idea, which aims at the
whole of possible experience and the unconditioned. The
unconditioned is the ground of appearance and occupies what
would have been the place of the One. Perhaps an example
from Aristotle might be helpful here. At the end of the
Metaphysics Aristotle talks of an unmoved mover whose
activity is thought thinking on thought. The experience that he
wishes to ground is a theoretically worked-up experience that
has its roots in our sense-experiences of an ordered whole, an
eternal cosmos of ordered motions. Given that we can have
such an experience, how is it possible? To understand Aristotle’s unmoved mover, I am often tempted to make a transcendental move of positing the unmoved mover as a necessary
logical construct that lays out the conditions for the possibility
of this eternal and ordered motion while unifying everything in
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light of an overarching end. Aristotle, however, does not make
this move. Instead, he makes the puzzling assertions that such
an unmoved mover is alive, and that, in its activity of thought
thinking on thought, it exhibits the best kind of life there is, the
bios theōrētikos—which is a real possibility only for some of
us and only for short periods of time. In whatever way we are
to understand this exhibited life, we can point to it as
something transcendent, as a One that is the ground of the
order of the cosmos, a One of which we can say that it is not
merely a logical construct. Dante, in the context of a religious
journey, also calls upon this One at the beginning of his
Paradiso: “The glory of Him who moves all things pervades
the universe and shines in one part more and in another less.”2
Kant recognizes that this orientation toward the One, in the
philosophical context, is motivated by the needs of reason.
Reason is marked by universality and necessity as it strives for
systematic completeness and perfection. Speculative reason
seeks this One, this universal unity, as it attempts to bring
together in one synthetic act the conditioned—that is, the
whole of possible experience—and the unconditioned—that is,
the ground or end of such a whole. The results unfortunately
are the antinomies, the contradictions that reason inevitably
falls into when it seeks to know, to speculatively point at, the
overarching unity, the One. As Kant explains: “Either,
therefore, reason through its demand for the unconditioned
must remain in conflict with itself, or this unconditioned must
be posited outside the series, in the intelligible.”3 The positing
of something outside the series of appearances is needed in
order to point to a ground for appearances that makes the
possibility of appearances conceivable. This positing is also
needed in order to give a fuller account of us than are provided
by references to an empirical ego and to a transcendental unity
of apperception. But why take the trouble to label this positing
the intelligible world, especially since Kant has denied us any
intellectual intuition, and since his concept of knowledge en-
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53
sures that an intelligible world could never be a possible object
either of experience or of knowledge?
As a way to begin, let us look at what Kant accomplishes
in resolving the antinomies of pure reason by the positing of an
intelligible world. First, Kant preserves an idealizing synthesis,
a world-constituting synthesis that allows the distinction to be
made between the world as a whole and what is in the world.
This distinction helps to guide understanding in its work of
knowing objects in the world. In preserving the synthesis,
however, Kant downgrades the cosmos into the object-domain
of the natural sciences, into a kingdom of nature, a kingdom
whose only unity is a unity under a certain set of laws. This
unity is not a unity that could become an object of knowledge,
much less exhibit the highest form of life. It is not the One that
holds together the Many. This regulative unity merely assures
us that for any set of conditions a previous set of conditions
can be found from which the latter can be understood and so
on, ad infinitum. This world of nature, of appearances, is no
longer a whole organized according to ends; because its unity
is merely regulative, it has the heuristic goal of advancing
theory-construction. The regulative unity of the Cosmological
Idea does not provide an extramundane point of reference, nor
can it satisfy reason’s demand—or our need—for a whole that
contains contingencies, neutralizes negations, and calms the
fears of death and isolation.
Second, Kant preserves a space outside of nature that does
not conflict with the regulative unity needed for the
functioning of the understanding, as he states in the section that
discusses the Antinomy of Pure Reason:
The sensible world contains nothing but appearances, and
these are mere representations which are always sensibly
conditioned; in this field things in themselves are never
objects to us. It is not surprising that in dealing with a
member of the empirical series, no matter what member it
may be, we are never justified in making a leap out
beyond the context of sensibility. . . . On the other hand,
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to think an intelligible ground of appearances, that is, of
the sensible world, and to think it free from the contingency of appearances, does not conflict with the unlimited
empirical regress.4
As we said above, this intelligible world cannot be known
by us. The resolution of the antinomies of pure reason
therefore evokes resignation, which Kant expresses in this
way:
The greatest and perhaps the sole use of all philosophy of
pure reason is therefore only negative; since it serves not
as an organon for the extension of knowledge but as a
discipline for the limitation of pure reason, and, instead of
discovering truth, has only the modest merit of guarding
against error.5
If there is to be a positive use of pure reason, it will not be in
its speculative use but in its practical use. Furthermore, Kant’s
assertion that he found it necessary to deny knowledge6
suggests that it is not in the search for truth that we find our
dignity; it is rather in guarding against error that some other
possibility is preserved for us.
To conclude this first section, let us consider why this
space is labeled “the intelligible world.” Our metaphysical
desire, the desire for a One that can satisfy reason, cannot be
satisfied speculatively; moreover, as Kant has shown, attempts
to do so propel us into a land of illusion and deception. Unlike
David Hume, who claims that this desire will disappear once
we see that it cannot be satisfied, Kant rightly asserts that this
metaphysical desire will not wither. The needs of reason are
always pressing, and it is these needs that provide the context
for Kant’s exploration of practical reason. The burden that
speculative reason attempted to carry in response to the
demands of reason and the needs of our metaphysical desire
can only be carried by practical reason—and in particular, by
practical reason intimately bound up with morality. This is why
Kant says,
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The idea of a moral world has, therefore, objective reality,
not as referring to an object of an intelligible intuition (we
are quite unable to think any such object), but as referring
to the sensible world, viewed, however, as being an object
of pure reason in its practical employment, that is, as a
corpus mysticum of the rational beings in it, as far as the
free will of each being is, under moral laws, in complete
systematic unity with itself and with the freedom of every
other.7
Kant strives to preserve for us a rational core, a moral world
whose objective reality is affirmed by the fact of the ought. An
ought requires an I beyond the empirical ego, an I not reducible
to the kingdom of nature, an I somehow connected to considerations of freedom. Kant tries to preserve rationality by relying on pure practical reason, and on its affiliated concept of a
world of rational beings, each of which acts at all times as if,
through his maxims, he were a legislator in the universal kingdom of ends. Reason, which requires universality, necessity,
and ends, must be at play in this moral world that is also intelligible. Comprehending such a world would be an exalted and
stirring project; but Kant’s articulation of the project at the end
of the Critique of Pure Reason—as was pointed out by Kant’s
critics—lacked both clarity and content. Let us turn now to the
work that tried to respond to such concerns, Kant’s second
Critique, The Critique of Practical Reason.
II. Kantian Moral Being
Here is how Kant introduces his Critique of Practical Reason:
The theoretical use of reason was concerned with the
objects of the cognitive faculty only, and a critique of it
with regard to this use really dealt only with the pure
cognitive faculty, since this raised the suspicion, which
was afterwards confirmed, that it might easily lose itself
beyond its boundaries, among unattainable objects or
even among contradictory concepts. It is quite different
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with the practical use of reason. In this, reason is
concerned with the determining grounds of the will,
which is a faculty either of producing objects corresponding to representations or of determining itself to
effect such objects (whether the physical power is
sufficient or not), that is, of determining its causality. For,
in that, reason can at least suffice to determine the will and
always has objective reality insofar as volition is at issue.
The first question here, then, is whether pure reason of
itself alone suffices to determine the will or whether it can
be a determining ground of the will only as empirically
conditioned. Now there enters here a concept of causality
justified by the Critique of Pure Reason although not
capable of being presented empirically, namely that of
freedom; and if we can discover grounds for proving that
this property does in fact belong to the human will (and so
to the will of all rational beings as well), then it will not
only be shown that pure reason can be practical but that it
alone, and not reason empirically limited, is unconditionally practical. Consequently, we shall not have to do a
critique of pure practical reason but only of practical
reason as such. For, pure reason, once it is shown to exist,
needs no critique. It is pure reason that itself contains the
standard of critical examination of every use of it. It is
therefore incumbent upon the Critique of Practical
Reason as such to prevent empirically conditioned reason
from presuming that it, alone and exclusively, furnished
the determining ground of the will. If it is proved that
there is pure reason, its use is alone immanent; and the
empirically conditioned use, which lays claim to absolute
rule, is on the contrary transcendent and expresses itself in
demands and commands that go quite beyond its sphere—
precisely the opposite from what could be said of pure
reason in its speculative use.8
A mouthful to be sure! Let us try and bring some clarity to this
passage. First, Kant refers to pure reason as a unified faculty
that can be talked about either in its speculative or practical
use. Next, pure reason is concerned with the questions of
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freedom, God, and immortality, as is made clear by Kant’s
insistence upon universality and necessity. Finally, pure reason
bears within itself the “standard of critical examination of
every use of it.” Pure reason does not look to a higher authority
for its standards, nor does it see its finiteness as marked and
determined by reference to an infinite, divine reason. The unity
of pure reason is preserved over the difference between its
speculative and practical use by promoting pure practical
reason to a place of primacy, while at the same time demoting
speculative reason to secondary status. This reversal of priority
is quite striking when compared to theological explorations of
the relation between human and divine reason. A look to
theology’s distinguishing of divine and human reason puts this
reversal of priority in an interesting light. For some theologians, human reason is intimately connected to divine reason,
because the former takes its standards and orientation from the
latter. Thus, as regards human reason, the primary faculty is
speculative and the supporting faculty is practical. In speculative reason man looks up to an order of higher ontological
status than himself—God and his created order—while
practical reason guides man’s actions within this order of ends.
God, however, cannot have speculative reason as primary,
since there is no order of higher ontological status for him to
look up to. If there were such a higher order, he would not be
the creator, but the divine craftsman. So for God it is his reason
in its practical aspect that is primary. He creates by his word—
Let there be light!—and then he beholds that it is good.
By reversing the primacy of the two faculties of reason,
Kant makes human reason resemble divine reason: pure
practical reason, or reason in its moral activity, comes first;
then speculative reason follows—creating, then beholding.
There is no ontologically higher order that is open to man’s
speculative view, and thus the traditional metaphysical claim
that actuality anchored in this higher ontological order is prior
to potentiality becomes suspect as well. This rejection of the
priority of actuality is part of what is at stake in Kant’s
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rejection of the ontological and cosmological arguments for
the existence of God. For Kant, possibility—a possibility not
tied to an already existing actuality, but a possibility tied to
freedom—will be central. Since there is no existing order of
the Good that is open to our view, and thus no way to measure
our actions by reference to such an order, this reorientation is
a significant break from traditional ethics with its concerns
about such things as the distribution of goods, and with its
grounding of obligation in the demand that we bring to
fulfillment our potentialities as human beings.
Let us now turn more directly to the passage quoted above.
Kant seems to assert that practical reason determines the
faculty of the will, but that the will can be determined in two
different ways: it can produce objects corresponding to representations, or it can bring about such objects. To understand the
first alternative, we must see how something can be a cause of
our actions. In the Preface to the Critique of Practical Reason,
Kant says, “Life is the faculty of a being to act in accordance
with the laws of the faculty of desire. The faculty of desire is a
being’s faculty to be by means of its representations the cause
of the reality of the objects of these representations.”9 In other
words, this faculty of desire requires representations of certain
objects, from the very concrete (such as desiring an ice cream
cone) to the more abstract (such as honor or shame). The
subject is affected by a certain representation of a desired state
of affairs, and then practical reason goes to work to determine
how to attain or bring about such a state of affairs. The content
of this representation and the attendant evoking of pleasure or
pain is determined by our experience. Kant claims that we do
not innately know what we desire and what will bring us
pleasure or pain; and furthermore, he claims that these will
vary from person to person. We find what it is that makes us
happy through experience. When practical reason determines
the will through representation, it is operating as empirical
practical reason. Under various descriptions it should be
familiar to all of us.
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When we strive toward a desired end—usually happiness—empirical practical reason is at work as the overall endin-itself that needs no reference to another end. Maxims and
rules of conduct formed in consideration of this end Kant calls
hypothetical imperatives: if you want this, then you must act in
this way. A way of life organized around such imperatives is a
prudential life. Kant indicates this dependency upon experience by the word empirical. This dependency on experience
motivates most of our actions, and that is why Kant sees those
actions as pathological—because they are determined heteronomously rather than autonomously.
Kant thinks that heteronomous determination is natural to
us, since he believes that we are inwardly determined in the
same way as the course of nature is determined. Our inmost,
authentic desires, which we believe both determine and
express who we really are, have been shaped by our education,
by our experience, and by our society—that is, from without.
Hence to be determined by these inclinations is not to be free,
but to be determined heteronomously. Kant regards everything
we think of as deeply, inwardly human—our desires, our social
roles, our insights, our feelings of love, care, and devotion—as
heteronomously determined, which is to say, conditioned from
a moral perspective, and radically pathological. Kant considers
all desire-driven action to be pathological because it arises in
us as a pathos, as a suffering of a determination that arises
outside of us. In this sense, therefore, pathological activity is
not contrasted with normal activity—since it is precisely
normal activity that is pathological—but with autonomous
activity, that is, with freedom and the formal determination by
one’s own will.
This other possibility of determining the will, in which we
are not determined heteronomously, is to have the will effect
the object by the exercise of the faculty of pure practical reason
that is not grounded in our experiences. This way of determining the will may be rather puzzling, but we can at least
understand that it would eliminate the mediation caused by
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representing to ourselves objects of experience that then activate the faculty of desire, thereby bypassing our dependence
on experience. To be subject to representation and desire is in
fact to be determined pathologically; moreover, to be motivated by concerns for happiness is to be determined heteronomously. Kant frames this option in the form of a question:
“The first question here, then, is whether pure reason of itself
alone suffices to determine the will or whether it can be a determining ground of the will only as empirically conditioned.”10
Kant claims that what is at stake here is freedom and the possibility of autonomy in the sense of self-determination. Our
freedom might well be at stake, but it is hard to accept the
claim that pure reason alone, pure practical reason, can be
sufficient in itself to determine the will. The common view,
which is easier to accept, was expressed by Hume in his
Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals: “Reason being
cool and disengaged, is no motive to action, and directs only
the impulse received from appetite or inclination, by showing
us the means of attaining happiness or avoiding misery.”11
There are, of course, actions that we perform under the guidance of reason for which we have no immediate inclination—
for example, submitting to a painful and risky surgery, or dragging oneself out of bed early to work at a job one dislikes. But
the motivations for these actions are also tied to inclinations—
to the desire for health or the desire for food and shelter. In
other words, reason in its practical work can only direct inclination—that is, in Kantian terms, it can function only as conditioned or empirical practical reason.
Kant is aware of this limitation, of course, and so he asserts
that it is “incumbent upon the Critique of Practical Reason as
such to prevent empirically conditioned reason from presuming that it, alone and exclusively, furnishes the determining
ground of the will.”12 If we stand aside from our mode of
representation, if we leave aside our faculty of desire—which
is, after all, the defining faculty of life—we are certainly in an
uncanny place. Is it possible that there could be an ethics or a
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morality that is not the fulfillment of desire in some form, a
fulfillment guided by the representation of the way the world
is? Kant proposes that such an ethics or morality is possible,
and that it is made possible by the operation of pure practical
reason, a practical reason that is not dependent upon the representation of a desired object or state of affairs, not dependent
on ends that are given to it. This claim about a will that can
determine itself apart from representation sets the stage for the
prominence of will as a basic metaphysical category for many
thinkers following Kant.
Kant pushes us very hard here. In effect, he says that we
are less free than we believe. There is no internal sanctuary in
which we can discover our true selves, and if we respond to
divine commands or act on promises of an afterlife we are
being determined heteronomously. Morality for Kant will not
consist of a set of norms for bridling desire in order to keep our
conduct free of excess. In relation to the smooth, normal
course of events—now seen as pathological—morality is always an interruption, a going beyond the way the world is, a
going beyond even the pleasure principle. Kant, in fact, rejects
the distinction between higher and lower desires, between
higher and lower pleasures, a distinction based on whether the
desire originates in the intellect or in the senses. Such a
distinction lies at the center of much moral reasoning and
education, and is implicit in all appeals to moderation. The aim
of such a morality is to refine our desires by reflection and to
redirect them toward objects of higher ontological status, that
is, objects that are visible to the mind only. By lifting our eyes
to the intelligible heavens, as it were, we lift our desires as
well. A simple example: Pleasures of the senses have a limit—
sound, for example, can become so loud that it can destroy the
sense organ; pleasures of the mind, on the contrary, can be
unlimited—learning simply prepares the mind for more
learning. Kant flatly states that all desires are on the same
level; this is indicated, for instance, by the fact that we can and
do leave a poetry reading because we want to go running and
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vice versa. His contention is supported further by the fact that
there is no intelligible heaven open to our view, and by the fact
that we are determined in what we desire, we are fully conditioned beings. Because we are fully conditioned beings, we are
less free than we believe, and everything we take as proper to
our humanity stands on one side of the ledger, while only an
invisible marker stands on the other side, pointing toward an
empty dimension into which we can think ourselves, and in
which we can imagine that it is possible to determine our moral
being rationally, that is, universally and necessarily.
If, however, on the one hand we are less free than we believe, Kant nevertheless also indicates that we are freer than we
know. In his critique of practical reason, Kant often refers to
the experience of moral necessitation, the experience of the
ought—I ought to perform this action, I ought not to have done
this, this ought not to have happened—and he gives us an interpretation of this experience that indicates that we are freer than
we know:
Lest anyone suppose that he finds an inconsistency when
I now call freedom the condition of the moral law and
afterwards . . . maintain that the moral law is the condition
under which we can first become aware of freedom, I want
only to remark that whereas freedom is indeed the ratio
essendi of the moral law, the moral law is the ratio
cognoscendi of free-dom. For, had not the moral law
already been distinctly thought in our reason, we should
never consider ourselves justified in assuming such a
thing as freedom (even though it is not self-contradictory).
But were there no freedom, the moral law would not be
encountered at all in ourselves.13
The positing of freedom is bound up with the moral law as a
condition of its possibility, and this interpretation shores up the
experience of the ought, making it a necessary, rather than a
contingent, element in human cognition. In order, then, for the
moral law to be encountered as the moral law—and for Kant
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that means it must be encountered in its universal and necessary character—it is necessary to posit freedom. In this way,
we are freer than we can know, since the moral law necessarily
calls forth the postulate of freedom: even though freedom is
not a possible object of knowledge for us, we must postulate it.
This rational necessity of positing freedom is, for Kant, the
first tenet of a rational faith.
Of course it is critical for Kant that this positing of freedom
should not contradict the doctrine of freedom found in the
Critique of Pure Reason—namely, that freedom, though
incapable of being an object of experience, is thinkable and
conceivable as a transcendental connected with our noumenal
selves, as part of the intelligible world needed to resolve the
antinomies. This theoretical conceivability does not ground the
concept of freedom, does not give it objective reality, but it
does leave open the possibility of freedom. In the Groundwork
of The Metaphysics of Morals, Kant says:
The intelligible world signifies only a “something” that is
left over when I have excluded from the determining
grounds of my will everything belonging to the world of
sense, merely in order to limit the principle of motives
from the field of sensibility by circumscribing this field
and showing that it does not include everything within
itself but that there is still more beyond it; but of this
something more I have no further cognizance.14
The only cognizance of the freedom proper to our intelligible,
noumenal self, is an indirect one, a posited one. Only through
the experience of the moral law, as interpreted in a certain way,
can I become aware that I must be free.
Of course this experience of the ought, of the moral law as
universally and necessarily binding, can be interpreted otherwise. For example, following Freud, we could see the categorical imperative as an internalization of the strictures of our
parents and society, resulting in the formation of the superego;
or, following Freud’s contemporaries, we could see it as no-
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thing more than the consequence either of long-settled custom
or of the necessities dictated by prudence. Kant, however, is
strongly drawn to this interpretation of the moral law because
it solidifies many aspects of his thought. In the Preface to the
Critique of Practical Reason he says,
The union of causality as freedom with causality as
natural mechanism, the first of which is established by the
moral law, the second by the law of nature, and indeed in
one and the same subject, the human being, is impossible
without representing him with regard to the first as a being
in itself but with regard to the second as an appearance,
the former in pure, the latter in empirical consciousness.15
This positing of freedom fills out a possibility foreshadowed in
the Critique of Pure Reason, allows for some kind of unity of
the human being, and supports a view of reason that is not
unavoidably in contradiction with itself. Our noumenal self in
its freedom prescribes universal and necessary laws to our
empirical and conditioned self, which experiences itself as
necessitated by these prescriptions, not heteronomously, but
autonomously, as self-determining. The preservation of the
universal and necessary character of these prescriptions allows
Kant to see this experience as rational. Only in this way do we
gain some purchase on the intelligible world. We will take up
this rationality again at the end of this essay.
But why talk of this purchase on the intelligible world in
terms of a rational faith? We see a similar move on the part of
Maimonides in his recognition and resolution of a question that
I am going to frame as an antinomy: Is the world eternal or
does it have a beginning in time? Maimonides is concerned
about the claim that Aristotle has demonstrated the eternality
of the world. To hold onto the belief that God created and
governs the world in the face of such a demonstrated claim is,
for Maimonides, to be placed in an impossible situation.
Neither he nor Kant could tolerate the proposition that we must
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sacrifice reason for faith—that we should believe precisely
because it is absurd. Maimonides spends a great deal of time
showing that Aristotle did not claim to demonstrate that the
world is eternal; and, in fact, he tries to show that it is not
possible to demonstrate either that the world is eternal or that
it has a beginning in time.16 We do not have a coherent,
scientific account of our world to base such a demonstration on
because our best physics (an Aristotelian one) and our best
astronomy (a Ptolemaic one) are in contradiction. Thus, we are
at liberty to decide this issue on other terms. Aristotle can hold
a considered opinion that the world is eternal because it
concurs with and supports his other metaphysical concerns. Of
course, Maimonides is also at liberty to base his considered
opinion on considerations of compatibility with his traditional
faith. Kant goes a bit further than this compatibility, because he
sees the moral law as universal and necessary: he holds that in
determining the moral law we act as legislative members of a
kingdom of ends. The underpinning of such universal,
necessary, and teleological action must likewise have this rational character. Thus, for Kant, freedom is a tenet of a rational,
not a traditional, faith.
Let me now address the other two tenets of this rational
faith. As mentioned above, somehow the will, quite apart from
representation and desire, brings about an object. This object,
for Kant, is the highest good, in which happiness ought to be
distributed according to how much one deserves to be happy.
Kant tells the painful truth: that in this world, those who
deserve happiness often do not attain happiness—the wicked
do indeed often prosper, and the good often suffer. Virtue is not
its own reward; moreover, happiness does not constitute a
coherent system: the things that make us happy often work
against each other. In addition, it is not in our power to bring
about this highest good. We can act individually as if we are
legislating members of a Kingdom of ends, but to bring the
highest good into being requires that others act with us—thus,
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to do so is not in our power. God is posited as a necessary
condition for the possibility of such a highest Good, inasmuch
as He can somehow harmonize our actions with those of
others. Furthermore, the human will is not good, as we can see
through the experience of being morally determined: we must
struggle against our sensual nature as we strive to be virtuous.
Now although we can strive to perfect our will, it is an impossible task, which Kant must reframe as an infinite task in order
to make the completion of our striving at least conceivable.
The condition for the possibility of such an infinite task is the
immortality of the soul. Thus in order for the will to bring
about the highest good, and thereby to have a rational hope that
our actions are not completely futile, the rational postulates of
God and immorality are required. The postulate of freedom
grounds the moral law while the other two postulates, God and
immortality, transform our moral actions (namely, making the
world into what it ought to be and perfecting our will) into an
infinite task. It is important to see that these rational postulates
give us neither any knowledge of what God is in himself nor
any knowledge of what life after death may be like. All I know
is that it is necessary to assert these tenets in order to make it
conceivable that we can bring about the highest good as an
object of our will. In this way, our metaphysical desire is
addressed and met by a rational faith; and this is the only way
that these desires can be met, since Kant has demonstrated that
they cannot be met by striving for a speculative vision.
Let us now marshal further support for Kant’s assertion
that we are freer than we know. We have already seen that in
claiming to be the sole power that can determine the will,
empirical practical reason oversteps its boundaries and closes
off the uncanny space of freedom. This space is preserved by
pure practical reason. But is there other evidence of our
freedom?
Kant presents several examples that show situations in
which our freedom is made manifest. In the Critique of
Practical Reason, he rebuts the claim that we are impotent in
the face of our desires—that, for instance, those of us who lust
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are controlled by our lust. Kant responds that a lustful person
about to enter a brothel would soon learn to control his lust if
he encountered a gallows in front of the door together with an
official proclamation that anyone frequenting the establishment would be hanged. We can certainly conceive of controlling our lust under such a threat, but if we do exert control,
it is for the sake of self-love and self-preservation. Kant then
extends this rebuttal with a slightly different example: A prince
pressures someone to bear false witness against an innocent
man whom the prince wants eliminated. Kant claims not only
that everyone knows what ought to be done in such a situation,
but also that it is quite conceivable that someone in that
situation would refuse to bear false witness even despite the
threat of the gallows. The first example shows that we can
exert control over our desires if something serious, like our
life, is as stake; the second example shows that we can refuse
to perform an action even if our life is as stake. These
examples show that our relation to moral activity takes place
on two planes; in one we appear to be determined by the
situation, while in the other we appear to be free.17
A few pages later in the same book, Kant provides another
bit of evidence for our being freer than we know—what might
be called a phenomenological description of the difference in
self-critical response between losing at a game and cheating at
a game. He who loses a game (or, by extension, loses the game
of life by not becoming as successful or respected as he might
have desired), might be angry with himself or at his unskillful
play; but if he knows himself to have cheated at the game, he
must despise himself as soon as he compares his action with
the moral law. These two failures are different; the second
clearly lies in the moral realm and is connected to freedom.18
In this second response, we see again that there is a plane of
moral action that points to an independence from external
determination.
Finally, let us look at one last piece of evidence for our
freedom: the categorical imperative. Both our own inclinations
and sometimes the blandishments of others, including our
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friends and family, try to persuade us that we are a special case,
that a normally prescribed action is necessary just this once,
and that to take the action is really, in this situation, better for
all concerned. We may be told that this action is what God, or
our church, or our family, or our country demands of us if we
are to fulfill our responsibilities. These persuasions of sentiment, reason, and authority are effective because they touch on
our foremost moral weakness—the temptation to make a specific exemption for ourselves in a special case. The tendency
toward self-favoritism or particularism is a commonplace both
in philosophical systems of morality, where judgment of
actions typically must be made by an impartial spectator, and
in everyday legal practice, where we may not sit in judgment
in our own case. The Categorical Imperative is a rational procedure that makes this common and pervasive temptation
explicit, because it demands that actions be judged by universal and necessary laws: we must act so that the maxim of
our action can serve as a law for all rational beings—including,
quite pointedly, the law-determiner himself or herself.
Now it may seem that following commands, doing as one
is told, has the same form as Kantian duty. But this is problematic for several reasons. First and foremost is the sacrifice of
freedom in following a command that is not the product of
one’s own self-determination. In a bold move, Kant places
following commands together with following inclinations (two
functions that are kept strictly separate in most moral systems)
under the same heading, namely, being determined heteronomously. It is at this point that Kant introduces his famous
distinction distinguishing actions that are merely in conformity
with duty from actions that are in conformity with duty and
done for duty’s sake. Kant places actions that merely conform
with duty in the category of legality, which is, strictly speaking, an empty formalism, since it is independent of intentions
and motivations. Actions that are both in conformity with duty
and done for the sake of duty bring into play the pure practical
reason as well as a will that can determine itself, apart from
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desire and representation, by means of the universal form of
the categorical imperative. The pressing question here is: How
can a form, namely the form of universality, serve as a material
incentive?
Kant’s answer to this question takes us to a strange place.
In his Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, Kant asserts
that we are free to decide, after a certain age, which of our
inclinations we will we allow to influence us. He does not
mean that we cease to feel these inclinations; he is asserting,
rather, that in feeling them we are not necessitated to act. Or,
to put it more broadly: we can choose our character by deciding which of our inclinations to emphasize. It is in this freedom
of choice that we can decide to have the universal form be the
principle of the maxims by which we act. This decision
happens in the twinkling of an eye. Kant describes it in this
way:
[I]f a man is to become not merely legally, but morally, a
good man . . . this cannot be brought about through a
gradual reformation, so long as the basis of the maxims
remain impure, but must be effected through a revolution
in man’s disposition. . . . He can become a new man only
by a kind of rebirth, as it were a new creation.19
Strictly speaking, this does not constitute evidence of Kant’s
uncanny space of freedom. But he is not the only thinker to
claim that our freedom to decide what will influence us determines what character we will have. In the myth of Er near the
end of the Republic, Plato depicts our souls in a place outside
of time, having to choose a life, a character that they will fall
into.20 Kant suggests something similar: a place of freedom, a
place outside of time, in which we can actually exercise the
faculty of choice.
III. Conclusion
Kant’s step of setting our humanity aside, of asking us to be indifferent to our desires, has evoked passionate criticism. Some
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are upset by his refusal to allow our inclinations—especially
our positive inclinations such as care and sympathy—to serve
as a ground for obligation; others complain that he ignores the
consequences of our actions; yet others are genuinely puzzled
by what in the world (or out of it, for that matter) Kant could
possibly mean by designating humans as “finite rational
beings.” For the most part, these criticisms come from critics
of single-principle moralities such as Kant’s that place a
premium on conformance to duty and obligation; such moralities tend to denigrate concerns for life-fulfillment or happiness,
that is, questions about what is good to love or good to be, both
for ourselves and for others. The great benefit of Kant’s moral
system is that it can resolve complicated situations in which
there are competing goods, and cut short the angst of moral
remorse. But the critics of single-principle moralities ask, At
what cost do we purchase this benefit? And for them, the
answer seems unacceptably high: At the cost of our humanity.
All of these are understandable concerns, but behind most
of these criticisms is the fear that if we become indifferent to
our desires, to our humanity, we will lose what makes us most
truly who we are. This self is our personal self—not personal
in the Kantian sense of having standing in a court of law as a
bearer of rights, but personal in the sense of a personal touch
or personality. In creating the moral world by acting as if we
are members of a possible kingdom of ends (a creation ex
nihilo, since we are not guided by a pre-existing good nor tied
to our existing potentialities), we are acting impersonally. Kant
is asserting that at the very core of our being exists an impersonal space. It is this space that Kant seeks to preserve,
because he sees it as the guarantee for whatever dignity we
have. As he says in the Groundwork of The Metaphysics of
Morals:
There is a sublimity and dignity in the person who fulfills
all his duties. For there is indeed no sublimity in him
insofar as he is subject to the moral law, but there is
insofar as he is at the same time lawgiving with respect to
SMITH
71
it and only for that reason subordinated to it.21
Our dignity demands that happiness is not a blessing to be
bestowed on us by a higher power as a reward for obedience or
service; rather, it is a right belonging to reason, and it ought to
be distributed in proportion to the worthiness of being happy.
If we insist that a personal self lies at our core as the
foundation for our dignity, we abandon the possibility of being
a lawgiver in a possible kingdom of ends; in effect, we
abandon reason. If we replace Kant’s pure reason with a reason
that is socially and historically mediated, we relinquish the
possibility that reason can access the space of freedom. For
Kant, it is this lawgiving self, a universal, necessary, and enddetermining rational power, which is admittedly impersonal
and uncanny, that is at the center of our being. This rational
power, this pure practical reason, determines its own ends, and
therefore it should be respected as an end-in-itself—that is, as
a moral being. In Kant’s view, as expressed in the passage from
the Introduction of the Critique of Practical Reason quoted
earlier,22 pure practical reason allows us to attain a threefold
end that other moral systems cannot match: the requirements
of reason are satisfied by rational faith; the supremacy of our
faculty of pure reason (which defines who we are) is preserved
as practical; and our dignity remains intact—not as knowers of
eternal truth, but as autonomous moral beings.
NOTES
1. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp
Smith (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1929), 29 (Bxxix-xxx).
2. Dante, Paradiso, trans. Robert Hollander and Jean Hollander
(New York: Anchor Books, 2007), 3.
3. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 482 (B592).
4. Ibid., 482 (B591).
5. Ibid., 629 (B823).
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6. Ibid., 29 (Bxxix-xxx).
7. Ibid., 637-38 (B836).
8. Immanuel Kant, “Critique of Practical Reason” in Practical
Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 148-49.
9. Kant, “Critique of Practical Reason,” in Practical Philosophy, 144n.
10. Ibid., 148.
11. David Hume, “An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals,”
in Moral Philosophy, ed. Geoffrey Sayre-McCord (Indianapolis:
Hackett Publishing, 2006), 274.
12. Kant, “Critique of Practical Reason,” in Practical Philosophy, 148.
13. Ibid., 140.
14. Kant, “Groundwork of The Metaphysics of Morals,” in Practical
Philosophy, 107.
15. Kant, “Critique of Practical Reason,” in Practical Philosophy, 141.
16. Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed, Part II, Chapters XV-XIX.
17. Kant, “Critique of Practical Reason,” in Practical Philosophy, 163.
18. Ibid., 170.
19. Immanuel Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, trans.
Theodore M. Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson, ed. John Silber (New York:
Harper and Row, 1960), 42-3.
20. Plato, Republic 614b-621d.
21. Kant, “Groundwork,” in Practical Philosophy, 88.
22. See above, pp. 00-00 and note 8.
REFLECTIONS
73
What Did You Learn?
Lise van Boxel
Congratulations on successfully completing the Master’s
Program in Liberal Arts.
Now that you have your M.A., it is a good time to reflect
upon what you have learned and the reasons why you began
the journey that led you to your degree. What knowledge have
you acquired at St. John’s College? Have you gained any
practical skills here? Your employers or potential clients, your
friends and your family will certainly ask such questions. What
will you say to them? What do you say to yourself?
Before turning to a consideration of possible answers to
such questions, consider briefly some of the presuppositions
that often underlie them. Frequently, the real meaning of
“What did you learn?” is, “In what way has this education contributed to your value as a worker or to your ability to earn a
living?”
These questions are not ridiculous. Unless you are lucky
enough to be independently wealthy or to have a patron, you
have to think about how to support yourself. On the other hand,
it is wrong-headed to think of education simply or primarily in
these terms, as if employability and income were the highest,
most important considerations for a human being.
Friedrich Nietzsche offers a vivid description of this
impoverished and narrow understanding of education—an
understanding that characterizes the modern era. In sum, he
argues that an education that looks solely or primarily to the
marketplace deforms the souls of its students because it is
Commencement Address to the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education, August 12,
2011. Lise van Boxel is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis.
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ignorant of, or denies, the proper fullness and activity of the
human soul:
[T]he present age is . . . supposed to be an age, not of whole,
mature and harmonious personalities, but of labour of the
greatest possible common utility. That means, however, that
men have to be adjusted to the purposes of the age so as to
be ready for employment as soon as possible: they must
labour in the factories of the general good before they are
mature, indeed so that they shall not become mature—for
this would be a luxury which would deprive the ‘labour
market’ of a great deal of its workforce. Some birds are
blinded so that they may sing more beautifully; I do not think
the men of today sing more beautifully than their grandfathers, but I know they have been blinded.1
Nietzsche grants that the emphasis on science, and more
specifically on science directed by the marketplace, will indeed
produce economic success, at least in the short term. However,
he adds that this kind of science is a desiccated version of the
comprehensive understanding that is the proper goal of science
or higher learning more generally—a goal that the modern
world has largely abandoned:
I regret the need to make use of the of the slave-owner and
the employer of labour to describe things that in themselves
ought to be thought of as free of utility and raised above the
necessities of life; but the words ‘factory’, ‘labour market’,
‘supply’, ‘making profitable’, and whatever auxiliary verbs
egoism now employs, come unbidden to the lips when one
wishes to describe the most recent generation of men of
learning. Sterling mediocrity grows even more mediocre,
science ever more profitable in the economic sense. . . .
Those who unwearyingly repeat the modern call to battle and
sacrifice—‘Division of labour! Fall in!’—must for once be
told in round and plain terms: if you want to push science
forward as quickly as possible you will succeed in destroying
it as quickly as possible; just as a hen perishes if it is
compelled to lay eggs too quickly.2
REFLECTIONS | VAN BOXEL
75
If Nietzsche’s account of the trend in modern education
aptly describes the kind of education you did not receive and
to which, I think, St. John’s is opposed, how might you describe what you did learn here?
While denouncing an overly narrow view of education,
Nietzsche alludes to the effect of a complete education: it
would create “whole, mature and harmonious personalities.”
Neither you nor I can honestly claim that you acquired a complete and harmonious soul as a result of several years of education at St. John’s. This is not to say that I reject the idea that the
truly authoritative education aims at, and can produce, a harmonious soul. Rather, I think this education is the ongoing
activity of a lifetime. Nonetheless, I do believe that the liberal
education you received here can contribute greatly to the
attainment of this goal. However, I will put aside these ideas
for the moment, and I will turn instead to a more modest articulation of what a liberal education is and what skills may be
acquired as a result of it.
To do so, I will replace Nietzsche’s high-flying, though
accurate, description of a complete education with Aristotle’s
sensible, though still ambitious, account of a liberal education.
In distinguishing a specialist from someone who, like you, has
been generally educated, he says:
With regard to every [kind of] contemplation and inquiry,
both lowlier and more esteemed alike, there appear to be two
ways of being skilled, one of which it is well to call the
science of the thing, and the other as it were a kind of educatedness. For it is characteristic of an educated man to be able
to hit the mark and judge appropriately what the speaker sets
forth finely and what he doesn’t. For something like this is in
fact what we suppose the generally educated man to be, and
that to be educated is to be capable of doing this very thing—
except that we believe that this one, the generally educated
man, is able to judge about virtually all things, though being
one man, but that the other one is able to judge [only] about
some limited nature.3
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I do not recommend launching yourself into this quotation
when asked what practical skills you acquired at St. John’s
College, though if you decide to do so, take a deep breath, and
deliver it with panache. You can, however, capture the essence
of what Aristotle says in your own words.
In my own words, I say that, as a result of your liberal
education, you are better able to judge when an argument or
account is adequate and when it is not. When it is inadequate,
you are more capable of seeing how it is deficient and what
would need to be addressed to alleviate this shortcoming. Such
judgment can be brought to bear on any argument, regardless
of the field. If the argument includes technical language, all
you need is the time to look up the definitions of these words
before you are able to proceed as you would with any other
account. At bottom, such an argument is no different from any
other.
To Aristotle’s description, I would add that, as a result of
your education, you are now better able to admit when you do
not know something, and to do so without embarrassment. Do
not underestimate the value of this intellectual honesty. It will
help you to continue to learn. In addition, it will be greatly
appreciated by other people, most of whom are anxious about
their own ignorance, but are afraid to admit that they do not
know. It can be a tremendous relief to encounter someone who
can say without shame that he does not know, but that he wants
to learn.
This training in judgment—in clear thinking—is an
essential part of a liberal education. And it can indeed help you
to advance your career. I advise you, therefore, to consider how
you can describe this skill to others so that you can represent it
with the full strength that it deserves and in a manner that is
readily apparent to others. If you do this, you will be well
equipped to respond to those who want to know how you can
apply what you learned to the workplace.
This account of your education, however, is neither
complete nor does it capture the most important element of
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77
education. Aristotle would say that, in order truly to judge well,
one must have a satisfactory understanding of the ultimate end
at which one aims. It is not enough to have an idea of the
proximate goal that one seeks to fulfill. One must have
adequate knowledge of whether and how this proximate goal
accords with the highest and most comprehensive goal at
which human beings can and should aim. Without a sufficient
account of this authoritative, supreme good—the Good—no
judgment is adequate, strictly speaking, and consequently one
cannot truly be said to know. Thus, any education can and must
be considered in terms of whether and how it can contribute to
the Good. Regarding questions about whether your education
here was practical, therefore, the real issue is not whether this
education will contribute to your employment opportunities,
but whether it contributes to your knowledge of the Good. And
the real question about your job is not whether your education
has made you suitable for it, but whether it can contribute to
your ability to lead a good life.
No, I will not let go of the highest account of education to
which Nietzsche alludes and which, I dare say, all great
thinkers share. Moreover, I expect that you empathize with me
in my refusal to forgo these highest goals.
While some of you came to St. John’s partly in order to
advance your career, I doubt that any of you came here
primarily for this reason. You came because you had
questions—questions that perhaps you could not quite articulate, even to yourself, but that you could not put aside. As you
made your way through the works of our Program, I suspect
many of you began to recognize your questions reflected back
to you in the Great Books: “What is justice?” “What is love or
friendship?” “What kind of beings are we, and what is our
place in this world?”
Many and perhaps all of these questions arise from a
common origin: the yearning to have a good life, combined
with the realization that you do not know clearly enough what
this is. I suspect, in other words, that the fundamental reason
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why you came here was because you thought this education
might help you to understand the Good.
Since our human life is limited, and since the clock is
already ticking on the time that we have, this question of the
Good is urgent. No one wants to realize at the end of his life
that he misused or wasted his time. And since none of us know
how much time we have, it is foolish for any of us to postpone
the question of the Good indefinitely.
Such talk of mortality and the Good sounds very serious.
Well, what did you expect? Has anything valuable that you
have read or discussed here been unserious? Thankfully,
seriousness does not have to be grave. You need only recall the
company you have kept as you have pursued your questions,
and you will feel, not weighted down, but elevated by the
astounding souls who have walked alongside you.
Here is Plato, on the same journey as you, speaking with a
voice as nuanced and relevant as it was some 2,400 years ago.
With a touch of mischief, he doubles himself, adopting the
voice of Socrates, who recollects taking this same path, just a
day earlier: “I went down to the Piraeus yesterday with Glaucon, son of Ariston.”4
Another man introduces himself with the words: “Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war between the
Peloponnesians and the Athenians, beginning at the moment
that it broke out, and believing that it would be a great war.”5
He hands you his book, which contains his thoughts about your
shared questions, saying as he does so: “I have written my
work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the
moment, but as a possession for all time.”6
Homer turns his blind eyes upon you and points to Achilles
and Odysseus, each of whom tackles the questions of the good
life and what it means to be a good human being. Shakespeare
speaks to you with a profundity that is surely expressed in
some of the most beautiful language ever heard. Nietzsche
reaffirms life with a cry from his electric soul: “We still feel it,
the whole need of the spirit and the whole tension of its bow.”7
REFLECTIONS | VAN BOXEL
79
These souls are among the best students and teachers ever
to have lived. Their greatness consists largely in the fact that
they investigated the most serious eternal questions with
unmatched comprehensiveness and depth. What have you
learned from them about the Good?
If you have learned anything, it is that, when speaking to
one who does not already know the answer, you cannot
respond meaningfully to this question in a single sentence or
two. You might say, for example, that they taught you that the
good life is the philosophic life or the life devoted to the
Divine, but then you would have to explain what philosophy or
the Divine is and what it would mean to dedicate your life to
such things.
While there are answers to these questions, each answer
leads to a new question—and this is not the occasion for a long
conversation. It is the occasion, however, to remind you that all
of these great students and teachers spent their lives engaged
with such questions. Inquiry is thereby shown to be central to,
if not the essence of, a good human life. Furthermore—and this
is worth emphasizing, since you are have now exited the
Master’s Program—these students were able to learn from virtually everything and everyone, if not directly, then indirectly.
Life after your M.A. may not be as leisurely as it was when you
were a student, but you can and will find opportunities to learn,
if only you come to embrace life itself as a learning opportunity.
I hope and expect that something of this way of life has
become a part of you and that, if you look around now at the
faces of your fellow students, you will see in their eyes something of the souls of those great human beings who are your
models.
Continue to be thoughtful. Be open-minded. Retain the
flexibility of soul that is necessary for continued learning. In
sum, keep the goal of a good life always before you. Use the
Good as your North Star to guide every significant action and
decision you make. Doing this will not guarantee that you
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always make the right decision, but it will mean that you will
have done the best that you could do, and that, whatever contingencies you may face, you will have led the best life that is
possible for you.
Let me conclude with one of Plato’s favorite valedictions:
“Have success in action, and do what is good.”8
NOTES
1. Friedrich Neitzsche, “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for
Life,” in Untimely Meditations, ed. Daniel Breazeale (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997), 97-98.
2. Ibid., 99.
3. Aristotle, On the Parts of Animals, 639a2-15, trans. David Bolotin.
4. Plato, Republic, trans. Allen Bloom, 2nd ed., (New York: Basic
Books, 1991), 3.
5. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, in The Landmark
Thucydides, ed. Robert B.Strassler (New York: Free Press, 2008), 3.
6. Ibid., 16.
7. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kauffmann
(New York: Vintage, 1989), 3.
8. Plato, Republic, 303 and 472.
POETRY | ZUCKERMAN
To the New Recruits
Elliott Zuckerman
From now on I’ll refer to you as waiters,
even those whose ears do not resemble
the picture in the magazine.
You will be issued the standard bill of fare
including a list of all the famous sauces
and all the substitutions we allow.
You’ll wear the studded cuff
the collar and the pied cravat
and those who can will wear the earrings
that fascinate the men who dine here,
whether they arrive by pre-arrangement
or enter dazed directly from the street.
I ask you not to fall in love.
When two of you collide, just smile,
stand up again and go about your business.
The moppers will come running.
Ignore the murmuring of the clients who
deplore the loss of sequence in the dance.
After a month or two you’ll get the steps
and grow to like the music.
Then we can film the service.
We’ll play it back at half the pace of life
And next we’ll show it speeded up.
The comic rondo will delight us all.
81
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REVIEWS
83
DELPHIC EXAMINATIONS
David Leibowitz, The Ironic Defense of
Socrates: Plato’s Apology. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2010.
204 pages, $80.
Book Review by David Bolotin
David Leibowitz’s book on Plato’s Apology of Socrates is in the
first place a thorough and penetrating interpretation of the dialogue. It also claims, however, and attempts to show, that the
Apology is the key to the entire Platonic corpus, and to this end it
includes thoughtful interpretations of various aspects of other
dialogues. Yet the book’s ultimate ambition goes much further
even than this. For its chief aim is to show, in Leibowitz’s words,
“that Plato’s Socrates is not just a colorful and quirky figure from
the distant past, but an unrivaled guide to the good life—the
thoughtful life—who is as relevant today as he was in ancient
Athens” (1).* Thus, Leibowitz combines his interpretations with
arguments for the truth of the Socratic positions that he has
brought to light. The book even includes arguments in Leibowitz’s own name that reply to objections a reader might make to
Socratic views. Now it is likely to be younger readers who are
most open to the question of whether Plato’s Socrates is an
unrivaled guide to the good life, and thus the book’s primary
audience is not other scholars but these younger readers. But
Leibowitz asks of his readers that they follow him in his
scholarly, and even more than scholarly, attention to the details of
Plato’s text (24-25). And his reason for doing so is indicated in his
book’s title. Socrates was ready and even wanted, on Leibowitz’s
* Numbers in parentheses refer to pages in The Ironic Defense of Socrates:
Plato’s Apology.
David Bolotin is a tutor at St. John’s College in Santa Fe.
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view, to be convicted at his trial and executed, out of a wish to
promote the cause of philosophy by becoming a martyr for it. But
this wish required him to explain to potential philosophers what
philosophy is while concealing from the other citizens—even as
he was courting death—those aspects of it that, as he thought,
could never become publicly acceptable (59-60, 154-160). And in
order to achieve all this in a single address, Socrates had to speak
ironically, a term that Leibowitz well explains to mean speaking
“in a ‘double’ fashion so as to be understood differently by
different listeners” (18). But this implies that Socrates’ deepest
thoughts could be revealed only in hints, whose intended meaning
could come to light only though careful attention to his words. We
who have the good fortune to be able to study these words as
Plato presented them must therefore pay great attention to subtle
details of Plato’s text. Leibowitz himself has surely done this, and
though his account of the philosophic life and his argument for its
being the good life are ultimately stated with great directness, he
develops them in stages, following Socrates’ own guidance,
through an almost line-by-line reading of the Apology.
It would be too large a task for me to comment on Leibowitz’s work in its entirety. So I shall limit myself instead to what
he himself presents as the core of his account, his interpretation
of Socrates’ story of the Delphic oracle. According to Leibowitz,
this story is a fiction, whose purpose is to call attention, as
inoffensively as possible, to the central theoretical crisis in
Socrates’ life. As we know from the Phaedo and from Aristophanes’ Clouds, Socrates in his youth was a student of natural
philosophy. But the Phaedo also teaches us that Socrates’ study of
nature led him to an impasse, since he realized that he could not
be certain of the causes, i.e., the necessary causes, why things
come into being, are as they are, and perish. Recognizing the
limits of his knowledge of nature, Socrates also came to recognize
that he could not even be certain that there is nature, which he
understood as a necessity that limits what a being or class of
beings can do or suffer. The implications of this awareness of
ignorance were made more acute by his recognition that many
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85
people at least implicitly deny that there is nature, since they
believe in gods with unlimited power to intervene in the world.
Moreover, at least some of these believers claim to have had
evidence of there being such gods from their own experience of
them. Thus, Socrates had to admit that, for all he knew, the study
of “nature” was a pseudo-science based on a false premise, and
also a turning away from the deepest human evidence of truth.
According to Leibowitz, it was this crisis resulting from Socrates’
youthful pursuit of natural philosophy that led him to the crossexaminations that he pretended to undertake at the instigation of
the Delphic oracle. In keeping with this suggestion, Leibowitz
presents these examinations primarily as attempts by Socrates to
learn that his interlocutors lacked the evidence of omnipotent
gods that they thought they possessed—or in other words, that
what they had thought of as evidence was illusory. For if he could
know this about his interlocutors, then even though he lacked
certainty that natural necessities are at the root of things, he could
at least know that he knew no one else with a firmer hypothesis
(63-69). Leibowitz also argues that there was a second reason for
Socrates’ “Delphic” examinations, even on the assumption that he
could successfully refute his interlocutors’ claims to superhuman
wisdom. For he says that Socrates came to doubt, even on the
assumption that there is no such wisdom, whether the life of
philosophy is the best or happiest life, and he interprets the crossexaminations as having the subordinate aim of confirming that it
is (72-73).
In discussing Leibowitz’s interpretation of Socrates’
“Delphic” activity, I will stress what I see as difficulties with his
account rather than its merits. This is not because I am blind to
these merits—which seem to me to be quite considerable—or that
I disagree with Leibowitz about what is primarily at stake in
Socrates’ examinations—which I do not. But since I believe that
he does not give an adequate account of this central aspect of
Socrates’ life, I feel compelled to say why.
Let me begin with the second of the two reasons that Leibowitz gives for Socrates’ Delphic examinations, since it is the one
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he focuses on first in his own elaboration. To repeat, Leibowitz
claims that Socrates had to examine the various classes of nonphilosophers in order “to confirm that the life of philosophy or
science, or to speak more cautiously, the life based on human
wisdom, is the best or happiest life if indeed there is no ‘superhuman wisdom’ to guide us” (72). And the first thing I would say
about this suggestion is that I can see little if any evidence for it
in Plato’s text. The only time that Socrates even mentions the
question of whether his life is preferable to those of his interlocutors, as distinct from the question of whether he is wiser than
they—though even here it is not simply distinct from it—is in the
context of his examination of the craftsmen. And the reason he
asks it seems to be that he had to grant to the craftsmen a superiority of sorts in wisdom, since they were wise in their crafts, even
though, like his other interlocutors, they turned out to suppose
falsely that they were wise with regard to the greatest things. For
that reason he asked himself whether he would prefer to be as he
was, neither wise in their wisdom nor ignorant in their ignorance,
or to be as they were; and he replied that it was better for him to
be as he was. But apart from this, Socrates’ account of his examinations deals only with the question of whether he was wiser than
his interlocutors. It is true, of course, that he will later claim that
his own way of life is “the greatest good” (or, perhaps more
precisely, “a very great good”) for a human being, and that “the
unexamined life is not livable for a human being” (Apology of
Socrates 38a1-7). But he never suggests that these conclusions
relied on any fruits of his examinations other than the knowledge
he gained of his interlocutors’ inferiority in wisdom.
Further difficulties with this suggestion of Leibowitz’s
emerge when we consider his discussion of it in more detail.
Leibowitz stresses, and rightly, that after coming to the conclusion that the first political man he examined was not wise,
Socrates “did not leave it at that. Instead, he tried to show him
both that he thought he was wise and that he was not. . . . In short,
Socrates exposed him as a fraud” (75). Not surprisingly, this
caused Socrates to be hated, both by the politician and by many
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87
of the bystanders, and Leibowitz asks what Socrates’ reason could
have been for “the seeming malice of his procedure. Why did he
rub the man’s nose in his foolishness” (75)? Dismissing what I
agree is the implausible suggestion that Socrates hoped to steer
the politician toward philosophy, Leibowitz proposes an answer
to his question in terms of Socrates’ eagerness to establish—even
assuming “that he is already confident that no superhuman
wisdom (divine guidance) exists”—that “philosophy is the best
way of life for any human being capable of living it” (77-78). And
he suggests that Socrates hoped to confirm this belief by prompting his interlocutors, once they saw that they lacked wisdom
about the noble and good, about which he questioned them, to
acknowledge that their lives appeared “fundamentally defective
or unsatisfying” (78). In other words, Socrates confirms that
philosophy is the best way of life by showing that everyone can
in principle be brought to agree with him that their alternative
ways of life are unsatisfying. Ultimately, then, there is no dispute,
since the philosopher is the only one whose belief in the goodness
of his life can be maintained in the face of scrutiny. According to
Leibowitz, Socrates’ interlocutor will come to feel dissatisfied
with his life because the beliefs that Socrates shows to be false or
inconsistent are central to his way of life. But how will Socrates’
interlocutor reveal his dissatisfaction with his life? Leibowitz
says that he will do so by “getting angry at Socrates. . . , blaming
him for his distress, perhaps even coming to hate him” (79). This
anger and hatred will reveal the pain he feels once he sees not
only that Socrates’ refutation is sound, but also that it destroys a
prop on which his satisfaction with life has depended. And
accordingly, “anger and possibly even hatred are part of the
confirmation that Socrates seeks, not unintended, or altogether
unintended, byproducts of his examinations. In many cases, they
may be the only confirmation available” (79).
But as I said, there are difficulties with this account. In the
first place, it assumes that Socrates is successful in showing his
interlocutors that they are unwise, or that their fundamental
beliefs are false. But Socrates says explicitly, in the only case
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where he describes at length this aspect of his examinations, that
his (first) interlocutor did not see this, but that in Socrates’ view
he continued to suppose that he was wise (Apology of Socrates
21d4-5). According to Leibowitz, however, this continuance of
his false belief, and therefore also his continuing sense of satisfaction with his life, was the result of “powerful defenses,” which
allow people to “bury this awareness [viz., that their lives are
unsatisfactory] by the next day or even the next minute” (79-80).
“But this changes nothing,” he continues. “For in their one
moment of clarity, they themselves have judged their lives to be
defective” (80). Socrates’ first interlocutor has revealed this judgment by his anger, or more precisely, “the disturbing insight that
leads to his anger is clouded by or in the anger itself,” so that
Socrates’ attempt to show him that he was not wise “both did and
did not succeed” and “its success was partial and unenduring”
(80-81). This is how Leibowitz can square his account with Socrates’ unambiguous statement that he thought he had not succeeded in his attempt to show this interlocutor that he was not
wise.
But in fact Leibowitz’s suggestion is unsupported by the text
of the Apology. On the basis of the dialogue, it makes more sense
to say that Socrates’ interlocutors, or at least those among them
who became angry at him, never stopped believing that they knew
what the noble and good (or virtue) was, even when their assertions about it were refuted. They may have recognized that they
were unable to give an adequate account of it in the face of
Socrates’ questions, but this meant only in their view that they
were unable to give adequate expression to what they knew (cf.
Meno 79e7-80b4; Laches 194a7-b4, 200b2-4). And so their anger
at Socrates must not have stemmed from the pain of becoming
aware of their ignorance, and thus dissatisfied with their lives, but
rather from the more common pain of being insulted (cf. Meno
94e3-95a3). Indeed, an additional difficulty with Leibowitz’s
suggestion is that an interlocutor’s anger could never reveal
clearly that its source was anything other than this more obvious
one. Leibowitz acknowledges the difficulty of interpreting an
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interlocutor’s anger, but he dismisses it on inadequate grounds,
with a mere assertion that in practice it “may not be very difficult”
to distinguish the anger that he says Socrates is looking for from
other kinds (79).1
But if Socrates’ attempt to make his (older) interlocutors
aware of their ignorance was not aimed at eliciting the kind of
anger and hatred that Leibowitz suggests it was, what was its
purpose? I am not certain of the ultimate answer to this question,
but the most plausible beginning point is that Socrates must have
wanted to confirm what he in fact discovered, that he would be
unable to show them their ignorance of virtue, or in other words
that their confusion about it was ineradicably deep-seated or that
they had a stake in holding on to this confusion. This discovery
must have been important enough to Socrates that he was willing
to incur the anger and hatred that he knew he would arouse in the
course of coming to it. But he was not looking for the anger itself.
Leibowitz has given a surprising amount of weight to what he
regards as Socrates’ attempt to discover through conversation that
his interlocutors, in addition to being his inferiors in wisdom,
lived less satisfying lives than his own. His Socrates does not
assume that his discovery of their lack of wisdom, or their
confusion about virtue, is sufficient to confirm the superiority of
his life to theirs. They themselves must be made to see, if only
partially and only for a moment, that their lives are unsatisfying.
Leibowitz argues for the significance of such a moment by
reminding his readers that we human beings want more than
illusory happiness, such as the “happiness” of a deceived cuckold,
but a contentment rooted in truth (82-84). But what if it turned out
that some human beings were satisfied with illusory happiness, or
that their contentment with their lives was not affected, even for
a moment, by the discovery that they were based on falsehood?
How could this imagined state of affairs have been of any concern
to a man like Socrates? Would it have made him doubt the superiority of his life to theirs? Hardly. And more generally, in order to
be convinced of the choiceworthiness of the philosophic life,
Socrates did not need to burst other people’s bubbles.
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Leibowitz’s belief that Socrates deliberately sought to
provoke anger and even hatred in his interlocutors has an unfortunate bearing, it seems to me, on the tone of his own writing. For
too often he expresses his unavoidably challenging views with
unnecessary and un-Socratic harshness, a harshness that could
well provoke anger and hatred, especially in older readers. I have
already cited his claim that Socrates exposed the first of his
examinees “as a fraud,” and that he rubbed his nose “in his
foolishness.” Along the same lines, he claims later in the book
that those refuted by Socrates’ youthful imitators—their fathers,
or at least men of their fathers’ generation—act “as if Socrates
were to blame for their own stupidity.” And he adds that when
they are asked how Socrates corrupts the youth, as they accuse
him of doing, they are “of course not about to reply, ‘by teaching
the young to expose men like me for the fools and frauds we
really are!’” (105). Such language on Leibowitz’s part seems to
me to show a failure to appreciate the respect—even intellectual
respect—that Socrates, like any sane man, would naturally feel
for at least some of those who turn out to be confused about the
questions he raises. Another example of Leibowitz’s harshness is
his suggestion that “ordinary decency” (which he here distinguishes from the “deeper and more solid decency” of the
philosopher) is “perhaps the chief enemy” of philosophy (109).
Or consider his claim that Socrates is confident, even before
conversing with his typical interlocutor, that “his moral beliefs are
always false. . . , in the first place because they are sure to
presume the existence of ‘high’ things. . . , yet Socrates knows
through his own reflection that highness in the relevant sense is
literally inconceivable” (96). A footnote makes clear that by
“highness in the relevant sense” Leibowitz means “intrinsic worth
or goodness” (97). And later in this footnote he adds, “Given the
unintelligibility of the notion [viz., of intrinsic worth or
goodness], it is a cause for wonder, then, that belief in high things
has such extraordinary vitality in people’s lives” (97). Now in
company with Kant, as well as most ordinary people, I disagree
with Leibowitz’s assertion that intrinsic worth or goodness is an
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unintelligible notion (whether or not it is as fundamental a
concern for us as Kant thinks it is). But even apart from this, why
does Leibowitz choose to assign the word “high”—even if
slightly qualified at first—to a notion that he rejects as unintelligible? Later in this footnote he admits, “[T]o deny that there are
high things is not, of course, to deny that there are admirable or
beautiful ones” (97). But this admission rings hollow in the wake
of his initial rejection of the very notion of highness. And readers
of what he calls ordinary decency, who are likely to be deeply
attached to the notion of highness, whether or not they understand
it adequately, are therefore also likely to feel anger and hatred
toward a way of life that is said to reject it out of hand. Under less
liberal conditions than those which prevail now in the West, such
feelings could lead to a renewal of the persecution of philosophy.
Even now, they are likely to stand in the way of Leibowitz’s
attempt to guide the most promising young people toward the
philosophic life (cf. 174). And I fear that Leibowitz’s apparent
indifference to these concerns—in practice, if not in principle (cf.
59-60)—is at least partly rooted in his view of Socrates as a man
who deliberately sought to provoke anger and hatred.
But let me turn now to the primary reason that Leibowitz
gives for Socrates’ Delphic examinations, namely, his concern to
meet the theoretical challenge to philosophy posed by those who
claim to have evidence of an omnipotent god or gods. For, to
repeat, this claim directly calls into question the presupposition of
philosophy that there are natural or necessary limits to all possible
change. Now it is not immediately apparent, to say the least, to
the reader of Plato that Socrates’ Delphic examinations had this
anti-theological motive. But Leibowitz’s excellent interpretation
of many large and small details of the Apology (and of other
dialogues) might well convince even a reader who, unlike me,
was not already persuaded of it that this view was sound.
However, Leibowitz’s account of the precise manner in which
Socrates’ refutations aim to meet this challenge to philosophy
seems to me to be problematic, both in itself and in terms of the
textual evidence that he claims for it. According to Leibowitz,
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Socrates thought that his Delphic conversations, which were
primarily about virtue, “are somehow the key to answering the
question of whether or not there are gods, and hence whether or
not philosophy in the full sense is possible” (71). More precisely,
I would say, and in keeping with the bulk of Leibowitz’s argument
(e.g., 67-68, 72), Socrates thought that they were somehow the
key to answering the question of whether or not human beings
have genuine evidence of there being gods. In Leibowitz’s view,
Socrates suspected that the belief that one has experienced the
presence of a god, a belief whose soundness—or, as I would say,
the alleged evidence for which—he could not dispute directly,
“rests on other false beliefs” (88), about virtue or morality, whose
falsity he thought he could show. Accordingly, his refutations are
intended to lead his pious interlocutors, once they have seen the
falsity of their own beliefs about virtue, to come to understand, if
only for a moment, that what they previously may have interpreted as experience of the supernatural was no such thing.
Leibowitz suggests that these interlocutors would perhaps reveal
their loss of faith in what they had taken to be their experience of
a god “by getting angry,” and he adds that “their reaction to what
he showed them must have been a crucial part of his confirmation
of the possibility of philosophy” (88, cf. 96).
I have the same doubts about this last suggestion as I do about
Leibowitz’s earlier suggestion that Socrates intended to provoke
in his interlocutors a momentary awareness of ignorance about
virtue and an angry response to it. But leaving this aside, let us see
how he supports his more fundamental claim—that according to
Socrates, belief that one has experienced the presence of a god
rests on one’s beliefs about virtue or morality. He leads up to this
suggestion through his account of Socrates’ examinations of the
poets, which he begins by quoting from Socrates’ own report of
these examinations. What Socrates says, in Leibowitz’s translation, is that he “soon came to know . . . that the poets do not
make what they make by wisdom, but by some sort of nature and
by divine inspiration, like the prophets and those who deliver
oracles. For they too say many noble things, but they know
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nothing of what they speak. And it was evident to me that the
poets also are affected in the same sort of way (22b8-c4)” (86).
According to Leibowitz, this passage means more than what it
says clearly, which is that the poets, like the prophets and those
who deliver oracles, do not speak as they do by wisdom or with
knowledge of what they are speaking about. Leibowitz thinks it
also means that these three classes are all “consciously or unconsciously . . . makers [not merely of poems and other verses, but]
of gods and of reports of seeming evidence of gods,” and that they
make these gods and these reports about gods by nature and not
by divine inspiration (87-88). Now I do not accept this interpretation of the text or the argument leading up to it, but rather than
going into tedious and I think unnecessary detail, let me say only
what seems to me most important: by presenting Socrates as
denying that his interlocutors were divinely inspired—though
Socrates explicitly asserts that they were, whether or not he meant
it literally (cf. Philebus 15e1)—Leibowitz weakens the focus of
Socrates’ concern, which was not to learn what cannot be learned,
namely, that there are no gods and no divine inspiration, but rather
to learn that the poets and the others do not possess knowledge of
what they speak about (which would of course include the gods).
But to continue with Leibowitz’s account, he goes on to ask,
“How has Socrates confirmed . . . that all three classes make what
they make by nature and not by wisdom or divine inspiration?
How has he to this extent settled the question of the gods? He
explains briefly with the words, ‘for (γάρ) they too’—the prophets
and those who deliver oracles as well as the poets—‘say many
noble things’—he does not say true things—of which they know
nothing. In other words, he implies that the belief that one has
been inspired by a god rests on other false beliefs about the
noble” (88). But these words of Socrates, which are presented by
Leibowitz as an answer to his question of how Socrates has
settled the question of the gods (to the extent at least of ruling out
that poets or prophets are divinely inspired), are clearly intended
rather by Socrates to explain why he has just likened the prophets
and those who deliver oracles to the poets. And from all that I can
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see, Socrates is not concerned here to settle the question of the
gods, except to the extent that his interlocutors’ claim to knowledge of them can be successfully challenged through the discovery that they say the many beautiful things they do—primarily, as
I agree, about virtue and about the noble, rather than the gods (cf.
Republic 598d7-e4, 599c6-e1, 600e5-6; Ion 531c2-d2)—without
knowledge of what they are speaking about.
But precisely how could the discovery of such ignorance on
the part of his interlocutors help Socrates make any progress at all
with respect to his question about the gods? Leibowitz addresses
this question directly in a section of his book entitled “Socrates’
Approach to the Theological Problem” (92). He contends that
Socrates tries to show his interlocutors, or at least those among
them who claim to have had “vivid and detailed experience of a
god,” that “the moral content of their experience—the divine
command, let us say—is incompatible with the moral perfection . . . that they demand, perhaps without knowing it, of god”
(93). “Consciously or unconsciously,” as Leibowitz elaborates a
bit later, “the believer raises the claim that god’s commandments
and actions are just, and this claim can be examined” (94). And,
returning to the original passage, “In the most successful cases the
interlocutors then come to doubt, at least for a time, that their
experience was genuinely divine” (93). This would of course
corroborate Socrates’ own suspicion. Leibowitz illustrates the
possibility of such conversations by referring to Socrates’
refutation of the definition of justice that he attributes to Cephalus
at the beginning of the Republic. In Leibowitz’s view, Cephalus’
belief that it is a requirement of justice always to return what one
has taken—to the extent, at least, that this really was his belief—
seems to have its origin, or to find support, in dreams in which a
Zeus-like figure commanded him to pay all his debts or be
tormented forever. On this view, and assuming that Cephalus
really held this belief about justice, Socrates would have hoped to
confirm that Cephalus would not respond to a reasonable critique
of this belief by objecting that a god’s commands must be obeyed
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whether or not they are just or seem just to our human reason, but
would instead come to doubt that his dreams were really divine.
This account, however, of Socrates’ approach to the
theological problem suffers in the first place from a lack of textual
evidence. Leibowitz’s premise that Socrates’ interlocutors
thought of morality or virtue as consisting in obedience to
divinely revealed commands seems to me to find no support,
except in the Euthyphro, where the virtue in question is piety (cf.
Leo Strauss, Xenophon’s Socratic Discourse, 134-35). The only
other instance I can think of where interlocutors in a Platonic
dialogue speak of virtue as obedience to divine commands, and
where their beliefs about what the gods have commanded are
transformed in the wake of a rational critique of their opinions
about virtue, is in the Laws. But in the Laws, the philosophic
character is not Socrates, but an Athenian stranger. And though
this stranger does indeed seem to be a kind of fictional “Socrates”
(who chose to flee Athens rather than accept death at the hands of
the city), his intention is not to provide a theoretical defense of the
possibility of philosophy, but rather to help frame a code of laws
for a newly founded city in Crete in which philosophy would, to
the extent possible, have legal sanction. Now it is true, as these
two instances suggest, that Leibowitz’s account does indeed
capture a genuine aspect of Socratic thought. But I see no
evidence that it gives an adequate picture of what Socrates hoped
to learn about the gods, or about our knowledge of them, from his
Delphic examinations.
Moreover, there is at least one substantive difficulty with
Leibowitz’s account, a difficulty that he raises himself, namely,
that it deals only with those interlocutors who believe that the
gods are just, and not with anyone who believes that they are
“unjust or unconcerned with justice” (95). Now for Leibowitz to
state the objection in this way is perhaps unfair to his own
argument, since he has just said that in Socrates’ view the believer
“consciously or unconsciously” (94) claims that god’s commandments and actions are just, and he has argued that Socrates
confirmed this view by seeing his interlocutors’ response to his
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refutations. But at all events, Leibowitz goes on to downplay the
significance of this objection by claiming, as he suspects that
Socrates discovered, that the belief in gods who are unjust or
unconcerned with justice is both rare and “almost never
supported—at least among believers who are even modestly
educated and sane—by the experience of revelation, that is, by
seeming evidence that natural philosophy cannot assess” (95).
Still, he acknowledges that “Socrates’ approach to the theological
problem cannot tie up every loose end,” and that “the possibility
of revelation from an amoral, willful, or radically mysterious god
cannot be ruled out” (95). But this last is a very serious admission.
For whatever may be the case about belief in gods who are unjust
or unconcerned with justice, the belief in a god who is radically
mysterious—in his actions, and even in his commands—has been
held by thoughtful people throughout the centuries (cf.
Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, III 25-26). For Socrates to
leave unchallenged, then, the alleged evidence of those who claim
to have had experience of such a god would be to fail to respond
to a most serious objection to the possibility of philosophy.2
But let me turn to Leibowitz’s most important reason for
focusing only on believers who believe in (intelligibly) just gods,
a reason that comes to light in what is also his most important
discussion of the confusion about morality that he thinks these
refutations disclose. Leibowitz claims that Socrates thought of
morality or virtue as something that people regard as the source
of happiness, not by constituting happiness itself, but by
promising it as a deserved reward. But since virtue itself, as the
argument continues, does not deliver this reward, it can have the
power that people think it has only if there are gods who do
deliver it. “Virtue, one can perhaps say, is a claim on the attention
and concern of just gods” (177). Leibowitz goes on to argue that
Socrates rejected the belief in just gods on several grounds, but
chiefly because the concern for virtue that it presupposes (and to
which it also gives support) rests, as he claims that Socrates
thought, on a confused and even contradictory view of our own
motivation. Leibowitz presents what he sees as this contradiction
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in the following way. He begins by observing that “virtue, seen in
the first place as noble, inspires devotion” (178). But then he says
that “devotion would seem to be harmful, if only because it
distracts us from the pursuit of our own good” (178). And since,
as he reminds us that Socrates claimed, no one voluntarily (or
knowingly) harms himself, he asks how voluntary devotion is
possible. His proposed answer to this question is that devotion to
virtue gives us hope that we will obtain—because we deserve to
obtain—a greater good than anything we might give up as a result
of such devotion. It is, then, as he says that Socrates suggests, “the
expectation, perhaps only half-conscious, of benefit to oneself
that makes devotion possible” (179). But this line of reasoning,
Leibowitz continues, which would seem to establish the possibility of voluntary devotion, “suggests instead the impossibility of
all devotion. For if benefit to oneself—as Socrates implies—is
our ultimate consideration, no true devotion is possible, for
devotion embraced as a benefit is not true devotion” (179). And
“if men are never truly devoted, they never meet the condition of
deserving rewards as they understand that condition” (179).
However, most of us never face up to this truth about our
motivation, and it is through this failure that we can preserve the
hopes that our attachment to virtue inspires. Accordingly,
Leibowitz concludes, our attachment to virtue, or at least the kind
of virtue that arouses hope in rewards from the gods, is rooted in
the contradictory thought that what we most care for is both the
noble and our own happiness.
This is a powerfully stated argument, as it seems to me, and I
am sympathetic to it, having even tentatively proposed something
similar to it in print myself. But Leibowitz proposes his argument
without tentativeness, and I must therefore say that in my view he
has failed to make his case. I will leave aside the difficulty that his
description of the believer as someone who thinks he deserves
divine rewards shows a surprising insensitivity to the fact that at
least the most thoughtful believers regard themselves as unworthy
to receive the blessings they hope for. For even apart from this,
the argument fails to show that the believer has contradictory
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thoughts about what he most cares for. A believer will readily
grant to Leibowitz that he cares very much about his own good or
his own happiness, which he hopes for both in this world and the
next. But he would deny that this is what he loves or cares for
most (cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica II-II, qu.26, a.3).
He might fear that, because of his weakness, a loss of hope for his
own happiness could undermine his attachment to virtue, but he
would not believe that it would necessarily do so, and he might
even be thankful never to have experienced or yielded to such loss
of hope. And Leibowitz’s argument, it seems to me, has done
nothing to show that the believer’s view of himself is wrong. The
most he has done is to attribute to Socrates the claim that we care
mostly for our own good. But I don’t see his evidence even for
this assertion. What he apparently relies on is Socrates’ exhortation to virtue, “Not from money comes virtue, but from virtue
comes money and all of the other good things for human beings
(30a-b).” Leibowitz interprets this exhortation to mean that “men
should care above all for virtue, and for virtue for the sake of the
good things it brings. Men should and should not care above all
for virtue” (178). It is the latter of these conflicting claims that he
thinks Socrates means seriously. But Socrates’ statement that all
good things come from virtue does not say, as Leibowitz says it
does, that men should care for virtue for the sake of the good
things it brings, and surely not for the sake of these good things
above all. Socrates knew, of course, that the many among his
listeners might take him to be saying this. But that he made it easy
for them to do so means only that he understood them well
enough to know that he could not reach them with a higher
appeal. Leibowitz has therefore not shown that our own good is
our ultimate concern even according to Socrates. And so he has
also not shown, and not even shown that it was Socrates’ view,
that a believer’s hope for divine rewards rests on self-contradictory thoughts about what he cares for most.3 And this means,
finally, that he has neither undermined nor shown that Socrates
thought he had undermined the basis for this hope on the part of
the believer.
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It seems to me, then, that Leibowitz has not explained with
sufficient clarity what Socrates wished to accomplish through his
Delphic examinations or how he sought to accomplish it. In
particular, he has not explained adequately how Socrates hoped to
meet the challenge posed to philosophy or the study of nature by
those who claim to have evidence of miraculous gods. On the
other hand, he has outlined this challenge in an unusually
compelling way, and he has made a persuasive case that the
Apology presents the core of Socrates’ response to it. For this
merit, among many others, we should be grateful to Leibowitz for
his book. Even if he has not shown, as he intended to show, that
Socrates is an unrivaled guide to the good life, he has, I think,
shown that this is at least a serious possibility, and he will help his
best readers to keep considering the evidence for and against it on
their own.
NOTES
1. In a footnote, Leibowitz refers to Callicles’ anger in the Gorgias as a clear
case of what he calls the deeper kind of anger, but he offers no evidence that
Callicles ever becomes aware of his ignorance of virtue, as I believe he does
not. (Moreover, at the moment when he seems to come closest to that
awareness, at Gorgias 513c4-6, he is not angry at Socrates.)
2. I suspect that Leibowitz thinks that the possibility of revelation from a
radically mysterious god can indeed be ruled out, at least to some extent, on
the basis of what he speaks of as a necessary “second branch” of Socrates’
Delphic examinations, or the conversations he had with those “promising”
young people who could go “to the end of the road” with him in their
critique of our ordinary moral beliefs. Accordingly, when he says that
Socrates sought to determine “whether for them, as for himself, all traces of
seemingly divine experience eventually disappear,” I think he meant to
include in this even the apparent experience of a radically mysterious god
(98-100; cf. 134: “the so-called experience of the gods of the city, and
indeed of any gods”). But even if one admitted for the sake of argument that
this was Socrates’ intention and that he learned what he hoped to learn from
his most promising interlocutors, this would not be adequate to the question
at hand unless one could show the bearing of these conversations with
regard to his examinations of his more typical interlocutors. After all, a
radically mysterious god, and even a not so mysterious god, might be disin-
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TOLERATION
clined to reveal himself to people like Socrates. And I do not think that
Leibowitz has given an adequate account of the bearing of this “second
branch” of Socrates’ Delphic examinations.
3. There is perhaps the outline of a stronger argument for Leibowitz’s view
of our ultimate concern in his discussion of Glaucon on pages 96 and 97.
But even there I think he has failed to present an adequate case. In this
connection, I wonder about Leibowitz’s claim, in note 72 on page 99, that
Socrates would like to know “whether those who reconcile themselves to
unfathomable gods and inexpressible divine experiences could also, if
brought to see the truth about highness, reconcile themselves to the unintelligible nobility and goodness of the commands that these allegedly divine
experiences communicate.” For if Socrates knows, as Leibowitz claims he
knows, that “the noble and good,” or virtue, “does not exist” (180), because
it rests on contradictory thoughts about our motives, why would he care
whether others who appeared to understand his argument would accept its
conclusion? If they did not accept the conclusion, wouldn’t he assume that
they had not understood the argument?
Eva Brann, Homage to Americans
Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2010. 273
pages, $19.95.
Book Review by Janet Dougherty
Eva Brann’s Homage to Americans is an expression of heartfelt,
genuine, and ungrudging respect for the American people. As Ms.
Brann explains in the first essay of the book, “Mile-High Meditations,” true respect may involve—nay, it requires—thoughtful and
sometimes pointed criticism. In particular, she notes that toleration,
which has eclipsed and perhaps supplanted all other standards in
contemporary American society, is “helpless before reality” (7)* and
“culpably helpless in the face of evil” (3). Like Lincoln, Ms. Brann
displays a kind of “radical conservatism” in her writing: she reminds
us of our roots and thereby invites us to renew our awareness of our
convictions and our goals. She never preaches; she reflects. Beginning, as she says all reasoning must, in media res, Ms. Brann speaks
for herself and writes so as to invite her readers to engage in the
examination of our shared habits of thought. Homage to Americans
is the work of a master teacher who respects her students and therefore wishes them to think for themselves.
Homage to Amerians is divided into three parts: “Mile-High
Meditations,” “Close Readings,” and “Time-Spanning Speculations.”
“Mile-High Meditations” is a single essay in eight sections, named
according to the time and place of her reflections. In it we see Ms.
Brann’s mind at work, beginning with immediate responses to what
she sees around her and deepening into philosophical and practical
thinking of wide-ranging significance. The second part of the book
comprises close readings of Madison’s Memorial and Remonstrance
*
Numbers in parentheses refer to pages in Homage to Americans.
Janet Dougherty is a tutor at St. John’s College in Santa Fe.
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and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. The third part includes a lecture
given to the students of the Air Force Academy on “The Paradox of
Obedience,” together with a lecture given at St. John’s College on
the destruction of two great South American civilizations, the Aztec
and the Inca, by conquerors from Spain. The book is unified by Ms.
Brann’s persistent concern with the integrity of American culture,
and therefore with the prob-lem of reconciling the adherence to true
and defensible principles of human society with toleration of
otherness.
“Mile-High Meditations” is a fitting opening of the book, for in
it Ms. Brann puts into perspective the principle of toleration—which
means, in part, putting it into the context of the Western tradition.
Ms. Brann and the Americans to whom she speaks share this
tradition, albeit some of us half-heartedly and with little awareness.
Her writing moves seamlessly from contemporary American society
to Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Spinoza and Heidegger, Swift, Shakespeare, and Wallace Stevens. This is no display of erudition, but
rather of openness to the tradition wherever it can offer support for
genuine inquiry. Ms. Brann’s style of writing is egalitarian in its
openness to insight wherever it manifests itself, and therefore to the
tradition that shapes our society. In “Mile-High Meditations” she
invites her readers to reflect upon the appropriate limits to toleration,
and the invitation is unequivocally democratic. All may engage in the
inquiry she shares with her readers; all, that is, who are willing to risk
“respectful contempt,” the rightful punishment for those who fall
short of the standard to which we deserve to be held. This is democracy in the high sense. This is the democracy that we ought to count
as our heritage.
For a thoughtful citizen there are no insuperable barriers
between intellectual inquiry and everyday reflection. Americans can
seek depth of understanding wherever it is to be found and we ought
to begin wherever we find ourselves. Ms. Brann shows the way by
reflecting on an overweight couple playing chess in the Denver
airport. (Their tastes, happily, are not limited to fast-food pizza.) She
provides a model of judging cautiously without surrendering the
power to make judgments. Toleration, she shows us, cannot be held
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103
as a principle overriding all others without being intellectually flabby
as well as weak in the defense of right; but respect for others requires
openness to their sometimes surprising combinations of traits. With
no absolutes to rely on, Ms. Brann plunges into the morass of distinctions that alone help to untangle mere prejudice from thoughtful
conjecture. In this piece Ms. Brann exhibits an intellectual courage
and straightforward honesty worthy of emulation. She acknowledges
that she shares the “bias for the thinkable, the bias of our West” (63).
(Who, after all, lacks biases?) Her ability to examine the grounds of
her convictions and the convictions that characterize the West does
not fade but rather gains momentum as she identifies what may be
the bias of all biases: “The faith that some thoughts are true and their
opposites false is attended by this unease: It is not itself a truth,
meaning a mode of the intellect in which it is through and through
lucid and—or rather because it is—about something through and
through genuine. It is rather an opinion, even a prejudice” (27). The
prejudice that there are truths drives one to seek them. Ms. Brann
does not pretend to settle the difficulties she articulates and clarifies.
But she does work towards greater clarity and, ultimately, toward
answers.
The compelling question of this piece, as I see it, is whether our
biases serve us as human beings worthy of respect, and, in doing so,
serve humanity? Do they allow for the “personal practice of virtue”
(both intellectual and moral) that Ms. Brann, by her own admission,
prefers over general principles of morality (79)? While falsity is a
condition for thinking through to the truth (31), and a multiplicity of
perspectives can give us insight into another’s position, to acknowledge those perspectives is not to obliterate the sense that some things
are beyond the pale. Near the close of this essay Ms. Brann reflects
on the difference between intellectual and moral virtue (“a virtue in
thinking is, however, often a vice in doing” [82]), and announces the
importance of “doing right.” This conviction is easy to account for in
those who “care less about the livability of life than its consecration”
(8)—that is, those who acknowledge a firm religious faith. With
regard to faith in God, Ms. Brann is Socratic: she chooses “knowing
that I don’t know” (49). She begins and ends the essay, however,
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with a reference to the possibility of evil. Without assuming that evil
is always easy to recognize, one must acknowledge the problem of
evil while putting toleration into perspective. One brief reference to
Nazism is enough to prove the point: “What, for example, was the
attraction offered by the Nazis to the young but Romanticism writ
large and made official” (82)?
The key to toleration might be seen as “letting others alone,” but
in the face of evil it is clear that such thoughtless toleration is
shameful and irresponsible. In section IV of the essay, Ms. Brann
lays out several reasons for thoughtfully respecting, not merely tolerating, others. Throughout the essay she demonstrates what it means
to avoid forcing the truth into preconceived notions, by letting something be, but not letting it alone (12), and this distinction, it seems to
me, points to a standard for action as well as for thought. Like people
who espouse values in conflict with one’s own, the current trends
demand respectful examination; Ms. Brann demonstrates that they
are unworthy of slavish adherence. Toleration without respect is a
standard that is below the dignity of human beings. The contemporary emphasis on the dissimilarity of races, for example, on “dissimilation” rather than assimilation (59), is flawed in that it overemphasizes otherness. Particular humans combine their share in universal humanity with particular accidents and unique choices—here
Ms. Brann finds an opening into the perennial philosophical problem
of the relation of same and other. That problem is just beneath the
surface of the complex and delicate issue of how various ethnic,
racial, religious and otherwise differentiated groups relate to one
another in a society that derives its fundamental principles from
universal humanity and whose status depends upon the respectability
of these principles. American society cannot maintain its integrity
unless its members maintain a habit of thoughtful reflection. Ms.
Brann’s “Mile-High Meditations” provides us with a model.
In the next section of Homage to Americans, Ms. Brann goes on
to make available to the reader the kind of thinking and writing that
gave this nation its character. Madison’s Memorial and Remonstrance and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address are both models of
thoughtful eloquence; the first united Virginians, the second, Amer-
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105
icans committed to the preservation of the union, to uphold convictions that provided the basis for liberty and mutual, respectful, toleration. Ms. Brann’s examinations of these two texts are models of
close and informed reading. Her analyses reveal to the reader the
greatness of these documents in a way that a casual reading—that is,
a reading uninformed by knowledge of the tradition in which
Madison and Lincoln were steeped—cannot. After a paragraph by
paragraph account, Ms. Brann, quoting from Hume’s “On
Eloquence,” sums up Madison’s work as “at once ‘argumentative
and rational,’ grandly passionate and carefully constructed” (123).
As for Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, Ms. Brann shows in a line-byline reading its beauty as poetry and its resonance with the Biblical
language by means of which Lincoln tried to persuade his audience
of the “bonds of affection” (181) that could alone preserve the union.
Both sections of this central part of the work deserve slow and
careful readings. The section on Madison’s Memorial showed me
that I had read this document only superficially. While I have read
and heard Lincoln’s Address many times and with great appreciation,
Ms. Brann’s account showed me that it too is a richer piece of writing
than I had ever imagined.
In his Memorial and Remonstrance, Madison argued against a
bill to support Christian education and in support of the toleration of
all religions because he was confident that without governmental
interference they would thrive. He was far from disparaging the role
of religion in supporting a healthy society. Ms. Brann asks, “What
would Madison have said in the face of an observable decline of
religious commitment and the increasing legal expulsion of religion
from communal life” (110)? She wonders whether the kind of
rhetoric he uses in the Memorial is an irrecoverable art. These are
pressing questions for us to consider, questions, it seems to me, that
were easier to address in a time when the hope that the United States
could provide a “practical political pattern to the world” (161) was
not considered narrowly self-serving, and when few if any would
claim that “truth is a private predilection and everything is ‘true for’
them that believe it” (116).
Not only did Lincoln and Madison not share this prejudice, but
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
they did not feel obligated to respond to it. The depth of both
statesmen’s grounding in religion, far from being a hindrance to their
promotion of democracy, was at its heart. Lincoln looked forward to
a “new birth of freedom” in the aftermath of the Civil War, a new
birth that was possible only through the common respect for the
principles of the Declaration of Independence, and especially the
principle that “all men are created equal.” The principles of the
Declaration must be held, he thought, as sacred. Respectful
tolerance thrives on the support of such principles.
In the penultimate piece of Homage to Americans, a lecture
addressed to students of the U. S. Air Force Academy entitled “The
Paradox of Obedience,” Ms. Brann maintains her characteristic sense
of balance between opposing respectable views in the difficult
context of the use of armed force. She avers that an “unthinking
warrior is a fearful thing” (195), and argues that “submission can be
an act of freedom” (208). She broaches a question that is urgent for
those who defend this nation with force: how does one fulfill one’s
duty to obey one’s superiors while cultivating a thoughtful awareness
of the possibility that “personal, conscientious disobedience” (206)
may sometimes be morally necessary? Citing the Spartan obedience
to law rather than to an individual, Ms. Brann suggests the possibility
that freedom requires some sort of obedience. But blind obedience
cannot support freedom. It seems to me clear that the respectability
of a warrior must depend on the respectability of the nation he or she
serves, but it is equally clear after reading this lecture that the
nation’s general character is insufficient by itself.
The discussion of toleration that opens the book is complemented by the last piece in the book: “The Empires of the Sun and
the West”—and in particular by Ms. Brann’s account of the intolerance of human sacrifice that characterized Cortés and his men,
which contributed to their determination to conquer the Aztec
people. This is no whitewashing: the Spanish conquistadors were
guilty of unnecessary brutality, which Ms. Brann appropriately deplores (253). The motives of the Spanish conquerors were self-interested, but their prejudices, like ours, were integral to the Western
tradition that promotes respect for human dignity. Where then ought
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107
we to set the limits to toleration? This is no small problem. Ms.
Brann peremptorily dismisses the suspension of judgment as any
kind of solution: “A non-judgmental historian is an incarnate contradiction and produces only an armature of facts without the musculature that gives it human shape (222). In this respect she sides with
Cortés himself, who “dignifies his subjects with his condemnation”
of their practice of ritual human sacrifice (223).
The role of human sacrifice in the Aztec (or Nahuan) culture,
Ms. Brann argues, is the key to their defeat by the Spanish conquistadors. For the Aztec people thought they were compelled to sacrifice
human beings in order to render more reliable the annual and epochal
returns of the sun, their primary god. The nobles themselves may
have experienced a sense of doom, for they were “living over a moral
abyss” (241) created by the compulsion to kill their own kind. They
were betrayed by their trust in their gods (248-9). The Spanish, by
contrast, worshipped “a god mysterious but not capricious, [who]
made nature according to laws and left it largely alone” (257).
Although Ms. Brann describes the conquistadors as ruffians, she
attributes their victory over the Aztecs and the Incas to the Western
culture that shaped them, and she supports their disgust and horror at
a practice they could not see as justified or tolerable.
This account of the conquest of the Aztecs is well informed and
extensively researched. Ms. Brann describes a wide variety of
sources, including Cortés’ own letters to his king, and acknowledges
their biases. No set of citations can demonstratively establish the
truth of Ms. Brann’s account, but its plausibility is, to me at least,
manifest. The contest was by no means a conflict between good and
evil: it is worth repeating that there was plenty of wrongdoing on the
side of the Spanish conquerors. But their victory does seem to have
been a victory of the West (our “West”—an ambiguous but convenient term, as Ms. Brann acknowledges [217]), of a culture that
produces a kind of human being who knows “how to fight back,” and
“how to correct our aberrations by returns to sounder beginnings”
(229). The Aztecs were trapped by their culture; we, with all our
defects, may find renewal at the heart of ours. This is not a promise
but a task.
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Ms. Brann has accomplished a great deal if she has helped her
readers to understand that task. I think she has done that and more.
To read Homage to Americans is to prepare to undertake the task of
renewing our culture.
�
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Pastille, William
Brann, Eva T. H.
Hunt, Frank
Sachs, Joe
Van Doren, John
Williamson, Robert B.
Zuckerman, Elliott
Arnaiz, Deziree
Sachs, Joe
Braithewaite, William
Howland, Jacob
Smith, Joseph
Boxel, Lise van
Bolotin, David
Dougherty, Janet
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The St. John’s Review
Volume 53.2 (Spring 2012)
Editor
William Pastille
Editorial Board
Eva T. H. Brann
Frank Hunt
Joe Sachs
John Van Doren
Robert B. Williamson
Elliott Zuckerman
Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant
Deziree Arnaiz
The St. John’s Review is published by the Office of the Dean,
St. John’s College, Annapolis: Christopher B. Nelson, President;
Pamela Kraus, Dean. All manuscripts are subject to blind review.
Address correspondence to The St. John’s Review, St. John’s
College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800.
©2012 St. John’s College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in
whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
Desktop Publishing
The St. John’s Communications Office
Current and back issues of The St. John’s Review are available online at
www.stjohnscollege.edu/news/pubs/review.shtml.
�THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
�Contents
Essays & Lectures
Aesthetics Ancient and Modern .........................................1
James Carey
Passion and Perception in Mozart’s Magic Flute ...........38
Peter Kalkavage
Socrates, Parmenides, and the Way Out ...........................68
Judith Seeger
Rolling His Jolly Tub: Composer Elliott Carter,
St. John’s College Tutor, 1940-1942.........................97
Hollis Thoms
Reflections
Talking, Reading, Writing, Listening .............................133
Eva Brann
Caged Explorers: The Hunger for Control.....................150
Howard Zeiderman
Poetry
The Love Song of the Agoraphobic ................................177
Elliott Zuckerman
Reviews
Henry Kissinger on China: The Dangerous
Illusion of “Realist” Foreign Policy
Book Review of Henry Kissenger’s China..........................179
Joseph A. Bosco
Everything is One
Book Review of Eva Brann’s The Logos of Heraclitus ......195
David Carl
�THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
�ESSAYS & LECTURES
Aesthetics, Ancient and Modern:
An Introduction
James Carey
The phenomenon of beauty is trans-political, trans-historical
and trans-religious. Whether we are believers or non-believers, we can admire Greek temples, an archaic statue of
Apollo, Islamic calligraphy, a Gothic cathedral, Bach’s St.
Matthew Passion, Hindu architecture, Chinese landscape
painting, a Japanese tea ceremony, and so forth. Our admiration of these things need not be animated by religious belief.
To be sure, they mean incomparably more to those who believe that they are intimately connected with the sacred or divine than they mean to those who deny such a connection. But
the beautiful in art is accessible to all, the beautiful in nature
even more so. We should not be surprised, then, to find some
agreement among the greatest minds as to what beauty is.
It is often pointed out that philosophical inquiry into the
nature of the beautiful did not get designated as “aesthetics”
until the eighteenth century. The inquiry itself is not an exclusive modern concern, however. It was launched by Plato.
His most impressive attempt to shed light on the nature of the
beautiful is not to be found in the Symposium or the Phaedrus, but in the Hippias Major. The Symposium and the
Phaedrus are chiefly concerned with the erotic relation of the
soul to the beautiful. The concern of the Hippias Major is,
on the face of it, more limited: what is the beautiful?
Hippias has come to Athens on a diplomatic mission to
represent the interests of his native city of Elis. He is a well
known sophist. He plays a small role in Plato’s Protagoras
James Carey is a tutor at St. John’s College in Santa Fe. A shorter version
of this essay was delivered as a lecture at St. John’s College, Annapolis,
on September 10, 2011. This essay is dedicated to the memory of Thomas
McDonald, in whose soul were uniquely combined intellectual powers
of the highest order with rare loftiness of spirit and refinement of taste.
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
and he is the chief interlocutor with Socrates in another dialogue, the Hippias Minor. He has a high opinion of how
much he knows, and he boasts about it without shame. Hippias is, as one of the most careful students of the Platonic dialogues notes, “the great fool.”1 There are other fools in the
Platonic dialogues—Ion and Euthyphro come quickly to
mind. But Hippias is the greatest fool of them all. His limitations in combination with his vanity keep the conversation
with Socrates from ascending to the highest peaks of speculation. But the conversation ascends very high nonetheless,
though to appreciate this the reader has to compensate for
Hippias’s dullness by engaging his own thought with what
Socrates has to say.
There is a rather lengthy introductory exchange between
the two men. It begins with a comparison of earlier sophists
with contemporary sophists. It thereby brushes up against the
theme of wisdom, though without explicitly exploring it. Instead, the introductory exchange centers on the problem of
Hippias’s failure to make money through sophistry on his visits to Sparta, in contrast to his general success in this endeavor elsewhere. At one point, when Hippias claims to have
composed a beautiful speech about the beautiful, Socrates
says that Hippias has reminded him “opportunely” of something.2 Someone, Socrates says, has recently been throwing
him into confusion with the question, “What is the beautiful?” Socrates asks Hippias to help him find an answer to this
question. But his expression “opportunely”—eis kalon—is
not quite serious, since he has used the word kalon, the Greek
word for” beautiful,” or its derivatives seven times in the
opening exchange. Hippias himself used it once in the opening exchange, rather strangely.3 He does not, however, seem
interested in elaborating what he might mean by it, in spite
of the fact that Socrates tacitly invites him to do so by responding with a double echo of the word.4
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | CAREY
3
Unlike the conversations that Socrates has with Euthyphro and Meno in the dialogues named after them, and, in
particular, unlike the exchange at the beginning of the Republic and the ensuing conversations with Cephalus, Polemarchus, Thrasymachus, Glaucon, and Adeimantus, Socrates
himself initiates the conversation with Hippias in this dialogue, as he also does in the Hippias Minor after being invited
to do so by Eudicus. When Socrates initiates a conversation
we must ask ourselves what he hopes to accomplish through
it, that is, why he even engages in it. And it is especially important for us to ask this question when Socrates bothers to
initiate a conversation with someone like Hippias or Ion who
is not already a friend or associate of his and whom he knows
in advance to be limited in philosophic capacity and commitment.
We might think that Socrates is not well acquainted with
Hippias. But right off the bat he appeals to Hippias’s vanity
by calling him “Hippias, the beautiful and wise” and in the
same sentence he refers to a prior encounter with Hippias.
Socrates may be alluding to Hippias’ role in the conversation
reported in the Protagoras, where he does not make a good
impression.5 Is it possible that Socrates thinks that Hippias,
in spite of his limitations, might nonetheless help him achieve
a bit of clarity regarding something about which he is admittedly perplexed?
In response to the distinctively Socratic question, “What
is the beautiful?” Hippias offers three answers. The beautiful
is a beautiful maiden, it is ornamental gold, and it is the
solemn occasion of a funeral. Socrates exposes the deficiencies of these answers. In doing so, he couches his observations in the name of a third party who is not present, someone
who, Socrates says, chastises him about his thoughts on the
beautiful (to kalon). It later appears that this person is Socrates
himself. Socrates, then, presents himself as being in conflict
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
with himself about the beautiful. And yet one of the very few
things that he says he is an expert on is erotics.6 So, given
Socrates understanding of the necessary relationship of eros
to the beautiful, we find a tension, to say the least, between
his uncharacteristic profession of expertise and his apparent
confusion about something that falls within the purview of
his expertise, to be even at the center of it.
After disposing of Hippias’s answers to the question,
“What is the beautiful?” Socrates himself suggests three answers. His first answer is that the beautiful is the fitting (or
the appropriate—to trepon).7 This leads to the question of
whether its presence causes things just to appear beautiful or
to really be beautiful. The difficulty here is in the Greek expression to kalon itself. It can mean the beautiful as we today
usually use the word, the aesthetically beautiful.8 But to kalon
can also mean the noble—moral nobility or nobility of character. In the case of the latter there can be a great difference
between being and appearance. Someone could have a noble
character without appearing so, not at first glance anyway.
Socrates himself is the conspicuous example. Nobility manifests itself most conspicuously in those situations that, as we
say, exhibit one’s character. In the case of noble laws and pursuits, the discrepancy between being and appearance is so
striking and of such contention as to lead, Socrates says, to
“strife and battle . . . privately for individuals and publically
for cities.”9 In the case of the aesthetically beautiful, the other
sense of to kalon, there seems to be no difference at all between being and appearance. It would be strange to say that
a landscape or a painting, for example, only appears to be
beautiful but is not really so.
Socrates’ second answer to the question “What is the
beautiful” is that it is the useful (to chrēsimon). And this an-
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | CAREY
5
swer gets transformed into the claim that the beautiful is the
helpful (to ōphelimon).10 We can perhaps think of the noble
this way, although we can easily imagine situations in which
nobility of character does not help very much, and other situations in which it even brings physical harm to him who exhibits it. It is even less obvious how something aesthetically
beautiful, such as a statue or a sunset, is useful or helpful.
We might get the impression from his first two definitions
that Socrates is interested in debunking the aesthetically
beautiful, which sometimes gets pejoratively called the
“merely pretty.” This impression is dispelled with Socrates’
third and most interesting, definition. Here is what he says:
I think that I have just now found my way out. Observe. If we were to say that what makes us delight
is beautiful—in no way do I mean all pleasures,
but rather that [which pleases] through hearing
and sight—how then would we do in the contest?
I suppose, Hippias, that beautiful human beings at
least, but also all decorations and paintings and
pieces of sculpture, whichever ones are beautiful,
please us when we see them. And beautiful voices
and music in general, discourses and stories too,
produce this same thing, so that if we should answer that bold man [i.e., Socrates’ “critic”] this
way—“Noble one, the beautiful is the pleasant
[that pleases] through hearing and sight”—don’t
you think we would check his boldness?11
We notice a couple of peculiarities in this passage. In the
first place, there is a double chiasmus. Socrates speaks of the
pleasant that comes through hearing and sight, in that order,
at the beginning of this passage and again at the end. The
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
pleasures that come through hearing would seem to have
some primacy over those that come through sight. And yet,
in the middle of the passage, Socrates first mentions the
pleasures that come through sight, and afterwards those that
come through hearing. So, though one might infer that
Socrates holds discourses to be more truly beautiful than
sights, the passage above does not support this inference.
Beautiful discourses and beautiful sights are situated on the
same plane here.
In the second place, Socrates includes the human as well
as the non-human in that which can please through hearing
and sight. And he also includes that which pleases without
any logos in the strictly discursive sense of the word, such as
decorations, paintings, sculpture, voices, and music, and that
which does please discursively, such as discourses and stories. He thereby highlights the two senses of to kalon, as
meaning, again, both the aesthetically beautiful and the
morally noble. The morally noble, which pleases us through
a rational consideration of it, and the aesthetically beautiful,
which pleases us through sensation and presumably without
any rational consideration, are intimately connected, so much
so that, again, a single Greek word can mean both. Beautiful
human beings, in particular, can be beautiful in their looks or
beautiful in their character, or both.
We leave the Hippias Major at this point, with some regret. For we shall not follow up Socrates’ ensuing and profound distinction between two types of classes, a distinction
that no lesser a student of Plato than Jacob Klein held to be
the clue to Plato’s understanding of the eidetic duality that is
constitutive of Being itself, a theme that Klein shows is at the
heart of the Sophist and is alluded to in other dialogues as
well.12 Our regret, however, is somewhat assuaged. For Socrates’
claim in the Hippias Major that the beautiful is what pleases
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through sight and hearing induces us to reflect on similar
claims about beauty made in the greatest work on the subject
ever written, Kant’s Critique of Judgment.
The Critique of Judgment is divided into two parts, the
Critique of Aesthetic Judgment and Critique of Teleological
Judgment. We confine our attention to the first part, the principal task of which is to validate the concept of taste as something that can be cultivated, something that can be good or
bad, and something that has the beautiful—and not the pleasant simply—as its primary object.
Early on Kant raises the question of whether in the judgment of taste the feeling of pleasure precedes or follows the
judging of the object.13 One might think that this question
could be decided empirically, simply by paying attention to
the temporal sequence in which feeling and judgment occur.
But the mind moves so rapidly that the question cannot be
answered by empirical inspection alone. It can only be answered by way of an argument. Kant says that the solution
to this problem is the key to the critique of taste. He argues
as follows.
Nothing can be universally communicated except cognition (Erkenntnis) and presentation (Vorstellung), so far as it
belongs to cognition. One can report a certain sensation, say,
that buttermilk tastes good. But one cannot be sure that others
who have also tasted buttermilk will concur in this report. If
a difference of opinion emerges, that is the end of the matter.
On the other hand, an argument, say, a Euclidean demonstration, can be not just reported but universally communicated.
Anyone who sets out to prove, for example, that the base angles of isosceles triangles are equal, can expect anyone else
who is familiar with the preceding definitions, common notions, postulates, and propositions to follow the demonstration. Each step of the argument can be made clear. And if
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someone observing the demonstration discovers a flaw in the
argument, then that discovery too can be communicated. The
reason for this agreement is that, when we communicate our
cognitions to one another, what is individual about us recedes
into the background. We communicate our cognitions simply
as one rational being to another rational being. In doing so
we expect agreement; and if we find disagreement we expect
an argument of some kind in support of it.
We do not communicate our sensations to each other this
way. If I say that the room is warm, and you say that it is cold,
I do not ask you for a demonstration that it is cold. If I find a
certain dessert excessively sweet, and you don’t find it sweet
enough, we do not set out to refute each other. In a similar
way, if I experience something as beautiful, say, the slow
movement from a late Beethoven string quartet, and you hear
it as more boring than beautiful, I do not try to demonstrate
to you that it really is beautiful. An argument establishing
something as beautiful, a definitive argument compelling assent from everyone who can follow the argument, is not possible.
But in spite of this similarity, the experience of something
as beautiful is not just a feeling of pleasure either, though
pleasure is surely bound up with this experience. Kant thinks
that, unlike the feeling of pleasure, the judgment that something is beautiful is universally communicable, at least in
principle. This is possible because the encounter with something beautiful gives rise to a peculiarly harmonious interaction of the understanding, or the faculty of concepts, with the
imagination, and hence produces a state of mind (Gemütszustand) that can be communicated. There is no comparable
harmonious interaction of the cognitive faculties in the experience of something as merely pleasant, such as the scent
of patchouli or the taste of cilantro, about which there can be
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a difference of opinion that is in principle irresolvable.
In the case of a judgment of cognition proper, there is also
a relationship between the understanding and the imagination. The synthesis of the imagination is subsumed under a
definite concept. For example, two events are subsumed
under the a priori concept of cause and effect; the empirical
concept of a plate is subsumed under the pure concept of a
circle; an individual dog is subsumed under the general and
empirically derived concept of a dog. Such subsumption
under a definite concept Kant calls a determinative judgment.
This kind of judgment determines the object as this or that
definite kind of thing. It fixes the object, establishes its
boundaries as it were, and thereby renders it intelligible. The
result is a definite cognition.
In the judgment of something as beautiful, however, the
synthesis of the imagination is not subsumed under a definite
concept. The harmonious interaction of the cognitive faculties that is initiated by the presence of a beautiful object Kant
calls “free play” (freies Spiel). The resultant state of mind can
be universally communicated because it is formed by a free
play of cognitive faculties that we all possess. On the other
hand, this harmonious interaction, precisely as free play, does
not give rise to a definite cognition (ein bestimmter Erkenntis). It is only what is required for cognition in general
(Erkenntnis überhaupt).
That this state of mind is communicable, even universally
so, does not by itself imply that it is actually communicated.
For the latter, taste is also required. And taste is developed
primarily by cultivating a habit of attention to the formal relationships that are present in beautiful objects. These relationships, precisely as formal, cannot be apprehended
through sensation alone—as pleasure can—but must be apprehended by specifically cognitive faculties. And yet, be-
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cause here the imagination is not simply subordinated to the
understanding and placed in its service, but harmoniously and
freely interacts with the understanding, a feeling of pleasure
necessarily arises, as always happens in play.
A judgment that proceeds, not determinatively and by
way of subsuming a particular object (in the broadest sense
of the word) under a given definite concept, but by finding a
universal concept for the particular object is what Kant calls
a reflective judgment. In the investigation of nature determinative and reflective judgments are sequentially made. But
in the experience of an object as beautiful only a reflective
judgment is made, though in reading a work of literature in
particular, determinate judgments prepare the way for the reflective judgment that the work is beautiful. The universal
concept “beautiful,” the predicate of the reflective judgment,
“This object is beautiful,” is an indefinite concept. It refers
only to the way the individual object has of animating the
cognitive faculties into free play.14 The effect of this free play
is a pleasure that we expect everyone who has taste to feel.
To Kant’s argument that, in the encounter with a beautiful
object, the feeling of pleasure is consequent to and founded
on the judging of the object as beautiful, and not vice versa,
one might object that he has only shown what the sequence
could be. He has not shown what the sequence must be. But
Kant would respond that only this argument accounts for the
phenomenon of aesthetic enjoyment. For we do not call all
the things that please us “beautiful”—not by a long shot.
There would, however, be no reason not to do so if pleasure
precedes and founds the judgment that the object is beautiful.
Kant’s argument also makes sense of how one can distinguish between good taste, educated taste so to speak, and bad
or uneducated taste. Most of us recognize that our taste is
more refined now than it was when we were younger. The
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broadening experience of attending to the formal relations
present in beautiful objects enables us to note, appreciate,
and, as a consequence, delight in them. Again, these formal
relations cannot be apprehended by sensation alone, as is the
case with pleasures that are not mediated by judgment and
the cognitive principles that make judgment possible. And
yet, because no definite cognition is involved in a pure judgment of taste, we cannot actually demonstrate that an object
is beautiful, however perfect its formal articulation. What we
say by way of communicating the satisfaction we take in a
work such as the Adagio of Beethoven’s “Hammerclavier”
Sonata or Josquin Desprez’ “Déploration de la Mort de Jehan
Ockeghem” to someone whose musical taste we think is cultivated or susceptible of cultivation, is “Just listen to this.”
Or, in the case of painting by, say, Vermeer, “Just look at
this.”
A beautiful object does not consist of formal relations
alone. It has a material element as well, such as shades of
color or volume of sound. Unlike form, this material element,
which gives rise to what Kant calls the charm of sense, is not
communicable. Two individuals might possess an equally developed and refined appreciation of the formal relations in a
Bach fugue. But one of them prefers to hear a given fugue
played on the piano rather than on a harpsichord, whereas the
other prefers exactly the opposite. The timbre of a harpsichord and the timbre of a piano belong to the matter of the
music. For that reason, the extent to which one pleases more
than the other lies entirely within the domain of individual
preference. But the motivic, melodic, tonal, and structural elements belong to the form of the music. It is these formal relationships that stimulate the free play of the cognitive faculties
and thereby allow for universal communicability.
Formal relations are best apprehended at a distance. We
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can experience little in the way of formal relations through
the sense of touch, and only a little more through the sense
of taste and the sense of smell. Our sense of smell, unlike our
senses of touch and taste, can, of course, apprehend things at
a distance. If it were more developed in us humans we might
be able to smell formal relationships. But as it is, we cannot
do so, certainly not as readily as we can through sight and
hearing. It should not be surprising, then, that we rarely if
ever speak of a tactile sensation, however pleasant it may be,
as beautiful, and the same is true of an excellent meal or a
fine wine. We might say that the layout of a meal is beautiful,
or that the color of a wine is beautiful. But on tasting these
things we do not say, “What a beautiful flavor!” We say instead, “What a delightful flavor!” and maybe even “What a
lovely flavor!” Someone might decide to say “What a beautiful flavor!” just to show that it is possible to do so. But this
is not how we typically speak, however pleasant we may find
tactile, gustatory, and olfactory sensations. The reason seems
to be—and this is what Plato caught sight of—that any formal
relations we might apprehend through touch, taste, and smell
are almost infinitely vague in comparison to what we can
hear in a piece of music or see in a painting, to say nothing
of what we can apprehend in a work of literature.15
There is a further sign that Plato and Kant are right in
their agreement that the beautiful pleases through sight and
hearing uniquely. In the case of touch, taste, and smell, the
pleasure is felt right on the skin, and right on the gustatory
and olfactory organs. One feels a pleasure in or on the organs
of sensation, granted that it can also be quickly suffused
throughout one’s body as a whole. This is not the case regarding the pleasures associated with sight and hearing. On looking at a beautiful painting one does not experience a pleasing
sensation on the eyeball. Nor on hearing a beautiful piece of
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music does one experience a pleasing sensation in the ear.
Regarding music in particular, we can enjoy it up to a
point just by remembering it. A talented and well trained musician can imagine and delight in music he has never heard
before just by reading through a score as though it were a
book. Beethoven composed his greatest works when he was
stone deaf. Schubert did not live to hear a single one of his
symphonies performed. Brahms is reported to have said,
partly in jest but not entirely so, that when he wanted to hear
a really fine performance of the Marriage of Figaro he would
light up a cigar and stretch out on his couch. Many composers
refuse to compose at the piano. They want their compositions
to originate in the imagination, not in their fingers, not even
in their ears.
The distance that separates what is visible and audible
from our eyes and ears enables us to apprehend the visible
and the audible with a measure of detachment. To be sure, a
light can be so bright that it causes a pain in one’s eyes, and
a sound can be so loud that it makes one’s ears hurt. But,
again, the intensity of a light or a sound pertains to sensory
matter, not to form. Form, as such, causes no pain in the sensory organs, and the pleasure it gives rise to does not occur
there but somewhere else. It occurs in the mind.
Kant argues that the satisfaction associated with the experience of the purely beautiful is disinterested. He has been
famously taken to task on this point by Nietzsche.16 If Nietzsche
read the Critique of Judgment, he did not possess the patience
to read it carefully; for Kant very early in that work explicitly
says that “a judgment about beauty, in which the least interest
mingles, is quite partial and no pure judgment of taste.”17 A
judgment of taste can indeed be interested, but to that extent
it cannot be a pure judgment of taste. The judgment of a beautiful human form, for example, is an aesthetic judgment, but
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it is not entirely disinterested. Kant recognizes this, though
Nietzsche seems to think it undercuts Kant’s thesis. Even
when the beautiful is combined with the good, it cannot, according to Kant, be the object of a pure judgment of taste;
and the same is true of what he calls “the ideal of beauty.”18
In Plato’s Symposium Socrates relates Diotima’s saying
dictum that “eros is not of the beautiful. . . . It is of engendering and bringing to birth in the beautiful.”19 However we are
to understand this, Plato seems to recognize, as Kant does,
that eros, being about as interested as interested can be, for
that very reason cannot have the beautiful, simply, as its real
object. The antecedent disinterested contemplation of the
beautiful may well give rise to a consequent interest in, even
a desire for, a certain non-contemplative relation of oneself
to the beautiful, a relation of engendering and bringing to
birth in it. Still, what eros is of is not the beautiful. Instead,
Diotima says, “eros is of the good’s being one’s own always.”
Diotima seems to be saying that, though the good can be
one’s own, the aesthetically beautiful cannot be one’s own.
The delight you take in contemplating the beautiful object in
no way detracts from the delight I take in it. Quite the opposite. Your delight enhances my delight.
The experience of pure beauty gives rise to a disinterested
satisfaction not simply because beautiful sights and sounds,
unlike pleasant tactile sensations, flavors, and odors, are mediated by distance, but because they are thereby also mediated by judgment. The satisfaction bound up with the merely
pleasant, on the other hand, is immediate. No act of judgment
is needed to enjoy the pleasing sensation of a cool breeze on
a hot day. An irrational animal can enjoy tactile sensations as
easily as a human being can. When we call a flower “beautiful,” we do so because of how it looks, not because of how it
smells. After all, one can, and often does, call a flower beau-
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tiful without ever smelling it. One does not, however, call a
flower beautiful without seeing it, however pleasant may be
the scent that comes wafting through the window. The assessment of how a flower looks, of how it is shaped and articulated, is made in an act of reflective judgment, which occurs
so naturally and rapidly that we rarely realize that we are even
making a judgment.
Because the pleasure we take in a beautiful object is consequent to and founded on the judgment that the object is
beautiful, this pleasure bears an analogy to, without being
simply identical with, the pleasure we take in contemplating
moral nobility. As Kant argues, we do not do what is morally
right because of the pleasure that doing so gives rise to. For
we would not experience any pleasure in doing what is
morally right unless we thought that acting this way was good
in itself, regardless of whether it gave rise to more pleasure
than pain or the reverse. Any reduction of moral nobility to
pleasure seeking is as morally obtuse as a reduction of the
admiration of moral nobility to pleasure seeking.20
The remarkable affinity between the pleasure taken in the
beautiful and the pleasure taken in the morally good leads
Kant to speak of beauty as the symbol of the morally good.
Aesthetic education, though by no means a substitute for
moral education, can nonetheless facilitate moral education.
The cultivation of taste elevates one above enjoyment of the
coarser and more immediate pleasures to those refined pleasures that are mediated by judgment. The pleasure that one
takes in contemplating the aesthetically beautiful is then analogous to the pleasure that one takes in contemplating exemplars of moral nobility, and to the pleasure that one can also
take in establishing a measure of integrity in one’s own character. Kant says:
Taste makes possible, without too violent a leap,
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the transition (as it were) from the charm of sense
to habitual moral interest, because it represents the
imagination in its freedom as purposively determinable for the understanding, and so teaches us
to find even in objects of sense a free satisfaction
apart from any charm of sense.21
Thomas McDonald puts this matter well when he speaks
of a teleological function of aesthetic education. It is conducive to developing “a susceptibility to rational determination immanently, working from within and from beneath,
[such] that one’s practical moral determinations not always
be imposed from without or from above.”22 That there is but
one Greek word, kalon, for both the aesthetically beautiful
and the morally noble is not a linguistic accident.23
To return briefly to the Hippias Major, that to kalon
pleases through sight and/or hearing holds true of the morally
noble as well as of the aesthetically beautiful. Moral nobility
can be seen in an act and heard in a speech. Obviously it cannot be touched, tasted, or smelled. Now, Socrates sees that
this formulation, though true and highly significant, describes
a beautiful object only in terms of its effect. He is interested,
however, in more than the effect that the beautiful object has
on the subject. He is also interested in what causes the beautiful object to be beautiful. If we say that the cause of the
beautiful object is itself the beautiful—a possibility that
Socrates briefly entertains—then we are not saying very
much: the beautiful is the cause of the beautiful; cause and
effect are the same. And yet if the cause and the effect are
different, but both are somehow beautiful, we find ourselves
confronted with the so-called “third man” problem: there
must be some third “beautiful” in which the beautiful as cause
and the beautiful as effect both participate; and then some
fourth “beautiful” in which all three participate; and so on ad
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infinitum. The question of what causes an object to be beautiful is a real question. Socrates does not answer it.
Kant, however, does answer this question. The cause of
the beautiful in art—we are not speaking now of the beautiful
in nature—is genius. Kant does not use this word the way we
do. For him it does not necessarily denote someone with an
exceptionally high intelligence, as intelligence is commonly
understood. Newton, he says, is not a genius, and Kant would
certainly not call himself one. Genius names a kind of mysterious spirit that is at work within the artist, assuming that
he is a great artist.24 According to Kant, only an artist can
possesses genius. Newton notoriously moves from one assertion to another without supplying the intervening steps that
logically connect the one with the other. But Newton can fill
these steps in. With much more labor than it cost him we can
fill them in as well. Newton can justify each step in his
demonstrations. If we understand his demonstrations we can
do the same.
Kant maintains that the case is different with the artist
and his art. Mozart, for example, cannot explain why the interval of a sixth at just this point in a melody is exactly the
right interval, and not, say, a fourth. Michelangelo cannot explain how he visualized a captive within an uncut block of
stone, or why he decided to paint the newly created Adam
just as he painted him. The great artist must of course possess
a communicable knowledge of the elements of his craft. And
these elements are teachable. Mozart could teach counterpoint, and Michelangelo could teach the techniques of sculpture and of representing perspective in two dimensions. But
Mozart could not teach anyone, no matter how technically
proficient he was at mastering the rules of counterpoint and
harmony, how to write a “Jupiter Symphony,” or even a comparatively simple but beautiful melody like “La ci darem la
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mano” from Don Giovanni, or the even simpler but equally
beautiful melody from The Magic Flute, “Drei Knäbchen,
jung, schön, hold, und weise.” (The latter melody, in B-flat
major, begins implausibly with five F’s in a row followed by
five D’s in row, and then three B-flats in a row—and yet, for
all its simplicity, I daresay there is nothing more beautiful in
opera.) Similarly, Michelangelo could not teach anyone how
to sculpt a masterpiece comparable to his “David.”
Kant says that to the extent that an artist is animated by
genius he cannot articulate the rules by which he produces
his works of art.25 Genius presupposes technique, but it is not
identical with technique. Genius is an altogether mysterious
force that even the artist cannot account for. Brahms once
said that when he was a young man melodies came to him
while he was polishing his shoes.
This attitude of the artist toward the sources of his inspiration is a familiar one and millennia old. An unnamed goddess is invoked in the third word of the Iliad; an unnamed
muse is invoked in the fourth word of the Odyssey. In Plato’s
Ion, Socrates makes a number of comic observations about
the pretentions of rhapsodes, poets, and soothsayers. While
we are laughing at them, however, we should not overlook a
remarkable observation he also makes that is not so comic:
A great indication [that the god is speaking
through these people] is Tynnichos the Chalcidean, who never made any poem whatsoever
that would be worthy of remembering, but then
[made] the paean that everyone sings, just about
the most beautiful of all lyric poems, simply (or
artlessly—atechnōs) as he himself says, “a discovery of the muses.”26
How did Tynnichos manage to do this? Socrates does not
say. One might say that Tynnichos was visited by genius. If
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so, it was a brief visit. Beethoven, who was in a position to
know, held that genius is always prolific. Beethoven may
have had Bach in mind. He once said, “Bach ought not to be
called Bach (German for “brook”) but Meer (German for
“ocean”).
What is the ultimate source of the beautiful in art? The
twentieth-century German philosopher Max Scheler gave a
blunt and characteristically provocative answer to this question. “The artist is merely the mother of the work of art. God
is the father.”27 So direct a theological answer to this question
is not the only one. Leo Strauss, hardly an unqualified admirer of the fine arts as distinct from the liberal arts, and
highly suspicious of aesthetics, writes in a letter, “[O]nly the
moderns are so crazy [as] to believe that ‘creation’ of a ‘work
of art’ is more worthy of wonder and more mysterious than
the reproduction of a dog: just look at a mother dog with her
puppies . . . .” It is not clear what crazy moderns Strauss has
in mind. Kant, for one, would grant that nature, prodigal in
its production of the beautiful and sublime, is more worthy
of wonder than any work of art. But also worthy of wonder
is the process of artistic production. Strauss recognizes this,
and continues his sentence as follows: “. . . and the force, by
means of which Shakespeare conceived, felt, and wrote
Henry IV, is not Shakespeare’s work, but [is] greater than any
work of any man.”28
Kant is not averse to a theological account of artistic genius, but he is determined, as always, to keep theology at
arms length until compelled by his argument to bring it into
the picture. He entertains the possibility that what is at work
in genius is nature. “Genius is the innate talent of the mind
(ingenium) through which nature gives the rule to art.”29 A
bit later Kant says:
In science . . . the greatest discoverer differs only
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in degree from his laborious imitator and apprentice, but he differs specifically from him whom
nature has endowed for beautiful art. . . . The artist
is favored by nature. . . . [Artistic] aptitude (Geschicklichkeit) cannot be communicated; rather, it
is imparted to every [artist] immediately by the
hand of nature; and so it dies with him, until nature endows another in the same way, who needs
nothing more than an example to let the talent of
which he is conscious work in a similar way.30
The way nature works is mysterious. After Mozart died a
lot of attention was directed toward turning his son into “another Mozart.” It did not work. The boy had a very good ear,
and he was taught the nuts and bolts of composition, but he
lacked genius. He was not one of nature’s favorites.
In the above passage Kant indicates that artistic activity,
which cannot be reproduced, can be a way in which artistic
activity gets, not exactly reproduced but further produced,
assuming that talent is present and technique has been mastered. The artwork of an earlier artist can serve as an example
to a later one—not to be copied of course, but to be emulated.
Beethoven’s great piano concertos are not copies of Mozart’s,
not even structurally. But they were in large measure inspired
by Mozart’s concertos. Artistic inspiration is, to be sure, occasioned not only by examples of artistic masterworks.
Beethoven wrote the “Molto Adagio” of his E minor string
quartet under the direct inspiration of the night sky.
The literary critic Eric Heller reports that the great physicist Werner Heisenberg was once speaking with a small group
of English research students on the difference between humanistic studies and scientific pursuits. A grand piano was in
the room, and after the discussion Heisenberg, who was a
highly accomplished pianist, improvised on it a bit. He then
played, beautifully, a Beethoven sonata. When Heisenberg
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finished, he said to those present, “If I had never lived, someone else would have discovered the Uncertainty Principle.
For this was the solution of a problem that had emerged from
the logical development of physics and had to be solved in
this and no other way. But if there had never been a
Beethoven, this sonata would not have been composed.”31
Kant’s claim that genius is an endowment of nature is
problematic. He labored at length to ground and validate the
post-Aristotelian, non-teleological, mathematico-mechanical
concept of nature in his first Critique and in the Metaphysical
Foundations of Natural Science. Kant construes nature in
these works as simply the complex of phenomena standing
under architectonic laws prescribed to it a priori by the human
understanding. It is hard to see how nature, so construed,
could be the source of anything so inscrutable as artistic genius. The post-Kantian rise of a putatively non-teleological
biology has the effect of making genius all the more inscrutable. One might say that the force that produced, say,
Schubert’s final piano sonatas, his Ninth Symphony, his
Grand Duo for four hands, and his great string quintet (the
last three works all composed in C major, incidentally) was
just a rare and transient anomaly, like a black swan. But this
claim does not adequately account for the taste by which we
are able to appreciate these works, and this taste is not anomalous at all. It is not easy to see how taste for beauty, or even
the capacity for such taste, could have gotten naturally selected for enhancing the survival prospects of the human
species. For, again, the satisfaction bound up with our experience of the beautiful is the effect of a disinterested judgment. The cognitive faculties that are set in free play by the
presence of the beautiful can certainly be placed in the service
of our biological needs. But does their free play serve these
needs? It is one thing to assert that it does. It is something
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else to make sense of this assertion. The nature that gives rise
to genius can hardly be the nature of modern natural science.
It is something whose inner workings in the case of genius
are essentially veiled from view—from the view of the scientist and from the view of the artist as well.
The activity of artistic genius is as mysterious as its ultimate source. Kant understands this activity to be one that is
productive of what he calls, almost paradoxically, “aesthetic
ideas”:
[B]y an aesthetic idea I understand that presentation (Vorstellung) of the imagination that occasions much thinking, yet without any definite
thought, i.e., any concept, being adequate to it, a
presentation that speech, consequently, cannot
completely compass and make intelligible.32
In spite of the last clause, Kant understands poetry to be
the art form that is most impressive in its production of aesthetic ideas. Intelligibility, according to Kant, is constituted
through the understanding’s imposition of concepts on intuitions that have previously been synthesized by the imagination.33 This activity of our understanding is highly selective.
Only a portion of what the imagination has previously synthesized in intuition gets attended to. For us to understand
something, much of the material that the imagination synthesizes has to be passed over and disregarded. It suffices to
think of the controlled experiment, in which the scientist deliberately attempts to eliminate everything from consideration
that is extraneous to the experiment itself.
In the case of writing poetry, something quite different
happens. Kant says that there the imagination “is free to furnish unsought, over and above . . . agreement with the concept, extensive undeveloped material for the understanding,
material which the understanding did not take into consider-
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ation in its concept.”34 Though this activity of the imagination
is not in the service of the understanding’s constitution of an
object, and hence not in the service of acquiring knowledge,
it is still, as Kant says in the preceding quotation, “for the understanding.” In the first place, this activity “quickens the
cognitive powers.” That’s the element of free play, assuming
genius in the artist and a cultivated taste in his audience. But
in the second place, this activity, in the case of poetry especially, provides a kind of “nourishment” for the understanding. “[T]hrough his imagination [the genius] gives life to his
concepts.”35 Let us consider a few lines of poetry to see how
imagination furnishes material for the understanding that is
deliberately ignored by the understanding in its purely cognitive endeavors and typically overlooked in ordinary experience by those of us who are not geniuses.
The rejected lover says, in a poem by Fulke Greville:
Cynthia who did naked lie
Runs away like silver streams;
Leaving hollow banks behind,
Who can neither forward move,
Nor if rivers be unkind,
Turn away or leave to love.36
Banks of a river exposed by receding water are gray,
grassless, and pitted. Warped roots of nearby trees protrude
at random. They are desolate, and anyone can see this. But
to connect this sight with the condition of a lover who has
been abandoned and can neither follow his love nor cease
loving her is the work of genius. It is the production of aesthetic ideas.
Frederick Goddard Tuckerman attends to the phenomena
of nature with all his senses, though he finds little consolation
for grief even in its splendors:
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But not for him those golden calms succeed
Who while the day is high and glory reigns
Sees it go by, as the dim pampas plain,
Hoary with salt and gray with bitter weed,
Sees the vault blacken, feels the dark wind strain,
Hears the dry thunder roll, and knows no rain.37
Thomas Hardy, with a sensibility as cultivated as Greville’s and Tuckerman’s to “undeveloped material normally
passed over,” writes of how others may remember him after
he has died:
If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid’s soundless blink,
The dew-fall hawk comes crossing the shades to alight
Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, a gazer may think,
“To him this must have been a familiar sight.”38
We are accustomed to speak of such things as Hardy’s
“dew-fall hawk” and “wind-warped upland thorn” as poetic
images. But this is an imprecise way of speaking, for they are
not images of anything else. They are the bird and the branch,
not visibly present in this room to be sure, but surely, in their
own way, present in the poem.
In these passages we can see how the imagination provides the understanding with material for, as Kant puts it,
“much thought”—not the kind of thought that is at work in
scientific research and philosophical enquiry, but thought directed to features of human experience in which we take an
interest as mortal beings and not as minds only. Kant understands the taste for beauty to be something unique to man, to
a finite but nonetheless rational being, an animal possessing
both sense organs and intellect.
Beauty is a sensible phenomenon. It is a spatial or temporal phenomenon, or both spatial and temporal. It is for this
reason that, for Kant, the term “aesthetic” can designate fea-
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25
tures or statements regarding the beautiful and sublime as
well as space and time themselves. In fact, the different art
forms can be ordered in terms of how they work with space
and time. Painting is the most spatial and least temporal of
the arts. A painting can be seen all at once, assuming that it
is not excessively large or curved like a cyclorama. The time
involved in the apprehension of its composition is minimal.
In the case of sculpture more time is required, for one must
move around it to take all of it in. In the case of architecture,
yet more time is required, not only because buildings are
larger than statues, but also because one must enter them as
well as walk around them. In the case of dance we observe
spatial figures themselves move through time. This is true of
theater and also of film, where we must also apprehend
speech. Speech fills time and takes time to understand. In poetry and literature in general the spatial relations referred to
occur only in the imagination of the reader.39 Music is at the
opposite end of the scale from painting. Spatial relations are
absent, though they can be imagined. The formal relations in
music are temporal. And all these different forms can be combined, most comprehensively in opera. Wagner intended his
gigantic music dramas to be unities of all the art forms.
The various art forms can, of course, make man himself
their theme. Kant speaks of the possibility of representing
man at his height in a section of the Critique of Judgment entitled the “The Ideal of Beauty.” The following sentence from
the Critique of Practical Reason can serve as an introduction
to it. There Kant says:
The [moral] law should obtain for the world of
sense, as a sensible nature (as this concerns rational
beings), the form (Form) of an intelligible world,
i.e., the form of a supersensible nature, without
interrupting the mechanism of the former.”40
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It is our consciousness of the moral law that causes us to
regard other human beings to look like something more more
than obstacles to be gotten around or targets of sexual appetite, and causes them to manifest themselves not as things
at all but as persons. The very looks of the phenomenal order
are modified, indeed ennobled, by our consciousness of obligation. In the expression of the human being before us, in
the pressing out of his interior rationality and intrinsic worth
to the surface of his countenance, we behold an end-in-itself
that our consciousness of the moral law commands us not to
treat as a mere means to the attainment of our private ends.
In his treatment of the ideal of beauty in the Critique of
Judgment Kant makes two important distinctions. The first
is between idea and ideal. “Idea properly means a rational
concept [a concept of reason], and ideal the representation of
an individual being, regarded as adequate to that idea.”41
The distinction between idea and ideal is the fundamental distinction governing Hegel’s aesthetics. For Hegel
the idea is the whole dialectically interrelated system of
rational concepts, which he attempts to explicate in his
Science of Logic. According to Hegel, art attempts to make
the idea, which is truth in its purity, immediately present
to sensible intuition. The attempt is never fully successful,
for what it aims at is impossible. Art according to Hegel
necessarily falls short of philosophy. The ideal is for him
only an ideal. On the other hand it really is ideal. The ideal
would be (per impossibile) that the idea be intuitively
present, right there in front of us, rather than accessible
solely through discursive, laborious, and largely abstract
thought, as Hegel argues it must be.
According to Kant, however, the great artist is more
successful at presenting the ideal than Hegel supposes.
The unconditioned, for Kant, is not so much a comprehen-
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27
sive system of speculative concepts as it is a practical law.
And it is possible to depict a human being as governing himself through this law. Kant makes a distinction not only between the idea and the ideal but also between the aesthetical
normal idea and the ideal. The aesthetic normal idea is the
visible archetype of the species, whether of man or of some
other species. It exhibits regularity and perfect fitness of form
to function, whether of man or animal. The ideal, on the other
hand, “makes the purposes of humanity, inasmuch as they
cannot be sensibly presented, the principle for judging of a
figure [Gestalt] through which, as their phenomenal effect,
those purposes are revealed [offenbaren].”42 According to
Kant, this ideal can be represented only in the human figure,
and it is an expression of the moral.
The visible expression of moral ideas that rule
men inwardly can, to be sure, be taken only from
experience; but to make their connection with all
that our reason unites with the morally good in the
idea of the highest purposiveness—goodness of
soul, purity, strength, peace, and so forth—visible
as it were in bodily expression (as the effect of
what is internal): all that requires a union of pure
ideas of reason with great imagination even in him
who wishes only to judge of it, still more in him
who wishes to present it.43
If we leave aside specifically religious art, with its own
complications and profundities, and limit our attention instead to secular art, two candidates for the ideal of beauty in
painting immediately suggest themselves. One is a portrait
by Rembrandt. But Rembrandt’s portraits, though in the
finest instances surely representing “moral ideas that rule
men inwardly,” do not take their departure from the normal
aesthetic normal idea. Quite the contrary, the individual in
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his individuality is represented—warts and all, as we say. His
face is not the ideal type of our species. A better candidate
for the ideal of beauty is Michelangelo’s sculpture of Lorenzo
de Medici, Il Penseroso (Fig. 1). This
sculpture does not represent the Duke of
Urbino as he really looked, and probably
does not even try to represent him as he
really was. The task of making a statue of
Lorenzo for the de Medici tomb seems to
have served as the occasion for Michelangelo to present, on the foundation of the
normal aesthetic normal idea but rising
Fig. 1:
above it, the ideal of the beautiful as the
Michelangelo,
visible expression of “all that our reason
Il Pensoroso
unites with the morally good in the idea of the highest purposiveness.”
The interest, essentially practical, that we take in the ideal
of the beauty as Kant understands it, that is, as the visible expression of moral nobility, keeps the judgment pertaining to
this ideal from being a purely aesthetic judgment. The same
can be said of the interest we take in beautiful poetry. Poetry,
however so beautiful it may be, to the extent that it treats of
human concerns, cannot be the object of an entirely disinterested satisfaction, and our judgment of it is not a pure judgment of taste. And yet Kant ranks poetry as the highest of the
arts. And so we are led to an unexpected conclusion: loftiness
of beauty and purity of beauty are not identical.
Although the primary focus on of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment is on the beautiful, its secondary focus is on
the sublime. Kant thinks that the beautiful exists not only in
art, but in nature as well, in flowers, gardens, landscapes, and,
of course, in the human figure. Though what Kant has to say
about natural beauty is intriguing, we have restricted our at-
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tention to what he has to say about beautiful art because of
its connection with genius and aesthetic ideas. We turn now
to his account of the sublime, for it too has a relation to the
moral, though one quite different from that of the beautiful
to the moral.
Whereas the beautiful is characterized by phenomenal form,
the sublime in nature is characterized by phenomenal formlessness. Kant divides the sublime into the mathematical sublime
and the dynamical sublime. The mathematical sublime appears
as vastness: a towering mountain, a view from its summit, the
ocean in a still calm, and, most strikingly of all, the celestial
vault on a clear night. The dynamical sublime appears as power:
a cataract of water, flashes of lightening, a violent hurricane,
the ocean in full tumult. We take a certain pleasure in beholding
such things, though only when we behold them from a safe vantage point. If they place us in imminent peril, we are too frightened to take pleasure in them. But why, even if we are not
threatened, do we take any pleasure in them at all?
Kant’s answer to this question is remarkable. The mathematical sublime requires us to recognize that our physical
being is, by comparison, infinitesimally small, and the dynamical sublime requires us to recognize that our physical
being is infinitesimally weak. But at the same time the sublime leads us to recognize that in our moral being we are elevated above the whole phenomenal order. For nothing, no
threat of extinction, not even extinction itself, could cause us
to freely betray our moral principles. Some force of nature,
even a drug, could wreak such havoc on our nervous system
as to impair or even destroy the rationality that is the origin
of our moral principles. But as long as we possess our rationality, and hence our will,44 no external force or threat of force
can compel us to abuse our freedom.
The sublime in art is similar to the sublime in nature. The
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
sublime in art, however, cannot be
formless. For then it would not be
art at all, but a mess. In sublime
art, form is placed in the service of
representing vastness and power.
An example of the mathematical
sublime in art would be that part
of the façade of Saint Peter’s
Cathedral that was designed by
Michelangelo (Fig. 2).45 An example of the dynamical sublime in art
would be the first movement of
Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, especially that point at which, the
Fig. 2: Michaelangelo,
development having been brought Façade of St. Peter’s Cathedral
to pitch of intensity, the hushed D
minor opening is recapitulated in a blazing and thundering D
major, but in first inversion with an F-sharp in the low bass,
as though the very cosmos were exploding, or fully displaying itself for the first time.
We said earlier that the satisfaction bound up with the
judgment of taste is, according to Kant, disinterested. It is to
that extent unlike both the satisfaction one takes in the merely
pleasant and the satisfaction one takes in morally good—as
different as these latter two satisfactions most definitely are
from each other. The beautiful pleases, but it is not the merely
pleasant. And, though the beautiful can serve as the symbol
of the morally good, it is not the morally good. Nor does a
cultivated taste imply moral nobility, though an aesthetic education can, as we noted, facilitate the task of a moral education.
Aristotle says that the beginning of philosophy is wonder, especially regarding the causes of things. But, he adds,
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31
we must end in the opposite and the better state, not with
wonder about the causes of things, but with knowledge of
the causes. Knowledge is better than wonder.46 And Aristotle
seems to think that we really can know something about ultimate causes, even if we know them, not as they are essentially and in themselves, but only as the ultimate cause or
causes of what we are familiar with, of what is close at hand,
of what is not first in itself but first for us.
Kant does not think that even this attenuated knowledge
of ultimate causes is available to us. Wonder is not only the
beginning of philosophy. It is itself a kind of end, an end not
replaced by knowledge. Wonder is present in our aesthetic
experience of the beautiful and the sublime, and in a different way it is present in our moral experience as well. Wonder
is bound up even with the longed for, indeed a priori assumed, discovery of special empirical laws of nature and
their interconnection, which is not accomplished by the
human understanding’s a priori prescription of architectonic
laws to a nature in general.47 Like aesthetic experience in
general, wonder is possible only for a finite though rational
being.
Kant speaks of the wonder that emerges from the accomplishment of reason, both speculative and practical, in an impressive passage that occurs near the end of the Critique of
Practical Reason. Part of the first sentence was inscribed on
his tombstone. It is well known and frequently quoted. But
the whole passage should be better known. If the ancient
philosopher Plato often seems to be the most poetic of
philosophers, the modern philosopher Kant often seems to
be the most prosaic. And yet the passage at the end of the
Critique of Practical Reason, which can serve as a conclusion to this introduction to aesthetics, shows that there was
more poetry in Kant’s soul than one might have guessed
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solely from working one’s way along the “thorny paths” of
the Critique of Pure Reason:
Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe (Bewunderung und Ehrfurcht) the more often and more steadily reflection
occupies itself with them: the starry sky above me,
and the moral law within me. . . . The former begins at the place I occupy in the external world of
sense; and it broadens the connection in which I
stand into an unbounded magnitude of worlds beyond worlds and systems of systems and into the
limitless times of their periodic motion, their beginning and their continuance. The latter begins
at my invisible self, my personality and exhibits
me in a world that has true infinity, but which is
perceptible only to the understanding, a world in
which I recognize myself as existing in a universal
and necessary (and not only, as in the first case,
contingent) connection, but thereby also in connection with all those visible worlds. The former
view, of a numberless mass of worlds, annihilates,
as it were, my importance as an animal creature,
which must give back to the planet ([itself] a mere
speck in the universe) the matter from which it
came, the matter which is for a short time provided with vital force, we know not how. The latter, on the contrary, infinitely elevates my worth
as that of an intelligence through my personhood,
in which the moral law reveals a life independent
of all animality and even of the whole world of
sense—at least so far as it may be gathered from
the purposive destination assigned to my existence
through this law, a destination that is not restricted
to the conditions and limitations of this life but extends into the infinite.48
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NOTES
Leo Strauss, Letter of February 26, 1961 to Helmut Kuhn, in The Independent Journal of Philosophy 2:1978, 23.
2
Greater Hippias Major 286c5
3
282d6. Cf. fn. 1 in the Greater Hippias, translated by David Sweet in
The Roots of Political Philosophy, edited by Thomas Pangle (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), 307.
4
At 283a1 and a9.
1
Protagoras 314b10-c8; 337c7-338b2: “meta de ton Prodokon Hippias
ho sophos eipen” ff. Cf. fn. 17 of in Sweet’s translation of the Greater
Hippias, 307.
6
Symposium 177d79-810.
7
Greater Hippias Minor 293e5.
8
The later coinage of the term “aesthetics” emerges for a reason. There
is a special connection between aesthesis, the Greek word for “sensation,”
and beauty. The beautiful, and the sublime too, are present in sensory experience, even if something super-sensible shines through them. For this
reason the expressions “the aesthetically beautiful” and “the morally
noble” can both be used to translate the two distinct but related senses of
the expression to kalon.
9
294d1.
10
295c3 and; d9; 296e2. Note the introduction of power (or that which is
powerful, to dynaton) at 295e5, and the grouping of the helpful, the useful, and “the power to make something good” at 297d4.
5
Hippias Major 297e4-298a8.; Cf. Phaedrus 250d1-e1.
12
Greek Mathematics and the Origin of Algebra, translated by Eva Brann
(Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1968), 79-99.
13
Immanuel Kant, Werke in Zehn Bänden, hereafter Werke, edited by Wilhelm Weischedel (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1981),
Band 8, Kritik der Urteilskraft, 295-298. (English translation, Critique
of Judgment, translated by J. H. Bernard, (New York: Haffner Press,
1951), 51-54. Pagination for in this translation will hereafter be given immediately following the German pagination and separated from it by a
slash. I have made some alterations in the translation in the interest of
greater literalness.)
11
14
The concept beautiful is nonetheless predicated of the object; it is not
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
predicated of the subject. But, for Kant, it is predicated of the object only
because of what it occasions in the subject. And yet the object would not
occasion this effect were it not, in itself so to speak, already characterized
by perfection of composition, simplicity of means and richness of effects,
radiance and mutual illumination of whole and parts or, in the language
of Thomas Aquinas, integritas, consonantia, and claritas (Summa Theologiae 1, Question 39, Article 8, corpus). Kant’s argument in the Critique
of Judgment does not presuppose the particulars of the case he makes for
the a priori constitution of nature via transcendental subjectivity in the
Critique of Pure Reason. On the contrary, beautiful objects, just like special empirical laws of nature, are not deducible from the architectonic
laws of a nature in general that he argues are prescribed to it a priori by
the human understanding. The exact source of the special laws of nature
as such is as mysterious as the exact source of beauty. It remains a problem that, though taken up again in the “Introduction” to the Critique of
Judgment, in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, and in
the Opus Postumum, is never fully solved by Kant. “For who can entirely
draw out from nature her secret?” Werke, Band 8, 316/70.
15
In the case of a really fine wine, one goes so far as to speak of structure,
balance, and bouquet, borrowing terms from architecture and floral
arrangements. Still, one does not call the taste of the wine, but only its
looks, beautiful. The same can be said of fine pipe tobacco. It may look
beautiful in the tin, but no one says that it tastes or smells beautiful.
Genealogy of Morals, Third Essay, Section 6.
17
Werke, Band 8, 281/39.
18
Ibid., Werke, 311/66; 314/69. We shall consider the ideal of beauty
below.
16
Symposium 206e1-207a3.
Cf. Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1953), 128.
19
20
Werke, Band 8, 462-463/200.
22
From “Thoughts on Kant,” a Friday-night lecture given at St. John’s
College, Annapolis, in the spring of 1979. This lecture, which Mr. McDonald delivered from notes, was recorded, and each library on the two
campuses of St. John’s has a compact disk of it. I listened to the lecture
more than once in gearing up to write the present essay, and I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in understanding Kant’s project
in its full scope.
21
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“Shakespeare wrote at a time when common sense still taught . . . that
the function of the great poet was to teach what is truly beautiful by means
of pleasure.” Allen Bloom and Harry Jaffa, Shakespeare’s Politics
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1964), 6. Kant would say
that this formulation (whether or not it is what common sense taught in
Shakespeare’s time, which one can doubt) gets the relationship between
beauty and pleasure exactly backwards. The function of the great poet is
to teach what is truly pleasant by means of beauty, inasmuch as the truly
pleasant—more precisely what is pleasant to a rational animal as such—
presupposes the recognition that what is under consideration is aesthetically beautiful, or, for that matter, morally noble.
23
Werke, Band 8, 417-420/160-163. This spirit can be thought without
contradiction as being divine in origin.
24
Werke, Band 8, 406-410/151-153.
Ion 543d7-10.
27
Quoted by Gershom Scholem in “Revelation and Tradition as Religious
Categories” in The Messianic Idea in Judaism, (New York: Schocken
Books, 1971), 303.
28
Letter of August 20, 1946, to Karl Löwith. The force that Strauss speaks
of in this clause cannot be easily distinguished, in the case of the genius,
from the “creation” to which he refers, within quotation marks, in the preceding clause.
25
26
Werke, Band 8, 405-406/150.
30
Werke, Band 8, 408/152.
31
Eric Heller, “The Broken Tradition: An Address,” in The Age of Prose,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 31.
29
Werke, Band 8, 413-414/157.
“Thoughts without content are empty; intuitions without concepts are
blind” (Critique of Pure Reason B 75, Werke, Band 3, 98). “An object is
that in whose concept the manifold of a given intuition is united” (ibid.,
B 137, Werke, Band 3, 139). “It is one and the same spontaneity, which
[in the synthesis of apprehension] under name of the imagination, and [in
the synthesis of apperception, under the name] of the understanding,
brings combination into the manifold of intuition” (ibid., B 162 note,
Werke, Band 3, 155).
34
Werke, Band 8, 417/160.
35
Werke, Band 8, 423/165-166.
32
33
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
From Number 56 in “Caelica,” Selected Poems of Fulke Greville, edited
by Thom Gunn, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 85.
36
From Sonnet 5 of the First Series, 1854-1860, in The Complete Poems
of Frederick Goddard Tuckerman, edited by N. Scott Momaday, (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1965), 5.
37
From “Afterwards,” in The Complete Poems of Thomas Hardy, edited
by James Gibson, (New York: Macmillan, 1978), 553. Particularly fine
studies on the poetry of Greville, Tuckerman, and Hardy, among others,
can be found in Yvor Winter’s Forms of Discovery (Chicago: The Swallow Press, 1967).
39
On the quite different, even opposed, ways in which great poetry and
great painting stimulate the imagination, see Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s
magnificent study, Laokoon; or, On the Limits of Painting and Poetry
(1766).
38
Werke, Band 6, 156.
41
Werke, Band 8, 314/69. Compare Critique of Pure Reason B 595-598.
For Kant, an aesthetic judgment in the strict sense is singular (Werke,
Band 8, 293-294/49-50). The individual per se is not the concern of science. (Cf. Aristotle, Posterior Analytics 81b8: there is no scientific knowledge, no epistēmē, of singulars—though for a possible exception to this
general rule see Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 1, Question 1, Articles 2-8). But the individual per se is very much the concern of fine art.
One reason why Plato so frequently gets called a “poet” is that he presents
his teaching through the voices of flesh and blood individuals, Socrates
chief among them. Dostoyevsky goes somewhat further in this direction:
“[T]he image of the [Dostoyevskian] hero is inseparably linked with the
image of an idea and cannot be detached from it. We see the hero in the idea
and through the idea, and we see the idea in him and through him. . . . [W]hat
is important is not the ordinary qualifications of a person’s character or actions, but rather the index of a person’s devotion to an idea in the deepest
recesses of his personality.” Mikail Bakhtin, “The Idea in Dostoyevsky,”
in Problems of Dostoyevsky’s Poetics, (edited and translated by Caryl
Emerson in Theory and History of Literature, Vol. 8, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 87. Cf. infra, fn. 44.
40
Werke, Band 8, 315/70.
Werke, Band 8, 318/72.
44
“Everything in nature works according to laws. Only a rational being
has the capacity to act according to the idea (Vorstellung) of law, i.e., ac42
43
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37
cording to principles, [and so has] a will.” Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals in Werke, Band 6, 41.
45
See Ralph Lieberman, “Bramante and Michelangelo at St. Peter’s,” The
St. John’s Review 40.1 (1990-91), 1-38. Our Fig.2 is Fig. 37 in Lieberman’s article. He submits it in support of the following perspicuous observation: “Michelangelo’s predecessors at the church, even the most
gifted of them, could merely build big; he solved the problem of St.
Peter’s because he could think big” (35-37).
Metaphysics 982b11-21; 983a12-20. Cf. Plato, Theaetetus 155d1-8.
47
Critique of Pure Reason B 164-165; Critique of Judgment inerke, Band
8, 260- 267/17-25. Cf. fn. 14 supra.
46
48
Werke, Band 6, 300.
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38
Passion and Perception in
Mozart’s Magic Flute
Peter Kalkavage
Mozart leads us deep into the realm of spirits. Dread
lies all about us, but withholds its torments and becomes more an intimation of infinity.
—E. T. A. Hoffman on Mozart’s
Symphony No. 39
This essay is an excursion into the world of Mozart’s Magic
Flute. My focus will be the aria “Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd
schön,” “This image is enchantingly beautiful.” One of the
most exquisite love songs ever written, it occurs early in the
opera and is sung by Prince Tamino as he gazes upon a likeness of Pamina, daughter of the Queen of the Night and
Tamino’s destined Other.
Mozart’s final opera, written in the last year of his short
life, is a musical meditation on large themes: love, friendship,
marriage, the human and the divine, world-order, virtue and
vice, light and darkness, lust, resentment, vengeance, illusion
and disillusionment, hardship, despair, trials, death, and reconciliation—all this in the context of a bizarre fairy tale that
is by turns solemn, light-hearted, homiletic, dire, ceremonial,
and slapstick. The Magic Flute is a magical work that reflects
on magic, especially the magic that is music. It offers us a
perfect opportunity to examine the elements, principles, and
causes of musical phenomena in an admirably distilled and
lucid form.
Peter Kalkavage is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis. This essay
was first delivered as a lecture at Thomas Aquinas College on 11 November 2011.
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | KALKAVAGE
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The Magic Flute has been called Mozart’s “Masonic
opera,” and so it is. Mozart was a serious Freemason. So was
his librettist, Emanuel Schikaneder, at whose Viennese theatre the work was first produced and who was the first to play
the birdman, Papageno. The opera—or rather Singspiel, “play
with songs”—is filled with the ideals, symbols, terms, rituals,
and numerology of Freemasonry.1 The Masonic Three is especially prominent: three flats in the key signature, Three
Ladies, Three Boys, Three temples, and, of course, three
tones in the major triad, which Mozart celebrates in the middle of the Overture and throughout the opera.2 The sovereign
Three is the major triad, which Mozart highlights in various
ways throughout the opera. I say all this now because the Masonic influence, though pervasive, will not be my concern. I
want to focus instead on the power—and, as I hope to show,
the wisdom—of Mozart’s music.
Part One: The Story
The plot of the Magic Flute is strange, to say the least, and
often confusing. Since it may be unfamiliar to some of you,
I will go through it briefly.
Our story begins with Prince Tamino, lost in the dark
wood of C minor and pursued by a giant serpent.3 He carries
a bow but no arrows. Three Ladies who work for the Queen
of the Night slay the serpent and give Tamino a portrait of
the Queen’s daughter, which causes the prince to fall in love
and to express his feeling in the aria we are about to examine.
By this time, he has heard Papageno sing his lusty birdcatcher song. The Queen majestically appears. She tells a sad
story about her daughter’s abduction by Sarastro, and sends
Tamino on a mission to rescue Pamina from this fiend.
Tamino is given a magic flute, and Papageno, now Tamino’s
sidekick, is given silver chimes. The flute inverts the dark
passions of its listeners: its magic turns sadness to smiles,
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
cold-heartedness to love. Flute and chimes will protect the
two friends, who are also assigned guiding spirits: Three
Boys who are said to be “young, beautiful, gracious, and
wise.”
In the next scene, we meet Pamina. Her cruel treatment
at the hands of the slaves and the Moor Monostatos (“he who
stands alone”) suggests that Sarastro is indeed a villain and
tyrant. Papageno arrives ahead of Tamino. He and Pamina
become fast friends, as the birdman tells her about his longing
for a mate and the young prince who is on his way to rescue
her. The princess and the birdman sing a graceful 6/8 duet in
E-flat major. It is an ode to marriage. “Man and Woman,
Woman and Man,” they sing, “reach unto divinity.”
This brings us to the Finale of Act I. Having arrived at
the stronghold of Sarastro,Tamino enters the Temple of Wisdom and meets a priest, who tells him he will never achieve
the reward of love and virtue while he burns with death and
vengeance. The priest disabuses Tamino of his false opinion
about Sarastro, who rules in this Temple. Tamino is told that
many of his questions must for now remain unanswered. One
thing he does learn: Pamina is alive.
His spirits renewed, Tamino plays his flute, as wild animals gather and listen, their impulses tamed by the flute’s
warbling. Papageno and Pamina arrive, but before they find
Tamino, Monostatos and the slaves arrest them. Papageno
plays his silver chimes and, for the moment, charms his
would-be captors. Then Sarastro enters, as the chorus sings:
“Hail, Sarastro! He it is to whom we joyfully submit!” Pamina, resolved to tell the truth, confesses her guilt. She gives
Sarastro two reasons for her escape: the Moor’s lustful advances and the sweet sound of her mother’s name. Sarastro
cuts her off. Her mother is a proud woman, he says: a man
must guide Pamina’s heart. Monostatos drags in Tamino, and
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he and Pamina see each other in person for the first time.
Monostatos thinks he has earned a reward but is brutally disappointed. Sarastro sentences him to seventy-seven strokes
on the soles of his feet. As Monostatos is led off, the chorus
resumes its song of praise. Tamino and Papageno are then
taken to the Temple of Probation to be purified.
Act II begins with Sarastro’s prayer to Isis and Osiris. He
asks the deities to send the spirit of wisdom to the young couple, along with patience in the upcoming trials. If Tamino and
Pamina succeed, they will have proved themselves worthy of
one another and of acceptance into the priesthood. The male
hegemony will be transformed through marriage. It will incorporate Woman into the ruling class—a bold move on the
part of Mozart and Schikaneder, since women were not allowed to become full-fledged Freemasons.4
Tamino and Papageno go through the first trial together.
They resist the temptations of the Three Ladies, who now appear in their true, demonic form. Meanwhile, the Queen of
the Night comes to Pamina and is similarly unmasked. She
gives Pamina a dagger and commands her to murder Sarastro.5 “The vengeance of hell,” she sings, “boils in my heart.”
If Pamina refuses, her mother will cast her off forever. After
the Queen leaves, Monostatos enters. He has heard everything about the planned murder and blackmails Pamina, who
can save herself and her mother only by yielding to his lust.
When Pamina refuses, Monostatos says: “Then die!” As he
raises the dagger to kill her, Sarastro enters and holds him
back. He dismisses the Moor and reassures Pamina with an
aria that is warm, regal, and deep-sounding. Pamina need not
fear that Sarastro will take vengeance on her mother. In these
sacred halls, he says, vengeance is unknown, and the spirit
of friendship and forgiveness reigns supreme.
Tamino and Papageno must again endure a test: this time
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they must remain silent in the face of all temptation to speak.
Papageno has a comic interchange with an old woman who
brings him water. She is about to reveal her name when a
thunderclap calls her away. The Three Boys come on the
scene and hand Tamino and Papageno their instruments. The
flute attracts Pamina, who arrives to find her beloved sad and
silent. She takes this as a sign that Tamino no longer loves
her. She sings of her despair in a deeply tragic aria, which
sadly mimics the lilting 6/8 rhythm of Pamina’s marriage
duet with Papageno.6
Sarastro tells Tamino that two “dangerous trials” remain.
Pamina is summoned, only to be separated from Tamino, who
goes off to face the test alone. Meanwhile, the old woman returns to Papageno and gets him to promise marriage, at which
point she is magically transformed into Papagena—a female
Papageno! But when Papageno tries to embrace her, she is
led away by an official who tells her that Papageno is not yet
worthy of her. Papageno and Pamina are now paired once
again, but in contrast to their duet, in which they sang joyfully
about the blessings of marriage, this time they sing separately
about their loneliness and despair. Both attempt suicide, but
they are stopped by the Three Boys, who rekindle Pamina’s
hope by informing her that Tamino is waiting for her.
Tamino prepares for his first dangerous trial, thinking that
he must go it alone. He hears Pamina’s voice. “Tamino, stop,”
she calls, “I must see you!” The two Men in Armour—who
gravely warn Tamino about the need to be purified by the
four elements, and to conquer the fear of death—switch to a
jolly tune once Pamina shows up. They tell the pair to enter
the Temple hand in hand. Pamina vows never to leave
Tamino’s side and to face whatever hardships come their way.
“I myself will lead you,” she says, “love will guide me.” She
urges Tamino to play his flute, so that by the power of music
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they may “walk joyfully through death’s dark night.”7 After
they endure the tests of fire and water, the chorus greets them
with a song of triumph.
The scene shifts to Papageno. After preventing his suicide, the Three Boys remind Papageno about his magic
chimes. The chimes play, and Papagena appears. The pair
sing a courtship duet suited to their birdy nature. They take
turns repeating the opening syllable of their names—“Pa, pa,
pa”—in a musicalized rendition of panting. They sing about
all the offspring they plan to have.
But a menace looms. Monostatos, the Queen, and the
Three Ladies march on the temple, supported by a threatening
accompaniment in the key of C minor. Thunder and lightning
defeat them, and they are plunged into “eternal night.” The
scene then shifts to the Temple of the Sun, as Sarastro stands
on high, and Tamino and Pamina appear dressed in priestly
vestments. “The sun’s rays,” he says, “drive away the night,
destroy the stolen power of the hypocrites.” At the end, a jubilant chorus hails the two initiates and offers thanks to Isis
and Osiris. “Strength,” they sing, “conquers and crowns, as
a reward, beauty and wisdom with an eternal crown.”
Part Two: The Unfolding of a Song
We love music because of how it makes us feel. We listen to
some works more than others because we want to experience,
again and again, the feelings they stir in us. But feeling is not
primary in music, nor is it always the reason why we listen.
Sometimes we listen to a piece of music because we wish to
hear a quality or perfection that is present in it. The reason
for listening is an active, even strenuous, contemplation
through which we participate in, and unite with, the life and
shape of the musical object—not the emotion the object
arouses.8 Our feelings, in any case, are grounded in, and
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prompted by, what we perceive in the tones; they are rooted
in what is there in the phenomenon we call music. As we now
turn to Tamino’s aria, I shall make the attempt to say what is
there.
Tamino’s aria is inspired, as we know, by an image of
Pamina, or, as we might call it, given Tamino’s fervent devotional response, an icon. The image is said to be magical,
but it surely needs no magic beyond Pamina’s likeness to enchant the young prince, who sings as if caught up in a dream.
The words to his song are as follows:
This image is enchantingly beautiful,
such as no eye has ever seen!
I feel it, how this divine portrait
Fills my heart with new emotions.
I cannot name this,
yet I feel it here burning like fire;
Could the feeling be love?
Yes, yes, it is love alone!
O, if only I could find her!
O, if she were standing before me!
I would, warm and pure . . . what would I?
Enraptured I would press her to this burning breast,
And forever would she be mine.
Tamino’s words trace out a progression in three stages: first,
he admires a divine image; second, he asks whether the feeling it inspires in him, and which at first he cannot name, is
love, but then affirms that it must be love; and third, he wonders what he would do if the beloved were standing before
him, concluding that he would press her to his breast, and she
would be his forever.
Tamino is doing more in this song than expressing his
feelings. He beholds his inner state and makes it an object of
reflection. He wonders at the power of the magical object that
he perceives and his passionate response to it. He does not
immediately identify his new emotion with love but rather
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reaches that conclusion through inner dialogue and questioning. Mozart’s music perfectly expresses the stages of Tamino’s
response, the meaning of his words, and the motions of his
soul.
The music that accompanies these words is one of
Mozart’s greatest love songs. Young listeners are sometimes
put off by the aria, as if embarrassed by Tamino’s heart-onthe-sleeve outpouring of feeling. It is easy to be condescending toward Tamino, who is young, naïve, and not very bright.
He lacks irony.9 His aria, nevertheless, towers above immature judgment and puts it to shame. As a musical object, a
work of art, the song is gorgeous, brilliant in its shadow play,
and deep. It is also truthful—a faithful rendering of the
human soul in one of its most profound shapes. Do we want
to know what it is like for a young, noble soul to experience
romantic love for the first time? If so, then we should immerse ourselves in the aria—in what tones can tell us about
love.
My musical starting-point is the observation that “Dies
Bildnis” is a precisely formed, perfectly balanced whole.
Tamino is agitated and confused. But his music, though passionate, is restrained, stately, and inward-sounding.10 It expresses his awareness, not just his feeling. The music critic
and writer of tales E. T. A. Hoffmann once said that Haydn,
Mozart, and Beethoven all had the musical virtue of “Besonnenheit.”11 The word means something like rational awareness, sensibleness, being in one’s right mind. Tamino’s aria,
with its beautiful melding of feeling and form, passion and
restraint, is a superb example of this virtue.12
The song is in E-flat major—the solemn, heroic key of
the opera—and has a moderately slow, two-beat measure. It
is scored for strings, clarinets, bassoons, and French horns
(no flutes or oboes). Their sound is like a warm glow ema-
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nating from Tamino’s heart. The aria is in a truncated version
of sonata form. It follows the usual tripartite structure of the
sonata—exposition, development, and recapitulation—inasmuch as its key-area plan goes from tonic to dominant and
then back to the tonic; but there is no repeat of the opening
theme as is customary in the sonata. Unlike song-form, which
is also tripartite, the sonata emphasizes the progressive, forward-moving unfolding of musical ideas. Circularity is
achieved, but only at the end. Along the way, the tones move
in a linear, arrow-like trajectory.13
The opening sound: a tender statement of the E-flat major
triad spelled out in dotted rhythms and played by the strings.
Clearly, the singer we are about to hear—unlike Papageno,
with his bouncy bird-catcher song—is noble. Tamino’s first
utterance is a leap on the words “Dies Bildnis,” “This
image”—a rising major sixth from scale degree 5 up to scale
degree 3 (B-flat up to G). This tonal leap expresses an event
in Tamino’s soul, the passionate wonder inspired by Pamina’s
likeness.14 When his sentence is spoken in German, the accent
is on “schön,” “beautiful”—“Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd
schön.” Mozart’s melody shifts the accent to “Bildnis,”
“image,” leaving no doubt that for Tamino the focus is on
what he sees, on the source and cause of his surging passion.15
After the inspired leap from 5 to 3, the melody gently descends by steps, pausing on degree 4 (A-flat), an unstable degree that tends downward toward 3. The musical phrase
corresponds to the first phrase of the sentence: “This image
is enchantingly beautiful.” As Tamino moves to the second
part of his sentence—“as no eye has ever seen”—he sings a
second rising sixth—from 4 up to 2, A-flat to F. He then descends by steps to 3, the tone to which his earlier 4 was pointing. Whereas the first phrase landed on a tone that was
unstable and “wanted” to move, the second complements the
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first and brings it to rest. The two phrases, thanks to the postponement of the move from 4 to 3, form a single phrase—
not two sets of tones but one coherent movement composed
of two sub-movements.16 The entire phrase is bounded by an
octave that extends from the high 3, to which Tamino leaps,
to the low 3, to which he descends by step.
Mozart’s musical language is that of tonal harmony. This
means that the music is firmly grounded in a tonal center, the
tone to which all the other tones point, and has a background
or underpinning in the movement of what we call “chords.”
We can say that this movement is an accompaniment to the
melody, but it is more precise to say that the harmony is the
structured movement that interprets the melody and reveals
its depth.17 Harmony is present in the two-part phrase we have
just examined. The harmonic movement is from the I chord,
or tonic, to the V7 chord, or dominant seventh, and back again
to I—a musical oscillation. This works because the instability
and tension of the V7 chord has a precise direction: it points
unambiguously to the I chord, in this case the E-flat major
triad. And so, we can regard Mozart’s opening two-part
phrase as the cooperation of melody and harmony, or rather
as the unity of two simultaneous kinds of tension that beget
movement: the melodic tension of individual tones and the
harmonic tension of chords. It is possible to argue that these
directed tensions and their various relations to one another
are the primary object of musical perception, that to listen to
music, at least in the tradition of tonal harmony, is to perceive
not pitches per se but forces—dynamic qualities that manifest themselves in and through pitches and hold the piece
together.18
After the opening phrase, which goes harmonically from
I to V and back again, the tones open up and move forward.
This effect is due largely to the harmony, which, having so
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far confined itself to I-V7-I, now moves to the IV chord, or
subdominant, a chord that signals the “away” move in a tonal
journey, as well as a certain leisureliness and lessening of harmonic tension. Tamino moves from the picture to his inner
state: “I feel it, I feel it, how this divine portrait fills my heart
with new emotions.” As he says “I feel it, I feel it,” he sings
appoggiaturas on “feel”—B-natural to C, then A-natural to
B-flat. Appoggiaturas are leaning tones, unstable tones on
strong beats, which briefly delay the arrival of a main tone
in the melody. The effect is an increased expressivity, an inflection perfectly suited to Tamino’s word “feel.” The accompaniment echoes the heartfelt leaning tones: as Tamino leans
into his feeling, the entire string section leans as though in
sympathy with him.
Right after his appoggiaturas, Tamino speaks of his heart,
“Herz,” and the new emotions that have been aroused in it.
He expresses an outburst on “Götterbild,” “divine portrait,”
with a second dramatic leap, this time from B-flat up to Aflat, the highest tone of his song. The interval, a minor seventh, is an even bigger leap than his opening sixth. The
melody here outlines part of the V7 or dominant-seventh
chord. The music does not resolve this tense chord, which
points to the tonic, but rather stresses it and lingers on it.
When the tonic chord finally arrives, it is not the end of
the previous phrase but the beginning of a new one. Now past
his initial outburst, Tamino retreats to a calmer, more inward
mood as he completes his sentence: “fills my heart with new
emotions.” The accompaniment is measured and lovely, like
the gentle strumming of a guitar: bass note, chord / bass note,
chord. The harmony takes us on a little musical journey, as
the melody above begins and ends on scale degree 1, that is,
E-flat. The sequence of chords here—I6, IV, I6/4, V7—arouses
the expectation that the tense V7chord will resolve to the
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tonic, which would fit with the E-flat, or scale degree 1, in
the melody. But this does not happen. When Tamino sings
his E-flat on “füllt,” “fills” (which in German closely resembles “fühlt,” “feels”), the harmony subverts the expected closure. It interprets this E-flat as part of a dissonant diminished
seventh chord based on A-natural. The tones seem to have
gone off course.
We have here a so-called deceptive cadence: we expect
the cadence to reach its end, but the harmony takes a detour
at the last minute and puts instability (in this case, extreme
instability) in place of stability. This creates tension and the
need for continued movement—for a repeat of the formula
that will finally reach its destination. This is in fact what happens. The unexpected and darkly passionate diminished-seventh chord is an applied dominant (or secondary dominant).
This is a dominant that tenses toward a chord other than the
tonic, in this case, to the V7 chord of E-flat: a B-flat dominant
seventh chord. As Tamino rises up stepwise to his E-flat on
“fills,” the tones fill the measure with a mounting passion.
On this word, three kinds of musical tension unite in a single
chord: deceptive cadence, applied dominant, diminished seventh chord. Tamino’s unassuming E-flat in the melody does
not reveal the depth of the word he sings or of the passion it
expresses. But the harmony does: it interprets Tamino’s Eflat and releases in it an unexpected possibility.19 This harmonic inflection of a melodic tone recalls what Wagner said
about harmony in general: that it is “the first thing that fully
persuades the feeling as to the emotional content of [the]
melody, which otherwise would leave to it something undertermined.”20 The more we perceive the structure and detail of
this flawless movement of tones when Tamino first sings the
word “fills:—this marriage of melody and harmony—the
more intimately we move with it, know it for what it is.21
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Right after the deceptive cadence, the first violins, as if
inspired by Tamino, sing rising phrases that form a gentle
two-part wave: up and down, higher up and down. Their
tones outline the degrees of the B-flat7 chord, to which the
diminished-seventh chord was pointing. With this move, the
tones regain their direction in the musical journey.
The dominant seventh chord spelled out by the first violins gently leads Tamino to repeat his sentence, this time with
musical closure. Again he sings his passionate rising sixth
from B-flat to G on the words “mein Herz,” “my heart,” and
then goes even higher—to his A-flat. He ends his phrase with
a smooth 3→2→1. The harmony here traverses a complete
cycle or journey, at the end aligning itself with Tamino’s Eflat: I, ii6, I6/4, V7, I. I observe in passing that this conventional
symbolism, which is admittedly useful for analysis, conceals
the true phenomenon, which is not a succession of separate
tone-stacks but rather a continuous movement of closely related phases: starting-point (I), stepping away (ii6), preparing
to point back (I6/4), pointing back (V7), and being back (I).22
Moreover, the cadence formula is not tacked on but grows,
as if organically, from what has come before. Not a device
that merely stops movement, it is a true telos, the gratifying
completion of Tamino’s opening 16-measure period.
Throughout my discussion I have emphasized musical
tension. Indeed, the Greek word for tone, tonos, derives from
the verb tenein, to stretch or strain. Tonal music makes sense,
even to the untutored ear, because we directly perceive the
continuity and the whole formed by the interrelation of musical tensions. Precise expectations are aroused, postponed,
and ultimately fulfilled. Tonal harmony may thus be characterized as erotic, as constituting a musical universe animated
by a desire or longing that is present in the tones themselves.23
That is perhaps why the tones can arouse longing in the per-
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ceptive-passionate listener. In the tones we hear the strains
of our souls: the music gives them coherent shape and represents them as objects for our contemplation.24
Right after his opening 16-measure period, Tamino
pauses, as clarinets in gentle thirds take us into a new section
of the exposition. Here the music changes key from E-flat to
B-flat, from I to V. This is a standard move for a sonata-form
piece in a major key. But it is not an imposition of a prefabricated abstract schema. It is rather an organic, natural continuation of musical movement. I and V are intimately
related: they are neighbours on the circle of fifths. Also, V is
the harmonic degree that points to I. Finally, in the music of
Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, V functions as a sort of
counter-pole—an opposite that competes with I for tonal supremacy.25 In our present case, we should note, above all, how
E-flat is dislodged and B-flat established as the new tonic.
The upper clarinet goes from G to F, that is, from 3 to 2 in E
flat, and then repeats the F. Had it gone from G to F and on
to E-flat, the key of E-flat would have been maintained:
3→2→1. It is the emphasis on 2 that subtly begins to move
the harmony from I to V. It blocks the move to E-flat as scale
degree 1, and begins to set up F as degree 5 of our new key,
B-flat. The appearance among the tones of A-natural, scale
degree 7 in the B-flat scale, solidifies this move.
Earlier, Tamino sang his appoggiaturas and the orchestra
followed. Now the reverse happens. The upper clarinet introduces a new musical strain, which Tamino follows, as if inspired by it. “I cannot name this,” he sings, “yet I feel it here
burning like fire” (“Dies Etwas kann ich zwar nicht nennen;
doch fühl ich’s hier wie Feuer brennen”). In imitation of the
clarinet, Tamino begins on his high G (now scale degree 6)
and descends stepwise. His gently undulating phrase ends
with a leaning tone (C-sharp leaning into D) on the word
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“nennen,” “name.” He then repeats the phrase, with a slight
variation, on the words “yet I feel it here burning like fire.”
The harmony is simple: oscillation between the tonic (now
B-flat) and the dominant (now F).
A brief transition in dotted rhythms, played by clarinets
and bassoons, takes us to Tamino’s first question, which he
stresses by singing it twice: “Could the feeling be love?”
(“Soll die Empfindung Liebe sein?”) Both phrases end on
tense chords: the first on an applied dominant (the V7 of V),
the second on the dominant of B-flat (an F major triad). This
harmonic tension—this upward-tending interrogative gesture—is reflected in the melody. Tamino’s first utterance of
his question outlines the B-flat triad and ends on an E-natural,
a tone foreign to B-flat (the F at the top of the triad becomes
a leaning tone to the E). His second utterance begins with a
downward leap from G to B-flat (the inverse of his opening
sixth) and ends on the unstable scale degree 2. The E-natural
with which Tamino ends the first utterance of his question is
especially affecting: “Could this feeling be love (“Liebe
sein”)?” The chromatic E-natural (highlighted by the preceding F as leaning tone), the applied dominant of which it is a
part (C7), and the florid notes of the first violin all sound as
though a light were beginning to dawn, as though the question “Could this be love?” was more than just a question. The
anticipation of the answer is heightened by the brief interlude
played by the clarinets. Their rising phrases in dotted rhythms
give Tamino his cue. His “Ja, ja!” completes the sequence of
upward melodic gestures.
Tamino answers his question: “Yes, yes, it is love alone,
love, love, it is love alone.” He utters the word “Liebe,”
“love,” four times in all—three times with an expressive leaning tone and once with a climactic flourish called a “turn.”
At the end of his first phrase (right after “Ja, ja!”), Tamino
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sings a straightforward 3→2→1 (D→C→B-flat) on the word
“allein,” “alone” or “only.” But the harmony undercuts the
stability of his final B-flat with a deceptive cadence. Instead
of V→I, we get V→VI, where VI is a minor chord. Musically, this is a subtle way of extending the phrase and producing the need to move on. Also, the minor VI adds a gently
dark inflection and fervor to the word “allein.” But the deceptive cadence may also suggest, in this case, that Tamino’s
certitude is doubtful, that he is still in the dark about what he
is feeling, just as he is ignorant of what it really means to
love.
As Tamino repeats his sentence (“It is love alone”), he
dwells on “Liebe” and makes it into its own musical phrase
in three parts: first a leap that gently descends by step, then
this same phrase repeated, and finally an embellished ascent
to a high G. The chord on this G is a dramatic diminished
seventh chord that points to the F major triad, the V of B-flat.
Both melody and harmony are at this point up in the air, begging for resolution. The eighth-note rest that follows heightens the suspense. After the rest, tension is released, as Tamino
completes his sentence: he drops more than an octave to an
F and proceeds by step to B-flat, scale degree 1, this time supported rather than undercut by the accompanying harmony.
The cadence, embellished by a turn played by the first violins,
brings the section to a close. It provides the release that the
preceding deceptive cadence had postponed.
We now enter the development or middle section of the
aria. I think you will agree that although not much time has
passed, much has happened. We have perceived the unfolding
of a musical idea that expresses the unfolding of Tamino’s
enraptured soul: music has given us access to the soul that
words alone cannot give. That the tones are embarking on a
new large section of the piece is signalled by a pronounced
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shift to quicker rhythms in the accompaniment. The tonal
drama now has more forward momentum. Up to this point,
it has been pretty much a matter of beautiful phrases in starts
and stops. This new section as a whole, this middle of the
aria, is the point of maximum tension—the crux of the tonal
drama. As we put ourselves into this extended moment of
mounting tension, we are unsure of where the tones will go.
How will the tones end this section and lead into the recapitulation? How will the recapitulation resolve all the tensions
that have built up in the course of the song?
The quicker rhythms in sixteenth- and thirty-second notes
are played by the strings. The winds enter with a recurring
pattern of syncopations or offbeat rhythms. Underneath this
dense rhythmic complex, the bass viols provide support with
a persistent B-flat in sixteenth-notes (a so-called pedal point).
They are the quickened pulse and heartbeat of this part of
Tamino’s music. Mozart brilliantly adds yet another rhythmic
element that heightens tension: he has the first violins surge
upward in thirty-second-notes grouped in quick pairs, followed by a rapid succession of appoggiaturas. These leaning
tones then take over and become the principal theme of the
violins. They are like little flutters of the heart produced by
heightened expectation. All the rhythms together form a complex musical image of the surging yet reflective passion that
leads Tamino to his second, more pressing question: “O, if
only I could find her! O, if only she were standing before me!
I would, warm and pure . . .what would I?”
The melody here begins as a stepwise ascent, which
Tamino then repeats, from B-flat, that is, scale degree 1, to
the high A-flat. Could this A-flat be hinting that we are already on our way back to the home key of E-flat major, or is
it just part of an applied dominant? When Tamino sings the
A-flat to complete his sentence “O, if only I could find her,”
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he outlines three-fourths of the dominant seventh chord that
points to E-flat (the pitches he sings are A-flat, F, and D). But
the harmony does not go to E-flat. The tones seem to be
caught in a region of harmonic indeterminacy, which is highlighted as Tamino repeats the same phrase with the same harmony. As he approaches his second question, he breaks the
pattern and sings a perfect fourth from C up to F on “ich
würde” (“I would”), then another perfect fourth from B-flat
up to E-flat on “würde” repeated. The repetition alone suggests that Tamino is suspended in mid-thought by the indeterminacy of his feelings and intentions. His melodic
indeterminacy is echoed and strengthened by the accompaniment, which here plays mysterious, dusky sounding measures with a flurry of chromatic appoggiaturas. When Tamino
sings “warm and pure,” he uses a warm-sounding G-flat on
“warm.” The harmony interprets this G-flat as part of a diminished seventh chord on A-natural, scale degree 7 of Bflat. This chord points to the B-flat major triad. The tones
seem to have found their direction, their tonal center, in scale
degree 1 of B-flat. But as Tamino now utters his second question (“what would I?”), he ends his phrase by falling a major
sixth from F down to the A-flat an octave below the A-flat
we heard earlier. The gesture is an anticlimax, coming as it
does after Tamino’s three dramatic rising phrases: two ascents
to A-flat and one to G-flat. The gesture suggests a momentary
deflation—rising confidence that is suddenly at a loss. The
low A-flat blocks the reassertion of B-flat as key. It is part of
a B-flat7 chord, the dominant seventh of E-flat major, our
home key. Tamino’s question “What would I?”, melodically
a deflating fall from F to A-flat, finds a fitting harmonic expression in an upward gesture of incompleteness—an unresolved V7 chord that leaves this entire section of the aria
hanging.
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The intense anticipation that has built up is further emphasized by the full measure of rest that follows. It is the
longest, most dramatic pause in a song full of pauses. The
soundless measure is no mere absence. It is an active nonbeing—the tense non-being of eros, that greatest and most
potent of all human tensions, the tension music seems
uniquely suited to express.
Once again, the orchestra leads the way, as the bass viols
play a constant E-flat in sixteenth notes and the violas play
an oscillating figure called an Alberti bass in thirty-second
notes. This confirms that the B-flat7 on which Tamino’s question ended was indeed the V7 of E-flat. We have returned to
the home key, and the recapitulation has begun. In this final
section of his song, Tamino, with rising self-confidence, answers his second question: “I would press her to this burning
breast, and forever would she be mine.” The harmony is refreshingly determinate. We know where we are—firmly
planted in E-flat major—as the harmony oscillates repeatedly
between I and V7. We are hearing a tonal homecoming.
Tamino’s melody is straightforward: first, a little melodic
wave that starts on a B-flat and rises to E-flat through an appoggiatura on F—“ich würde sie” (“I would her”)—then the
same melodic phrase repeated—“voll Ent-zü-cken” (“enraptured” or “utterly thrilled”). His next phrase, which begins
similarly, introduces a pattern of skips and ends on a chromatic D-flat: “an diesen heißen Busen drücken” (“press to
this burning or heated breast”). The E-flat to D-flat on
“drücken,” “press,” captures the act of pressing. This chromatic tone tenses forward. It conspires with the tones in the
accompaniment to form a I7 chord, that is, the E-flat major
triad with D-flat as a destabilizing seventh. The I7, which interprets and deepens Tamino’s D-flat, is an applied or passing
dominant that pushes into the final phrase of the aria: “und
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ewig wäre sie dann mein,” “and forever would she be mine.”
Tamino repeats this final phrase five times in all, three
times with the upbeat “und” (“and”) and twice without. The
phrases without the “und” have greater urgency and are allowed to begin on the crucial word “ewig,” “forever.” The I7
chord on “drücken” tends toward an A-flat triad, the IV
chord, or subdominant, in E-flat major. But as Tamino moves
to his first utterance of “and forever would she be mine,”
Mozart substitutes the ii6 chord, which plays the same role as
IV in the harmonic cycle—the moment of stepping away and
preparing for the dominant. Why the substitution? No doubt
because the ii chord, being minor, has greater warmth. On
this ii6 chord, which lasts an entire measure, Tamino sings a
smooth ascent to his high A-flat. He then drops to D, scale
degree 7 in E-flat, by way of a leaning tone. The first violins
second this lovely melodic phrase. The D is part of the chord
played by the strings: the V7 of E-flat. The music pauses on
this tense dominant chord.
Then, something familiar returns: the calm measured
phrase from the exposition, where Tamino sang the words
“fills my heart with new emotions.” The first appearance of
this phrase ended with a deceptive cadence on a diminished
seventh chord (on the word “fills”). Mozart repeats that cadence here. But whereas in the exposition Tamino ended his
second phrase serenely on scale degree 1, here, at the corresponding moment, he bypasses the E-flat and leaps to a high
G on “mein.” This is the measure in which phrases with
“und” switch to phrases without it. This change quickens the
movement of the song. It also produces an elision on the
tones G, E-flat, and C that allows Tamino to combine “mine”
and “forever” in the single phrase “mine forever.”
Tamino goes on to stress the degrees of the E-flat major
triad in a smoothly flowing phrase that seems destined to land
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on a low E-flat, that is, scale degree 1. But at the last moment
he leaps from low F (scale degree 2) to the G a ninth above
on the word “mine”— and then overtops the G with an A-flat
on “ewig.” This is the most dramatic moment in the aria, as
Tamino intensifies his previous elision, his musicalized,
heartfelt dream of eternally possessing his beloved. Tamino
sounds very heroic and confident here. He sings his signature
G a lot, as though this single tone, scale degree 3, embodied
the whole of his passion. When he gets to the last restatement
of his phrase, the melody emphasizes the tones of the E-flat
major triad. He leaps, for one last time, to his signature G—
this time, significantly, on the word “sie,” “her.” This G is
not a stable degree of a chord but an appoggiatura tending toward F, scale degree 2. Tamino, in other words, does not
merely stress the pronoun that refers to Pamina with a high
note; instead he puts his whole heart into the word and leans
toward his beloved. Having reached high G, the tones now
descend to E-flat, scale degree 1, by step, with the assistance
of D, that is, scale degree 7: 3→2→1→7→1 (“sie dann
mein”). A straightforward cadence affirms closure: IV, I6/4,
V7, I.
The entire orchestra ends the piece with a brief, noblesounding coda composed of two complementary phrases. The
phrases are the tonal expressions of the two complementary
sides of Tamino’s nature, as it is revealed in the aria: the first
heroic and forte, the second tender and piano, a recollection
of the fervent E-flat chords with which the song began.
So ends my journey through Tamino’s aria. I have tried
to be faithful in speech to what is there in the tones. I have
not, of course, captured all that is there. No one could.
Mozart’s music, like all great music, is inexhaustible, and
every act of listening brings new discoveries. I have tried to
present the aria as a wondrous object—a time-structure—that
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comes to us and is welcomed by our musically receptive
souls. This time-structure “speaks” to our passion and our
perception, just as the enchanted portrait, a visual or spatial
form, “speaks” to the soul of Tamino.
I have placed special emphasis on tonal tension, and on
directed tension as the possible ground of coherence and
unity in tonal music. To listen to Tamino’s aria—his strain of
musicalized longing—is not just to hear coherence from one
moment to the next. It is to hear the tension at work in the
whole: in the overall form that unfolds in time, by analogy
with organic growth. The exposition is an ordered accumulation of tension. The development section extended and
heightened that tension; it expresses Tamino’s point of maximum anticipation and perplexity. Of all three sections, it is
the one that most has the character of an arrow. The recapitulation takes us home, reaffirms E-flat as the central key, recalls part of the music from the exposition, and brings the
whole time-structure to perfect balance and resolution. It does
all this by accumulating its own tensions, with which the
tones move swiftly and urgently to a satisfying close.
To listen perceptively to the aria, to hear what is there, is
demanding. It takes effort and study. I would like to suggest
that behind all the complexities, a simple scheme prevails.
The melody, as we know, begins with a rising sixth to a G,
scale degree 3 of E-flat major. The entire piece may be heard
as the attempt by 3 to reach 1 through the intermediation of
2: G→F→E flat. Recall that the first key change came about
because the first clarinet played 3→2→2 rather than 3→2→1.
This facilitated the transformation of 2 in E-flat into 5 in Bflat. The rest of the piece—key changes and all—exploits and
further develops this move to 2.26 The completion of the move
3→2→1 in the overarching scheme takes place only at the
end, only after the recapitulation has affirmed E-flat, not
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merely as the key of the final section but as the governing
tone of the entire aria. Only at the end of the journey do we
really have the beginning.
Part Three: Wisdom
My account of Tamino’s song would be incomplete if I did
not talk about Pamina, the enchanting object of Tamino’s
love. Pamina is the focal point of the opera. Of all the “good”
characters, she endures the greatest and most prolonged sufferings: her mother’s absence, the stern tutelage of Sarastro,
the violent advances and blackmail of Monostatos, and the
revelation of her mother as a demon bent on a murder Pamina
herself is ordered to commit. Finally, she suffers despair over
what she thinks is lost love, and is almost driven to suicide.27
Pamina is also an exalted figure in the opera. It is she who
most embodies what is new about the new order. It is she, a
virtuous woman, who gives the lie to all the negative things
said about women in the opera. Sarastro told her that a man
must guide her heart. This is true, in a sense: Tamino gives
Pamina’s heart its proper object and bearing. But in the last
two trials, it is Pamina who guides Tamino, as love guides
her. Finally, it is Pamina who reveals that the magical vocation of music is not to gain power over others, or merely to
amuse oneself, but to ward off the fear of death.
When Pamina joins Tamino for the final trials near the
end of the opera, the two face each other in more than the obvious sense. They now see each other clearly for the first
time. There is mutual recognition. This recognition is mirrored, or rather enacted, in the complementary phrases the
lovers use to sing each other’s names: “Tamino mine! O what
happiness!” “Pamina mine! O what happiness!” The string
of monosyllabic German words that the lovers sing to each
other—“O welch ein Glück”—is both simpler and more con-
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crete than this English translation. A more accurate rendering
is: “O what a stroke of good fortune!” Tamino and Pamina
are not referring to a subjective state or feeling, but to an
event, to something wondrous that has just happened and that
presents itself to their perception: the arrival and the presence
of the beloved. The phrases they sing are two halves of a little
musical circle or period in F major. When Pamina sings
Tamino’s name, she does so with a rising major sixth—the
same interval with which Tamino’s soul rose up in response
to Pamina’s image. But this is not mere repetition. The sixth
at the beginning of Tamino’s aria was the sound of passion
that aspired but did not know itself. It had shadows. Pamina’s
sixth is different. It is pure, luminous, and rationally aware.
It has “Besonnenheit,” and in more than the strictly musical
sense.28 Pamina’s sixth is the enlightenment and perfection of
Tamino’s. It is the sublime moment in which passion, now
perceptive, finds its purpose.
When Tamino first responded to the magic that was Pamina, his love was mediated by an image. He asked himself
what he would do if the beloved were standing in front of
him. That moment has arrived, for here stands Pamina, not
as image but as solid reality. Tamino’s first rush of love was
itself a kind of image and dream, a first step in the soul’s journey from erotic striving and heroic aspiration, through painful
disillusionment and trials, to the moment of enlightenment,
when images are seen for what they are, and when the lover,
having transcended mere feeling, now grasps what love really
is. Pamina is the Other in and through whom Tamino can
know himself as the man who loves Pamina, not as a possession but as partner. He can see who he is in the eyes of the
beloved because the sound of her rising sixth, as she sings
his name, shows him how. Her sixth, her love in musical
form, is his unfailing guide.
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Pamina is more than Tamino’s beloved, more than a symbol of virtuous womanhood (her mother in redeemed form),
more even than the first Woman Ruler of a new order based
on marriage and reconciliation. She is Tamino’s wisdom, and
the wisdom—and true magic—of Mozart’s Magic Flute.
NOTES
1. For an exhaustive study of the Masonic elements in Mozart’s opera,
see Jacques Chailley, The Magic Flute, Masonic Opera, trans. Herbert
Weinstock (New York: Knopf, 1971). Chailley finds Masonic meaning
even in the number of notes used in individual phrases. His analysis
makes the plot more coherent but ultimately distracts us from Mozart’s
music.
2. Chailley makes the interesting observation that there were originally
five Ladies, in keeping with the Masonic number for the Female, and that
this was reduced to three due to “necessities of casting” (109-110).
3. “[T]he key of C minor throughout Die Zauberflöte is nearly always
connected with death or the threat of death.” From Erik Smith, “The
music,” in Peter Branscombe, W. A. Mozart: Die Zauberflöte, Cambridge
Opera Handbooks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 130.
4. During Mozart’s time there existed ancillary Masonic lodges that accepted women—so-called “Lodges of Adoption”—but the members of
these lodges were barred from the loftier honors and duties open to men
(Chailley, 74-79).
5. The Queen explains that killing Sarastro is the only way she and her
daughter can retrieve the “seven-fold Circle of the Sun,” which Pamina’s
father, at his death, gave Sarastro. She recalls, resentfully, that the father
wished to give the magical object to the “manly” care of Sarastro and refused to entrust it to “your woman’s spirit.” In the Queen’s resentful mind,
the murder of Sarastro will topple the dominance of the Male and assert
the supremacy of the Female.
6. Pamina’s aria is in G minor, the key her mother used to tell the story
of her daughter’s abduction. It is also the key Papageno will use when he
prepares to commit suicide. Charles Rosen observes the following: “In
all of Mozart’s supreme expressions of suffering and terror—the G minor
Symphony, Don Giovanni, the G minor Quintet, Pamina’s aria in Die
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Zauberflöte—there is something shockingly voluptuous.” The Classical
Style, 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 1997), 324-5.
7. It is here that Pamina reveals the history of the flute, which her father
carved, amid thunder and lightning, from the heart of a thousand-yearold oak.
8. See Eduard Hanslick, On the Musically Beautiful, translated by Geoffrey Payzant (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1986). Hanslick famously attacked
the “aesthetics of feeling”: “to induce . . . feelings in us is not the task of
music or of any other art. Art first of all puts something beautiful before
us. It is not by means of feeling that we become aware of beauty, but by
means of the imagination as the activity of pure contemplation” (4). Unfortunately, Hanslick’s dichotomy makes it impossible to understand the
musical bond between feeling and contemplation, or, in the terms of this
essay, between passion and perception.
9. Kierkegaard (or rather one of his personae) criticizes Tamino, who
compares poorly with Don Giovanni, Mozart’s fully developed embodiment of music as eros: “As a dramatic character, Tamino is completely
beyond the musical, just as in general the spiritual development the play
wants to accomplish is a completely unmusical idea” (“The Immediate
Erotic Stages or The Musical-Erotic,” in Either/Or, translated by Howard
V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, 2 vols. [Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1987], Vol. I, 82.) The Magic Flute is musically deficient, it would
seem, because “the whole piece tends toward consciousness,” that is, toward the clear daylight delineation of good and bad, or the ethical. It celebrates marriage, which “is absolutely unmusical” (ibid., 83). In these
assertions, Kierkegaard (or rather his alter ego) seems unaware of the
subtly dark, erotic side of the noble characters in Mozart’s fairy tale. See
note 3 above.
10. Ingmar Bergman’s film portrays Tamino accurately as he sings this
aria. The actor gazes lovingly at the picture and, at one point, presses it
to his heart. The singer performs the song not as though he were seeking
the admiration of an audience, but as an internal, musical-erotic meditation. Even his high notes, which sound properly heroic, retain this inward
quality.
11. Hoffmann defends Beethoven against the charge that he doesn’t know
how to control himself as a composer: “In truth he is fully the equal of
Haydn and Mozart in rational awareness, his controlling self detached
from the inner realm of sounds and ruling it in absolute authority.”
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(“Beethoven’s Instrumental Music,” in E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings, edited by David Charlton, translated by Martyn Clarke [Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1989], 98.) Mozart’s own affirmation of this
virtue appears in a letter to his father. Explaining his reasons for a certain
key change in the Abduction from the Seraglio, Mozart writes that just as
“passions whether violent or not, must never be expressed to the point of
exciting disgust,” so too “music, even in the most terrible situations, must
never offend the ear, but must please the listener, or in other words must
never cease to be music.” (The Letters of Mozart and his Family, translated and edited by Emily Anderson [New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1966],
Vol. II, 769).
12. The Queen, too, in her most hysterical moments, sings in a way that
is orderly, lucid, and musical. She is always a pleasure to hear. In Mozart’s
universe, even the Queen exhibits “Besonnenheit”—though, admittedly,
she pushes the envelope.
13. For the authoritative treatment of sonata form, see Charles Rosen,
The Classical Style (cf. note 4 above). For a revealing account of “circle”
vs. “arrow,” see Karol Berger, Bach’s Cycle, Mozart’s Arrow: An Essay
on the Origins of Musical Modernity, Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2007. Berger argues that whereas the music of Bach presents time
as a self-enclosed, circular image of eternity (“God’s time”), that of
Mozart affirms an arrow-like progression that imitates “the temporal disposition of events” (179). Circle and arrow are central metaphors for Victor Zuckerkandl, who stresses the arrow-like movement of counterpoint.
He acknowledges, however, that the classical sonata combines “chain”
(arrow-like succession of phrases) with “circle”: “The whole [of a movement] is symmetrical: A—B—A; but within each section [exposition, development, recapitulation] the chain principle is dominant” (Victor
Zuckerkandl, The Sense of Music [Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1959], 96).
14. It is tempting to compare Tamino’s rising major sixth with the most
famous rising sixth in all of music—the minor sixth at the very beginning
of Tristan and Isolde. What do these sixths show us about the nature of
eros? Do they point to two different kinds of erotic love? Or are they two
sides of the one passion we call eros?
15. For a fuller discussion of Mozart’s shift of accent in the Magic Flute,
see again Erik Smith’s essay in Branscombe, Magic Flute, 120-124 (cf.
note 2 above).
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16. Hanslick stresses the perception of movement in music in his famous
definition of music’s content: “The content of music is tonally moving
forms” (The Beautiful in Music, 29). He does not, however, speculate on
the cause and nature of this movement.
17. On harmony as the third dimension of depth, see Victor Zuckerkandl,
The Sense of Music, 171-179. Throughout this essay, I use the term
“chord” loosely and without much reflection. It is in fact not easy to say
what a chord is, and hence what it means for harmony to be the movement
of chords. At one point in his discussion, Zuckerkandl asks: “Where is
the chord?” He answers: “the chord is not in the tones but, in a sense,
above them, more immaterial than the tones themselves” (ibid., 184). This
leads him to the fascinating assertion that a chord is “something like an
idea—an idea to be heard, an idea for the ear, an audible idea.”
18. The theory of tones as “dynamic qualities” is that of Zuckerkandl,
who develops the theory in three amazing books: The Sense of Music,
Sound and Symbol, and Man, the Musician (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959, 1956, and 1973 respectively).
19. It is worth noting that a deceptive cadence is not a sudden, disruptive
shock, but rather a musical surprise that makes sense to the ear. The reason is that the unanticipated chord has at least one tone in common with
the chord we expect. In the most common deceptive cadence, the V7 chord
goes to VI, which has two tones in common with the I chord. In the present case, the deceptive chord—the diminished-seventh chord built on Anatural—has in it the two tones common to I and VI (C and E-flat), but
adds the destabilizing tones A-natural and G-flat. That this tense unexpected chord arrives so naturally, and just as naturally leads to the V7 of
the key of E-flat, points to the marvelous fluidity and ordered freedom of
harmonic movement.
20. Wagner on Music and Drama, selected and arranged by A. Goldman
and E. Sprinchorn (New York: Da Capo Press, 1964), 214.
21. The psychologist Géza Révész writes the following about the musical
listener: “He is able to follow the composer’s intentions, even at times to
anticipate them. It is also characteristic of the musical person to sink himself into the mood of the music, and achieve a relation to it that has an effect on his whole spiritual being. He experiences the art work so inwardly
and so profoundly that he feels as though he were creating it” (Introduction to the Psychology of Music [New York: Dover, 2001], 133-134).
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22. One especially problematic aspect of the usual chord notation is that
it implies but does not emphasize the motion of the bass. The various
“positions” of triads—root, first inversion, second inversion, etc.—are
really ways of composing a bass line. In the present case, where the
chordal progression is I6, IV, I6/4, V7, vii5/6 of V, V7, the bass has a beautifully continuous ascent: G to A-flat to B-flat to B-flat repeated to C to D,
and finally to the E-flat, the root of the E-flat triad that begins Tamino’s
complementary phrase and the harmonic progression that culminates in
the perfect cadence to the 16-measure period. A good way to hear this
bass line, this voice in its own right, is to sing along with it.
23. Zuckerkandl, following the music theorist Heinrich Schenker, calls
this Tonwille, the will of the tones.
24. Schopenhauer is perhaps the only philosopher who attempts to explain
the intimate connection between music and the human self, and to explicate the classical idea according to which music is a form of imitation.
Music, he argues, is a copy of the will that is the source of all representation. This will, to which we are tragically enslaved, is an urge or desire
that is incapable of being satisfied. In music, we hear this urge as pure
striving detached from particular objects. This removal of determinate
objects permits us to enjoy the pleasant, aesthetic contemplation of the
tragic source of all things, and of ourselves. Through this enjoyment, we
gain momentary refuge from the suffering and curse that is human life.
See The World as Will and Representation, translated by E. F. J. Payne
(New York: Dover, 1969), Vol. I, 255-267, and Vol. II, 447-457.
25. See Charles Rosen on this point: “The greatest change in eighteenthcentury tonality, partly influenced by the establishment of equal temperament, is a new emphatic polarity between tonic and dominant, previously
much weaker” (Rosen, The Classical Style, 26). I have borrowed the term
“counter-pole” from Zuckerkandl, who uses it to characterize the role of
scale degree 5 in the major scale (The Sense of Music, 26).
26. The “history” of F in the piece tends to support my suggestion: the
initial emphasis by the clarinet at the first key change, the continued emphasis of F in the melody that follows, the peak of Tamino’s “Ja, ja!” and
the appoggiaturas that follow, the Fs that appear in various roles in the
development, and the appoggiatura Fs at the beginning of the recapitulation, which lean temptingly to E-flat, as if asking other tones to help it
make a final convincing close. (The harmonic move from II to I occurs
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in the second Act, where the key of F major, with which the Act begins,
returns right before the E-flat Finale.)
My suggestion about 3→2→1 as the underlying structural principle
derives from Heinrich Schenker’s notion of the Urlinie or “primordial
line.” See his Free Composition, translated and edited by Ernst Oster
(New York: Longman, 1979), 3-9.
27. Branscombe notes another important aspect of Pamina’s suffering:
“Without the advantage accorded to Tamino and Papageno of knowing
about the trials to be undergone, she survives her own trials”
(Branscombe, Magic Flute, 217).
28. Pamina shows her capacity for straight speech when Sarastro appears
at the end of Act I. Papageno anxiously asks her in C minor: “My child,
what now shall we speak?” The harmony intensifies his anxiety with the
extremely tense augmented sixth chord, an applied dominant to the V on
which the question hangs. Pamina responds with a soothing move to C
major: “The truth, the truth, even if it were a crime.” Charles Rosen observes that when Pamina sings “the truth,” “the music takes on an heroic
radiance unheard in opera before then” (Rosen, Classical Style, 319).
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Socrates, Parmenides, and the
Way Out
Judith Seeger
Before I begin, I would like to warn you that you must not
expect this lecture to present a definitive interpretation of
Plato’s Parmenides. Indeed, I am so far from being an expert
on Plato that I am somewhat amazed to find myself here behind the podium, where experts usually stand on Friday
nights. Furthermore, the Parmenides is perhaps one of Plato’s
most difficult dialogues—a fact that, curiously enough, gives
me comfort, for I have yet to hear or read an unambiguously
persuasive interpretation of it. In any case, as you know, the
lecture itself is only part of these Friday-night events. If I succeed in opening a discussion in which we all can participate
and learn, then I will have accomplished something. My goal,
you see, is modest.
The talk will consist of the following sections. First, I will
summarize the story for you, drawing your attention to the
character of the interlocutors as it is revealed through their
words and through the narrator’s observations. I will explore
in particular the character of young Socrates, and I will also
give some attention to Plato’s portrayal of Parmenides as
compared with what we know about the philosopher Parmenides. Then, I will consider the fundamental questions
raised by the dialogue, which are, I believe, put most succinctly: “What is philosophy?” and “Is philosophy possible?”
Finally, I will suggest that the dialogue not only raises these
questions, but also answers them favorably, though in such a
Judith Seeger is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis. This lecture
was originally delivered on January 20, 1995.
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way that we are forced to look beyond the words themselves
and compelled to pursue the answers. That is, we are invited
to engage in philosophy ourselves.
I don’t remember where I was when I first read every dialogue of Plato’s, but I do remember where I was when I first
read the Parmenides. The year is 1990. It is the afternoon of
the day before seminar. I am sitting in my living room on the
dark blue loveseat between two windows. My back is to the
west wall, and, looking up, I can follow the sun’s slow sinking by observing the lengthening patches of brightness (cold
brightness, because it is a January afternoon) on either side
of me. They stretch toward the opposite wall, then reach and
start to climb it. Dust motes, drifting lazily in the sunbeams,
begin a crazed dance as the furnace fan kicks on. When the
fan goes off, the dance subsides.
Do you get the impression that I was having trouble concentrating on my reading? Actually, it was maddening. When
I reached the end of the assigned reading (which is partway
through Parmenides’ argument for the existence of the One,
after which we jump directly to the final statement) and managed, out of respect for the other dialogues in the volume, not
to pitch the book against that same wall the sunlight was
climbing, I was convinced that I had just read a very old joke,
which I was possibly the first one ever to “get” (for otherwise
why would we be wasting our time reading it?), but which
wasn’t really very funny. I was relatively new to philosophy.
But it seemed to me that Plato had been pulling our collective
leg for a long time.
That seminar conversation, and the one the following
year, when I read the dialogue for the second time, helped a
little; but neither one dispelled my conviction that the dialogue was, at best, seriously unbalanced, a feeling which became only more acute when one of my seminar co-leaders
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dismissed the last sentence of the dialogue as “nonsense.”
Parmenides concludes (in R.E. Allen’s translation): “Then let
this be said, and also that, as it seems, whether unity is or is
not, both unity and the others are and are not, and appear and
do not appear to be, all things in all ways, relative both to
themselves and to each other.” To which young Aristotle, who
has been Parmenides’ chosen interlocutor during the exercise,
replies “very true” (166c). Recall, also, that this particular
Aristotle, as we are deliberately told in the dialogue, later became one of the Thirty Tyrants, whose crimes Socrates speaks
about in the Apology (32d).
So Parmenides’ display of dialectical fireworks in the second part of the dialogue seems to be nonsense, and possibly
dangerous nonsense, to boot, if someone who is as thoroughly persuaded by it as young Aristotle seems to be grows
up to be a tyrant so ruthless as to try to implicate innocent
men, including Socrates, in the murder of other innocent men.
(Cf. Republic 537e-539d, on the dangers of teaching dialectic
to young men). Nonetheless, Parmenides’ dialectical exercise
follows an impressive presentation of young Socrates in the
beginning of the dialogue. Plato shows us what appears to be
Socrates’ first, sincere, if perhaps somewhat naive, account
of the Forms. And he shows us Socrates exploring one of the
difficulties raised by the concept of Forms: the so-called
problem of participation. Thus, a fundamental tenet (perhaps
the fundamental tenet) of Socratic and Platonic thought is
paired with what appears to be closely reasoned gobbledygook. This presents us at the outset with a formidable
dilemma. The Parmenides, like many other Platonic dialogues, but perhaps more blatantly than most, seems to have
a split personality, to be composed of two parts that fit together uneasily at best.
The problem of unity in this dialogue, then, part of which
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is at least ostensibly about the One, is striking, even on the
level of its organization. Questions arise which, like the problem of participation itself, will simply not go away. What is
the nature of this exercise Parmenides calls a “devious passage through all things” (136e), without which he claims the
mind cannot attain to the truth? How are we to read it? There
are several possibilities. One is that Parmenides’ tedious
“gymnastic,” with its nonsensical conclusion, is so far from
being a legitimate means of searching for truth that we might
read it as Plato’s example of exactly what not to do if you
want to pursue philosophy. The sort of reasoning we scornfully call logic-chopping comes to mind. In this reading, Parmenides is the consummate sophist, who can manipulate
words to mean anything he wants, with the inescapable outcome that ultimately they can mean nothing at all. If this Parmenides is really supposed to represent the philosopher by
that name, the sense of such an interpretation would be that
the older man has not only been displaced but has also been
made to discredit himself. He becomes an old fool, who
would be dangerous if we were foolish enough to take him
seriously.
There are, nonetheless, problems with this reading. It
does not take into account the care Plato apparently lavished
on this dialogue, or the respect with which Socrates seems to
regard the older philosopher. Parmenides claims that the exercise he performs regarding the One is necessary for
Socrates’ philosophic maturation; and young Socrates, so far
as we know, remains present and attentive throughout (although at least a few of the members of my preceptorial on
Parmenides thought that surely he must have silently departed—at least, that is what they would have done). It seems
not unreasonable to suppose that Socrates is learning something necessary, and before we decide that this necessary
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something is how not to proceed, the dialogue deserves a
closer look. So let us return to the first part of the dialogue to
examine its setting and characters and try to determine who
this Socrates is, who this Parmenides is, what the one might
have to learn from the other, and what we might have to learn
from it all.
The part of the dialogue before Parmenides begins his exercise comprises only a bit more than a third of the entire
piece. It is immediately evident that the dialogue is set in a
“present” which is very remote from the conversation among
Socrates, Zeno, and Parmenides that it recounts. Though we
are given no date, we may assume that all the participants in
the original conversation are dead, including Socrates, if only
because, had Socrates been alive, Cephalus, who is the firstperson narrator of the entire piece, would certainly have gone
directly to him rather than to a man who had acquired the
conversation second-hand. In the “present” (which is itself
actually a “past” recounted by the primary narrator to unnamed listeners who become us, the readers), Cephalus and
some of his fellow-citizens who are interested in philosophy
have come to Athens from Clazomenae in Ionia. They have
made this journey because they have heard that someone in
Athens has memorized that long-past conversation, and they
would like to hear it. This Cephalus, by the way, is not the
Cephalus of the Republic, a man who, you will recall, was
not sufficiently interested in philosophy even to stay in his
own home when Socrates was brought there (331d), much
less to go out of his way to seek out a dialogue from the distant past.
The opening scene of the Parmenides is, nevertheless,
reminiscent of the beginning of the Republic, both in the
name of its narrator and in the first sentence, which recalls
Socrates’ narration of his descent into the Pireaus. Cephalus
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begins, “When we arrived at Athens from our home in Clazomenae, we met Adeimantus and Glaucon in the Agora”
(126a). Unlike Socrates in the Republic, Cephalus is not
forcibly detained by eager questioners. Instead, Glaucon and
Adeimantus (who are those once-young men of the Republic)
welcome him cordially, and he tells them he has come to ask
a favor. He would like for them to take him and his friends
to their half-brother, Antiphon (who is also Plato’s halfbrother), who, he hopes, may be persuaded to recite from
memory the conversation held by Socrates, Zeno, and Parmenides that Antiphon learned from a student of Zeno’s
named Pythodorus, who was present at that encounter many
years ago. Antiphon—who was once sufficiently interested
in philosophy, if not to practice it, at least to memorize an exceedingly complex conversation—is now more interested in
raising horses. The others come upon him instructing a smith
how to make a bit. At first, Antiphon is reluctant to comply
with their request, for reciting the conversation will be, as he
says in words later nearly echoed by Parmenides himself, an
arduous task. But he finally allows himself to be persuaded
to perform, as Parmenides will later in the dialogue (and did,
earlier in time).
Since Antiphon was not present at the conversation he is
about to relate, he gives his listeners Pythodorus’s account.
As Pythodorus told it, Zeno and Parmenides once came to
Athens for the Panathenaia festival, and stayed outside the
walls in Pythodorus’s house. Parmenides was elderly at the
time, quite gray, and distinguished-looking. Zeno was about
40 years old, tall and handsome. It was said that Zeno had
been Parmenides’ favorite; the suggestion is of an erotic relationship. We do not know the age of young Socrates, but
the dialogue emphasizes that he was very young, though
older than Parmenides’ interlocutor Aristotle. Socrates, at the
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beginning of Pythodorus’s account, has been listening to
Zeno read a treatise, of which we readers hear nothing, for
Pythodorus had heard the treatise before, and, evidently not
caring to hear it again, enters the house with Parmenides only
after Zeno has finished reading. Socrates asks Zeno to read
the beginning again, and Zeno does; but the second reading
serves only to emphasize the utter unimportance of Zeno’s
text, for the narrator does not give it to us, even though he is
now present. We hear instead only Socrates’ summation of
it, which is this: “If things are many, then it follows that the
same things must be both like and unlike, but that is impossible, for unlike things cannot be like or like things unlike”
(127e). Zeno agrees that this summary is accurate, and
Socrates presses on: “Now, if it is impossible for unlike things
to be like and like things unlike, it is also impossible for there
to be many things; for if there were, things would undergo
impossible qualifications. Isn’t that the point of your arguments, to contend, contrary to everything generally said, that
there is no plurality? And don’t you suppose that each of your
arguments is a proof of just that, so that you believe that you
have given precisely as many proofs that there is no plurality
as there are arguments in your treatise? Is that what you
mean, or have I failed to understand you?” (127e). It appears
that Socrates is baiting Zeno, suggesting that he has become
mired in the contradiction of providing many arguments to
prove that there is no such thing as many. But Zeno, again,
graciously concedes that Socrates’ estimation of his work is
correct. Since innuendo did not work, Socrates now attacks
outright. Addressing not Zeno but Parmenides by name, he
accuses Zeno of saying much the same thing as Parmenides
himself while misleading his readers into thinking he is saying something different. Parmenides remains silent, and again
Zeno, clearly stung, replies, but quite mildly considering that
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he has just been accused of a kind of cheating. He protests
that this particular treatise was, in the first place, the work of
a young man written in a spirit of controversy, not of an older
man zealous for reputation, and, in the second place, that it
was stolen from him and published without his consent.
Though the effect of these disclaimers is less to enlighten us
than to cause us to wonder why he is reading the discredited
treatise of his youth now that he is older and presumably
knows better, Zeno continues to agree that Socrates did not
misrepresent his thesis. Parmenides, meanwhile, makes his
presence increasingly felt by saying not a word.
Socrates has tried both innuendo and direct accusation in
what appears to be an unsuccessful attempt to draw first Zeno
and then Parmenides into discussion. He plunges on. The paradox of unity and multiplicity raised by Zeno has a simple
solution, Socrates claims. The answer is the Forms, which
exist alone, by themselves. If someone could demonstrate to
him that Forms could change, that would be amazing,
Socrates asserts. But it is not at all remarkable that other sorts
of things should share contrary characteristics. Socrates uses
himself as an example. In order to say that he is many, that
is, partakes of multitude, all anyone would have to do would
be to consider his front, his back, his upper body, his lower
body, and so on. If, on the other hand, someone wanted to
say that he partakes of unity, that person would need only
consider him one of the seven—but remember that only five
are named—present at this particular conversation (129d).
With regard to the changeable things we perceive, plurality
and unity depend, in effect, on how you look at them. There
is no genuine paradox in this, only a manipulation of language. The tone of Socrates’ speech is aggressive. He seems
to be implying that Zeno is either a liar or a fool.
I have tried to capture something of Socrates’ tone in this
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summary. He has, of course, expounded his opinions at much
greater length than I just have. If you were reading it your
impression would likely be that this brash young man has indeed gone too far: he’s smart all right, but he is also rude and
offensive. That is, evidently, the feeling the reader is supposed to have, because suddenly we are recalled to Pythodorus, who, Antiphon says, expected Zeno and Parmenides
to become angry, and was surprised when instead they
glanced at each other from time to time as Socrates spoke and
smiled as if in admiration. Now, for the first time, Parmenides
speaks, and his words reveal that young Socrates, in flailing
away at Zeno, has been, in effect, setting himself up. Young
Socrates is about to meet his master.
First, Parmenides blandly commends Socrates on his talent for argument; then he asks if he himself was responsible
for the distinction between Forms and the things that partake
of them. Parmenides does not give Socrates time to reply to
this question, so I suppose we do not really know the answer.
Instead, he immediately becomes more specific. Is there, he
asks Socrates, a likeness apart from the likeness we possess?
Is there One? Is there Many? “Of course.” Then what about
the just, the beautiful, the good, and all such things? “Yes.”
Then are there Forms for such things as man, fire, and water?
Socrates has no answer. Within three simple exchanges, Parmenides has reduced him to a state of perplexity, that condition of ignorance which is discomfiting to say the least,
because anyone who is aware he is in it also knows that he
must escape from it, and there is, at least as far as Socrates
can see at this point, no way out.
This is a most important moment, for it is evidently the
first time that Socrates has realized that he is in the state to
which he will later try to reduce all those with whom he
speaks. The force of this image of aporia, recalling Zeno-
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phon’s use of it in the Anabasis (III.1.11-13), is of a desperate
need to escape from imminent danger, to find a pathway to
safety where none is apparent. If Parmenides had stopped
here he would have accomplished quite a lot, but he is not
yet finished with young Socrates. What about certain other
things, he asks, vile and worthless things, like mud, dirt, and
hair? At first Socrates seems to have returned to firm ground.
Not at all, he answers, in his previous assured manner. That
would be impossible. But then he stumbles a bit, driven to
face the abyss, I think, both by the questions of a man he
clearly respects and by a characteristic honesty as remarkable
as the intelligence and talent for argument he has already
demonstrated. “Still,” young Socrates says, “I sometimes
worry lest what holds in one case may not hold in all, but
when I take that stand, I retreat, for fear of tumbling undone
into depths of nonsense. So I go back to the things we just
said have characters, and spend my time dealing with them”
(130d). This is no way to escape from aporia. It may very
well be that there is a significant difference in kind between
justice, say, and hair, but a simple assertion of that difference
is not sufficient to make it so, and Socrates knows it. He is in
this position, Parmenides says, because he is still young and
philosophy has not yet taken hold of him. When he is older
and more experienced he will despise none of these things.
Now he still pays too much attention to what people think.
This reply is problematic for a sympathetic reading of
Parmenides, if it implies that he considers mud, dirt, and hair
equal in kind to justice, beauty, and the good. I do not think
that he does, if only because he calls them particularly vile
and worthless, but we will consider this further when I explore the question of who this Parmenides is. Whatever the
reading, it is clearly not Parmenides’ intent here to explore
what sorts of things have Forms. Rather, simply by raising
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the question, he has done this bright young know-it-all the
immense favor of reducing him to a state in which he has
been forced to admit perplexity and doubt, a state which we
know (because we have read dialogues in which the older
Socrates partakes, dialogues that were composed before this
relatively late one) is absolutely necessary for him to recognize if he is to understand that he is in danger and must search
for a way out—that is, he must pursue philosophy. At this
point in young Socrates’ education, concentrating on such
ideas as justice, virtue, and the good is a retreat, in so far as
it represents a failure to face the real dilemma inherent in the
notion of Forms. Furthermore, Socrates has confessed that
fear of falling into nonsense has caused him to turn away
from questions that had occurred to him before his encounter
with Parmenides. Parmenides, then, has forced the young
man to admit, first, that, despite his intellect and talent for argument, he is in a perilous situation; second, that he must
search for a way to escape from this danger; and, third, that
his fear has led to intellectual cowardice and laziness.
Whether there actually is a possible way of escape remains
to be explored, and this is the question to which Parmenides
immediately turns his attention.
Assuming with Socrates that Forms exist even though we
are not yet sure which of the things we perceive has a Form,
Parmenides directs the conversation to the problem of sharing. This in turn raises the dilemma of participation, which,
in its most general expression, has to account for the relationship between the Forms and the things that partake of them.
The effect of this conversation will be to reduce Socrates
once again to perplexity, and it will lead to a difficulty that is
more fundamental than the question about which of the things
we perceive partake of Forms. Parmenides readily agrees
with Socrates that there are unalterable Forms, but, through
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questioning, he compels Socrates to admit (and readers to
see) that if we cannot discover a relationship between the
things we see and the Forms—that is, if we cannot find a way
to escape from deceptive change into the reality of the absolute—there can be no knowledge and, hence, no philosophy.
How, Parmenides asks Socrates, can there be any relationship between the things we see and the Forms of which
they partake? More specifically, how can a Form be at once
in itself and in the others (that is, the things that partake of
it) without being separate from itself? Socrates has an ingenious solution to this problem: It might be like a day, he says,
which is in many places at once yet not separate from itself.
“Very neat,” replies Parmenides, flattering the young man,
“you mean like a sail spread over many persons at once.”
“Perhaps,” responds Socrates, apparently sealing his doom
in the discussion, since a sail really does not seem to be like
a day at all. Unlike a day, it is a material object, capable of
being cut into pieces, a characteristic Parmenides will exploit
in his refutation of the idea. Why does Socrates accept the
substitution? Is he being polite? He wasn’t very polite to
Zeno, but he obviously has more respect for Parmenides. Did
he succumb to the older man’s flattery? For whatever reason,
Socrates, perhaps with some reluctance, accepts the sail in
place of the day. Parmenides then raises the paradox of divisibility, with an argument that irrefutably concludes, to put
it briefly, that other things cannot partake of Forms either as
parts or as wholes. Next he raises the difficulty of infinite
regress. Using largeness as an example, he obliges Socrates
to agree that when we look at a number of things that are
large we believe there is the same Form of largeness in all of
them, and thus believe that Largeness is one. But then don’t
we need yet another largeness by which that one largeness
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can appear large, and then another, and another? The search
for the last largeness will never end. Socrates, trying to escape from this infinite regress, suggests that Forms are
thoughts (noēma, a word that is rare in the Socratic dialogues); but Parmenides parries that for a thought to be true
it must be a thought of something that is, and Socrates, if he
is not to be trapped in relativism, is compelled to concede.
Perhaps, then, he replies, the Forms exist in nature as paradigms, which other things resemble and imitate. But if this
is so, Parmenides counters, the Form must resemble the object that resembles it, in so far as that object resembles it, and
thus a third “entity” is called into being: that by participation
in which like things are made like. Again we are faced with
an infinite regress, a hall of mirrors.
All of these arguments, none of which Socrates can refute, lead to what Parmenides calls the greatest difficulty of
all: If we maintain that the Forms are separate, independent
beings, we are in danger of having to concede that they cannot be known, and the consequence of that is that there is no
way out of our difficulty. Aporia becomes absolute; philosophy is impossible. If this is our condition, Forms may or may
not exist; if they exist, they may have their nature relative to
themselves, and the things we perceive may have their nature
relative to themselves. But if the Forms and the things among
us have no relationship to each other, Parmenides and
Socrates agree that we can have no knowledge of truth. Put
another way, we cannot know any of the Forms because we,
by our nature, cannot partake of absolute knowledge. The
gods, on the other hand, by their nature, would have absolute
knowledge, but that would make no difference either to us or
to them, for if there is no connection, no path, between the
transient and the absolute, the gods could know our world no
more than we could know theirs, and we all might as well go
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raise horses.
This is not to say that Parmenides has given up. He asserts twice (133c and 135d) that there are ways out of this
dilemma, which are open to people of wide education and
ability who know how to seek them. Further, Socrates clearly
possesses the considerable natural gifts that will allow him
to seek a way out, and perhaps eventually to teach others to
do so. Parmenides knows this because he heard Socrates discuss these questions with young Aristotle the day before, and
he observed his noble and divine impulse toward argument
(logos), as well as his refusal to discuss problems in terms of
visible objects, appealing instead always to absolutes. The
problem is that Socrates is trying too soon, before he is properly trained. He must exercise and train himself in an art that
the many call idle talk if the truth is not to escape him. Parmenides approves of Socrates’ attention to the things that are
rather than the things that merely seem to be. But he claims
that Socrates lacks rigor; he must learn to examine the consequences that follow from each hypothesis, for example,
“should you hypothesize if likeness is, or if it is not, what
will follow on each hypothesis both for the very things hypothesized and for the others, relative to themselves and relative to each other” (136a). The same procedure must be
followed for anything that may be hypothesized as being and
as not being, and as undergoing any other affection whatever.
Before looking at the exercise in more depth, let us return
to several questions raised in the segment of the dialogue I
have just summarized. I would like, in particular, to explore
the characters of young Socrates and of Parmenides, as they
are presented in the dialogue, and the problem of participation as it is framed here, with the consequences it has for the
pursuit of philosophy.
Let us look first at Socrates. Much is made in the dialogue
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of the fact that he is young. Parmenides has remarked upon
his youth, and Pythodorus, too, as quoted by Antiphon, observes that he was very young. He seems in his interchanges
with Zeno to be exhibiting some of that controversial spirit
of youth to which Zeno, speaking of himself, alludes.
Socrates’ attacks on Zeno show that he has mastered argument; but his remarks are glib and aggressive, the over-confident assertions of someone who (in a contrast that could not
be more striking with the older Socrates) knows it all. Young
Socrates, a sort of philosopher warrior slashing away with a
sword of words, does not hesitate to take on the leading
philosophers of the day. Though it is not used, the word thumos (in the sense of spirit, heart, will) comes to mind. And,
as we have seen, both Zeno and Parmenides are delighted.
This is surely not because of the easily-avoided swipes
Socrates is taking at Zeno in his apparent wish to replace him
in the great man’s affections, but rather because of his eager
desire for logos and his conviction that there are absolutes.
Socrates is a young man of great gifts in dire need of a lesson
in directing those gifts if he is to find the true way of philosophy. And who better to give the lesson than Parmenides?
I know that this is a tricky question, for the character of
Parmenides in this dialogue is problematic. Respected commentators have argued that this Parmenides cannot be intended to be the philosopher by that name because the real
Parmenides could not possibly have spoken in the way this
Parmenides does; but I, at least at this point in my study, am
compelled to follow the more direct route of believing that
Plato meant this Parmenides to represent the great philosopher, while, of course, writing the character to suit his own
purposes.
Many of you probably have not read Parmenides’ poem
on being, and I do not have time here to give more than the
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briefest of summaries of a work which is very hard to summarize, both because of its inherent difficulty and because it
has survived only in widely scattered fragments and quotations which have been stitched together, leaving great gaps.
Parmenides of Elea would have been born around 515 BCE,
if we use Plato’s dialogue (about whose date, of course, we
can only conjecture) as a way of estimating his birth date. He
wrote a poem in the archaic hexameters of Greek epic poetry
whose first-person narrator is a youth of great thumos who
has undertaken a sort of mystic journey. Well-guided horses
pull the youth in a chariot whose axle glows and whistles
with heat along a wide road leading out of darkness into light.
Maidens, identified as daughters of the sun, escort him along
the road and through a mighty doorway into the abode of a
goddess. The maidens then persuade the goddess to give the
youth two accounts, one of which has been called the Way
of Truth and the other the Way of Seeming.
The Way of Truth states that being is and non-being is
not, and that only being can be thought or learned. Being has
certain characteristics, which the goddess lists for the youth:
It is ungenerated, imperishable, whole, single-limbed, untrembling, complete, indivisible, changeless, held in limits
by the chains of justice. Most mortals, she continues, do not
realize that only being is knowable; instead they wander, twoheaded, lost along the well-trodden but misdirected way,
thinking, mistakenly, that they can name and know opposites.
This mistaken way is the Way of Seeming, and its relationship to the Way of Truth is not completely clear in the poem.
What is clear is that being is one and absolute (though finite)
and that it can be truly known, while non-being, as it does
not really exist, cannot be known or even thought.
Now this is not quite the doctrine that Parmenides upholds in the dialogue. The Parmenides of the dialogue does
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still maintain the fundamental principle of the poem, namely,
that only absolute being can be known. Nonetheless, by accepting without question Socrates’ notion of Forms, he has
allowed multiplicity into being. So if the Parmenides of the
dialogue is the Parmenides of the poem, he has changed at
least part of his understanding of the nature of being. Furthermore, in the dialogue he raises that fundamental difficulty
which young Socrates has apparently not considered fully,
namely, the relationship of Forms to the things of this world.
This difficulty, as Parmenides sees it, has two parts. One part
is the question of which things in our world participate in
Forms, and the other concerns the nature of that participation.
The Parmenides of the dialogue is very concerned with the
relationship between seeming and being, a relationship which
is truly problematic in the poem, where, after stating that only
being can be known, the goddess provides a surprising
amount of information about seeming things, particularly
heavenly bodies and sex. Remember that we have no way of
knowing how much of the Way of Seeming has been lost, and
its reconstruction is particularly difficult because the fragments are so short and puzzling. If there is any connection
between the Way of Truth and the Way of Seeming in the
poem, we have to devise it ourselves; it is not given to us. In
fact, we have already seen that the poem tells us as plainly
as it tells us anything that one way is true and the other is
false.
So the poem and the dialogue concur that only being is
absolute and knowable, but in the dialogue we have a Parmenides who, unlike the author of the poem, has, in the first
place, accepted a plurality of absolutes (that is, the Forms)
and who, in the second place, considers the relationship between those absolutes and seeming things to be of utmost importance. Furthermore, he engages in an exercise that takes
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the form of dialectic, an interchange of a sort entirely absent
from the poem, whose young man remains silent, listening
(in a way reminiscent of Socrates’ encounter with Diotima in
the Symposium) to the teachings of the goddess.
These are three undeniably significant differences between the Parmenides of the poem and the Parmenides of the
dialogue. Our conclusion might be that these are different
men. It seems more fruitful to say that Plato has taken the
fundamental questions raised by Parmenides in the poem and
pushed them in the direction he felt they had to go if the approach to knowledge was to be anything other than a
metaphorical journey leading to a mystical vision. Who better
than the great philosopher himself to give his blessing to such
an enterprise, and to anoint young Socrates as the spirited
youth, the young hero, capable of pursuing it, if only he can
summon the courage to undertake such an arduous task? The
dialogue, in effect, resurrects the venerable authority and has
him declare, with Zeno’s approval, that Socrates is his true
heir.
Parmenides passes his legacy to Socrates in five ways.
First, the great philosopher who first asked the question
“What is Being?” has accepted the Forms as the answer to
that question. Second, he has repeatedly complimented young
Socrates on his ability and divine inclination toward logos.
Third, Parmenides has, by his questioning, forced Socrates
to recognize that he is in a state of aporia, by raising the question of the status of such things as mud, dirt, and hair—which
the author of the Way of Truth could never have valued any
more than Socrates ever will. Fourth, he has shown the young
man a possible way out of his aporia by instructing him in
the method that he will later adopt, that is, dialectic. And,
fifth, he has given him a demonstration of the courage that
young Socrates showed he lacked when he admitted he was
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afraid to face the possibility that mud, dirt, and hair might
partake of Forms.
Parmenides demonstrates courage to Socrates when he
allows himself, despite a fear that he voices several times, to
be persuaded to undertake the exercise of exploring the consequences, both for the One and for the others, of the existence and of the non-existence of the One. This is the most
difficult part of the dialogue to read. I have already raised one
possible interpretation: that the exercise is intended to
demonstrate how not to proceed if we are seeking truth. The
consequence of this reading, however, is that Parmenides becomes a buffoon, and I do not believe the dialogue supports
that contention any more than do later mentions of the
philosopher in the Theatetus, where Socrates, an old man
himself, refers to the nobility of Parmenides’ “reverend and
awful figure” during the encounter we are discussing (183e),
or in the Sophist, where, even though Father Parmenides is
killed by his own Eleatic follower, Socrates remembers the
magnificence of the arguments he employed in that long-ago
meeting (217c). Even allowing, as we must, for the possibility of irony, it is not at all clear what purpose would be served
by making a buffoon of the philosopher who first conceived
of being as unchanging and as capable of being known. More
consistent with the raising of Socrates into true philosophy
is the reading that makes Parmenides into a revered elder,
aware of his own limitations, but still able to inspire a spirited
youth to carry on the journey that, for an old man like himself, has become just another run around the track. No longer
a youth pulled by well-guided horses, but rather like an old
horse himself, Parmenides is nonetheless capable of recognizing a worthy heir and guiding him to pursue philosophy
along the correct route.
As I have observed, the novelty of the dialogue with re-
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spect to Parmenides’ poem as far as the practice of philosophy is concerned is the introduction of dialectic. Parmenides
in the dialogue has already shown a dialectical bent uncharacteristic of the poem in his questioning of Socrates. This
questioning is suggestively juxtaposed with Zeno’s reading
of an old essay—an essay that the author himself, when challenged, repudiates. And when Parmenides agrees to perform
his exercise, it is dialectical rather than expository; that is, it
is unlike the teaching of the goddess in Parmenides’ poem.
He then chooses the youngest one present, that is, young Aristotle, to be his interlocutor, giving three reasons. First, the
youngest will give least trouble; second, he will be most
likely to say what he thinks; and third, his answering will give
the older man a chance to rest. The first and third reasons indicate that Parmenides’ primary interlocutor in this exercise
will really be himself. This locates his demonstration of the
method closer to exposition than to dialogue. But the second
reason is interesting insofar as it recalls Socrates’ demonstration with the slave boy in the Meno; like the slave, who has
no reason to hold back from Socrates’ questioning, young Aristotle possesses a kind of pure outspokenness, a kind of fearlessness, that tends to be smothered by conventional thought
as a person ages. We can see that even the gifted young
Socrates has already fallen prey to convention if we read the
“perhaps” with which he accepts Parmenides’ substitution of
a sail for the day as a grudging acceptance of a substitution
he does not really admit. Whether he is being polite or he is
responding to the flattery Parmenides has just lavished on
him, Socrates, who contradicts Zeno so freely, seems unable
to contradict the admired older man.
The exercise itself is extremely difficult to read and understand, but it is carefully organized. (This is a feature that
is not evident in the truncated seminar assignment). Par-
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menides has said that he will consider the consequences both
for the One and for the others of the hypotheses both that the
One is and that it is not (135e-136c and 137b). I will repeat
the tangled conclusion he reaches:
Then let this be said, and also that, as it seems, whether
unity is or is not, both unity and the others are and are not,
and appear and do not appear to be, all things in all ways,
relative both to themselves and to each other (166c).
It is, as I said earlier, possible to read this as a demonstration
that nonsense is the only possible outcome of this particular
method of reasoning. In contrast, some commentators have
claimed that Parmenides’ exercise has indeed answered the
questions of participation that he raised in the first part of the
dialogue. Constance Meinwald, for example, argues ingeniously that it is possible to make sense out of the final statement, essentially (though, of course, this follows a complex,
book-length argument) by reading the verb esti, “to be” as
existential in some occurrences and predicative in others.1
According to this reading, the exercise would have explored
the possible pitfalls of language in general, and of that troublesome verb in particular. I would like, however, to argue
for a third interpretation. I believe that Parmenides has answered the questions he has raised, but that the answer is so
deeply buried that its very hiddenness begs to be explored.
Let us begin to do this by looking at the organization of the
argument in the light of Jacob Klein’s “Note on Plato’s Parmenides.”2 As its title suggests, Klein’s piece is no more than
a brief observation. The concern of the note is the “indeterminate dyad,” mentioned by Aristotle in the Physics and
Metaphysics.3 Aristotle’s contention is that the indeterminate
dyad was the substitute for the single “unlimited” or “indeterminate,” and, further, that this dyad consisted of “the Great
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and the Small.” Aristotle observes that the indeterminate dyad
is never explicitly mentioned by Plato. Klein believes, however, that there is a clear, if oblique, allusion to it in the Parmenides, specifically in Socrates’ apparently casual remark,
following Pythodorus’s observation that “many” others came
with him to hear Zeno’s reading. I mentioned earlier that
there were, in fact, seven men present at this conversation,
of whom only five are named. Parmenides also calls our attention to the group, without, however, numbering it, when
he agrees to engage in his laborious pastime. Klein suggests
that this equation of “many” with “two” is deliberate, and
that it is a veiled but unmistakable reference to what Aristotle
called the indeterminate dyad. Klein continues:
Zeno’s lecture (composed in his youth) was meant to show
that the consequences which flow from the assumption of
multiplicity in this world are even more absurd and ridiculous than the consequences which flow from the derided
Parmenidean assumption that “the One is” (128d). The
thesis of multiplicity, in Zeno’s presentation, seems to
imply the absence of unity, just as Parmenides’ assumption
divorces the One entirely from any multiplicity. It is noteworthy that, in the dialogue, Parmenides himself unfolds
before his listeners—young Aristotle acting as his dialectical partner—the contradictions involved both in the assumption and in the rejection of the “One” as the one and
only archē. There is an imbalance between Zeno’s thesis
and Parmenides’ performance: the denial of multiplicity is
not subjected to any scrutiny. What is lacking is a discussion of the consequences which flow from an explicit rejection of the many (cf. 136a).
Instead we are led by Parmenides and Aristotle to the
threshold of the insight that the root of the contradictions
concerning the “One” taken by itself is precisely the nonadmittance of another archē responsible for the “Many”
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and correlated with the “One.” The dialectic of the “One”
cannot avoid bringing this other archē, the “Other,” into
play. But its role within the framework of the dialogue is,
as it were, illegitimate. Still, its power is there, conspicuously, though silently present. The two undetermined men
in the audience represent it. They embody the elusive “indeterminate dyad” itself. This is their mimetically ironic
role.4
The structure of Parmenides’ exercise supports Klein’s
interpretation. Precisely what is lacking is what Klein has
called scrutiny of the denial of multiplicity. The structure of
the exercise is relatively simple.5 With one exception, it is divided into four sections, which follow Parmenides’ stated
plan. Two segments of the exercise consider (each one in two
parts) the consequences for unity and for the others if unity
exists. The other two (also each in two parts) consider the
consequences for unity and for the others if unity does not
exist. The opening argument, however, stands alone. Parmenides’ initial assumption is that the One is not Many. Of
course, young Aristotle agrees, for if anything is obvious, it
is that one is not many. Nevertheless, the outcome of this assumption is disastrous. Parmenides concludes that if the One
is not Many “then it cannot be named or spoken of, nor is it
an object of opinion or knowledge, nor does anything among
things which are perceive it,” and young Aristotle concurs
that none of those things can be true of unity (142a). Well, if
the One is not not-Many, does it then follow that the One is
Many? This is the balancing argument, which is missing. It
seems so absurd. There is no way in our everyday language
that the one can be many. There is no speakable way out of
this perplexity. And this is perhaps the crux of the indeterminate dyad, the manyness in the one that cannot be named but
which must somehow exist if we are to be able to link the
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Forms with the things of this world, that is, to practice philosophy. There is, then, a missing argument (and it could not
be otherwise, for the argument cannot be made with language
as we know it)—a fact that becomes apparent only when we
step back from the words and look at the structure of Parmenides’ exercise. This missing argument, necessarily absent,
is the one for the indeterminate dyad, the multiplicity within
the One, to which the presence of two unnamed men in the
first part of the dialogue points.
Let us look briefly once again at the principal questions
that the dialogue has raised and, I believe, answered. The first
is “What is philosophy?” In this dialogue Socrates is located
firmly within the Parmenidean tradition with respect to the
question of the nature of being: Only unalterable being is true
and knowable, and the philosopher seeks to know the truth,
that is, being. The second question—“Is philosophy possible?”—is no less important for human beings who would
seek to know. For if there is no way out of our perplexity—
and there is no way out unless the things we see can be related
to the things that are—then we are trapped in the world of
change, and the questions that philosophy raises are inaccessible to us. This is the difficulty with which Parmenides is
principally concerned in this dialogue; and the dialogue
shows us, if we know how to look at it, that there is a relationship between the things that are and the things that seem
to be. There is, in other words, a way out. That way is what
Aristotle called the indeterminate dyad, the multiplicity
within the One, and it must be sought in the dialogue as a
whole.
Let us return to the puzzling last sentence of the dialogue.
What are we to make of the stupendously unsatisfying conclusion to Parmenides’ exercise? If it is true that the dialogue
is seeded on various levels with covert allusions to the un-
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named and unnamable indeterminate dyad, the nonsensical
end of the dialogue may be a truly thumping clue that there
is a meaning here, and that the actual words are not where it
is to be found. This is a reading that takes us outside the text,
where we meet Socrates, who is, as it were, “in on it,” for he
is the one who alludes to the indeterminate dyad by mentioning that there are seven men present. Would Plato be capable
of performing such a trick—for our benefit, of course? I think
so. There is duality everywhere you look in this dialogue; and
furthermore, it is a duality that by its very ostentatiousness
implores us to attempt to forge a simple unity of it. Plato does
not coddle his readers, for one of his points is that philosophy
is hard work. We must be alive to the difficulties of reading
at every level of his intricately composed mimetic texts.
In conclusion I would like to recall a conversation I had
during a paper conference with one of the students in my Parmenides preceptorial, Adrienne St. Onge. She was troubled
by what she feared was an implication that only the young
had the spirit necessary to pursue philosophy. The initiate in
Parmenides’ poem is, after all, a young man, and in the dialogue, the point is made again and again that Socrates, the
spirited one, is very young. Zeno, a member of the generation
before Socrates, is frozen in time. Rereading old, repudiated
treatises, he is going nowhere. Indeed, if the significant difference between youth and age is the difference between zeal
for controversy and zeal for reputation, there is nowhere to
go. Parmenides, a member of the generation before Zeno’s,
provides an example that is not much better, comparing himself both to an aged lover and to an old racehorse reluctantly
running around in circles—that is, once again, going
nowhere. But as we talked we began to realize that this is the
beauty of the posthumous setting. Cephalus has come to
Athens because of what Socrates later became. And we read-
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ers know what Socrates became because we have read dialogues written earlier, but situated later in his life. We know
that Socrates never lost his desire for philosophy. We know
that he never confused truth with mud. Plato contrives to have
the venerable philosopher anoint and assist his heir, and what
that heir has become we already know.
Still, the “present” of the dialogue is troubling. It is true
that men have come from Clazomenae to hear the conversation, but the state of philosophy after Socrates’ death seems
perilous. I doubt that we ever expected Glaucon and
Adeimantus to become philosophers; but Antiphon, who in
this dialogue is the closest link to Socrates’ time, is shown
instructing a smith to make a bit for a horse. I can’t help but
read this as a discouraging allusion to the well-guided horses
pulling the young man’s chariot toward the light of truth at
the beginning of Parmenides’ poem. Antiphon is not a man
of philosophical desire or spirit. The text, as he recites it, is
trapped in time, as dead as Zeno’s treatise.
So is it only exceptional people who can become philosophers? We have Socrates, who surpassed his mentors, and
Plato, himself, who by implication may have surpassed
Socrates. But now what? The dialogue assures us that philosophy is possible, but it does not suggest that it is easy. On
the contrary, the philosopher must possess unending desire,
unusual intelligence, and divine devotion to truth. This is all
the more reason to wonder if Plato deliberately planted in his
dialogues hints that would not be accessible to the many,
those who despite everything and will always persist in traveling the wide and well-trodden, but wrong, way. Plato will
not do our work for us, for if he did we would not be moved
to philosophy. Both in this dialogue and more explicitly in
the Phaedrus, he warns us of the danger of dead texts. To
have meaning, the writing must somehow live. For more than
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two thousand years we have been trying to tease meaning out
of Plato’s texts, and the Parmenides has been among those
most resistant to our efforts. Manifestly, Plato would not expect such endeavors to lead everyone to philosophy, but insofar as our search for meaning has led us to seek a way out
of our perplexity, we have engaged in the only philosophy
Parmenides and Socrates (and, I think, Plato) would agree is
real: the living search for a path to knowledge.
NOTES
Constance Meinwald, Plato’s Parmenides (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1991).
1
In Jacob Klein, Lectures and Essays (Annapolis: St. John’s College Press, 1985), 285-87.
2
3
For references see Klein, 285.
4
Klein, Parmenides, 287.
I owe a debt of thanks to a student, Darcy Christ, for making this
clear to me.
5
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Elliott Carter at St. John’s College
Tutor, 1940-1942
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Rolling His Jolly Tub:
Composer Elliott Carter,
St. John’s College Tutor,
1940-1942
Hollis Thoms
Away went he out of town towards a little hill or
promontory of Corinth called (the) Cranie; and
there on the strand, a pretty level place, did he roll
his jolly tub, which served him for a house to
shelter him from the injuries of the weather.
—Rabelais
Elliott Carter, now one of America’s foremost living composers, was a Tutor at St. John’s College from 1940 to 1942.
This was a turbulent time both for the College and for Carter.
The College was still in the process of phasing out the “old”
curriculum and was trying to establish the “new” Great Books
curriculum. Then, just after the last students under the old
regime were graduated in 1941, World War II began to coopt
college-age men for the war effort. In Carter’s life, his recent
marriage, together with the lingering effects of Great Depression, made it imperative for him to secure an academic
position. At the same time, he was transforming his compoHollis Thoms is a composer and researcher from Annapolis, Maryland,
who received the Master of Arts in Liberal Arts degree from St. John’s
College in 2006. Many thanks are due to individuals at St. John’s who
facilitated research for this paper: Chris Nelson, President; Catherine
Dixon, Library Director; Cara Sabolcick, Public Service Librarian, Daniel
Crowe, Registrar; Jacqueline Thoms, Assistant Registrar; Eric Stoltzfus,
Music Librarian; and Mark Daly, Head of Laboratories. Thanks also to
Dr. Philip Allen, who edited the first draft.
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sitional practice, casting off traditional influences, and moving
in a radically new musical direction. The story of Carter’s
time at St. John’s is the story of two interlaced experiments:
the College’s experiment in higher education, and Carter’s
experiment in finding his vocation as a composer.
Elliott Carter, 1908-1940
Elliott Cook Carter, Jr. was born in New York on December
11, 1908 to lace-import businessman Elliott Cook Carter, Sr.
and his wife Florence, née Chambers. The young Elliott was
intended to succeed his father at the lace-import firm. As he
grew, however, his musical talents and interests led him away
from business and toward a career in music. The elder Carter
was openly contemptuous of such an impractical scheme
(Wierzbicki 2011, 5-6). But Clifton J. Furness, music teacher
at the Horace Mann School where Carter studied from 1920
to 1926, recognized and encouraged his student's talent. He
took the teenage Carter to avant-garde concerts, exposing him
to new music by composers such as Bartók, Ruggles, Stravinsky, Varèse, Schoenberg, and Webern. And he introduced him
to many New York musicians and composers, including
Charles Ives, the eccentric millionaire businessman and experimental composer. Ives often invited Carter to join him
and his wife in their Carnegie Hall box for performances by
the Boston Symphony, which, under the leadership of Serge
Koussevitzky, commissioned many new works by living
composers. Ives became a musical and intellectual role model
for Carter (Wierzbicki 2011, 7-9).
The distance between the younger Carter’s ambitions and
his father’s continued to grow during these years. When
Carter was sixteen in 1925, his father took him along on a
business trip to Vienna, where all his attention was focussed
on trying to acquire all the currently available scores of
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Schoenberg and Webern. Carter remembers going with his
father to a performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring,
which the father summed up with “Only a madman could
have written anything like that.” Yet that performance was
one of the experiences that inspired the young Elliot to become a composer (Edwards 1971, 40, 45).
So, contrary to his father’s wishes, Carter decided to
study music at Harvard. Ives wrote a letter of reference in
which he pointed to Carter’s artistic instincts:
Carter strikes me as rather an exceptional boy. He has
an instinctive interest in literature and especially
music that is somewhat unusual. He writes well—an
essay in his school paper—“Symbolism in Art”—
shows an interesting mind. In don’t know him intimately, but his teacher in Horace Mann School, Mr.
Clifton J. Furness, and a friend of mine, always
speaks well of him—that he’s a good character and
does well in his studies. I am sure his reliability, industry, and sense of honour are what they should
be—also his sense of humor which you do not ask
me about (Schiff 1983, 15-16).
He intended to major in music at Harvard in the fall of
1926, but lasted only a semester in that program. He remained at Harvard, however, but opted to spend his undergraduate years working on a degree in English literature. The
Harvard music department was not to his liking, since it
would have nothing to do with the new music in which
Carter was interested. Carter said that he “would have been
glad if somebody at Harvard had explained to me what went
on in the music of Stravinsky, Bartok and Schoenberg, and
had tried somehow to develop in me the sense of harmony
and counterpoint that these composers had” (Wierzbicki
2011, 11).
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Carter enjoyed his English literature experience, but, as
with music, he went further than the traditional literature offerings, which stopped with reading Tennyson. He preferred
reading more avant garde authors such as Gerard Manley
Hopkins, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, T. S.
Elliot, e. e. cummings, James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence,
Gertrude Stein, and others. In addition to studying classics,
philosophy, and mathematics, he also studied German and
Greek—which, in addition to his fluency in French, made
him quite proficient in languages. Carter spent his undergraduate years pursuing the broadest possible education, for he
saw music not merely as a technical study, but as an art form
embedded in and intimately connected with the liberal arts.
He, did, nonetheless, participate in more traditional musical
activities during his time at Harvard, taking instruction in
piano, oboe, and solfeggio at the Longy School. He sang
tenor in the Harvard Glee Club and in a Bach Cantata Club.
He also spent time studying the scores of the past masters,
taking full advantage of the vast holdings of the Harvard
music library (Wierzbicki 2011, 15-19).
Carter’s youthful interest in the new music can be seen
in the repertory of works he performed with his old music
teacher Clifton Furness in a joint piano recital in Hartford,
Connecticut on December 12, 1928: the program included
pieces by Igor Stravinsky, Darius Milhaud, Arnold Schoenberg, Francis Poulenc, Alfredo Casella, Gian Francesco
Malipiero, Henry Gilbert, Charles Ives, Eric Satie, Paul Hindemith, and George Antheil (Schiff 1983, 15).
After Carter graduated, he went on receive an MA in musical composition at Harvard, because, when Gustav Holst
came as a visiting composer and Walter Piston returned from
studying in Paris, there was a new interest in contemporary
music at Harvard, so that Carter felt more at home in the al-
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101
tered the musical environment. Piston recommended that
Carter go to study with the well known teacher of composition Nadia Boulanger at the École Normale de Musique de
Paris, and Carter did so from 1932-1935. Carter’s fluency in
French made Paris a natural choice; and because both Piston
and Aaron Copland, whom Carter knew and admired, had
studied with her, he felt that it was a reasonable thing to do
(Wierzbicki 2011, 20-21).
Despite persistent financial worries while in Paris—his
father did not approve of the plan and cut his allowance in
half, though his mother continued to supplement the allowance—Carter thrived as a student of Boulanger, whom he
remembers with admiration for the way she illuminated both
the past and the future of music:
The things that were most remarkable and wonderful
about her were her extreme concern for the material
of music and her acute awareness of its many phases
and possibilities. I must say that, though I had taken
harmony and counterpoint at Harvard and thought I
knew all about these subjects, nevertheless, when
Nadia Boulanger put me back on tonic and dominant
chords in half notes, I found to my surprise that I
learned all kinds of things I’d never thought before.
Every one one of her lessons became very illuminating. . . . Mlle. Boulanger was a very inspiring teacher
of counterpoint and made it such a passionate concern
that all this older music constantly fed me thoughts
and ideas. All the ways you could make the voices
cross and combine or sing antithetical lines were
things we were involved in strict counterpoint, which
I did for three years with her—up to twelve parts,
canons, invertible counterpoint, and double choruses—and found it fascinating.” (Edwards 1971, 50,
55. Emphasis added.)
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Then also, when I was studying with Mlle. Boulanger
I began for the first time to get an intellectual grasp
of what went on technically in modern works. I was
there at a time when Stravinsky, who was of course
the contemporary composer she always admired
most[, was also in Paris]. . . . The way she illuminated
the details of these works was just extraordinary to
me. . . . I met Stravinsky, because he used to come to
tea at Mlle. Boulanger’s. . . . [W]hat always struck
me every time I heard Stravinsky play the piano—the
composer’s extraordinary, electric sense of rhythm
and incisiveness of touch that made every note he
played a “Stravinsky-note” full of energy, excitement
and serious intentness” (Edwards 1971, 51, 56. Emphasis added.)
Boulanger’s attitude toward music matched his own: in
his daily lessons, composition as a craft was combined with
composition as in the context of the liberal arts. Carter spent
three years studying with Boulanger, and as a result of her
tutelage, he gained both the musical craftsmanship and the
self-confidence to produce compositions that he considered
worth preserving. It was only “after Paris” that Carter “could
begin to compose” (Wierzbicki 2011, 24).
After his return from Paris, Carter immersed himself in
musical activities, groups, and composing, first in Boston and
then in New York. He wrote a number of choral works including one called “Let’s Be Gay,” a work for women’s chorus and two pianos based on texts by John Gay. It was written
for, and performed by, the Wells College Glee Club in the
spring of 1938, which was led by his friend Nicolas Nabokov,
who was to figure again in Carter’s career a few years later
(Wierzbicki 2011, 25).
The Great Depression made it impossible for Carter to
find a secure job, but he was able to become a regular con-
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103
tributor to Modern Music, a journal that had been founded in
1924 as the house organ of the New York-based League of
Composers. In the process of writing thirty-one articles and
reviews for the journal, he gained familiarity with current
compositional activity in New York, and he developed the
skills of a professional music critic (Wierzbicki 2011, 26-27).
In addition, he was hired as a composer-in-residence for
the experimental ballet company Ballet Caravan, formed in
1936 by Lincoln Kirstein, whom Carter had met in Paris. In
that same year, Carter wrote the piano score of a ballet for
the company, called Pocahontas, which premiered in 1939.
In June of 1940 the New York Times announced that an orchestral suite drawn from the ballet had won “the Julliard
School’s annual competition for the publication of orchestral
works by American composers.” This prestigious award finally launched Carter’s career as a composer at the age of 31
(Wierzbicki 2011, 27).
Shortly before the premiere of Pocahontas, on July 6,
1939, Carter married Helen Frost-Jones, a sculptor and art
critic, whom he met through his friend Nicolas Nabokov.
With the possibility of a family now on the horizon, Carter
redoubled his efforts to find employment. At Aaron Copland’s suggestion, he applied in the spring of 1940 for a
teaching position at Cornell University. Cornell was actively
considering him, but the school was not in a hurry to hire.
Carter, on the other hand, wanted a position for the fall. So
instead he accepted an offer to teach music, mathematics,
physics, philosophy, and Greek at St. John’s College in Annapolis (Wierzbicki 2011, 28).
The offer from St. John’s was also due to Carter’s friend
Nicolas Nabokov, who recommended Carter after himself
turning down the offer of a position for 1940-1941. In a letter
to Stringfellow Barr dated June 22, 1940, Nabokov ex-
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plained, first, that he could not accept the position for that
year because his wife was expecting a child and, since they
lived in Massachusetts, it would be too inconvenient to move
or to commute between the arduous new job and his family;
second, that the compensation offered at St. John’s College
was not adequate for him to take care of his new family; and
third, that he could not in good conscience leave Wells so
soon before the beginning of the fall term.
In declining the position, Nabokov recommended a substitute: “Mr. Elliott Carter of whom I spoke to you the other
day and more extensively to Mr. Buchanan would in my opinion fit perfectly into the St. John’s place of education. . . . Mr.
Carter as you will see from his curriculum vitae and the enclosed articles is a very thorough, serious and reliable man
and I recommend him to you very highly. . . . [H]e is very
anxious to undertake the job.” He suggested that Carter could
substitute for him for during the coming school year, and then
Nabokov himself would come to St. John’s the following
year. Nabokov did indeed arrive at St. John’s the following
fall to take over the teaching of music; but Carter did not
leave. Instead he spent a second year at St. John’s teaching
Greek, mathematics, and seminar (Nabokov 1940).
Carter’s decision to accept the position at St. John’s could
not have been easy to make. He was just beginning his career
as a composer, trying to develop a distinctive creative voice
in challenging financial circumstances, which were made
even more challenging by his recent marriage. This was certainly a turbulent time in his life.
He was to join the St. John’s community at a turbulent
time in its own history. The college had recently launched an
educational experiment unprecedented in American higher
education, the success of which was far from certain. The
prospect of teaching at the third oldest college in the nation
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105
(the direct predecessor of St. John’s, King William’s School,
was founded in 1696, after Harvard in 1636 and William and
Mary in 1693) might have seemed a more stable position than
anything the young composer could find in New York, but he
would soon discover a great deal of unstable dissonance in
the community he was to join.
St. John’s College in 1940: Turbulence
In 1937, St. John’s College found itself at a crossroads. In addition to a severe financial crisis, the physical plant was in
deep disrepair. A weak Board of Governors and Visitors had
appointed three new Presidents within nine years in an attempt to find someone who could remedy the situation. All
three had failed, however, and the College had lost its accreditation status with the Middle States Association of Colleges
and Schools. Demoralized faculty members were leaving.
(See Murphy 1996 and Rule 2009 for the facts in this section.)
The stronger members of the Board decided to take drastic action. They named Robert Hutchins, President of the University of Chicago, who had long been involved in attempts
to revive the liberal arts, to chair the Board. The Board also
hired two colleagues of Hutchins’ from the Committee on
Liberal Arts at Chicago as President and Dean, Stringfellow
Barr and Scott Buchanan. Their charge was to effect a complete transformation from a traditional college curriculum to
a radically “old” Great Books curriculum. There would no
longer be the traditional options leading to specialized degrees; the faculty would no longer teach only in their areas
of expertise, but in all areas of the curriculum; the college
would no longer participate in intercollegiate sports; there
would no longer be fraternities on campus.
Instead, the completely renovated curriculum, known as
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the “New Program,” consisted of two seminars (discussion
groups) per week on one of the books on the prescribed reading list, five tutorials (small classes) per week in mathematics, five language tutorials per week, at least one three-hour
laboratory period per week, and at least one formal lecture
per week. (Barr 1941, 44.)
In order to effect the change, the New Program was
phased in over a four-year period. Students entering in the
fall of 1937 were allowed to choose which curriculum they
would pursue. Thereafter, all incoming freshmen entered the
New Program. Carter arrived in the 1940-1941 school year,
the last year of the unsettled transitional period, at the end of
which the last graduates under the old curriculum were
awarded their degrees alongside the first graduates under the
New Program. By Carter’s second year, 1941-1942, the New
Program had completely replaced the old curriculum.
Clearly, the board was taking a risk by instituting such an
innovative and untried curriculum, and the risk paid off
slowly. On 1937 there were twenty freshmen who entered in
the New Program; in 1938, forty-six; in 1939, fifty-four; and
in 1940, when Carter arrived, there were ninety-three. The
total number of students held steady at around 170 during the
first four years, so the transition seemed relatively painless
from the enrollment point of view. But the exodus of faculty
members continued, since quite a few were not prepared to
give up their specialties to become co-learners along with
their students in an environment of cooperative learning in
all the liberal arts.
In his quarterly report to the board of April 1939,
Stringfellow Barr described the sort of student and the sort
of tutor that would thrive in the New Program. The students
would have to be able to think clearly and imaginatively, read
the most diverse sorts of material with understanding and de-
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107
light, distinguish sharply between what he knows and what
is mere opinion, have an affinity for first-rate authors and an
aversion to second-rate authors, derive great pleasure from
exercising his intellect on difficult problems, and desire to be
a thoughtful generalist rather than a highly proficient specialist. The tutors, on the other hand, would have to transcend
divergent intellectual backgrounds, be clear expositors, imaginative artists, and cooperative fellow seekers, know how to
teach and learn through discussion, and, above all, be intellectual treasure-hunters.
For unquestionably, the treasures our authors had
written were for our generation partially buried. We
needed men who wanted to help our students dig
them up. The best that we could do, the best indeed
that could be done, was to call for volunteers, volunteers for the treasure hunt, remembering for our comfort that this treasure hunt has never wholly ceased
during the intellectual history of our Western civilization (Nelson 1997, 52-59).
When Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan recruited Elliott Carter they were looking for a “treasure hunter.” They
found in him a kindred spirit who transcended intellectual
narrowness, thought clearly, and was an imaginative artist.
Their relationship continued long after all of them had left
St. John’s. Years later, in 1962, when Barr was invited to
nominate Elliott Carter for an honorary degree at Rutgers
University, Carter replied from Rome in a letter that testifies
to their enduring friendship. (Barr was affectionately called
“Winkie” by his close friends. Carter, 1962.)
Dec. 18, 1962
Dear Winkie —
I am sorry to say that I will not be back in New York
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until July — I do thank
you very much for thinking of me in connection
with the honorary degree
from Rutgers but again I
must beg off — to my sorrow — because as usual
my work seems to have
taken over and dictated
the plan of my life for me
— and I must stay here
until I finish my Concerto
— Merry Xmas and
Fig. 1: Letter to Scott Buchanan
Happy New Year to you (St. John’s College Library Archive,
and Tak [?] — And thanks
Barr Personal Papers, Series 2,
Box 10, folder 20)
for the suggestion Sorry
not to be able to accept it —
Affectionately, Elliott
1940-1941: Tutor and Director of Music
In the college catalogue of 1940-41, Carter was listed as
Tutor and Director of Music (St. John’s College Catalogue
1940-41). His responsibilities included supervision of the entire music program. According to the college newspaper, The
Collegian, which ran a long article in October about the upcoming year’s music program, Carter would plan and schedule a series of six concerts by visiting artists; he would give
a lecture the week before each concert to discuss the works
on the program; he would organize and direct student instrumental ensembles to appear in recitals and accompany the
Glee Club; he would conduct the Glee Club, which was to
rehearse three times per week and give numerous recitals during the year; he would lead a music discussion group on Saturday mornings for interested students; he would lead a
counterpoint, harmony, and composition class for interested
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students; he would supervise concerts of recorded music four
times per week; he would prepare the music room in the late
afternoon each day for students to listen to recorded music
(The Collegian, Oct. 19, 1940).
Carter seems to have taken to these duties enthusiastically, if the pictures in the 1941 St. John’s College Yearbook
give any indication. In the faculty section of the yearbook
there is a picture of Carter working assiduously at his desk,
and in the Glee Club section there is a photo of him directing
the singers with deliberation. The yearbook also provides a
positive evaluation of Carter’s work with the Glee Club over
the year:
The aims of the Club are primarily to foster competent group singing (not necessary concert competency), to gain a better understanding of choral music,
and . . . to let the ear hear what the voice does. To date
the criticisms received from the two mid-winter
recitals give encouragement to the feeling that the
Glee Club is headed in the right direction. Studies,
scholarship work, and talents turned toward other
interests have naturally
taken their toll of the initial
roster, but there still remains a group large
enough to work with the
music under consideration.
The members are from the
three lower classes, which
means that their return next
fall will leave only the task
of inducting freshmen and
learning new songs; this is
Fig. 2: Carter’s four-part setting
indeed a strong incentive
of “St. John’s Forever”
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for the club’s continuation and success (St. John’s
College Yearbook, 1941, 30).
And the work Carter did with the music program was indeed quite varied. For instance, on Saturday, December 20,
1940, the Glee Club performed, at the request of Scott
Buchanan, on the St. John’s College monthly radio broadcast
from WFBR in Baltimore. On that occasion they sang “St.
John’s Forever,” arranged especially by Carter for the broadcast. (A copy of this arrangement can be found in the St.
John’s College Music Library.) They also sang at “Miss
Alexander’s Christmas Party” on December 18. And Carter
assisted in making the musical arrangements for the end-ofterm variety show That’s Your Problem, which showcased the
vaudeville talents of both students and tutors (The Collegian,
Nov. 13 and Dec. 13, 1940).
When the first performance of the year’s concert series
was announced, The Collegian took the opportunity to explain the purpose of the lectures that Carter would give in
preparation for each concert:
While Mr. Carter plans to discuss primarily the program for each concert, the entire lecture series will
form a course in music appreciation. As Mr. Carter is
himself a talented musician, the course affords a
unique opportunity in musical education (The Collegian, Nov. 1, 1940).
The Collegian also reviewed each concert, and while the performances were sometimes panned, sometimes praised, there
was no criticism of Carter’s work in organizing the series and
lecturing on the pieces performed.
Things went less swimmingly with some of Carter’s other
duties. The counterpoint, harmony, and composition class
that had been announced in October was “on the verge of collapse” at the start of the second term because of waning at-
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tendance. The Saturday morning music discussion class was
considered to be “somewhat irregular”; nevertheless, in January the group had just finished an analysis of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, and was starting to study Beethoven’s
Diabelli Variations (The Collegian, Jan. 31, 1941). In February it was announced that, “at the request of a small group
of students,” Carter would be offering a new class in eartraining and sight-singing on Saturday mornings (The Collegian, Feb. 14, 1941).
Taking into account the addition of this new class,
Carter’s teaching schedule for his first year at St. John’s
looked like this:
Elliott Carter’s Teaching Schedule, 1940-41
Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday
4-6
Sunday
Music
discussion
and ear
training
10-12
2-3
Saturday
Counterpoint
Music
Music
Room
Room
Music
Room
Music
Room
Counterpoint
Music
Music
Room
Room
Recorded Glee
Music
Club
Recorded
Music
Glee
Club
Glee
Club
6-7
7-8
Recorded
Music
In addition to his teaching hours, it seems that Carter was
responsible for writing several manuals relating to musical
studies during the fall 1940 term. Not surprisingly, he authored a “Manual of Musical Notation” explaining how to
read and write music, which was no doubt intended for the
use of students in his various music classes. But his name is
also attached to several manuals of musical studies that were
part of the Freshman Laboratory curriculum: “Musical Intervals and Scales,” “The Greek Diatonic Scale,” and “The Just
Scale and Its Uses” (Schiff 1983, 336). Another manual exists
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for a fourth laboratory unit called “The Keys in Music,”
which, though unsigned, must also have been devised by
Carter, because the musical examples are written in his distinctive musical script. (All the documents mentioned in this
paragraph can be found in the St. John’s College Library
Archives.)
All these manuals demonstrate Carter’s understanding of
the integration of music with the rest of the curriculum of the
New Program. The “Manual of Music Notation,” for instance, likens music to language, and musical notation to linguistic writing systems.
Musical notation is the method used to represent
graphically the patterns of sound which are the basis
of music. Like the writing which represents the language of words, it serves man to overcome his lapses
of memory by maintaining a more permanent record
and aids him in the transmission to other men of the
work of his mind as well in art as in thought.
The simplest kind of notation of music sounds indicates in a general way the prolongation or shortening
of the vowels of words and also the rise and fall of
the voice while it is sounding them (Carter 1941, 1.)
The comparison between music and language was a favorite notion of Scott Buchanan’s, and Carter seems to have
agreed with him. It is likely that the two discussed the matter
before Carter wrote this manual. There is a record from this
period of Buchanan’s thoughts on music—a three-page outline of the topic “Music” dated November 8, 1940 that shows
clear parallels to Carter’s formulation. The first page of the
outline contains these notes (Buchanan 1940, 1):
Voice—noise
Words
3 Dimensions of Words
Pitch
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113
Time
Accent-Rhythm
Other Dimensions
Expression
Music Without Words
Measurement and Words
Verbal Analogies
Figures of Speech
Metaphor
Simile
Analogy
Allegory
It appears that the two men were in agreement that music is
one of the writing and reading disciplines in the liberal arts
tradition, and that this view needed to be expressed somehow
in the New Program.
If Carter’s music-notation manual links the study of
music to the study of language, his laboratory manuals even
more clearly link it to the study of mathematics and physics.
In 1939-1940, the year before Carter’s revision of the music
element in the laboratory program, there was only one music
laboratory exercise during the entire year, and the text of the
manual for that exercise was a mere five pages that described
the design of a simple, two-string sonometer (sounding
board), gave instructions for duplicating Pythagoras’ experiments on musical ratios, provided directions for creating various musical scales, and posing questions to be answered in
laboratory reports. Carter’s four laboratory units brought the
total number of manual pages devoted to musical topics up
to sixty-eight, and the experiments he devised demonstrate a
wide-ranging knowledge of early music theory and mathematics. The lessons covered Pythagoras’ experiments, Euclid’s division of the canon, the music of Plato’s Timaeus,
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and Kepler’s notions of the musical relations among the planets; he had the students create eight- and thirteen-string
sonometers to explore the discovery and historical development of musical intervals, modes, scales, melodies, harmonies, and chord progressions from the most ancient
tunings through the experimental temperaments of the
Baroque and early Classical period to modern equal temperament. (The sonometer
in the accompanying
photo is located in the
St. John’s College
Music Library.)
Moreover, these
lessons were coordinated with the readings that students
were doing in matheFig. 3: Carter’s Sonometer
matics tutorial and seminar. According to the teaching schedule, the Freshman music
laboratories would have occurred during the fifteenth through
the eighteenth weeks of the school year, that is, probably in
December and January. These units therefore would have followed previous laboratory studies of physical phenomena
dealing with rectilineal angles, areas, weights and measures,
light, lenses, and circular motion, and mathematical studies
of polygons, simple ratios, compound ratios, and simple
quadratic equations.
Virgil Blackwell, Carter’s personal assistant, calls the two
years at St. John’s the “lost years,” because they have not
been much discussed by Carter’s biographers. He also told
me that Carter had a good laugh when he saw the image of
the sonometer I had sent via email (personal communication,
Nov. 6, 2011); he remembered that “the students made the
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | THOMS
115
sonometer” (personal communication, Nov. 8, 2011). These
remarks indicate that Carter approached the teaching of the
music laboratories in the participatory, exploratory, experimental spirit of the New Program. He and his students would
investigate the most complex concepts of tuning by means
of the sonometers they built with their own hands, by applying bridges, weights, rulers, wires, nails, rubber mallets,
bows, and resin to manipulate string lengths in an effort to
discover the mathematical underpinnings of the auditory phenomena.
While Carter thus set the foundations for the mathematical study of music at St. John’s, his initial designs began to
be modified in the very next school year. Since the program
of study at the college has always been under continuous revision, the music labs too went through changes over the
years, until Carter’s original contributions were all but forgotten. His four laboratory exercises lay neglected in the library archives, together with the drawings of the eight- and
thirteen-stringed sonometers. The seventy-year old sonometer, discovered some years ago in a basement storage room,
was tucked away as a curious relic in a corner of the music
library, its purpose and origin unknown.
1941-1942: Tutor of Greek, Mathematics, and Seminar
In the 1941-42 school year, Carter’s friend Nicholas Nabokov
arrived at St. John’s to take over the duties of Director of
Music. Nabokov expanded the music program considerably.
While the Glee Club continued, he added two new vocal
groups: a chamber choir and something called the “Vespers”
group. He also started a chamber ensemble and a community
orchestra.
Since Carter had relinquished his responsibilities to
Nabokov, he then took on the regular teaching schedule of a
tutor at the College. Initially it was difficult to determine ex-
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116
actly what he taught during his second year. After seventy
years, the original records of teaching schedules and tutor assignments had been lost. But the current Assistant Registrar
at St. John’s, Jacqueline Thoms, recently discovered some
ledgers detailing all the classes attended by each Senior in
the graduating class of 1945 during their four-your career, together with the names of their tutors. By compiling the
classes that these students attended during their Freshman
year, it was possible to identify the classes Carter taught during the 1941-42 school year, and the number of students in
each of his classes (Ledger 1941-42).
This research confirms the facts that were already known
about Carter’s teaching that year. He taught Freshman Greek,
Freshman Mathematics, and his four Freshman Laboratory units
when they came up in December or January. In addition, he coled a Freshman Seminar with fellow tutor Bernard Peebles.
Elliott Carter’s teaching schedule 1941-42
Monday
9-10
Greek
Tutorial
9 students
Tuesday
Greek
Tutorial
9 students
Wednesday
Greek
Tutorial
9 students
Thursday
Greek
Tutorial
9 students
Friday
Greek
Tutorial
9 students
10-11
11-12
Mathematics Mathematics Mathematics
Tutorial
Tutorial
Tutorial
9 students
9 students
9 students
Mathematics Mathematics
Tutorial
Tutorial
9 students
9 students
12-2
Laboratory
Freshman
Exercises 15-18
2-5
5-8
8-10
Seminar with
Peebles
18 students
Seminar with
Peebles
18 students
Although Carter’s responsibilities as Director of Music
were no doubt heavy, his responsibilities as a tutor were even
heavier. In addition to facilitating discussion in his Greek and
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ESSAYS & LECTURES | THOMS
Mathematics tutorials, he also had to set up, prepare, and lead
the laboratory exercises for the students. All these classes also
required him to read and respond to short papers and reports,
and to devise and correct occasional quizzes. In his Seminar
he had to complete the extensive required readings from the
Great Books, moderate the two-hour long seminar discussions twice a week, read longer papers, and conduct oral examinations. In addition, he also would have spent considerable
time advising students individually on their classwork, and
helping them to write, revise, and complete the required essays.
One can get an idea of the sheer amount of reading Carter
had to do for seminar alone from the schedule of readings
from the 1940-41 school year, which would not have changed
much during the following year:
September 26
September 30
October 3
October 7
October 10
October 14
October 17
October 21
October 24
October 28
October 31
November 4
November 7
Homer, Iliad, 1
November 11 Aeschylus, Choephoroe, Eumenides
Homer, Iliad, 2-4
November 14 Plato, Charmides, Lysis
Homer, Iliad, 5-10
November 18 Plato, Symposium
Homer, Iliad, 11-16
November 21 Herodotus, History, 1-2
Homer, Iliad, 17-24
November 25 Herodotus, History, 3-5
Plato, Ion, Laches
November 28 Herodotus, History, 6-7
Homer, Odyssey, 1-8 December 2 Herodotus, History, 8-9
Homer, Odyssey, 9-16 December 5 Plato, Gorgias
Homer, Odyssey, 17-24 December 9 Plato, Republic, 1-2
Plato, Meno
December 12 Plato, Republic 3-5
Plato, 3 works
December 16 Plato, Republic, 6-7
Plato, Phaedo
December 19 Plato, Republic, 8-10
Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Christmas Vacation
January 6
January 9
January 13
January 16
January 20
January 23
January 27
January 30
February 3
February 6
February 10
Plato, Cratylus
Plato, Phaedrus
Sophocles, 2 works
Aristotle, Poetics
Sophocles, 2 works
Euripides, 3 works
Plato, Parmenides
Plato, Theatetus
Plato, Sophist
Hippocrates, 4 works
Hippocrates, 5 works
February 13
February 13
February 20
February 27
March 3
March 6
March 10
March 13
March 17
March 20
Plato, Philebus
Plato, Timaeus
Aristotle, Categories
Aristotle, Prior Analytics
Aristotle, Posterior Analytics
Aristotle, Posterior Analytics
Aristotle, Posterior Analytics
Thucydides, History, 1-2
Thucydides, History, 3-4
Thucydides, History, 5-6
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118
Spring Vacation
March 31
April 3
April 7
April 10
April 14
April 17
April 21
April 24
April 28
Thucydides, History, 7-8
Aristophanes, 3 works
Aristophanes, 3 works
Aristotle, Politics, 1-4
Aristotle, Politics, 5-8
Plutarch, 5 works
Plutarch, 3 works
Nicomachus, Arithmetic 1
Nicomachus, Arithmetic, 2
May 1
May 5
May 8
May 12
May 15
May 19
May 23
May 26
May 29
Lucretius, On the Nature of Things
Lucretius, On the Nature of Things
Euclid, Elements, Bks. 5, 10, 13
Aristarchus, Sun and Moon
Aristotle, Physics, 1
Aristotle, Physics, 2-3
Aristotle, Physics, 4
Archimedes, Works (unspecified)
Lucian, True History
(Barr Buchanan Series III, Curriculum in Motion, December 1940,
Box 2, Folder 25, St. John’s College Library Archives)
As we have seen, Carter’s remarkable education prepared
him well for his duties as a tutor at St. John’s. Nevertheless,
the new experience of teaching Freshmen, the pace of the curriculum, and the many hours spent meeting individually with
students must have kept him extraordinarily busy.
1940-1942: Elliott Carter, Composer
According to Virgil Blackwell, Carter says that his choral
work In Defense of Corinth was written during his time at St.
John’s College, and that he began working on the sketches
for his Symphony No. 1 immediately after leaving the college,
when he and his wife moved west to Arizona and New Mexico. Both works relate to our consideration of Carter’s career
at St. John’s.
In Defense of Corinth for speaker, men’s chorus and
piano four hands, was commissioned by the Harvard Glee
Club and performed by them on March 12, 1942, with G.
Wallace Woodworth conducting (Schiff, 329). The work has
many similarities to Stravinsky’s Les Noces, Schoenberg’s
Moses and Aaron, and Orff’s Carmina Burana. It is based on
a passage from “The Author’s Prologue” to Book Three of
Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais (14951553). The text could be construed as a satirical commentary
on militarism and a mockery of war-hysteria. Carter’s work
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119
was composed close to the bombing of Pearl Harbor on
December 7, 1941. The satirical attitude toward war displayed in the piece did not, however, carry over into Carter’s
personal life: he attempted to enlist in military service as soon
as the United States entered hostilities, as did many of his St.
John’s students over the next few years. Because he had terrible allergies, however, he was rejected for active duty on
health grounds. Eventually, from late 1943 until June 6, 1944
he worked as a musical advisor for the U. S. Office of War
Information (Wierzbicki 2011, 29).
Whatever his personal political feelings, Carter’s In Defense of Corinth is a musical metaphor for his situation as
composer in a world made mad by war. The work is divided
into three distinct sections. In the first section, a speaker and
male chorus use the spoken narration, speech-song, and full
singing of a speaker and male chorus join with a four-hand
piano accompaniment to build up musical textures in imitation of the building up of the Corinthian war effort against
Philip of Macedon:
Everyone did watch and ward, and not one was exempted from carrying the basket. Some polished
corslets, varnished backs and breasts, cleaned the headpieces, mail-coats, brigandines, salads, helmets, morions, jacks, gushets, gorgets, hoguines, brassars and
cuissars, corslets, haubergeons, shields, bucklers, targets, greaves, gauntlets, and spurs. Others made ready
bows, slings, crossbows, pellets, catapults, migrains or
fireballs, birebrands, balists, scorpions, and other such
warlike engine expugnatory and destructive Hellepolides. They sharpened and prepared spears, staves,
pikes, brown bills, hailberds, long hooks, lances, zagayes, quarterstaves, eesleares, partisans, troutstaves,
clubs, battle-axes, maces, darts, dartlets, glaives,
javelins, javelots, and truncheons. They set edges upon
scimitars, cutlasses, badelairs, backwords, tucks,
rapiers, bayonets, arrow-heads, dags, daggers, mandou-
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
sians, poniards, whinyards, knives, skeans, shables,
chipping knives, and raillons. . . . Every man exercised
his weapon. (Rabelais 2004, 265.)
Accompanying this relentless concatenation of weaponry, the
musical elements continue to pile up, steadily getting louder,
sharper, more percussive; the voices progress to confused
speaking and shouting, reaching a climax in pure noise.
Fig. 4: In Defense of Corinth holograph score
(Library of Congress, ML96.C288 [Case])
The brief second section is a quieter setting in which the
main character, Diogenes, seeing everyone around him so
hard at work making war while he is not employed by the
city in any way, contemplates what he should do. Surely this
must reflect Carter’s state of mind at the time: unable to join
the war effort because of his allergies, he finds himself surrounded by young men, including his students, preparing for
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | THOMS
121
and leaving for war. Like Diogenes, he must have been contemplating his situation, and what he should do next.
In the third section Diogenes, in a moment of sudden
awakening, is roused and inspired by the war effort going on
all around him. He leaves town, goes toward a little hill near
Corinth called Cranie,
and there on the strand, a pretty level place, did he roll
his jolly tub, which served him for a house to shelter
him from the injuries of the weather: there, I say, in a
great vehemecy of spirit, did he turn it, veer it, wheel
it, whirl it, frisk it, jumble it, shuffle it, huddle it, tumble it, hurry it, jolt it, justle it, overthrow it, evert it, invert it, subvert it, overturn it, beat it, thwack it, bump
it, batter it, knock it, thrust it, push it, jerk it, shock it,
shake it, toss it, throw it, overthrow it, upside down,
topsy-turvy, arsiturvy, tread it, trample it, stamp it, tap
it, ting it, ring it, tingle it, towl it, sound it, resound it,
stop it, shut it, unbung it, close it, unstopple it. . . . And
then again in a mighty bustle, he . . . slid it down the
hill, and precipitated it from the very height of Cranie;
then from the foot to the top (like another Sisyphus
with his stone) bore it up again, and every way so
banged it and belabored it that it was ten thousand to
one he had not struck the bottom of it out. (Ibid.)
This text is set with hocket imitation and short fugue-like segments, piling the words on top of one another, so that the result is quite similar to the raucous first section. And also like
the first section, it undergoes a steady crescendo until it
reaches a thundering climax.
At this point, the final section begins. The narrator speaks
the last few lines quietly:
When one of his friends had seen, and asked him why
he did so toil his body, perplex his spirit, and torment
his tub, the philosopher’s answer was that, not being
employed in any other charge by the Republic, he
thought it expedient to thunder and storm it so tempes-
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
tuously upon his tub, that amongst a people so fervently
busy and earnest at work he alone might not seem a loitering slug and lazy fellow. (Ibid.)
It is not too far-fetched to imagine that Carter may have seen
himself in the role of Diogenes, and that composing this wild,
raucous piece was Carter’s way “tormenting his tub” in order
to avoid being seen as doing nothing while everyone around
him was consumed by the war effort. There is certainly no
doubt that the atmosphere on campus after the declaration of
war resembled the situation in Rabelais’ Corinth. The preparations for the war were both pervasive and intrusive. There
were military exercises on campus, information poured in
about military employment opportunities, new classes appeared on the mechanics of gasoline engines and the electronics of radio devices (The Collegian, various issues from
1942). Periodic lectures about the causes and progress and
status of the war were offered, and a rash of military enlistment by the students so depleted enrollment that by the war’s
end there war great concern that the St. John’s might have to
close its doors. In Defense of Corinth certainly reflected the
conditions that surrounded Carter while he composed the
work, and no doubt reflected his inner state as well.
Carter’s second major work of 1942 is his Symphony No. 1,
which he completed in Santa Fe, New Mexico, about six
months after leaving St. John’s. In the sketches for this work,
which are housed at the Library of Congress along with holograph score and the revised score from 1954 (Carter 1942),
it seems that Carter is again playing the role of Diogenes tormenting his tub; this time, however, the tub is the Symphony.
The 184 pages of sketches show beating, battering, slicing,
compressing, enlarging, twisting, and transforming of apparently innumerable musical ideas from all three movements
in the finished piece. There is an explosive vitality combined
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | THOMS
123
Fig. 5: Sketches for Symphony No. 1
(Library of Congress ML96.C288 [Case])
with a restless energy in the musical handwriting, which
seems almost thrown onto the pages in instants of creative
inspiration.
What is more, this material is not limited to musical notations. The sketches fall into ten categories: 1. Fragments of
one to many lines, some crossed out; 2. single-line drafts
worked out and developed; 3. two-part piano reductions of
sections in progress, for playing at the piano; 4. fair copies
of two-part part piano reductions, including one of the entire
first movement, 5. reductions of three to five parts, for working out complex ideas; 6. larger orchestral reductions with
instrumentation noted; 7. full-score drafts with instrumentation noted; 8. verbal notes, such as “add a few dotted
rhythms” or “avoid too many accents on the first beat”; 9.
letter designations for the various motives and themes, such
as “A,” “B,” “C,” and so forth; 10. verbal notes on the se-
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quential organization of musical elements within a section.
Out of all these disparate elements, Carter fashioned an
elegant, hand-copied full score of 149 pages on December
19, 1942. In this pre-xerox, pre-computer era, it must have
taken a considerable amount of time just to write out such a
meticulous manuscript. And if one adds to that the amount
of time that was clearly devoted to beating the tub while inventing, revising, discarding, reworking, drafting, and redrafting the thousands of sketches, it seems plausible to think
that Carter began working on the symphony while still at St.
John’s. Blackwell, however, indicated that Carter was “adamant”
about the fact that he began working on the piece only after
leaving St. John’s. If that is correct, then the explosive creative
energy displayed in the sketches suggests that his compositional urge had been suppressed by his intellectual and instructional responsibilities at St. John’s, so that once those
responsibilities were lifted, his musical imagination was able
to generate ideas profusely.
The Symphony No. 1 is a Janus-faced work, looking backward toward the influence of slightly older contemporaries
like Roger Sessions, Roy Harris, and Aaron Copland, but also
forward toward traits that would become characteristic of
Carter’s style—cross-accents and irregular groupings of
rhythms, interplay of tonal centers, fluidity in the shaping of
musical motives, a transformational approach to motivic development, evocative orchestral coloring (particularly in the
use of woodwinds), and simultaneous balancing of dissimilar
ideas (Schiff 1983, 117-121). The Symphony already shows
the continuous ebb and flow from sparseness to complexity,
from delicacy to brutality, from quietness to cacophony, from
simple textures to convoluted contrapuntal intricacy that
would appear fully developed in his masterpiece, the Concerto for Orchestra of 1969. One can see in the sketches and
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hear in the music that 1942 was a time of compositional turbulence for Carter. He must have been bursting with competing ideas from old and new sources, all pushing him toward
discovering his unique artistic voice. Whatever attractions
the undeniably novel environment of St. John’s held for him
as a curious, intelligent, inquisitive, and liberally educated
thinker, he must have felt that, in his heart, he was essentially
meant to be a composer. What else could he do but leave, so
that the potential composer within him could become actual?
Epilogue: Elliott Carter, Composer and Liberal Artist
In the years just after leaving to pursue his composing career,
Carter wrote two essays that relate to his tenure as a tutor at
St. John’s. The first, “Music as a Liberal Art” (Carter 1944),
which was written only two years after he left the college,
discusses the decline of music as a liberal art in America. Citing the fundamental importance of musical training in Plato’s
Timaeus and Aristotle’s Politics and Poetics, Carter laments
the fact that music has become a specialized and technical
discipline, divorced from the connection it once had to the
other liberal arts. At St. John’s, however, he says, “music has
actually been taken out of the music building. It is no longer
the special study of the specialist, of the budding professional. Instead it is examined in the classroom, seminars, and
laboratories, in an effort to give it a working relationship with
all other knowledge” (Carter 1944, 105). After describing in
greater detail the relations between music, mathematics, philosophy, and physics in the St. John’s curriculum, Carter
maintains that
[w]hen the student sees the interconnection of all these
things, his understanding grows in richness. And since
today no widely acepted esthetic doctrine unifies out
though on the various aspects of music, such a plan at
least conjures up the past to assist us; it helps to raise
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the various philosophical questions involved. In one
way or another these questions must be considered, for
it is not enough to devote all our efforts to acquiring
the technical skill essential to instrumentalists, composers, and even listeners. There must be good thinking
and good talking about music to preserve its noble rank
as a fine art for all of us, and the college is one of the
logical places for this more considered attitude to be
cultivated. (Carter 1944, 106).
As we have seen, Carter’s view of music education was
deeply attuned to the experimental approach being taken at
St. John’s. This alignment must have made his teaching in
the New Program a meaningful and rewarding experience for
him, and this article is evidence of how highly he regarded
the method of musical studies at St. John’s.
The second article, “The Function of the Composer in
Teaching the General College Student” (Carter 1952), reveals
a second aspect of Carter’s understanding of music as a liberal art. While it is certainly true that reconnecting music to
the other liberal arts provides students with a more profound
understanding of music than specialized musical instruction,
it is also true that connecting the other liberal arts to music
provides students with a more profound understanding of
their own inner life than specialized instruction in any discipline. In this article, Carter discusses the difference between
the “outer-directed” man, whose primary focus is on adapting
his inner life to the demands of society, and the “inner-directed” man, who primary focus in on adapting the demands
of society to his individual conscience and imagination. Both
the teaching scholar and the teaching artist, according to
Carter, are trying to “preserve that liveliness of the individual
mind so important to our civilization” (Carter 1952, 151). But
they go about it in different ways.
On the one hand, the teaching scholar of the general
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music student aims for the “all-embracing, the dispassionate
view of his subject” and “tries to find a harmonious and rationally explicable pattern in the past and present.” By contrast, the teaching artist is “only occupied with those aspects
of music most important to him as an individual”; his goal as
an artist is to create unique artworks that can move his audience and possibly shift societal demands. In short, he teacher
treats music objectively, the artist, subjectively. This basic
difference in attitude toward the subject gives rise to a difference in emphasis that marks the gulf between teaching
scholar and teaching artist: the scholar highlights the “pastness of the past,” and communicates to students the impassive
historicity of the subject matter, whereas the artist highlights
the “presentness of the past,” and communicates to students
the pliability of the past as material for the reshaping powers
of the creative individual. Carter admonishes higher education for its preference for teaching scholars, who give students “scraps of information” about the past; he praises the
teaching artist for “constantly trying to find a more powerful
method of making his students more culturally alive,” by reshaping the past into a living and vital present (Carter, 1952,
153-154). At present, Carter emphasizes,
we have got to help our students to realize that to enjoy
the arts creatively and imaginatively will be far more
rewarding to them as individuals in terms of stimulating vividness of thought and feeling, quickness of understanding, and ingeniousness in dealing with new
problems—far more rewarding than the mere passive
enjoyment which most mass-produced entertainment
invites (Carter 1952, 155).
The contemporary serious composer must be able to engage
students in the “presentness of the past,” must be able to absorb the musical past, sublimate its essence, and recast it into
new shapes that speaks movingly to the present while at the
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same time embodying what was most enduring in the music
of the past.
At this point in the article, Carter once again describes
the music program at St. John’s. Because the college wanted
to move away from the teaching scholar’s approach to music
toward a teaching artist’s point of view, “they called in a composer on the hunch that he would grasp the idea more than
other members of the musical profession, and a plan was
worked out from which it was hoped that students of widely
different musicality could make contact with art” (Carter
1952, 156). It was hoped that students might attain “esthetic
awareness” by studying music under the guidance of a composer, who could help the students see beyond the “pastness
of the past” to the “presentness of the past” by showing them
music history and the masterworks of the great composers
through the contemporary lens of his actively creative perspective.
But the teaching artist is not limited to exhibiting his
works to his students. On the one hand, by means of his compositions, the teaching artist “can give life to and express all
those things which, at best, he can but poorly indicate with
words.” On the other hand, “sometimes verbal teaching, that
is, the articulation of the principles and ideas he strives to
embody in his works, is a valuable part of his development
as a composer; and in this case he can be a useful member of
the academic world” (Carter 1952, 158). In this last circumstance, the artist can bring his students along into the internal
aspect of his creative process, and possibly stimulate them to
develop their own creative powers.
In this essay, as in much of his music, Carter seems to be
trying to hold together two complex and somewhat contradictory themes. It is simultaneously true not only that the
composer is the best teacher when he is writing music and
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indirectly teaching others, but also that his students, and the
composer himself as well, also benefit from his talking about
music and directly teaching others. The two truths conflict.
The working composer must be somewhat solitary; he must
spend time away from others pursuing his personal creative
projects. The teaching composer must engage in communal
life; he must bring “presentness to the past” by speaking with
others about listening to, performing, and creating music. For
the teaching artist, this counterpoint of competing activities
can enrich and deepen his creative life. But no one can do
both at the same time.
For Carter, his two years at St. John’s as a teaching artist
seem to have stimulated his already intense creative drive—
so much so, that he found it necessary to stop teaching in
order to focus on his art. Over the years, he has returned to
the role of teaching artist often, giving innumerable workshops, coaching prospective composers in academic and nonacademic settings, lecturing and writing essays about music
education for academic audiences. One could argue that it
was Carter’s decision to join the faculty at St. John’s that provided the opportunity for him to become an extraordinary
teaching artist, and that it was his decision to leave St. John’s
that provided the opportunity for him to create the many enduring artworks through which he could reach an ever widening circle of students with his teaching. Without both coming
and going from St. John’s, Elliott Carter could not have become Elliott Carter.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Blackwell, Virgil. 2011. Personal email messages to and telephone conversations with the author in November.
Buchanan, Scott. 1940. “Music,” three-part handwritten note dated November 8, at Harvard University Libraries, MS Am 1992, No. 1547.
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Carter, Elliott. 1941. “Manual of Music Notation.” St. John’s College Library Archives.
———. 1942. Sketches for Symphony No. 1, Library of Congress Performing Arts Manuscripts, ML96.C288
———. 1950. The Defense of Corinth. Library of Congress Performing
Arts Manuscripts, ML96.C288
———. 1944. “Music as a Liberal Art,” Modern Music 22:1, 12-16.
Reprinted in Else Stone and Kurt Stone, The Writings of Elliott Carter
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), 105-109.
———. 1952. “The Function of the Composer in Teaching the General
College Student,” Bulletin of the Society for Music in the Liberal Arts
College 3:1, Supplement 3. Reprinted in Else Stone and Kurt Stone, The
Writings of Elliott Carter (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977),
150-58.
———. 1962. Personal letter to Scott Buchanan. St. John’s College Library Archive, Barr Personal Papers, Series 2, Box 10, folder 20.
The Collegian. (St. John’s College newspaper.) Various issues, 19401941, 1941-1942. Maryland State Archives, St. John’s College Special
Collection, MSA 5698.
Edwards, Allen. 1971. Flawed Words and Stubborn Sounds: A Conversation with Elliott Carter. New York: W. W. Norton and Company.
Ledger 1941-42. Large format class ledger. St. John’s College Registrar’s
Office Archives.
Murphy, Emily A. 1996. “A Complete and Generous Education”: 300
Years of Liberal Arts, St. John’s College, Annapolis. Annapolis, Maryland:
St. John’s College Press.
Nabokov, Nicholas. 1940. Letter to Stringfellow Barr, June 22, 1940. St.
John’s College Registrar’s Office Archive.
Nelson, Charles. 1997. Stringfellow Barr: A Centennial Appreciation of
His Life and Work, 1897-1982. Annapolis, Maryland: St. John’s College
Press.
Rabelais, Francois. 2004. Five Books Of The Lives, Heroic Deeds And
Sayings Of Gargantua And His Son Pantagruel, translated by Sir Thomas
Urquhart and Peter Motteux. Whitefish, Montana: Kessinger Publishing.
Rule, William Scott. 2009. Seventy Years of Changing Great Books at St.
John’s College. Educational Policy Studies Dissertations. Paper 37.
http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/eps_diss/37
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Schiff, David. 1983. The Music of Elliott Carter. New York: DaCapo
Press.
St. John’s College Catalogue 1940-41. St. John’s College Registrar’s Office Archives.
St. John’s College Yearbook, 1940-1941, 1941-1942. St. John’s College
Library Archives.
Stone, Else and Kurt. 1977. The Writings of Elliott Carter: An American
Composer Looks at Modern Music. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press.
Wierzbicki, James Eugene. 2011. Elliott Carter. Urbana: University of
Illinois Press.
OTHER RESOURCES LOCATED AT ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE
In the St. John’s College Library Archives
Photo of Elliott Carter at desk
Musical programs from 1940-41
Carter’s Five Laboratory Manuals :
“Musical Intervals and Scales” (Laboratory Exercise 15, 1940)
“The Greek Diatonic Scale” (Laboratory Exercise 16, 1940)
“The Just Scale and Its Uses” (Laboratory Exercise 17, 1940)
“The Keys in Music” (Laboratory Exercise 18, 1940)
“Manual of Musical Notation” (1 March, 1941)
In the St. John’s College Music Library
Carter’s sonometer
Carter’s four-part setting of “St. John’s Forever”
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Talking, Reading, Writing, Listening
Eva Brann
I imagine that on Parents’ Weekend there might be some parents attending this once weekly occasion when the college assembles to hear
a lecture. By its very name, a lecture is read—but read out loud, delivered in the writer’s voice. Thus, the sequence goes: I thought, I
wrote, I read, I speak. Although this is the principal way of teaching
at institutions of higher education, it is a curious one. Here at St.
John’s, we show our respect for the possible profit we might derive
from it by requiring our students to come to a lecture every Friday
night—just when, elsewhere, it is prelude-time to party night. And we
express our suspicion of lecture-hearing by asking students to listen
to a lecture—but only once a week. So this one weekly hour of just
sitting and listening is mandatory, and about as enforceable as a
mandatory evacuation before a storm. (This simile appears here because this lecture was written in the dark during Hurricane Irene.)
The attendance that we do take utterly seriously is presence in
class—seminar above all. In seminar, no speeches are delivered. Instead we talk, in turn, to one another. So rather than call my lecture
“Speaking, Writing, Reading, Listening,” I have substituted “Talking”
for “Speaking.” Talk seems to denote a more conversational, almost
social mode of speech, less formal, more spontaneous, more participatory. And yet our seminar is a mandatory, scheduled class, with prescribed texts. Is that a setting for talk?
So I would like to think in public about our modes of being together, about the how and what of this college as a community of
learning. Since we, the tutors, collude with our students in making
them a little impatient with being talked at, I’ll sneak around that resistance, which I share. I’ll snaffle their good will (old books on rhetoric called this formal beginning of a speech the captatio benevolentiae,
This lecture was delivered at St. John’s College in Annapolis on the Friday
of Parents’ Weekend, November 4, 2011. Eva Brann is a tutor and former
Dean of the College.
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“the capture of benevolence”) by speaking about talking itself and
what it entails.
Your children, our students, will probably have told you now and
then that parents don’t know anything. Freshmen, on the other hand,
know everything. They are fresh, unimpaired in spirit—and also, perhaps, somewhat fresh in a now obsolete meaning of the term: cheeky.
Sophomores know a little less; their class name means “wise fools,”
as their knowledge of Greek will tell them; it is a combination of
Greek sophon, “wise” and moron, “foolish.” Juniors and the college
elders, the seniors, have reapproached their parents and become almost perfect in ignorance.
I am, in fact, being serious. The members of this community of
learning are not ashamed to own up to their own ignorance; indeed
we think better of this thoughtful confession than of a profession of
expertise. It’s why the teachers here call themselves “tutors,”
guardians of learning, rather than “professors,” authorities of knowledge, and it is why our students are to some degree our fellow-learners. Thus we are apt to think of even the most positive, content-replete
learning as a specification of our ignorance. It’s a fancy way of saying
that all our learning starts and ends in questions— a point to which I
will return as we go along. So this acknowledged ignorance is not
false humility, but a confident, even competent, way to conduct a college. Yet, of course, sub specie aeternitatis, “under the aspect of eternity,” as the philosophers say, we are, as limited beings, all
equal—equally diminutive before the infinitely distant ultimacies we
long for. This is cause enough for some personal modesty and even
occasional dejection.
I’ve been saying “we,” meaning the college of students and tutors.
Now I’ll mean mainly the tutors when I say that, although there’s
probably nothing we all agree must be true, there is something we all
agree must be done. Some of us, perhaps even most, think that the
Appearances before our senses bespeak a Being behind them; some
of us suppose there is a Ground in which all nature is rooted; and some
of us believe there is a realm of Divinity above us. Others see no reason to agree to any of these. But we all agree that, in regard to our ignorance about matters of most persistent importance to human beings,
we are close to our students, and that we are therefore guardians of
learning rather than transmitters of doctrine.
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We have a model for this unteacherly mode of teaching, presented
to us in the writings of Plato: Socrates. Not all of us, particularly freshmen, take to him. He describes himself now as a gadfly, stinging a
sluggish horse into wakefulness, now as a demon mediating between
earth and heaven (Apology 30e, Symposium 202d, ff.). So he is both
irritating and elusive. One moment he argues like a sophist, that is to
say, a trickster of the intellect; another moment he intimates his most
genuine relation to truth. He is both bully and benefactor. So when he
declares, often and insistently, that he is ignorant, we must suspect
irony. “Irony,” eironeia, is the Greek word for dissembling, pretending
to be what one is not. What then is this Socratic ignorance, which in
some of us engenders trust precisely by causing dis-ease?
We’ve all come across genuine inarticulate cluelessness, truly
dumb ignorance—though I think it is fairly rare in human beings. Socratic ignorance, on the other hand, is anything but dumb; it talks, and
that makes all the difference. For example, in the first philosophical
work our students read together, Plato’s dialogue Meno, Socrates
blames himself for knowing “nothing at all” about human excellence
(71b). That is why he can genuinely ask: What is it? But look what
this question involves. First of all it is an admission, actually an assertion, of self-knowledge. People who ask, know what they lack.
They know what they don’t know. Acknowledged ignorance is important knowledge about ourselves.
And second, it is a very precise negative knowledge of what we
are asking after. The word “comprehend” comes to mind; it means
“to get, to enclose, in one’s grasp.” Human thinking is wonderfully
prehensile. It can get at, wrap itself around, something it does not yet
really “get” in the sense of “understand.” In this dialogue, Meno is
Socrates’ “interlocutor,” which is learned Latin for “conversational
partner.” I use the term here because Meno—who, as we know from
other sources, was as bad a man as you’ll never want to meet—can’t
really be a partner, and certainly not a participant, in the sort of searching conversation Socrates cares about. In fact he tries to forestall such
talk by producing a clever argument. He has the clever ignorance that
defines human badness for Socrates. This obstructionist argument
turns that very wonder of question-asking, which I’ve described as
our ability to wrap our thought around what we haven’t yet got, into
an obstacle: If you know something why would you ask about it? If
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you’re ignorant of it, how would you recognize it if you did get it?
Socrates has a reply that has resonated down through the ages; it
bears on the essential character of talking, and I’ll come to it soon.
Meanwhile, there’s a third aspect to questions, shown in their very
asking. We ask ourselves in inner speech, but in the world, and in that
little world, the seminar, we ask each other. This asking presupposes
a sort of trust: the trust that we will be comprehended and met halfway
by our fellow learners. For a question is a sort of appeal: “Share my
perplexity; help me.”
A fourth trait of asking is one that Socrates, who claims to know
so little, claims to know for sure: To inquire, to seek by questions, to
search for what one does not know—that makes us better, braver, less
lazy than giving in to Meno’s clever sophism (86b-c).
And finally a fifth feature, which sounds odd but is central. I
know of only one subject in which Socrates claims outright to be an
expert: He says of himself that he “knows nothing else than matters
of love” (Symposium 177d). There are in the dialogues several examples of a wonderfully illuminating word-play: love, eros, and questioning, erotesis, sound very much alike (Symposium 199d, Phaedrus
234c); they are almost homonyms. The love in which Socrates is an
expert is the longing for knowledge, the “love of wisdom” which is
the English translation of the Greek word philosophia. But this longing, this pressure of desire is exactly what you might call the question-feeling. It transfigures apparently insoluble problems into
beckoning mysteries, where by a mystery I mean an ultimate problem
that attracts energizing reverence rather than dispirited resignation.
Our students’ much misused word “awesome” applies here, for once.
Thus genuine asking is the expression of a desire. For Socrates—
and for all of us—such question-desire is always close to real human
love. In fact Socratic love has a great penumbra of intermingling
loves, among them the affectionate delight that elders feel for the
young, the fond respect that colleagues—at their best—feel for one
another, and, best of all, that lifelong care which develops between
students who have spent many a night talking together. It’s a tutor’s
delight to hear the selfless admiration in the voice of a student who
tells of having found such a partner—admiration together with a very
proper and surely life-long pride in having accomplished such a
friendship. Here is half a line from Schiller’s “Ode to Joy,” which, in
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Beethoven’s setting, our Freshman Chorus often sings:
Wem der grosse Wurf gelungen
Eines Freundes Freund zu sein. . .
One who’s managed the great fortune
To become a true friend’s friend . . .
such a one is entitled to join in this ode to joy.
Schiller has it just right: Friendship is an effortful accomplishment
resting on great good luck. This school is its propitious setting: In the
talk that is a questioning, friends are found.
Aristotle, Plato’s true—that is to say resistant—pupil says
brusquely: “[Socrates] asked, but didn’t answer, for he claimed not to
know” (On Sophistic Refutations, 183b7).
Now ironic Socrates is surely unsettling, but no-nonsense Aristotle is often more so. Does he mean it? If I take him at face value,
then he is certainly wrong. Socrates does answer, probably always,
though often not in explicit words. His questioning doesn’t lead to the
levity of easy skepticism.
He does often begin by “questioning.” Light-minded talk about
higher education tends to fall into two camps. One camp thinks that
this education happens when authorities pour expertise into mostly
recalcitrant pupils. The other camp thinks this education occurs when
academics incite all too willing students to “question,” that is to test,
with the implicit intention of refuting, received wisdoms. Socrates
often does begin by showing that people’s opinions are wrong-headed
or incoherent, and, above all, not their own thought but some received
doctrine confidently proclaimed to the world but negligently adopted
within the soul. That is questioning in the somewhat hostile sense; it
is “interrogation.” But it is only done in order to clear the decks for a
second, more gracious question-asking, by which what ordinary people are really after is confirmed. Socrates is a horsefly to the lazy, to
wake them up, but a winged love-god to those ready to be impassioned.
I said Socrates gives answers. About present human life he proposes himself as a model that says to us, “Live to learn, and learn to
leave life, to be dead” (Phaedo 61c ff.). What he means, I think, is
this: Devote some of your time every day to reaching for what is behind, beneath, above the world we live in. Here many thoughtful peo-
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ple part company with him—and our students often do, understandably. About ultimate things he offers only working conjectures and
hypotheses, which he leaves to his companions to take up. And indeed
that is what happened; the thinking generations took him up. Alfred
North Whitehead—it figures here that an emigrant to America is
speaking to you—says that “the European philosophical tradition . . .
consists of a series of footnotes to Plato” (Process and Reality, Ch.1,
Sec.1)—and that means largely Socrates as Plato pictured him speaking. I am about to leap into that two and a half millennia-long footnote
for help in thinking more precisely about our kind of talking.
Each seminar starts with a question, asked by a tutor. Framing
seminar questions is the one expertise a tutor might be said to develop.
Such a question might well have much thought behind it, but it shouldn’t be an invitation to guess the tutor’s pet theory. It could be a wideopen admission of puzzlement, but it shouldn’t be mushily vague. It
might take off from an inconspicuous but significant detail of the text
but it shouldn’t run the conversation up the creek of a side issue.
Why start with a question rather than, say, a tutorial interpretation? A question is, of course, the very embodiment of a teaching
mode devoted to eliciting thought rather than delivering thought-products. The reason lies in the five features of question asking I’ve mentioned, the most pertinent of these being that questions solicit
responses by evincing trust in the willingness and ability to respond
in those addressed in the question mode.
What then is responsive talk? Here I’ll go into the footnote mode.
In the Middle Ages, certain thinkers developed the notion of “intentionality.” In fact it had come to Europe through the Arabic philosopher Avicenna (c. 1000 C.E.). Most good ideas have their comeback
time, and intentionality has been brought back in modern times. It’s
probably not wrong to say that its beginning is in Socrates’ passion
for this question: What is it that is knowable in our ever-changing, illusion-rife world, and how is it that words can convey what things
are?
Intention is both a characteristic of thinking and a capability of
speaking (where it is called “imposition”)—one that we can ascribe
to nothing else in the world or out of it. Its meaning is the action of
“stretching towards,” of reaching for something. Its descriptive name
is “aboutness,” the action and the result of something laying itself
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about, of “comprehending” something. Perhaps words show more of
the stretching, reaching-toward motion, while thoughts are more like
embracing, enclosing structures.
Take an example of what intentional aboutness isn’t: a wrapped
gift. The gift paper is distinguishable from the box of nougats—and
so you can unwrap the candy—but it’s also of the same kind, material
stuff. What you can’t do is put the gift-wrap about your affectionate
wishes, as you can’t wrap your sentiments around the nougat—except
poetically. Now think a thought. Let’s not be particular about its exact
nature—whatever we mean when we say that we have something in
mind—an object, a relation, an idea, an interpretation—any thoughtthing. Then ask yourself, Can I unwrap my thinking from the thought?
When I say that I am thinking a thought, is my thinking separable
from the thought? Or it is rather that thinking (that is, a form of the
verb for which thought is the noun), is the same as the thought, so that
when I think of something, intend it, attend to it, my mind becomes
that thing? Do thinking and thought become one? If that’s what happens, then which element wins out—the mine-ness of my thinking or
the object-ness of the content? Do I taint it with my prejudices, do I
rectify it to my standards, or do I let it be what it is? When I think, it
is often about a material object in a worldly environment. What aspect
of things comes to or into my mind—a mental, quasi-visual image,
some ideal essence, or just their use? In what way, as I attend to the
world of objects, do they tend toward me? When my talk is for real—
that is, when it is about something—how do I begin? How do I get
my thoughts to collect themselves in words? Or does my acquired language in fact produce the mental state that feels like thinking, and by
its very grammar give me the sense that there are mental objects? How
are my words about objects? Do these offer labels that present themselves for me to read off insofar as I know the vocabulary of the world,
or do my words tend out from me to the objects, throwing from my
mind an ideal sort of lasso, a thinking-noose, that will cast itself about
them and snaffle them in a mental shape suitable for my mind?
This long litany touches the Socratic mysteries, which, I have
said, he started on their way along with some conjectured elucidations.
Not that, after all, it matters much who began. These questions, at
least, are now ours.
Questions about thinking and speaking must surely be central to
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the education of human beings, who, as even animal ethologists are
willing to admit, are the only animal that can ask questions rather than
solicit reactions. But my main point here was to establish one sure
thing about talking—that it has the capacity of aboutness, which turns
out to make a piece of life like the seminar possible to begin with.
Now in the world at large there is much talk that has the aspect
of serious, even sophisticated, meaning but that, like many a hard-tocrack nut, has no kernel. So too, in the seminar, there is twaddle—
quite a lot of it.
Twaddle has in fact a sort of squatter’s right in the seminar. Concern for spontaneity and respect for potential make us leery of suppressing it too soon. I can think of three kinds of seminar twaddle.
Some among us are so eager to capture attention that they utter words
before they have collected a thought. Others are so abashed by the insufficiency of their speaking that they go on for quite a while after
they have finished; in the hope of amending their fault they make it
worse. This happens to us all and is easily fixed. We just have to become aware of it, as we do of any minor habit.
The third kind of twaddle goes much deeper. All worthwhile activities have their specific nullifications, and twaddle is the negation
of intentional talk. It is the consequence of a curious negative ability
that human beings have: the ability to fashion well-formed sentences
that express none of their own thinking, but that sound comfortably
explanatory. Here is an inevitable example from the first freshman
seminar: Why is Achilles so unassuagably angry when Agamemnon
takes his woman away? Student answer: Because he feels dishonored,
and “in the culture of that time honor was important.” Tutor’s overt
follow-up question: What do you know more about, the culture of the
time of Homer’s epics (this time happen to be a fictional composite
of times) or about Achilles? Tutor’s suppressed internal question: How
did this most murky of notions—culture—come to seem like a handy
explanatory principle to generations of students? Equally silent answer: Because Socrates’ notion of opinion is so right. We all share in
the remarkable inclination to find satisfaction in surrendering our
minds to enticing terms of thought without reaching for the intended
thought itself. “Culture” is the most perfect cover-all, the universal
wet-blanket for glimmers of penetrating thought.
A somewhat impatient tutorial response to twaddle is thus, What
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are you talking about? And generally, what are we talking about in
seminar?
Books. We prepare for seminar by reading assignments, and then
we bring our readings to class. For my part, I don’t care how the readings are delivered. If students find graven stone tablets their medium
of choice, let them bring those, or if e-books, let them bring those,
provided they don’t get diverted and distracted by appended applications, and provided they can find their place. After all, one reason we
center seminar on books is so that we may all be on the same page.
Let me interrupt myself here for an observation. Our faculty recently had a long discussion about the question: Should e-books be
permitted in seminar? We sensibly decided to leave it up to the tutors.
In last year’s freshman seminar I was expecting an invasion of electronic tablets. Not a one of them appeared. Word was that upperclass
members were discouraging them as not in our spirit. The world’s
opinion is that the young thrive on novelty; the truth as I’ve experienced it is that, having found a place to cherish, they become its radical conservatives. I have much sympathy. The material book—be it
of papyrus, parchment, paper—has, besides its sensory pleasures, one
great advantage: it’s all there at once in real space. This is a handy
representation of one important characteristic of a text: it’s an all-present whole; it exists simultaneously with itself.
And now that I’ve used the word “text” let me explain this slightly
pretentious term. I use it, first, because it is broader than “book,”
which is usually composed of words. But we read, in a broad sense,
also compositions of notes (musical scores) and books containing
more diagrams and symbols than words (mathematical texts).
Moreover, “text” reminds us of two etymologically related words:
“textile,” a woven fabric, and Greek techne, “skill, craft.” Books are
artfully crafted, carefully coherent artifacts.
Well, not all books. The tutors of this college are pretty much at
one in thinking themselves not so much entitled as obligated to discriminate between great books and lesser books. St. John’s College
is, unpopular though that term may be with terminally egalitarian
souls, a great books school. Let me say right away that the not-sogreat but good books, as well as the mediocre ones, and even the outright shoddy stuff—all these have their saving graces. The best policy
is to read some of everything. (When I was a little girl I developed
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for a while a passion for reading product labels, especially the fractured instructions written by people for whom English was a second
language.)
But together we read great books, because, to use a gross
metaphor, these are the ones you can sink your teeth into, the ones
that stick to your ribs. There are statable criteria for them, of which
I’ll mention the ones most pertinent to the life of the seminar: Great
books are usually self-sufficient, so that no background information
or annotation is absolutely necessary to getting absorbed in the text;
the best context for them is another great book—perhaps, but not necessarily, its chronological predecessor.
Second, a great book, approachable as it is on one level the first
time around, is inexhaustibly new, so that on opening it a fifth time
you ask yourself, “Could I have read this before? Where was I, to miss
so much?”
Third, such books are endlessly artful—sometimes beautiful from
shapely depth and something ugly with significant contrivance.
And fourth, great truth-seeking texts of reflection are full of imagination and great imaginative works of fiction are full of reflection.
The former present universals corroborated by particular instances,
the latter represent particulars coruscating with universal application.
Thus philosophy and fiction go hand in hand. Take, for example that
famous first sentence of Anna Karenina: “All happy families are alike;
each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” What is it but an
applied version of Aristotle’s dictum in the Nicomachean Ethics:
“There are many ways of going wrong but only one way which is
right” (1106b28)?
So such texts are what seminar talk appears to be about. To prepare for seminar we all read the same book—students for the first, tutors for the umptieth time. Reading is, for us, a silent, solitary activity.
I say “for us”; Augustine in his Confessions (c.400 C.E.) tells with
amazement how his beloved bishop, Ambrose, read. As his eyes
moved down the page, “his heart sought out the meaning but his
tongue remained silent” (VI, 3). It was an inestimably great revolution,
this inward relocation of the written word, which, among other things,
made possible summary reading both divorced from and unconcerned
about precise wording. We are the heirs of this revolution.
This preparatory reading we do is a curious business, then. New
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readers actually mouth the words; more mature ones read silently but
subvocalize the text laryngeally; others let the writing glide directly
into the mind. They get the thought, but see rather than hear the words.
They register whole sentences through the eyes and turn language, the
business of the tongue, into sight-seeing, the work of the eyes. However they do it, they now have in their minds and hearts the words and
thoughts of someone else.
Our texts, then, are writings, for the most part. And surprise, surprise! Books are written before they are read. How does writing come
about? Here is how I do it myself and imagine it for others: Writing
comes after talking, in two ways. First, in my own personal history I
learned to speak way back, effortlessly, but to write later, with difficulty. I also know that in the larger history of human beings, writing,
especially the kind that records the sound of speech, alphabetical writing, did not, in fact, come to Greece until the late eighth century
B.C.E. (where in my early years as an archaeologist I had a chance to
publish some of the earliest graffiti—that is, scratched letter-words).
Second, before and as I write, I talk to myself, because speech is the
concretion of thought; it collects its misty pressure into concise sentences and utters them in sensory shape. It’s often said that the primary
purpose of speech is “communication.” The evidence seems to me
otherwise. I imagine that most of us say to ourselves in the course of
our day hundreds of words for every word we say to others. Speech
certainly begins that way. Listen to what students of child development call “jargoning,” that sweetest, most melodious gibberish of late
infancy, which issues from a lonely crib. Whether it is the antecedent
of adult twaddle or carries mental meaning no one knows.
This internal speech is what we write down. In “paper conferences” with students tutors can’t do better than to persuade them that
it is this talk with themselves that they ought to record, without dulling
rectification in the interest of a risklessly pompous formality. An author—the word means an originating “augmentor”—is a recorder of
an inner speech that improves upon the banal ordinariness of a relaxed
inner life by saying something original, either in the sense of “neversaid-before” or in the sense of going to the origin of things—or both.
This is practically a definition of what the authors of our great books
accomplish. They are the masters of pouring thought into the mold of
inner speech and of turning that mold out onto the expectant paper.
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I must add here that, although you’d scarcely believe it, both
claims—that books have authors and that speaking comes before writing—have been disputed in the later part of the last century. The former claim, that there is no originating authorship, is disputed because
whatever is said has been pre-shaped by predecessors and will be reshaped by readers. The latter claim, that writing precedes speaking,
is disputed on the ground (too sophisticated for presentation here) that
writing has a character more original than speech and in fact, subsumes it.1
Reading presupposes writing, and writing poses at least two dangers. The one I’ve just touched on is that in the interest of liberating
our students from being possessed by the opinion of others we in fact
subject them to four years of others’ very powerful opinions. Another
way to put this is that even—or especially—the devoted study of
books is not direct thinking, immediate aboutness. It runs the danger
of producing a commentator’s soul. I mean that to study books is not
quite the same as to think about things; it is to be attending to a secondary sort of aboutness. By thinking in a primary way I mean appropriating the cry of early modern scientists: “To the things
themselves!”—without mediating texts.
The other danger, really the complement of the first, is set down
in Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus. Socrates tells approvingly of an Egyptian king who refused the gift of writing because, he said, those who
put trust in writing will learn to forget how to go into themselves to
recollect the truths within. Writing will then turn out to be no medicine
for memory, but merely a reminder (272c ff.). Writing is external
memory; we call on it to remind us now and then of baggage we do
not care to keep always with us. Whatever is readily accessible as a
filed record becomes storable stuff, a bit of fractured fact, related to
living thought as a cellophane-wrapped fish filet is to a frisky live
fish. It becomes information, which is as apt to wreck as to rectify
judgment. I think this is an up-to-date version of Socrates’ misgivings
about writing. However—you might call this Platonic irony—this
condemnation of writing is delivered to us in the most ravishing piece
of philosophical writing I know of, the work that drew me into phi1
Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1967),
Chapter 2. Derrida, the author of both claims, at one point instituted a suit
for plagiarism. Imagine!
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losophy as a graduate student. Evidently Plato thought of a way to
overcome the rigidification of writing—by incorporating conversation
into the text. We extend this trick by incorporating books into a living
dialogue, the seminar.
How do we then mitigate these drawbacks? Well, we get together,
come out of studious privacy, to talk with each other. In universities,
“seminar” means an advanced study group under the leadership of a
professor. Papers are written, read, and discussed. It is a place of
earnest, highly disciplined speech. Our seminars are serious, but perhaps not earnest, or at least not dead earnest, but live earnest—lively.
Walk through our corridors on seminar nights, and if you don’t hear
hilarity issuing from behind this or that door, you may conclude that
we’ve turned into the sitting dead, like the ancestral mummies the
Incas brought out to sit at their feasts. For laughter is the explosive
expulsion of breath that follows from having one’s equanimity pleasantly pinpricked by an acute incongruity—the result, in other words,
of a startling insight.
Laughter is the grace note of our seriousness. To be sure, the
books lie before us, well used, even marked up (which is why we
should buy, not borrow, seminar books), and they are the first focus
of our attention. But that is also a misapprehension. Books, texts, are
occasions, not ends. We don’t live in but through books. That formulation would be mere verbiage, were there not a way of study that
stays strictly with the text and in it. For instance, in graduate study,
say, in English or philosophy, all the student’s effort is really invested
in the text. The goal is to know the text accurately, to be acquainted
with scholarly opinions about it, to work out its arguments in detail,
all the while setting aside questions of truth-telling and personal illumination.
We encourage a different kind of reading—more direct, and if
you like, somewhat naïve. Because the author wrote about or expressed something, we feel entitled to pass through the text to that
something. We find it plausible sometimes to ask “What did the author
have in mind?” and sometimes “Does this representation agree with
our experience of life?” and sometimes “Can I corroborate this claim
in my own thinking?” Not that we ignore the literal words in their artfulness—not at all—but we regard them as a sort of come-on to catch
and hold us to the text until it gives up its meaning.
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Let me give an example from the freshman seminar that was
going on while I was writing this lecture —a wonderfully lively seminar. We asked: “Do the Homeric gods, in all their irresponsible levity,
look the same to Homer as to his heroes, does he have access to a view
of Olympus, transmitted to him by the Muses, that none of his humans
have?” We asked: “Is it in accord with our experience that gentle,
thoughtful Patroclus is transformed into a wildly impetuous warrior
just by wearing Achilles’ armor?” We asked: “Can we follow Socrates
in his claim that truth already lies in us and can be retrieved, ‘recollected,’ as he says, by the right questions?”
So to sum up our sort of reading: We pay careful attention to details for the sake of the text’s—the author’s—intentions, and we pay
attention to these for the sake of world and life. That effort requires
skills, namely, the arts of reading in the broad sense, the liberal arts.
We have the corresponding tutorials, where we practice dealing with
thought-laden words in the language class and with thought-structured
symbols in the mathematics class. We add to these the latest of the
liberal arts to appear on the scene, the art of making nature speak in
numbers; for that we have the laboratory class.
I’ve now talked in turn about talking, reading, writing. Now
comes the high point: listening. Among the boons of living within a
study program like ours—one that is stable and changes, though
steadily, yet slowly—is that truly new experiences can come to us tutors. For our students, it’s all new anyhow. By contrast, when so-called
innovation, that is, deliberate variation, is the universal background,
we may indeed be stimulated by novelty—the ever-diminishing frisson accompanying continual variety—but we can scarcely experience
newness, which is the poignant sensation of a substantial accession—
a real expansion of our psychic holdings. Under the influence of continual novelty our mind, as Shakespeare so tellingly puts it, “Like to
a vagabond flag upon the stream, / Goes to, and back, lackeying the
varying tide, / To rot itself with motion” (Antony and Cleopatra,
1.4.45-47).
Thus it was that through our way of acquiring truly new insights,
I belatedly discovered a philosopher—as it happens the very first one
whose writings we have. He was born around 540 B.C.E. I had often
glanced over, but had never made my way into, his sayings. He thinks
in aphorisms, that is, terse revelations. The most enticing one of these
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begins in this way:
Listen not to me but to the logos . . . (Heraclitus, D50).
Logos is one Greek work all our students are apt to have something
to say about. It had dozens of uses and more than one central meaning:
word, speech, saying, thinking, reason, ratio. Heraclitus’s saying goes
on to tell us what we must, in turn, say when we listen to the Logos,
the Logos with a capital L. This Logos is the principle that governs
everything, and it has something to say to us. I won’t go into the entirety of the world-informing thought that the Logos utters to Heraclitus, but I’ll attend to the first part of it. I think it has, and is meant
to have, several meanings—a fact that governs many of Heraclitus’s
sayings and makes reading him so pleasurably difficult. One of these
sayings, the one just quoted, is, as it were, made to be the principle of
our seminar. I’ll retranslate it:
Listen not to me but to my intention.
The civility of the seminar, expressed in our addressing one another by last names together with the honorific Ms. or Mr., goes much
deeper than a mere form of address. It makes for respectful distance.
It means listening past personalities to the thought-gist of our speaking. It enjoins us to try to hear what our fellow speakers intend us to
hear, even if we have to hear past the words they are actually, and
perhaps ineptly, saying. Of course, we take in each other’s looks, mannerisms, gestures. It is, after all, through these that the human being
to whose intention we are to listen appears to us. Of course, the “me”
Heraclitus wants us to listen past is unavoidably up front. We all, particularly tutors, whose business it is to form impressions of the candor,
seriousness, and preparation of speakers, observe the physical façade.
Any student who imagines that tutors don’t know, by such observations, whether they’ve done their seminar reading or are improvising—be it brilliantly, be it twaddingly—is living in cloud-cuckooland. The tutors’ version of Heraclitus’s injunction is the prospective
principle of hopeful pretense: Listen for the intention, for what the
speech is about, listen to all the speeches extendedly and intently, until
they are about something; help students frame what they mean or find
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out what they intended to say by evincing a staunch faith (even against
all evidence) that they did mean or intend something. What is for Heraclitus a call to hear the speech of Thought—capital T—itself, is for
us a pedagogic principle: Give respect even before it is due, so that it
may become due. Advise students with tacit benevolence as Hamlet
does his mother with demonstrative bitterness: “Assume a virtue if
you have it not” (Hamlet, 2.4.162). For Aristotle teaches that virtues
are acquired by being practiced before they are truly possessed (Nicomachean Ethics 1103a-b).
So also should students listen to each other in the Heraclitean
mode: Suppress animosities and aversions, go for the significant gist
in one another’s talk. The question “Did you mean . . . ?” is helpful
respect made audible.
After all, the seminar was intended to bring us out of the isolation
of studious reading and the rigidity of recorded, written speech, and
to introduce responsiveness into the life of learning. The underlying
hypothesis here, which we hold to through thick and thin, is that to be
human is, given a chance, to be intelligent. Now intelligence has this
feature, one that has been the millennial preoccupation of thoughtful
people: What we each think with is our very own intelligence—which
makes us interesting to one another—and that what the intellect is
about is common to us all—which makes it possible for us to hear one
another to begin with.
In my hurried summary of the liberal arts and the tutorials devoted
to them I left out the music tutorial and the chorus. Among the Greeks,
music stands near the apex of the liberal arts; it is the prime mode of
praising God for the Hebrews; and it stands close to theology for certain Christians. (See, e.g., Plato, Republic 530d ff.; Psalm 33:3;
Luther, “On Noble Music”). Our president recently put music at the
center of his convocation address, and then, to confirm his words, the
college sang. For as we are rightly called a talking college so we are
surely a music-making community. As words are to our thoughts, so
is music to our feelings. Without music our program would be radically incomplete; we would be neglecting the affective root of our nature, our sensibility, and our passions. We have been called a severely
intellectual college, and this could be an accusation rather than a compliment, if we did not also have a place in the program for cultivating
the very sense, hearing, that both takes in linguistic utterances ad-
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dressed to the intellect and also hears tonal structures calling to our
passions. In the music tutorial we learn how passions are informed by
number, not by the merely quantitative but by the wonderfully qualitative mathematics of tones in a scale. Moreover, we consider how
sounds and words respond to each other, and we attend to a relation
of sensation and thinking which we expect to carry over into all our
learning—that tenacious thinking is replete with feeling, that steady
passion is contoured by thought, and that the sensory surface itself,
be it conduit or last stop, is deeply questionable.
And finally, in Chorus, we are the singing college. In talking we
face toward each other and speak to each other, turn and turnabout,
vice versa—that is the very meaning of con-versa-tion. But we sing
with rather than to each other, and we do it mostly not in turn but simultaneously. We are together in the presence of something we are at
once hearing and doing, receiving and producing; we are absorptive
and responsive, listening to ourselves and to our fellow choristers. It’s
like hearing a heavenly lecture, for that’s how I imagine the angels
listen.
And that is the end of this merely earthly lecture, addressed to the
parents over our student’s heads, so to speak, but really meant for
them. So thank you all for listening.
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Caged Explorers:
The Hunger For Control
Howard Zeiderman
To achieve happiness and freedom you must desire
nothing else but what is entirely in your control—
and that is only your own thoughts and opinions.
—Epictetus, The Manual
The letter’s return address had a name, the letters MHC, and a number
next to it. I had no idea what it meant, but it was obvious from the
carefully lettered envelope and handwritten letter that great effort was
spent preparing it. The letter was a strange and bold request. It would
lead me to the gates of the Maryland House of Corrections, a high
medium/maximum security facility, the flagship of seven prisons surrounding a place in the Maryland landscape called Jessup, only a few
miles from Fort Meade, the home of the National Security Agency.
My first contact with the Maryland House of Corrections had occured sometime earlier, when I had received a request for some Touchstones materials to be distributed during an information fair at a
prison. Twice a year, the organizations that assist prisoners arrange
some contact with their families, and the many self-help programs
that are designed to encourage prisoners present their information in
a large activity area. Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, violence prevention programs, parenting advice, various Christian and Muslim ministries, and even the Junior Chamber of
Commerce send representatives with brochures. Touchstones is a program originally designed for pre-college students of all backgrounds
to overcome their passivity and enable them to collaborate and explore. It uses short seminal texts to initiate discussions in which students transform their thinking and their behavior toward others and
themselves. Since at that time my work with Touchstones was primarily in schools, I sent the first high school volume of texts along with
Howard Zeiderman is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, and President
of the Touchstones Discussion Project. This account is dedicated to the memory of Brother Robert Smith, who wished that it be shared with the St. John’s
College community.
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the accompanying guide explaining how leaders should utilize these
materials. I thought nothing of this until two months later when I received the letter.
The letter was from Marvin, a prisoner serving, he said, “life plus
30.” The language was simple and direct. “Dear Professor,” the letter
began, “I’ve been looking at your books. They’ve been in the Legal
Clinic office for a while. Two days ago I started reading them. First I
was confused. But now I see how the leader’s guide can help you run
the meetings. But we need someone to help us get started. Would you
come meet with us? I talked to a few of the guys. We all think this
would be good here. Nothing they give us here makes any sense. But
last night six of us were sitting around. I read out loud the story about
the old man asking for his dead son back. And we talked about it. We
were thinking about it. How brave the old man was to face his son’s
killer and what pain he felt.” I was startled as I read his account of a
text in our Volume I—a text from Homer’s Iliad, in which the old king
Priam begs the young warrior Achilles for the return of the dead body
of his son Hector. He went on to say he hoped we could talk about
how such a program might work in a prison.
Though I was stretched in my commitments with Touchstones’
efforts in public schools, with my normal teaching at St. John’s, and
with an executive group of investment bankers, CEOs, lawyers, and
journalists up in New York, I couldn’t think of a sufficient reason to
say no. In addition, I knew of a pilot program that had been tried at
the New Mexico State Penitentiary, where the ghastly riot had occurred in 1981. I was intrigued by the idea of working with prisoners,
and I had hoped we could find a location closer to home
Each type of group we work with is unique. Each group brings
specific talents to the program as well as specific needs. Each new effort is therefore a collaboration. The program that Marvin reviewed
was designed for high school students, both for the gifted and for those
who couldn’t read. For that reason, it was a good first step. It seemed
wrong not to answer the request.
But in spite of my desire, I was hesitant. I was influenced by what
the media reported about prisoners. I had the images of countless
movies and memories of the hostages at Attica in my imagination. I
remembered the atrocities, the disembowelments, at the New Mexico
prison outside of Santa Fe. I’m afraid I must admit that often in the
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early days I went into the prison because I couldn’t think of a way to
avoid going in without embarrassing myself. So in September of 1995,
I took the thirty-minute drive to Jessup and entered a vast structure
that from a distance looked like an ancient nineteenth-century Liverpool textile mill, but on closer inspection was revealed to be a fortress
designed to keep two worlds entirely separated from one another. It
was a Tuesday evening when I crossed the barriers of double steeland-glass doors and razor wire to meet the nine men who would embark with me on the exploration of a world that none of us knew
existed. I was reminded of Plutarch’s description of England as seen
by the Romans before they crossed the water from Gaul: a land that
existed only in myth and legend. Over the next two years we would
take the first steps together into unknown territory.
I would later realize that my entry on that day was remarkably efficient. My name was listed on a count-out document at the first control booth and I was moved quickly through sets of double doors
where I saw chains, handcuffs, and shotguns in a glass-enclosed watch
area. I walked nervously past interrogation rooms and holding cells
to what was called the Main Control Area: a large, cubical, steelbarred enclosure filled with guards. Unlike other such enclosures in
the prison, this one contained the only exit to the outside world. A corrections officer announced through a loudspeaker that we were leaving
the cage—which, ironically, was the Main Control Area—and entering the actual prison. We were now on the inside, surrounded by tiers
of cells and the sound of the movement of a thousand men. I was escorted by a guard up a flight of stairs past a hundred men descending
from their cells. At moments I was lost in the crowd, but with great
effort I moved upstream through the confusing mass of people. After
a brief and nervous wait at a landing, a metal door opened into a large
space, perhaps thirty by seventy feet, in which another guard sat at a
small desk.
The meeting took place in a small room at the edge of this large
activity area where we would eventually hold all our sessions, amid
the 100-decibel noise of the prison and the rival claims for space of
the Nation of Islam and the Jessup Jaycees. Around the open area were
a number of these rooms, allocated to the use of various prisoner organizations. There was the writer’s club, the prisoner newspaper, the
Colts—a sports club whose allegiance now focused on birds—Orioles
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and Ravens—instead of horses. There were the rooms for AA and NA,
and the fifteen-by-ten-foot area where men who had expressed themselves through crime now used brushes and paints. We met in the room
of the most important prisoner organization—the Legal Clinic. This
was where the men came for advice from other more experienced prisoners on how to represent themselves, since, whether guilty or innocent, their previous defenses had rarely warranted the name.
It was significant that we met here, since this was where prisoners
most felt the distance between themselves and the world outside the
walls. This was where they experienced most acutely their helplessness in the subtle labyrinth of our society’s legal system. Five of the
men I met were the high priests of this order. They were the officers—
present and past—of the Legal Clinic. They held the keys to helping
others at least attempt to control their futures. The four others were
equally important. They were presidents of other prisoner organizations. These were all older men, men who had somehow survived the
years of indignity and abuse and isolation. The youngest was in his
late thirties, and all but one were serving at least one life sentence,
whereas most were serving multiple such sentences either concurrently or in succession. These were men for whom prison was to be
their world and not merely an interlude before reinserting themselves
into ours.
I was clearly nervous as I entered, and they had me sit in a part of
the small room where I was no longer seen by the guard in the main
area. The meeting began awkwardly. I thought they knew what they
wanted from my visit, but in fact some were only vaguely aware of
why they were meeting. Marvin began by having us go around the
room and state who we were. I said I was a teacher, and others spoke
briefly about themselves. They never said it explicitly, but each said
enough for me to infer that I was sitting with nine men convicted of
murder, in a small room concealed from a guard. When we finished,
Marvin took the lead again. “Why don’t you tell us about the program,” he said in a voice filled with suspicion. I had thought that he
would be my ally in this alien world but his tone was distant, as if he
now wished to appear that he had played no part in my coming into
the prison. From the introductions, it became clear that half were invited to this meeting to hear about the program for the first time. I
could see a couple of the men whispering to one another and even
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heard one ask—to no one or to all—why I was there. Rather quickly
the roles had become reversed. Instead of being asked to come to respond to their request, it seemed that I had to convince them that they
should become involved.
I could feel control slipping away from me. Perhaps it was implicitly a test to see if one more white volunteer could offer something
they really wanted, or perhaps it was an exploration they were undertaking to find out what they needed. When they asked me to describe
the program, I did a very poor job. I kept speaking in ways that were
either too abstract or too rudimentary. I hoped to interest them in probing the conceptual presuppositions and biases of our culture though I
didn’t describe it in quite those words. Such an exercise hardly moved
them, however, since their incarceration incorporated the presuppositions and biases of our culture. Of all the men I met in prison, very
few asserted their innocence. Yet most felt that they were political
prisoners—prisoners on account of our country’s politics stretching
back to the very origins of the European conquest of the New World.
They didn’t offer this as an excuse, but merely reported it as a fact.
They saw their crimes as pretty much along the lines of infractions
against their masters on the plantations. Nor were they particularly
engaged by the prospect of increased skills. The skills they needed
were quite specific, and it wasn’t clear how Touchstones could help
them overturn a conviction.
While I was speaking, becoming more uneasy as I felt their eyes
glued to me, a short, heavily tattooed prisoner interrupted. “These
guys,” he said, referring to the authors of the texts in the collection
he had in his hands, “are all white.” I was taken aback by his claim.
In regard to the specific volume I had sent in, he was correct. I again
started trying to explain that this program was very different from
classes they had in school and that the Eurocentrism of this particular
collection of texts wouldn’t affect what we discussed. But they looked
skeptical. The meeting seemed to be going nowhere until Marvin
looked up from fingering the book of readings. “It could help us think
for ourselves,” he said calmly. “That’s something they can’t control.”
Immediately, I could see their faces change as if they finally heard
something that might be useful or even important. “You think that?
Say more,” said Lee, the president of the Legal Clinic whose great
knowledge earned him the respect of everyone in spite of a terrible
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stutter. “Yeah, it’s like when we talked about that dead guy. That Trojan. And you asked us how we would mourn a friend. There was no
one to tell us who was right and what to say. We were all thinking.” A
few of the most senior nodded agreement and the others—even the
tattooed critic—seemed to concur. That remark finally penetrated to
the core of their concerns. Perhaps Marvin had sensed this in the description of the discussion format. Perhaps these experts in the omnipresence of arbitrary control sensed an opportunity for the first time
to undertake the pure act of thinking. Perhaps my own inability to supply an answer allowed them the leisure to determine what they needed.
In their eyes, I was no longer a professor or a teacher of the kind they
had previously experienced. I was merely a technician who could help
them create the structure through which their own thought would take
shape.
“Thinking for yourself” was not an offhand expression for them.
Within that phrase was lodged the full intensity of their suffering. In
prison, all control and initiative was stripped from them. After one session in which we discussed a passage from Martin Luther King’s Letter
from Birmingham City Jail and why we need the stability of laws,
Eddie, a lifer who had served 25 years, took me aside out of the hearing
of the others. “Here you’ve got to be careful. Yeah, even you. They
change the rules every day. And they never tell you. That way they
control all of you.” To supply the desperate need they felt to establish
a realm in which they were not entirely passive, they had two options.
He took me further aside as if to confide a great truth about his life.
“We try to fight it. We work out with weights in the yard or in the gym.
That way we at least control how we look. Or we control the fags and
the slaves.”
A rigid hierarchy of keepers and kept transects the prison. The
keepers tell the kept what to do, how to act, and what to think. The
thoughts of the kept are as imprisoned as their bodies, since the constant pressure of others establishes a tyranny that overrides the distinctions between guard and prisoner. Control in its rawest form flows
everywhere in the prison, and it was their horror at this that these men
felt our programs might transform. The task was now clear: to go
about establishing the conditions for prisoners to reassert their freedom, their ability to become human again, by bestowing significance
on their lives through the mere act of thought.
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By the end of the meeting certain things had been settled. I had
committed to coming in every Friday evening for two hours, though
we never had that much time. Security always dictated how long it
took to enter. Sometimes I would be held in a control area for an hour
only to be told the paperwork couldn’t be found. This was always exasperating; however, when I once complained to the group about it,
they just laughed. Roderick, one of the older prisoners, explained,
“We were hopin’ it would happen. It’s good for you. It’ll help you understand something about here.” From then on I sometimes even savored the delays, because they revealed in a trivial and temporary way
what the prisoners experienced continually. I began to grasp what it
meant to be no longer a person but only a thing. These men had no
control over their lives. I too felt that lack of control every time I entered the facility. It was as if I had entered another world in which I
had no standing and no say about what might happen to me. It was a
separate world, dimly lit, and chaotic. Anything could happen in those
dark passageways as I walked past the correctional officers and groups
of prisoners. My only security was the hope that it wasn’t worth their
effort to interfere with me.
Control as it is implemented and experienced in our prisons is a
uniquely modern construct. In contrast to ancient prisons, our prisons
reduce prisoners to beasts through control and dehumanization. Although ancient prisons were dark and oppressive places where vermin,
neglect, and disease dominated, prisoners were not dehumanized.
Those vast ancient structures held people of various sorts, often in accommodations that suited their relative rank. Prisoners still retained
respect, and, in some cases, the accoutrements of their position in society. The ranks the prisoners held were part of them and could not be
stripped from them whatever their crime or infraction. This began to
change as religion and science struggled for our souls. Prisons, in a
temporary compromise, became penitentiaries, places where fallen
human beings would do penance and assert their humanity again.
These prisoners were not yet considered fundamentally different from
those who would confess their sins in prayers during church services.
The distinction was only that they required a more intense regimen of
prayer in places where there were fewer distractions from the work
of their salvation. As religion lost its primacy to scientific technology,
however, the penitentiary became the house of correction.
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Some of the group, a few who had served over forty years in prisons in many different states, could actually remember this change.
Once, when we were considering a drawing as a text, we suddenly
heard the story first-hand. The text was a drawing by Kathe Kolwitz,
Prisoners Listening to Music. The three prisoners depicted are skeletal, with hollow eyes—and all seemingly gripped by something. The
session was not going very well, and I regretted trying to use a text
that connected too vividly with their situation. A number of the
younger members were clearly repulsed by the drawing. When I asked
why a few who often spoke were being silent that evening, Larry answered. “It’s scary looking at them. I don’t want that to be me.” As he
finished, another prisoner, Craig, a man almost seventy years old who
first served time more than fifty years before, laughed. “You don’t understand nothing. They’re not dying. They’re gettin’ past their
hungers. It’s the music that makes them pure—like angels. Listen—
when I was young down south we had a chaplain. Every day he would
play music for us. Old music, beautiful. At first we couldn’t listen to
it. We never heard nothing like it. Sometimes a song would last a long
time, no words. But then we started to love it. We would listen like in
the picture, and we’d remember things. And we’d cry. Sometimes you
could hear ten men cry. And sometimes the priest would cry too. We
were all together in it. But then he retired and a new chaplain came.
He was different. He wanted us to see the doctors and counselors, the
caseworkers. They would ask us questions about ourselves and make
us go to classes, programs. They were working on us and the music
ended. It was different. It was them against us.” Correction, as Craig
sensed, is entirely different from penance.
This is one reason why the allegory of the cave from Plato’s Republic, one of the most powerful Touchstones readings for any group,
is especially fertile in a prison. The status of the modern prison as its
own self-enclosed world became explicit during a discussion about
this text. It is the story of people who are themselves prisoners in a
barely illuminated cave, and who believe that the shadows they see,
cast by objects that move behind them, are reality. Eight weeks into
the program I decided use this text to encourage the prisoners for the
first time to speak explicitly in the group about their own situations
as prisoners. For a while they argued about details of the allegory, but
finally Thomas, a serious and highly intelligent prisoner, moved the
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discussion to their own reality. He started to consider how a freed prisoner from Plato’s cave who saw the reality outside would communicate, if he were to reenter the cave, with those who were still
underground. To make his point about the difficulty of communication, he began to describe his own return to prison. “When I came
back in,” he said, “I thought I’d find my old friends, and I’d talk to
them. But I couldn’t. Nothing I said made any sense. I had to learn a
new language.” Ken, who had been silent, agreed. “Nothing here
makes sense out there. Nothing you would do out there works in here.
It’s like going from earth to Pluto. They make us into aliens, animals,
and then they wonder why we end up coming back to the barn.”
It was into this highly controlled and dehumanizing space that I
had entered in response to an appeal from nine lifers attempting to
reestablish themselves as men who had committed crimes rather than
as members of a separate species, a criminal class. Like the priest who
played the music and cried with his prisoners, perhaps like Dostoevsky’s Father Zosima crying for himself as much as for them, I was
joining them on a journey we would have to undertake together.
Soon, the nine men decided to involve another ten so we would
have a group of about twenty. They had to explain our goal to the others as best they could. The goal was a rare one in the prison. I would
undertake to turn over control of the program to them so they could
spread the program throughout the facility. In short, I wasn’t—like
other teachers or volunteers—coming to do something for them.
Rather, I would try to make it possible for them no longer to need me.
That is what all teachers want, but here it was essential that they not
feel indebted to me. The program would only work if they felt it was
also theirs—that they had collaborated in its creation. However, I
knew that it would be as difficult for me to surrender control to them
as it would be for them to accept it. I created the program they would
learn. I felt I knew better than they what would work and what structure was best. Yet to succeed I would have to enable them to collaborate with me actively in shaping the program for prisons. I was
worried that I might not be able to achieve this act of surrender. And
would they be able to forget who I was and allow me to be involved
without feeling I was judging them, that I was the expert and therefore
in control of the situation? Here we were touching on some of the
deepest issues of our culture, issues that pervaded both the prison and
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also our own lives—questions about the need for control, the fear of
surrender, and the very ownership of one’s words.
Every discussion group confronts the same set of barriers to a
genuine collaborative activity. There are always initially the issues of
control, power, and expertise. This initial stage is followed by competition among groups or individuals—in other words, factions—who
struggle with each other to assert dominance. The next barrier is the
problem of listening without imposing our own thoughts on one another. After overcoming these impediments, there is the effort one
must make to evolve a type of leadership and responsibility that is
shared among all the participants. These issues raise the most complex
human problems and questions irrespective of culture. The culture determines how the group approaches these problems, but not what the
barriers are.
In addition to these problems, there are others that characterize a
group as a unique collection of people immersed in a specific institutional or social environment. These problems concern all of us in some
measure, but specific groups face certain peculiar problems that pervade their lives and their circumstances. They have special expertise
in dealing with the particular problems they must continually face,
problems that the rest of us share to a lesser and more occasional extent. They can therefore become a resource for us all as they struggle
in the discussion environment to overcome the barrier that uniquely
affects them and shapes their lives. The prisoners had their own specific and complex needs, needs that centered on the issue of control
and their attempt to overcome the passivity imposed by their violent
and arbitrary environment. They had a hunger for control. But in order
to create a genuine group, they would have to transmute this desire
into a form that enabled them to surrender control in its customary
forms. It was with regard to such issues that they could most clearly
be a resource for others.
Prisoners also certainly need the intellectual skills and the skills
of cooperation to better equip them to enter society as employable
people. The needs expressed by these prisoners, however, had a different urgency. These nine men were to spend their lives in prison,
and their needs dealt not with the future but with the environment in
which they all lived. Their needs were threefold.
The first involved the fact that MHC, like all prisons, was over-
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crowded. There was a certain freedom of contact and movement simply because there was not enough space to keep prisoners separated.
This mobility, of course, increased the possibility of collisions among
prisoners or gangs of prisoners. Through spreading Touchstones in
the prison, the men aimed gradually to change the environment where
they all lived. A modest success was recounted one evening after one
of the discussions. We had just discussed the opening scene of Ellison’s Invisible Man, in which the “invisible” narrator collides with a
white man and comes close to killing him. During the session they
had mostly considered their prejudices, their assumptions about one
another. But near the end of our time, Alan, a white man, spoke up
more personally about James, a black man who sometimes attended
our sessions. “This happened yesterday. I was on line at lunch, carrying my tray. James was in front of me. Don’t know how, but I bumped
into him. His lunch fell. Three months ago he would have hit me hard,
maybe killed me. But he didn’t, and we cleaned up the mess. And
other people gave him some of their food. That’s never happened here
before.” Lee, one of the leaders, seemed to speak for all of them, when
he commented on this incident. “They try to make us savages. And
before we started talking to one another, we used to believe them.” In
short, their startling goal was to humanize their world—a world in
which they were viewed, and viewed themselves, as barely human.
Their second need involved a peculiar paternal attitude toward
the younger men. These men were old timers, men who had survived
years of abuse and indignity from guards and other prisoners. They
knew how to remain alive. They were the wisest of the wise. Each of
them was unique, and the only image that captured their stature for
me was a comparison with the Greeks and Trojans of the Iliad: Ajax,
Sarpedon, Patrocles, Achilles, and Hector. These men hoped to influence the young ones, seventeen-to-twenty-five-year-olds, who came
for two or three years and then graduated, as if they had attended a
college course in how to commit crimes. These young felons never
grasped that they too might spend their lives behind these walls. The
group of lifers felt that speaking directly wouldn’t work. They hoped
that their words would carry more weight after having worked together in these more neutral, though important, discussions.
The third need was the one that affected each of them most intimately. It wasn’t just a matter of their environment or a concern for
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those who would follow the paths these men regretted having themselves pursued. Rather, it was the sense that they too, even in these
hostile and precarious and dehumanizing conditions, were capable of
contemplating the deepest issues that confront all of us. This became
vivid to me and to them one Friday evening. The text was a short passage by Kant on morality. He claims that we are moral only when we
act from duty and not because we want to. Most of the group considered him crazy. They gave example after example of helping others—
family, friends, even enemies—because of pity or affection. Finally
Sam interrupted. “You guys really don’t get it. He’s saying that what
you’re talking about is only like eatin’ when you’re hungry. That’s no
big deal. It’s only when it’s hard, when it hurts, and you do it anyway
that you can respect yourself. Then you know you’re a man.” As he
spoke, I and others nodded in agreement. The intensity of Sam’s
thought, exploring an idea that no one had been able to consider, enabled me and others to take Kant’s claims more seriously. In these
sessions they felt they could finally exercise control over their own
thoughts—they could, as Sam did, think for themselves. This they
sensed would once again make them fully human in their own minds
and capable of respecting themselves as well as others.
The task that we set ourselves was to create a group of about ten
discussion leaders, each of whom would eventually be able to conduct
groups for other prisoners. The ultimate aim for the men was to involve as many prisoners as possible in the programs and to make these
discussions part of the ongoing life of the institution. In addition, a
collection of texts was to be selected and tried out for use both in this
prison and possibly in others as well. In this program and the other
programs I have designed, the texts are understood as tools, as touchstones. Though they are sometimes—like the Kolwitz drawing—specific to particular groups, most texts selected, like Ellison’s or Kant’s,
touch so deeply on our habits, our expectations, and our past cultural
and historical inheritance that they are useful for a wide variety of
groups. In the case of the prison population, we needed to determine
which texts would enable the participants to consider the issues of real
concern to them. At the same time, the process should not force them
into areas that they would only want to approach in their own time.
So it became necessary both to explore the problems these leaders
would face and to understand why certain kinds of texts were used.
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In other words, for the men to learn to lead a group, they would have
to grasp, to a certain extent, the underlying structure of the program.
The men in the group were therefore a core of nine who had committed to the project together with a varying group of others who
would join only as participants. These latter were sometimes known
to the other participants, though prisoners sometimes appeared for one
or two meetings who were not known to the main participants. In certain cases we knew that prisoners were asked to attend in order to inform prison officials and to monitor what was happening. I never
knew who these other occasional participants were. I never knew if
they were sent to disrupt the session, either by another prisoner organization that objected to what was happening, or by the prison administration, or simply by another prisoner who might be angry at one
of the participants or upset by the idea of changing the status quo of
the institution. Uncertainty is built into the nature of the discussion
process, and these visitors exacerbated the uncertainty surrounding
our work. This ongoing uncertainty also made it clear to me that, in a
real discussion, no one is ever in control. Both participants and leaders
are dependent on one another. And consequently a genuine discussion
cannot be an event that is isolated from the environment or culture or
organization in which it occurs.
The first stage of our work was to give the men the experience of
genuine discussion. I used texts from the Touchstones series, nine
graduated volumes ranging from works for third- and fourth-graders
up through high schoolers and beyond. These volumes, especially
those of the middle and high school series, are also perfectly suitable
for adults. In a school setting, the volume a group uses is rarely a function of reading level, since the program can be done orally, but is
rather a matter of experience with discussion. In high schools, our
goal during the first year of participation is for the participants to understand each stage of the process itself and, after twenty to twentyfive sessions, to begin conducting the classes themselves. This became
the model for our prison group. Each session was filmed, the video
was copied, and one of the copies was returned to the men. A typical
session would involve my passing out a text which was read aloud,
followed by preparatory individual and small-group work. The whole
group would then reunite, and I would lead the discussion. This would
last about fifty to sixty minutes. Then I would break the discussion,
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and for the last thirty minutes we would analyze what had occurred.
This was the procedure we followed week after week. Often the
analysis of the discussion process would revert to the text or revive
the topic of the main discussion. Once, after a discussion of the short
essay “About Revenge” by Francis Bacon, one of the prisoners named
James interrupted an argument between two very assertive men about
whether there had been dominance in the session. “Hey,” he asked in
an innocent tone, “did anyone take revenge during the meeting?” For
a few moments no one responded, though a number of eyes turned to
Michael, the man James had seemed to address. Then Lee acknowledged that he had been tempted to respond to what he had taken as a
slight—but didn’t. Finally, Michael spoke up. “I did. What Vaughn
said rubbed me wrong and I thought he knew that—so I went at him.
It was stupid.” The group then recurred to the text on revenge: Michael
and Lee discussed how they had reacted in different ways, why one
tried to get even while the other didn’t, and how they felt about their
actions.
This sort of event was common in the post-discussion analysis
sessions. The process of the discussion freqauently echoed the text.
In order for this to happen, texts must be selected that exemplify the
structures and attitudes of our society and institutions. The discussion
then becomes a unique kind of cultural exploration, in which the presuppositions of the culture can be made visible, and new forms of
thinking and behavior can be explored.
The entire history of slavery was continually present in the prison.
Jessup, like most American prisons, is filled primarily with black
men—the descendants of slaves once again in something very like
slave quarters. Not only are their cramped cells and chains reminiscent
of slavery, but, as the states increasingly involve prisons in various
commercial enterprises, we are once again witnessing the use of what
is essentially slave labor. The entire drama and stage setting of incarceration duplicates the four hundred year history of slavery on this
continent. Slavery and the complete lack of control over one’s decisions, one’s future, and one’s life were clearly the issues that should
be probed by these men. They have an expertise that the rest of us
don’t have and yet sometimes need in our own lives—an expertise in
surviving while facing the passivity imposed on us.
It is part of the aim of these discussions ultimately to enable the
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participants to discuss the most vital and volatile issues. But no one
is prepared to undertake this without the skills that the program develops. It is only quite late in the process that texts are dispensed with
and topics themselves confronted. When that occurs prematurely, the
result is mere conflict, or a series of monologues. It requires great discipline to undertake a genuine discussion of what one cares deeply
about. Thus, though slavery was at least one of the main concerns of
this group, its discussion as a topic would not occur until much later.
We would approach it through the mediation of specific texts until the
group became more skilled. Every group has certain issues like this,
and these will come up in the process itself, in the experiences the
group has in their lives, and in the institutional structure within which
they live.
I therefore selected texts at various stages which would push aspects of the issue of slavery to the surface. The choice of a passage
from Epictetus’s Manual was a first attempt. The passage is a terse
statement of stoicism, a very abstract claim about slavery and freedom
which holds that we are all enslaved, and that only by desiring what
is completely and entirely in one’s control could anyone be free.
Epictetus goes on to claim that only our thoughts and opinions are entirely in our control. This, he argues, is because all people for whom
we might feel love or affection and all property we possess or desire
could be lost through some unpredictable event. The discussion of this
text occurred about two months into the program.
The group was large that Friday night—about thirty—so the
shape of the arrangement of chairs had departed far from from the
customary circle into a very elongated ellipse. The configuration of
the chairs often plays a key role in a discussion, since everything in a
format like this has significance. I wanted to modify the shape of the
ellipse and make it more uniform but I hesitated. I always felt I should
accept the circumstances that presented themselves in the prison as
much as possible. Whether one manipulates the seating arrangement
depends on the setting, the group, and the leadership role. Leading a
discussion is not a uniform task. There is not one model that all must
adhere to in every situation. The goals remain the same across groups
of the same kind but how one achieves them can vary considerably.
I was at pains to make few demands on the situation and on the
men in it. I didn’t wish to be perceived as part of the organizational
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structure that moves them from place to place. When a prisoner would
run the group, he would exercise much more control and direction
than I did. It makes sense for that approach since he needs to demarcate himself as an expert in the initial phases whereas I wanted to minimize that status. This is the great issue confronting this effort to create
a genuinely collaborative activity. People want an expert who will
take control and yet wish to be free of that very desire. So the question
is how one should share leadership and authority. That of course is a
problem that will face all of us in every aspect of life. These discussions therefore are a laboratory in which the new directions to be pursued in our society can be explored and worked out.
I sat on the long side of the ellipse where I could best see all the
men. Many of them were new. There were three foci to the discussion.
One group was led by a large man named Karem, who sat at one of
the endpoints of the major axis—a dominant place in such a configuration. Karem agreed with Epictetus. He contended that the prison had
enslaved his body but his mind was free. He argued that they couldn’t
enslave that. “No one can chain my mind,” he boasted. “Though my
body is locked in this sewer, my mind can roam everywhere.” He
spoke in such a forceful way that many men, in spite of themselves,
agreed. Kevin, on the other hand, violently disagreed. The officers
didn’t just control his body. By controlling that, they controlled him.
They determined when he could move and where he could be. And
these decisions controlled his life, his desires, his thoughts, and his
dignity. While Karem held that he still felt free, Kevin vividly described what had happened to all of them—a need to urinate while
waiting somewhere in the prison. “And,” said Kevin, “they take their
damn time. They know what’s happening. They can read our faces,
and we’re forced to humiliate ourselves. They turn us into children or
animals.” Kevin went on to claim that such an indignity can happen
at any moment, and that to deny one’s feelings about it is not to be
free but rather to be less than human.
Karem tensed at this point. It was as if someone had said the
words that exactly characterized the situation all of them were in, and
which they were all striving to change by their own efforts. Sometimes
it is difficult to lead a discussion because what is said grips everyone
with the reality of the lives of some of the participants. Even with experienced leaders, when a discussion becomes intensely personal to
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the participants, it is difficult for the leader to focus on the long-range
goals of the project. Here I was listening to a discussion of Stoicism
by people who weren’t merely speculating and imagining what it
would be like to practice it. These were people whose very survival
and sanity often depended on their living that way. Some people in
that room were in fact stoics and could speak to Epictetus as if they
were colleagues. on the same path. Others knew well the temptation
of stoicism; perhaps they had tried it and abandoned it.
It is this aspect that gives such power to discussions that are designed to use text and experience to echo one another. This productive
tension between the experience of the group and the text reveals how
such discussions differ radically not only from education in the traditional sense—in which an idea or text is explored and but also from
therapy—in which what is at issue is the experience of the particular
participant. In discussion, personal experience is mediated by a text
that is often the seminal source of a concept or institutional structure;
yet, because of the difference betwwen text and personal experience,
the participants can view themselves from a distance. In fact, this very
issue itself came up in the discussion on Epictetus and soon became
the main focus. One of the men—Eddie, a former Black Panther who
was a lifer but always proclaimed his innocence—brought this home
to all of us. “None of us are free. We’re all enslaved,” he said, breaking
into a brief moment of silence between Kevin and Karem. “And not
just those like us in prison. Yeah, we’re held in place by bars and wire,
but that’s not all. Our minds themselves are enslaved. And not just
ours, Howard’s too and everyone out there. Our thoughts aren’t our
own. They’re just the ones we grew up with. How can we be free when
how we think is our prison?”
This took everyone aback. Everyone realized this was an important thought that we would have to continually consider and struggle
with. Eddie’s remark defused the tension between Karem and Kevin
by revealing how this issue of our slavery was the struggle we all had
to face. The men bounced all these ideas around as if they were in a
three-sided tennis match. No one changed an opinion, but each gave
the others the chance to speak. And this session was decisive for the
group because they finally recognized, as Eddie implied, that I had
nothing more to offer on this subject than they had, and in fact less.
After an hour I broke off the discussion so we might evaluate what
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had just happened.
In order to encourage people to emerge briefly from the prisons
in which Eddie claimed we were all captive, I wanted the men to
spend time with prisoners they didn’t know. I asked the men to count
to four and get into small groups according to number. That would effectively separate friends from one another, and I instructed them to
consider what they felt were the strong and weak points of the discussion. When these groups reported their analyses, most of the groups
agreed. They felt there had been a presentation of views but no discussion. As Vaughn said, “no one changed an opinion, and no one
looked at what they themselves were saying. We were just stating our
minds.” But Thomas responded: “That isn’t so terrible. At least we
could finally say what we really thought. And the rest of us listened
even if we didn’t react. That was important. Others listening—we get
some dignity that way,” he claimed. A number of men agreed.
But then Karem, who had been listening with a clear expression
of discomfort, interrupted. “But that means you need others to be free.
And how could this Epictetus be right about being free in your
thoughts when we need one another for our own self-respect? And
don’t you need self-respect for freedom?” It was there in the metadiscussion that the real discussion finally occurred. It was when they
had made the claims of stoicism visible to themselves in their very
activity that they could seriously consider the implications. The discussion did in fact act as an experiment for discerning new forms of
activity.
There was no official status in my position, and the men received
nothing for their participation. There was nothing concrete they would
gain. I therefore had no power to bestow anything obviously useful
or valued in that environment. The men came because they were allowed to think. The excitement of thinking and knowing that they too
were capable of this activity drew them into the group. They weren’t
here to learn from a book but to explore, together with me, both themselves and this new terrain we were bringing into being. Discussion
is possible only when there is no agenda. I had no agenda in terms of
the conclusions we would reach or the paths we would take, though I
clearly had a goal. I wanted to tailor the program to this institution.
This meant I would try out texts, and explore the means by which I
could turn over the responsibility for the program to these men. Often
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they would ask me about our other programs and I would tell them
about the possibilities and the difficulties we faced in the program
with Palestinians in Gaza, or indentured children in Haiti, or CEOs at
the Harvard Club, or middle school students, or senior citizens, or
plebes at the Naval Academy, or my students at St. John’s. I think it
was very important to these men to realize that what they were doing
was identical in some of its fundamental principles with attempts
being made throughout the world by people who were willing to risk
high levels of uncertainty to undertake the effort to change themselves.
It was the start of a sort of community where, we—there in the
bleak activity area of a nineteenth-century prison, in the third floor
private meeting room at the Harvard Club in Manhattan, in senior citizen centers, and in Haitian churches—were taking steps to explore a
world which, though continuous with strands of all of these disparate
worlds, nonetheless revealed glimpses of other forms of life and new
ways of being and thinking. It happened sporadically, but often
enough to hint at the outlines of a new possibility. The men knew that
they were exploring in an unfamiliar territory of human experience.
The trips to space were not the successors of the trips of Columbus
and Magellan. Those early explorers needed to change their fundamental conception of their world in order to make room for what they
saw. The astronauts merely solved the comparatively trivial problem
of how to get from one visible and relatively known place to another,
though the scale of their journey was immense. The problem we faced,
on the other hand, was not going from here to there, but from now to
then. It was exploration into a future that would no longer be a consequence of our pasts.
These men serving life sentences for serious crimes felt part of
the small bands of people making these journeys, and they sensed they
were bringing a perspective that was uniquely theirs but necessary to
all the others. This sense, I think, caused them to hae some respect for
me, in spite of the fact that I was merely one more among them—although I knew a bit more than they did about sketching a rough map
of our explorations, and had an instinct for recognizing apparent harbors that were only the temptations of sirens. Neither I nor they, however, could give a detailed account of this new terrain. Sometimes I
thought we were on solid ground and in a familiar region, when suddenly the ground would open up and I found myself, as in the con-
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ventional dream, falling endlessly with nothing to grab onto. And then,
just as suddenly, the scene would change, and I could see that we were
in a bucolic valley and the sense of falliing had been an illusion. I constantly had to seek my bearings along with the men, and that made
vivid the reality of our mutual dependence.
Up to this point I had led the discussions, selected the texts from
the Touchstones series, and designed the meeting format. But since
our goal was for the core group to develop the skills necessary to lead
discussions with other prisoners, I knew at some stage I would have
to turn over the responsibility to them. I must say I kept postponing
the step. I kept worrying that I hadn’t communicated enough to
them—and this remained a concern despite my understanding that one
cannot prepare for every eventuality in any complex activity, let alone
in a genuine discussion, which, if properly engaged in, changes from
moment to moment with a life of its own. Nonetheless, I also recognized that these were merely excuses I was using in order to avoid
surrendering control, and I was finally able to overcome my resistance
because of what the prisoners were able to do. We were approaching
the stage of the program in which the group must begin to observe
and judge itself.
In all the programs I have developed, the text, the experience of
the participants, and the dynamical issues arising in the process all interpenetrate and echo one another. To prepare the way for self-judgment and self-criticism of the group we first discussed a worksheet
that asked the men questions about how they judged others on first
meeting them. They were asked if they did so at first glance by clothing, by posture, or by eye-contact. In a prison, judging correctly at
first meeting is very important: one needs to be able to distinguish between a newcomer who poses a threat and one who does not.
Two men sharply disagreed on the best way to make such judgments. Idrus asserted it was by the person’s posture, whereas Eddie
focused on the eyes as the most revealing trait. This exchange went
on for a few minutes, and we could see Eddie becoming increasingly
impatient. Idrus was wearing dark glasses and Eddie, annoyed, finally
said what he had been thinking: “What’s behind those glasses?” In response Idrus tensed, started to rise, but then remained seated and
replied. “You’ve known me here for twenty years and you’ve never
seen that.” The moment was explosive and I quickly moved to the text
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for that day to re-establish control. They reconsidered this issue of
self-observation and self-judgment by discussing two self-portraits of
Rembrandt, one in which he concentrates on his eyes, and another in
which he elaborates his clothing while the eyes are in almost impentrable darkness. The discussion got past that moment of tension to
consider how Rembrandt had changed the manner in which he depicted himself.
The next week, Idrus—the prisoner who had shaded his eyes for
twenty years—came to the session without his dark glasses. We were
all stunned. All of us spoke haltingly as the session began, hardly able
to absorb the momentousness of his action. He had taken such a monumental step that I felt I should follow suit. I immediately changed
what I had planned for the session, and resolved that I would surrender
control to the group the following week. To begin that process immediately, I decided to explore with them what we would discuss in the
next session; that is, I began encouraging them to think through the
issues involved in leading a group.
A discussion leader always comes to a session with a goal. The
goal can be a topic that is essential for the group discuss, or a problem
the group must overcome—such as dominance by a few—or an opportunity for the group’s development, or a part of the text that seems
particularly important. The leader might well have to surrender this
goal immediately if it becomes clear that the group will not go along
with it, or that they are ready for a different goal. In this case it was I,
the group’s leader, who was finally ready for something more significant.
After almost a year of hesitation, I was finally ready to collaborate
with them, to surrender control. I therefore asked them to consider
what topic we as a group should discuss. For an hour they suggested
various subjects but the main one was “What is God?” Some claimed
that this was far too personal and sensitive too discuss, others claimed
that the group was capable of attempting it. Some then claimed it
wouldn’t be a discussion where one might change one’s mind. Instead
they would simply state their opinions, indifferent to what the others
might say. But in spite of their reservations, they were willing to attempt it. At the end of the session we chose a text that we could use
to focus our exploration, a selection in a Touchstones volume: the
story of the sacrifice of Isaac from the book of Genesis. The session
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had been so penetrating in examining what constituted a discussion,
what role texts can play in channeling the exploration, and how to
avoid having it turn into an empty ping-pong match of quotations and
scattered opinions, that I also decided the next session for the first
time would be led by one of the prisoners.
I could have chosen any of the group, but Michael volunteered.
A thirty-five-year-old prisoner, he had been serving a life sentence
since the age of fourteen when he was sentenced as an incorrigible
offender. Michael began quietly. He asked: “What sort of God would
make such a request?” There was silence for a few moments and then
first Eddie and then Thomas and then Lee all plunged into the discussion to shed light on the mystery of God’s purposes. For ninety minutes, Michael led a discussion on the difference between sacrifice and
murder and the role of God in our lives with a group of men all of
whom had either committed murder or were at least convicted of it.
And they identified even more closely with Abraham. As another of
the prinsoners, Vaughn, pointed out, “We here must constantly ask
ourselves just what Abraham must have asked himself during that
three-day trip to Mt. Moriah: why me, God, why me?” Though there
was a text, it was impossible to tell whether this was a textual or nontextual discussion. They had finally achieved that intermediate point
in which the distinction breaks down. The following week we spent a
good part of the session discussing what had occurred and whether
their expectations were satisfied. Had it been possible to discuss these
subjects or were they simply presenting monologues? Everyone
agreed that their worst fears had not materialized. In fact, the discussion was a great surprise even to those who expected that we would
be able to pursue it. As one of the men said, “It was like a wheel, it
just moved round and round.”
These men were discussing the issue most personal to them—the
murder of another human being. Yet they had the discipline to depersonalize their own experience and allow others to participate in a discussion. They could surrender control of what was most intimate, and
yet at the same time they never made it an abstract discussion. They
were able to fuse a textual exploration with one in which their own
experience lent credibility to their comments.
The session on the sacrifice of Isaac was a decisive moment for
the group. It was a great success, far greater than I or they or anyone
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could have imagined. They felt that with some advance preparation
one of them had been able to conduct a session. It was in fact a session
on a topic—what is God?—that most felt they wouldn’t be able to
handle. But even more, it was a discussion of the very crime for which
they were serving life sentences. The discussion was thoughtful and
probing, without self-pity and without avoidance of self-examination.
Once we began this process we decided to continue. The next week
we decided we would have another leader and would go in rotation
until each of the nine men had practiced with this group. This was a
major step. I also thought it was better to allow the leader to know in
advance and for him to be able to select the text and the approach.
The next volunteer was Vaughn, who had played a very strong role in
the last discussion. Michael, who had led the discussion, had the best
sense of how to keep himself out of the way. I knew others would have
more difficulty.
It is always a challenge to lead a group. Leading has little to do
with whether you enjoy discussions yourself. In fact often the worst
leaders are precisely those who want to be participants. However,
there is no one model for conducting a discussion. One has to discern
one’s strengths and determine how to use them in the new environment. Vaughn’s great strength as a participant would in fact, I expected, cause him problems as a leader. There was great seriousness
and intensity in Vaughn. In a discussion he often took the group to
new levels by his passionate thinking about a problem. In the Abraham
discussion, when the discussion was becoming fragmented, Vaughn
focused it on what we all knew we should talk about. He imagined
Abraham during those three days journeying with Isaac. He uttered
what everyone in the group was asking about Abraham and about
themselves, “God, why me, why me?” It was Vaughn who could suddenly transform a meandering route into one of deep engagement. As
one prisoner at a different prison said of a discussion on the Iliad, at
some point it left the streets of Troy for those of Baltimore. Vaughn
could effect that translation too. But this very power could also cause
problems.
It is wonderful when a participant deepens a discussion. But when
a leader does it, the group can become dependent on his enthusiasm
or it can become defensive and even go into opposition. A leader must
show that he respects others and feels that the issues they have raised
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are serious. Vaughn, however, was not generally attentive to the needs
of others in the group. He was not vain at all, but simply so engaged
by the question or topic that he would lose a sense of where the others
in the group were in their thinking. Each of the men had different
kinds of issues they would have to face as leaders, but Vaughn’s was
one of the most difficult. He would have to subordinate his own ideas
and help others to bring out theirs. He would have to surrender control
of the content and focus on his responsibility to others. If anyone had
to learn service it was he. My difficulty at the time was that I had to
let him choose the text.
What he selected startled me, and and was even more troubling
than the fact that he would lead the discussion. It was a piece by an
eighteenth-century ex-slave about what owning slaves does to the
slave owner. In one sense it was potentially useful because it at least
took a perspective that the group would not immediately relate to, but
would have to infer. But because it touched so directly on the topic of
slavery, it seemed beyond the ability of this group—much more so
than the question about God. I was amazed that this was the text chosen, yet I had resolved that I would do nothing to change it. They had
to learn to select texts for a specific group at a specific time in their
evolution and this was at least a start. And I had to learn to surrender
my position and become a participant in the group. Though I was convinced that the discussion would fail, I hoped we could analyze it afterward in order at least to decide why it failed. The analysis would
present an opportunity to explore the role of texts and how one selects
them.
I decided I would sit next to Vaughan, thinking that I might be
able to control, at least to some extent, how much he spoke. Though
the previous week had been so disciplined, this discussion collapsed
within moments. The first question took us far from the text into a
dispute about why white people enslaved black people. All the issues
surrounding enslavement and abuse came up immediately, and the
group could hardly sustain any exchange at all. Within minutes I
sensed that we were near an abyss. The few white men in the room
tried to speak, but were not taken seriously. Some got up and left the
circle, angry at what was happening. Most eventually returned and sat
down again, however, since there was no place else for them to go.
Even the others began to attack one another. All the alliances that had
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developed over time broke down. I felt I had no idea where we were
going, no idea whether the group could hold together for the hour or
whether I would have to break it off if they allowed me. At that moment I was certain that all the effort of the past year had been wasted,
and the apparent progress had been an illusion. The session became
electric when a prisoner nicknamed “Shaka” said that in 1975 he was
born a slave in Baltimore and his life would be devoted to becoming
free. I remained silent, unable to speak after my one contribution was
ignored.
After an hour, Vaughn suddenly broke off the conversation, saying we had to move on. I was relieved that we had all survived this
experience, and was ready to pack up and depart feeling that I had
failed in this entire effort. But before I could close out the session, in
a very steady voice Vaughn asked each person to reflect on the activities of the previous hour—what were the strong and weak points, was
it a discussion, was it a success or a disaster, and how could it have
been improved? I was startled both at what Vaughn had attempted at
this stage and also at how the men responded. They were very circumspect and considerate in their comments. Both the white prisoners
and the black prisoners spoke calmly about what had transpired, and
they were even able to discuss the reason why some had felt compelled to leave the circle. At the end of the main discussion I hadn’t
expected that we could ever revive the discipline they had attained
the previous week. But during the analytical conversation everything
changed. The men began to reflect on other aspects of the issue once
they no longer felt that they were expected to defend their respective
races.
After about fifteen minutes during which they considered how
Vaughn had conducted the session, someone abruptly broadened the
issue. Stuttering, Lee asked whether anyone had ever tried to enslave
someone in the prison, or even whether that had happened during the
discussion. There was a long silence and I could see many moving
nervously in their chairs. Finally Thomas acknowledged both. And
within moments, as if finally given the freedom to speak openly, all
entered the discussion as if they were no longer just the victims but
also the perpetrators. They began to describe the complexity of their
emotions as slave owners. They recounted how when they first enslaved someone on the tiers they felt a power and sense of victory.
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They no longer felt imprisoned but human again. But then they began
to feel the enslaved person to be a burden. Instead, only the free prisoners interested them. Their slaves were servile, willing to say or do
anything they felt would ease their lot. These men here, all of whom
were acknowledging themselves as slavers, wanted respect. They said
they didn’t want it from their slaves but from others—from one another. All felt that the moment they enslaved someone his respect was
worthless and their own self-respect diminished. And others would
not respect them for such pointless conquests. After their first moment
of euphoria, they said they felt debased and less human. And they
began acting that way. It was through reflecting on themselves and
their discussion that the text Vaughn had chosen was finally explored.
As I drove back to Annapolis that evening, I finally had occasion
to reflect on what I had just experienced. In the prison I had encountered the genuine reality of a critical section of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit—the section on Lordship and Bondage. Unlike the
obscure and illusive abstractions in the Phenomenology, the prisoners
had actually lived through the failures described so speculatively by
Hegel. They too, as Hegel points out about all of us, felt the deep and
fundamental urge to be recognized as human, to be acknowledged as
beings who were different from the rats and insects that populated
their world. And they struggled for this even in their most heinous
acts. These men, enslaved by their past and by their world, used others
in their attempts to break free; they tried to display their humanity
through acts of conquest; they were willing to die in order to assert
themselves as lords over a cell block or over a part of the yard. And
in the moment of success, in the moment of attaining complete control
over a space and its inhabitants, they acknowledged feeling their sense
of themselves slipping away into emptiness. In addition, the very men
whose submission and recognition was meant to guarantee their own
mastery and control showed to them the futility of seeking that recognition. By succumbing, the vanquished prisoners showed that they
couldn’t appreciate what the victor truly was, and therefore couldn’t
offer genuine acknowledgement and recognition. And so the victors
began to recognize themselves as slaves even in their moment of conquest. In Hegel’s story of the progress of human consciousness toward
complete self-awareness, the master who conquers is a dead end. The
story continues through the trials and struggles of the slave. And it is
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self-discipline that points the way to Hegel’s all too joyous conclusion
at the end of what he called the path of despair.
Here too was despair, here in these yards and in the echoing corridors—and yet these men had showed a self-discipline that I hadn’t
expected of them. They had gone farther than I could have imagined,
farther than I could go myself. They no longer needed a text to mediate
themselves. For a brief hour, they had raged about their pain and anger
and humiliation, and then, in a remarkable display of self-awareness,
they reflected objectively on their own strengths and weaknesses.
Though the road they had taken was not directed toward Hegel’s auspicious culmination of history, their exercise of self-discipline had
nonetheless revealed the path to the self. As Shaka—who considered
himself a slave even though he had been born in 1975—said, it was
in these discussions that he found his voice for the first time. These
men had attained more than anyone could give them, something that
any act of bestowal would itself destroy. These men had to find their
own voices. They had to surrender the idioms of their age and class
and race and gender, and for the first time risk hearing themselves.
Together they had to break free from the prison that, as Eddie pointed
out, they and I and all others inhabit. These prisoners thanked the discussions for making that possible. Perhaps that was true, but it was
also true that they had created the discussions. The discussions weren’t
there waiting for them. And suddenly I realized what it meant for me
to surrender control. The most that I had been able to do was to set
the stage for acts of courage that I could admire, but might never have
the privilege to display. I left the prison realizing that for a brief moment I had seen, in men confined to cells for their entire lives, a
degeree of mutual respect and recognition—of freedom—that the rest
of us rarely achieve.
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POETRY
The Love-Song of the Agoraphobic
Elliott Zuckerman
O sing a song
of standing alone
on the steppes of central Asia
and celebrate when thinly dressed
the stark surrounding white
of arctic ice.
Tell me these are Patagonian seas
and I’ll sing louder.
Have you noticed that the deck-chairs
tame the ship-board
by cutting off the terrible full circle?
Every market-place
is emptiness.
I cannot count the ears
of the endless rows
in the Iowa of my imagination.
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�REVIEWS
179
Henry Kissinger on China:
The Dangerous Illusion of
“Realist” Foreign Policy
A Review of Henry Kissinger’s On China.
New York: Penguin, 2011. 608 pages, $49.95.
Joseph A. Bosco
Henry Kissinger, an avid student and admirer of the “realist” statecraft
of Machiavelli, Metternich, and Mao, is viewed (not least by himself)
as the archetypical practitioner of Realpolitik in America’s foreign
policy establishment. His latest memoir, On China, describes how he
and Richard Nixon established American relations with the People’s
Republic of China in 1971-72, after nearly a quarter-century of mutual
isolation, suspicion, and hostility. He touts the China opening as
demonstrating the putative success of their “pragmatic” and “non-ideological” approach, and he makes the case with his customary erudition, aplomb, and Churchillian use of the English language. The book
is also a richly detailed account of the personal and sometimes philosophical interactions among the four key players: Nixon, Kissinger,
Mao Zedong, and Zhou-En-lai.
In an earlier book, Kissinger wrote that the China initiative
“marked America’s return to the world of Realpolitik.”1 Despite
China’s horrific human rights record and aggressive behavior since
the Communists took power in 1949, Washington sought rapprochement, convinced that it was “central to the establishment of a peaceful
international order and transcended America’s reservations about
China’s radical governance.”2 Kissinger can justifiably claim at least
partial results in one important objective of the strategy—relations
with Moscow: “[T]he Nixon Administration managed to create a
major incentive for Soviet moderation” that led to a brief period of
detente and a series of strategic arms control agreements,3 though it
Joseph A. Bosco served as China country desk officer in the office of the Secretary of Defense, 2005-2006, and previously taught graduate seminars on
China-Taiwan-U.S. relations at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service.
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was soon followed by one of the most fraught periods in Soviet-U.S.
relations.
But pursuit of the other immediate goal sought by the NixonKissinger diplomacy—China’s cooperation in terminating the Vietnam War on “honorable terms” for America—ended in ignominious
failure. “We made the withdrawal of our military forces from Taiwan
conditional on the settlement of the Vietnam war.”4 Kissinger blames
the outcome in Vietnam on Congress’s unwillingness to enforce the
Paris Peace Treaty. He says that he and Nixon foresaw Hanoi’s “massive violations” of the Treaty, but he signed it nevertheless because,
if necessary to ensure compliance, the use of air power to enforce the
agreement was never ruled out, either in the minds of members of the
Nixon Administration or in its public pronouncements.5 Obviously,
Hanoi was not deterred by the administration’s warnings that “we will
not tolerate violations of the Agreement.”6 As North Vietnam’s main
army forces poured over the 17th Parallel into the South, the Treaty
collapsed along with South Vietnam. Kissinger earned a Nobel Peace
Prize for having negotiated the agreement along with North Vietnam’s
Le Duc Tho, who declined the Prize.
Hardheaded realism requires that the overall China engagement
policy be examined over the long-term. Did it attain the peaceful international order Kissinger described as its goal? In this regard, the
results of Kissinger’s Realpolitik with China—which Nixon enthusiastically endorsed but also regarded as a “strategic gamble”—may
well be judged as one of the greatest miscalculations in American
diplomatic history.
Kissinger, of course, does not see it this way. He seems still to
revel in the momentous negotiations that shook the world, even
though its aftershocks grow increasingly ominous as time goes by.
The Shanghai Communiqué, drafted by Kissinger and Zhou En-lai,
was the seminal document in the new Sino-U.S. relationship. It clearly
stated the premise of the U.S. position: “[I]mproving communications
between countries that have different ideologies . . . lessen[s] the risks
of confrontation through accident, miscalculation, or misunderstanding.”7
Kissinger looks back with satisfaction over the ensuing four warfree decades, during which he continued to play influential roles—
often simultaneously—as a successful commercial entrepreneur in
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181
China and as an unofficial strategic adviser to both the American and
Chinese governments. His personal longevity, intellectual vigor, and
ongoing involvement in international affairs have enabled him to consult on an intimate basis with each of the four men who have led China
since the creation of the People’s Republic (and now with Xi Jinping,
the designated fifth-generation leader), as well as with the eight American presidents who have largely carried out Kissinger’s policies. “Despite occasional tensions . . . [i]n the forty years since [the Communiqué]
was signed, neither China nor the United States has allowed the issue
[of human rights] to interrupt the momentum of their relationship.”8
Yet during that period the United States and China have experienced their third Taiwan Strait Crisis; several dangerous clashes at
sea; the EP-3 incident; two separate nuclear threats against American
cities by Chinese generals; Beijing’s undermining of American objectives on nonproliferation, on North Korea, and on a range of rogue
state issues; and China’s creation of an alternative development model
that violates international standards of accountability, transparency,
and good governance. Kissinger’s massive volume does not do justice
to these events, where it mentions them at all. To demonstrate how
far U.S.-China relations have progressed since the historic opening,
Kissinger writes: “Nixon had to overcome a legacy of twenty years
of American foreign policy based on the assumption that China would
use every opportunity to weaken the United States and to expel it from
Asia.”9 He gives short shrift, however, to China’s contemporary demands, backed by their historically unprecedented military strength,
that the U.S. curtail its activities in international waters like the Taiwan
Strait, the East China Sea, the Yellow Sea, and the South China Sea.
He sees Chinese “triumphalist” rhetoric as unreflective of official Chinese policy and merely a hypothetical danger. At a recent meeting
with South Korea’s defense minister, which occurred too late for inclusion in On China, the chief of the People’s Liberation Army’s general staff, General Chen Bingde “issued an unusual and caustic tirade
against . . . America’s hegemonic attitudes toward other countries.”10
Such Chinese accusations are not unusual, never having disappeared
despite Kissinger’s rosy assessment of the achievements of the Shanghai Communiqué. Given the longevity of such Chinese views of
Washington’s motives, coupled with China’s economic and military
surge, it is no wonder that, thirty years after his historic opening,
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Nixon worried, “We may have created a Frankenstein.”11 Kissinger,
however, remains untroubled over his role in establishing and perpetuating the framework for U.S.-China relations, and unconcerned about
what that undertaking has produced. James Clapper, the Director of
National Intelligence, told the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2011
that China now presents “the greatest mortal threat” to the United
States.12
On China, together with the author’s extensive promotional interviews for the book, may well be Kissinger’s last concerted attempt
to establish a favorable historical record for the landmark oopening
to China. It is certainly a vigorous defense of Realpolitik in the crucible of U.S.-China relations. But even on its own realist terms the
book ultimately fails in its mission of vindication. This is partly because the story is not over and indeed is worsening as China’s economic and military power continue to grow. But the evidence of
long-term strategic failure is now sufficient to conclude that Nixon’s
strategic gamble has already failed—nearly a half-century after the
opening, the two powers should not still be seriously contemplating
scenarios for going to war with each other. But we are.
The issue that had always stymied Sino-U.S. relations until the
Nixon-Kissinger overture was the status of Taiwan. As Kissinger approvingly recalls, Washington initially lost interest in Taiwan after
Mao’s Communists defeated the Nationalists in 1949, during which
the U.S. remained on the sidelines. “Having conceded the mainland
to Communist control and whatever geopolitical impact this might
have, it made no sense to resist Communist attempts to occupy Taiwan.”13
Secretary of State Dean Acheson and General Douglas MacArthur
effectively reflected that thinking in late 1949 and early 1950, when
they publicly delineated U.S. strategic interests in Asia and excluded
both Taiwan and South Korea from America’s security perimeter. In
his book, Kissinger criticizes Acheson’s National Press Club statement
in January, 1950: “To the extent deterrence requires clarity about a
country’s intention, Acheson’s speech missed the mark.”14 Actually,
Acheson was, if anything, too clear in indicating, as MacArthur had
done a month earlier, that Washington did not intend to use military
force to defend Taiwan or South Korea. No wonder, then, that Kim
Il-sung, Josef Stalin, and Mao Zedong thought they had a U.S. green
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light to pursue aggressive unification. But after North Korea’s attack
on South Korea converted hypothetical danger to stark reality, a
shocked foreign policy establishment changed its perception of the
Asian Communist threat: “When American policymakers came faceto-face with an actual Communist invasion, they ignored their policy
papers.”15 President Truman mobilized a United Nations defense of
South Korea and sent the Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait to prevent a Chinese attack there, frustrating Mao’s openly stated intentions
to do just that. As Kissinger put it regarding the Korean War, “The
United States did not expect the invasion; China did not expect the
reaction.”16
After the war ended in a military and negotiated stalemate, President Eisenhower signed Mutual Defense Treaties with both South
Korea and Taiwan in 1954. The U.S. military presence maintained the
peace for the next decade and a half. Nevertheless, Kissinger expresses disdain for the sterile Sino-U.S. impasse over the island’s status that kept the two governments isolated from each other during that
period: “China would discuss no other subject until the United States
agreed to withdraw from Taiwan and the United States would not talk
about withdrawing from Taiwan until China had renounced the use of
force to solve the Taiwan question.”17 At that point Nixon and
Kissinger entered the scene wielding the sword of Realpolitik. They
cut the Gordian knot—simply acceding to China’s position. Washington informed Beijing that the Seventh Fleet—the primary obstacle to
a Chinese attack on Taiwan—was leaving the Taiwan Strait forthwith
and all American forces would be withdrawn from Taiwan in stages.
The fact that these commitments were made even before the start
of the official Sino-U.S. dialogue violated one of the Nixon-Kissinger
realist admonitions against making advance concessions and appearing overly eager to please. “We have a tendency to apply our standards
to others in negotiations. We like to pay in advance to show our good
will, but in foreign policy you never get paid for services already rendered.”18 As Nixon instructed his adviser, “We cannot be too forthcoming in terms of what America will do [by saying] we’ll withdraw,
and we’ll do this, and that, and the other thing.”19 But U.S. actions
had already conveyed the impression that Washington craved the rapprochement far more than did Beijing. Any fair-minded realist would
have to say that this impression weakened American negotiating lan-
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guage, strategic clarity, and deterrence in perpetuity. As Kissinger
takes justifiable pride in noting repeatedly, seven subsequent administrations have followed the Nixon-Kissinger approach. For more than
four decades, consequently, Beijing has taken full advantage of that
Western indulgence, deriving the benefits from the international system while enjoying wide latitude in its domestic and international behavior.
Kissinger has presented confusing, and even contradictory, accounts of the origin of the Sino-American “understanding” on Taiwan
established during Nixon’s historic meeting with Mao. In On China,
he writes: “[A]fter decades of mutual recrimination over Taiwan, the
subject in effect did not come up” except for some sarcastic banter
about Chiang Kai-shek.20 A few pages later, he reaffirms that “Mao
had omitted any substantive reference to Taiwan.”21 To bolster this
point, Kissinger reports his own conversation with Mao a year after
the Nixon meeting: “[T]o remove any element of threat Mao explicitly
delinked the issue of Taiwan from the overall U.S.-China relationship.”22 Although Mao warned that he did not believe China and Taiwan would be able to effect a peaceful transition,23 as far as
China-U.S. relations were concerned, “Mao made his principal
point—that there were no time pressures of any kind.”24 Mao also told
him, “I say that we can do without Taiwan for the time being, and let
it come after one hundred years.”25 Kissinger explains that Mao actually had two principal points of equal importance: First, “that Beijing
would not foreclose its option to use force over Taiwan—and indeed
expected to have to use force someday.”26 Second, “for the time being
at least, Mao was putting off this day.”27
Kissinger’s account of the Mao-Nixon the discussion in On China
is consistent with Nixon’s own description of the meeting in his 1978
memoir.28 Inexplicably, however, Kissinger told the story quite differently in two books he wrote between Nixon’s Memoirs and his own
On China. In 1979 and again 1994, Kissinger put Mao’s talk of delay
in Taiwan’s demise not in a one-on-one meeting with him, but in
Mao’s meeting with Nixon, at which Kissinger was also present:
“[T]he Chinese leader wasted no time in assuring the President that
China would not use force against Taiwan: “We can do without them
for the time being, and let it come after 100 years.’”29 In these earlier
accounts, Kissinger saw Mao’s statement to the President as a mani-
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festation of large-minded statesmanship: “Mao asked for no reciprocity for the assurance America had been seeking for twenty years.”30
Whichever version is accurate, Kissinger’s perception that Mao
was making a major unilateral concession is astoundingly innocent.
Nixon and Kissinger had already given Mao the quid for his quo—a
commitment to withdraw U.S. forces on and near Taiwan. Indeed,
they had already given Mao much more. Kissinger remarks that
“Nixon and his advisers . . . deemed diplomatic contact with China
essential” and, as early as 1969, had publicly committed the United
States to defend China’s independence against a Soviet attack—a
unique security guarantee from an American president to a hostile
Communist government.31 Moreover, Kissinger did not even seem to
regard Taiwan as a strategic bargaining chip. He once expressed bemused incredulity to Mao that China would wait so long to take Taiwan: “Not a hundred years,” he remarked. Mao responded: “It is hard
to say. Five years, ten, twenty, a hundred years. It’s hard to say.”32 Despite the shifting target dates, Mao’s comments about Taiwan consistently made clear that China would use force to take it: “[W]e are
going to fight for it.”33 So, Nixon and Kissinger, the two hardheaded
practitioners of Realpolitik, knowingly traded a concrete action China
wanted—permanent U.S. withdrawal from Taiwan—for a vague and
temporary expression of the action Washington had sought—China’s
commitment not to use force against Taiwan. It is worth noting that
on none of the occasions when Mao affirmed China’s intention to attack Taiwan did Kissinger raise any question or objection. Nor did he
suggest that the United States would feel compelled to defend Taiwan
on the basis of its “interest in a peaceful settlement” as stated in the
Shanghai Communiqué. Nixon, Kissinger, Mao, and Zhou, who might
be called the Gang of Four Realists, all understood that American public opinion and the U.S. Congress would not tolerate abandonment of
Taiwan to Communist China at that time. After a decent interval, however—in Nixon’s expected second term—the deed would be done.34
China would get its “full meal.” While Nixon shared wholeheartedly
in that original Realpolitik cleverness, his view significantly evolved
as Taiwan itself moved from dictatorship to democracy; unlike
Kissinger, he concluded that democratic Taiwan is now permanently
divorced from Communist China. (See discussion below.)
On China suffers from surprising historical inaccuracies and glar-
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ing omissions on some pivotal events in China-U.S. relations.
Kissinger recounts the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis, which began in July
1995 when China fired missiles toward Taiwan to protest a U.S. visit
by Taiwan’s appointed president, Lee Teng-hui. China then conducted
military exercises in the Strait during the period leading up to Taiwan’s
parliamentary elections in December. Chinese officials, clearly intent
on avoiding North Korea’s 1950 miscalculation, put the crucial question directly to their American counterparts during a November visit
of Assistant Secretary of Defense Joseph Nye: How would the U.S.
respond if China attacked Taiwan? Here was an ideal opportunity for
supposedly realist Washington to provide the strategic clarity and deterrent message Kissinger found lacking in Acheson’s Press Club
speech.
But Nye, even as he cited that earlier Korean experience, answered equivocally: “We don’t know and you don’t know; it would
depend on the circumstances.”35 Understandably wary of signaling an
Acheson-style green light, Nye erred in failing to red-light China’s
ambitions by a plain commitment to Taiwan’s defense. Instead, he
gave China a yellow light—what came to be known as “strategic ambiguity”—and it worked for that moment as China decided to proceed
with caution for the time being. When asked the same question by
American interviewers weeks later, Defense Secretary William Perry
enthusiastically adopted Nye’s statement, and it has been Washington’s official stance ever since. Curiously this pivotal incident does
not appear in On China, and neither Nye nor Perry is mentioned in
the book. Equally surprising is Kissinger’s failure to note the extraordinary threat conveyed by a Chinese general to an American scholar
at that time: “You care more about Los Angeles than about Taiwan.”36
Within a month of Nye’s statement, the Nimitz carrier group
passed through the Strait—the first such transit in the 23 years since
Nixon had removed the Seventh Fleet. After China protested, Washington explained that this passage was merely a weather diversion,
not a warning or a signal of commitment to Taiwan’s defense—
thereby undermining the impact of “the most significant American
show of force directed at China since the 1971 rapprochement.”37
Kissinger fails to note the missed deterrent opportunity for the United
States: having sent the ships through the Strait, it could have reminded
Beijing matter-of-factly that no U.S. explanation or Chinese indul-
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gence was required for the exercise of America’s freedom of navigation rights in international waters.38
Kissinger’s account also misstates the date and context of the
Nimitz Taiwan Straight passage. He places it not in December 1995,
when it actually occurred, but three months later in March 1996, prior
to Taiwan’s first presidential election, when China tested the U.S.
again by resuming its missile firings across the Strait. On that second
occasion in March, President Clinton deployed both the Nimitz and
the Independence to the area. But when Beijing threatened a “sea of
fire” if the ships entered the Strait, they changed course and avoided
the Strait. As a result, Washington’s attempt to signal deterrence was
trumped by Beijing’s message of counter-deterrence. This compounded the garbled strategic signals in December. A former senior
U.S. official who had been in office at the time later described the
1995-96 confrontations as the Clinton administration’s “own Cuban
missile crisis,” and said they had “stared into the abyss.”39 Kissinger
uses similar language to describe the crisis: “Approaching the
precipice, both Washington and Beijing recoiled.”40 But his failure to
note the mismanaged U.S. messaging during this critical period is surprising given his lifelong career focus on the roles of ambiguity and
clarity in international diplomacy generally and in the famously complex and nuanced U.S.-China relationship in particular.41
Nor does he remark on the significant lessons China learned from
the tense episode. According to subsequent Defense Department reports on China’s military power, after 1996 Beijing resolved to develop the capacity to deter or delay U.S. intervention in any future
Taiwan crisis. It has done so by deploying a formidable arsenal of
“area denial” and “anti-access” weapons, including advanced attack
submarines and the world’s first ship-killing ballistic missiles.
Kissinger takes no notice of these ominous developments. Nor does
he mention the existence of the congressionally mandated Pentagon
reports on China’s dramatic military advances.42
On China also ignores President George W. Bush’s abortive attempt in 2001 to restore the clarity of America’s commitment to Taiwan’s security that prevailed from 1950 until the Nixon opening to
China in 1972. The president said he would do “whatever it took” to
defend Taiwan now that it had become a democracy.43 Shocked China
experts within and outside the administration scrambled to walk that
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statement back, restoring the ambiguity of the earlier, presumably
safer policy. But it was the attacks of September 11, 2001 that put the
Taiwan issue on the back burner as Washington managed to convince
itself that Beijing was now on the same side with the U.S. in the war
on terrorism, counter-proliferation, and even controlling North
Korea’s nuclear ambitions.
Notwithstanding Kissinger’s omissions and historical errors, On
China offers an illuminating account of the similarities and differences
between Kissinger and Nixon on China policy. The two clearly agreed
on the compromises and ambiguities that enabled the China opening.
They also agreed that their successors should continue the engagement
policy because abandoning it would entail seriously adverse consequences. They parted company, however, over the future of Taiwan
and the attendant prospects for Sino-U.S. conflict.
Nixon recalled how “the Shanghai Communiqué negotiated by
Henry Kissinger and Zhou Enlai brilliantly bridged the differences
between the two governments.”44 But he also wrote:
Realistic reappraisals of U.S. relations with Taiwan,
and of the relations between the governments in Beijing and Taipei, are overdue. . . . The situation has
changed dramatically since then. . . . China and Taiwan publicly have irreconcilable differences. The
separation is permanent politically, but they are in
bed together economically.45
He advocated that the two sides simply accept their mutual dependency, and he also recommended that the United States strongly support
Taiwan’s membership in international economic organizations. He
exhorted Washington to “begin extending to Taiwan government officials the diplomatic courtesies that the leaders of one of the world’s
major economic powers deserve.”46 And he expressed optimism for a
long-term peaceful outcome: “The Chinese will not launch a military
attack against Taiwan as long as Beijing knows such an attack would
jeopardize their relations with the United States.”47
Kissinger assesses the situation differently. He still believes, as
Nixon did, that the “ambiguous formula” he inserted in the Shanghai
Communiqué was masterful: “ambiguity is sometimes the lifeblood
of diplomacy.”48 Unlike Nixon, however, Kissinger believes that
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China will use force against Taiwan unless it accepts “peaceful reunification through peaceful means,” as Premier Wen Jiabao put it to
President Bush in December 2003.49 But Kissinger recalls a 2001 conversation with President Jiang Zemin, in which he mentioned the possibility of military action against Taiwan. Kissinger took the remark
seriously enough that he “felt obliged to reply to this threat of force”
by saying, “In a military confrontation between the U.S. and China,
even those of us who would be heartbroken would be obliged to support our own country.”50 Kissinger did not predict that the U.S. would
in fact defend Taiwan, and he makes clear in his book that he doubts
it will: “The crucial competition between the United States and China
is more likely to be economic and social than military.”51 Given the
state of Sino-U.S. economic interdependence and the dramatic increase in China’s military power, it is unlikely Kissinger would find
a U.S. defense of Taiwan more palatable today than it was in 1949,
when the PLA was a lot weaker. This is why he has publicly urged
Taiwan to exercise the “peaceful” option and come to terms with Beijing before China feels compelled to resort to force. This is also the
reason Kissinger warns Washington about continued arms sales to Taiwan: “It would be dangerous to equate [China’s] acquiescence to circumstance with agreement for the indefinite future.”52 Nixon believed
that war over Taiwan could be avoided by self-interested Chinese selfrestraint; Kissinger believes that peace can be assured only if Taiwan
and the United States accept Taiwan’s unification with China—
thereby consummating the deal he made with Zhou En-lai in 1972.
“[The] series of ambiguities [that] sustained much of normalization
for forty years . . . cannot do so indefinitely.”53
It may be that Kissinger has fallen victim to the ancient realist
principles he admires in Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, teachings that anticipate Realpolitik in emphasizing “subtlety, indirection, and the patient accumulation of relative advantage.”54 This sort of approach
involves “building a dominant political and psychological position,
such that the outcome of a conflict becomes a foregone conclusion,”55
for “strategy resolves itself into a psychological contest” that sometimes requires “subterfuge and misinformation.”56 Like Sun Tzu,
“Mao believed in the objective impact of ideological, and above all,
psychological factors.”57 Mao and Zhou applied these principles
adeptly in their interactions with Nixon and Kissinger, and their suc-
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cessors have continued the tradition. For example, despite his dissatisfaction with Washington’s continued arms sales to Taiwan, Deng Xiaoping skillfully managed his relations with Washington so that, as
Kissinger concedes, “the People’s Republic achieved another decade
of American assistance as it built its economic and military power.”58
Kissinger also uses On China to warn against too much emphasis
on China’s human rights record. Once called “the American Metternich,” Kissinger espouses the realist position that national interest
must be based on seeing the world as it is, not as we would like it to
be, and certainly not with an over-emphasis on human rights and democratic values (which he calls crusading moralism) important as they
are to America’s national identity. The best way to influence China
on human rights, he informed Fareed Zakaria in a recent televised interview, is to leave it to himself and a few others who have earned the
trust and confidence of China over the years and can broach the subject in private rather than embarrassing its leaders in public. But the
record of the past forty years reveals that his realist approach has proved
to be decidedly unrealistic. That is because, contrary to Kissinger’s
teaching, the counterpoint to realism is not always idealism or excessive morality. Clearheaded pursuit of the national interest can also be
clouded by sentimentality, wishful thinking, illusion, grandiosity, even
self-delusion. Kissinger long ago convinced himself that he and Chinese leaders shared a hard-nosed pragmatism based on mutual selfinterest. “I could not have encountered a group of interlocutors more
receptive to Nixon’s style of diplomacy than the Chinese leaders.”59
He was comfortable in his assumption that the Chinese perceived their
own self-interest as he believes he would have seen it if he were in
their place. So he constantly projected onto Beijing his views of their
self-interest. It is a variation of a phenomenon Kissinger often decries:
American diplomats sometimes contracting what has been called clientitis. They become the policy captives of the countries to which they
are posted and end up advocating that government’s views to Washington instead of the reverse. But Kissinger, with characteristic intellectual complexity, takes clientitis to a new level. He sympathetically
presents to his American audience not merely the official Chinese position, but also his own imaginary conception of what the Chinese position would be if they were as rational as he is. Kissinger has written
that in “our opening to China . . . [o]ur objective was to purge our for-
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eign policy of all sentimentality.”60 It may be that he and Nixon only
replaced one form of sentimentality with their own, though Nixon,
unlike Kissinger, apparently recovered his perspective enough to predict a future Taiwan free of Chinese Communist domination.
Some passages in On China suggest Kissinger’s knowing psychological susceptibility to China’s advances. Kissinger fully recognizes how “Chinese statesmen historically have excelled at using
hospitality, ceremony, and carefully cultivated personal relationships
as tools of statecraft.”61 His chapter on the history of China’s relations
with the outside world contains an interesting passage from the Han
Dynasty: “For those who come to surrender, the emperor [should]
show them favor [and] personally serve them wine and food so as to
corrupt their mind.”62 A few hundred pages later, Kissinger describes
the lavish banquets his Chinese hosts bestowed on him—and includes
in his book a photograph showing Zhou En-lai using his chopsticks
to place food on Kissinger’s plate.
Whether Kissinger has been beguiled and seduced by a series of
Chinese leaders, or has merely invested so much of his life in vindicating the original flawed Sino-U.S. understanding that he can no
longer deviate from his own orthodoxy, the consequences are the
same. Or perhaps the explanation for Kissinger’s vulnerability to Chinese influence is more geostrategic and less psychological. Intellectually and professionally, Kissinger’s, and Nixon’s, strong anti-Soviet
background doubtless predisposed them to align the United States
with China, Moscow’s chief adversary at the time. (“The enemy of
my enemy is my friend.”) Kissinger probably exaggerated his own
neutrality when he described the debate within official national security and foreign policy circles over which way American policy should
tilt. He recalls that there were “Slavophiles,” “Sinophiles,” and those
who advocated Realpolitik. “Not surprisingly,” he writes, “I was on
the side of the Realpolitikers.”63 Richard Nixon’s seminal thinking on
the need to open relations with China was set forth in his October
1967 article in Foreign Affairs, in which he wrote: “[W]e simply cannot afford to leave China forever outside the family of nations, there
to nurture its fantasies, cherish its hates, and threaten its neighbors.”64
When, in 1994, Kissinger reviewed the consequences of his approach to China, he concluded that “[t]he certitudes of physical threat
and hostile ideology characteristic of the Cold War are gone.”65 But
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three years earlier, Deng Xiaoping—supposedly the un-Mao, who had
already ordered China’s military to “shed some blood”66 in Tiananmen
Square—gave fair warning of what lay ahead for the world: “hide our
capacities and bide our time.”67 Given the present state of Sino-U.S.
relations, the danger of conflict over Taiwan, North Korea, the South
China Sea, Beijing’s essentially subversive role on proliferation and
third world governance, and a myriad of other issues, it is fair to ask:
Who are the true realists?
As he again surveyed China-U.S. relations recently in the context
of increasing Chinese assertiveness in the South China Sea and elsewhere, Kissinger warned: “Care must be taken lest both sides analyze
themselves into self-fulfilling prophecies.”68 The problem is that there
has been too little reflection and fresh thinking in the West regarding
Communist China’s long-term motives. We are now being forced, belatedly, to reexamine long-held premises and assumptions. Kissinger’s
On China provides abundant evidence of the reasons why reassessment
is needed—now more than ever.
NOTES
1. Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1994), 724.
2. Henry Kissinger, On China, (New York: The Penguin Press, 2011), 447.
3. Kissinger, Diplomacy, 719.
4. Kissinger, On China, 249.
5. Kissinger, Diplomacy, 696.
6. Ibid.
7. Joint Communiqué of the People’s Republic of China and the United States
of America, February 28, 1972, reprinted in Richard Nixon, Speeches, Writings, Documents (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 225.
8. Kissinger, On China, 272.
9. Ibid., 216.
10. Miles Yu, “Inside China,” The Washington Times, July 20, 2011.
11. William Safire, “The Biggest Vote,” The New York Times, May 18, 2000.
12. Testimony of James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, before the
Senate Intelligence Committee, March 10, 2011.
13. Kissinger, On China, 119.
14. Ibid., 125.
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15. Ibid., 129.
16. Ibid., 132.
17. Ibid., 159.
18. The Diane Rehm Show, Interview with Henry Kissinger, WAMU-FM,
April 7, 1994. Emphasis added.
19. Kissinger, On China, 266.
20. Ibid., 258.
21 Ibid., 279.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid., emphasis added.
24. Ibid.
25. Ibid., 280.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid.
28. Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset
and Dunlap, 1978), 561-564.
29. Henry Kissinger, White House Years (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1979), 1062; and Diplomacy, 727. Emphasis added).
30. Ibid.
31. Kissinger, Diplomacy, 723-724.
32. Kissinger, On China, 307.
33. Ibid.
34. Kissinger, On China, 271. “[Nixon’s] intention, he affirmed, was to complete the normalization process in his second term.”
35. Joseph Nye, The Boston Globe, February 7, 1996, 6.
36. William Perry, The New York Times, January 24, 1996, 1.
37. Ibid., 476.
38. After China complained about a Strait transit by the Kitty Hawk in 2007,
Admiral Timothy Keating, the Pacific Commander, replied: “We don’t need
China’s permission to go through the Taiwan Straits. It is international water.
We will exercise our free right of passage whenever and wherever we choose
to.” “Sino-American Showdown in Taiwan Strait: Chinese Navy Confronted
USS Kitty Hawk,” Global Research, January 16, 2008. Kissinger does not
mention the incident.
39. Off-the-record Washington speech by a former U.S. official.
40. Kissinger, On China, 477.
41. Kissinger is decidedly ambiguous on the role of ambiguity in statecraft,
at least as it is practiced by others. Critical of Acheson’s lack of deterrent
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clarity in 1950, he takes great pride in his own “one China” formulation in
the Shanghai Communiqué, which could be a model of ambiguity as “the
lifeblood of diplomacy.” But then he criticizes President Reagan’s Third
Communiqué on Taiwan arms sales because it “is quite ambiguous, hence a
difficult roadmap for the future.” Kissinger, On China, 383.
42. See, e.g., Annual Report to Congress: The Military Power of the People’s
Republic of China, 2005, Office of the Secretary of Defense.
43. David E. Sanger, “U.S. Would Defend Taiwan, Bush Says,” The New York
Times, April 26, 2001.
44. Richard Nixon, Beyond Peace (New York: Random House, 1994), 133.
45. Ibid., 134. Emphasis added.
46. Ibid.
47. Ibid.
48. Kissinger, On China, 356.
49. Ibid., 492.
50. Ibid., 484.
51. Ibid., 525.
52. Ibid., 385.
53. Ibid., 356. To Chinese readers of Kissinger’s book, the title words On
China may look very much like “One China.”
54. Ibid., 23.
55. Ibid., 26.
56. Ibid., 29.
57. Ibid., 101.
58. Ibid., 386.
59. Kissinger, Diplomacy, 726.
60. Kissinger, White House Years, 191.
61. Kissinger, On China, 237.
62. Ibid., 21. Emphasis added.
63. Kissinger, White House Years, 182.
64. Richard Nixon, “Asia After Vietnam,” Foreign Affairs, 46.1 (1967): 121.
65. Kissinger, Diplomacy, 835.
66. The New York Times, June 4, 2010, 1.
67. “Deng Initiates New Policy ‘Guiding Principle,’” FBIS-CHI-91-215,
quoted in Kissinger, On China, 438.
68. “Avoiding a U.S.-China Cold War,” Henry A. Kissinger, The Washington
Post, January 14, 2011. See also “Our Fraught Place with China,” Joseph A.
Bosco, The Weekly Standard, January 21, 2011.
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Everything is One
A Review of Eva Brann’s The Logos of Heraclitus: The First Philosopher of the West on
Its Most Interesting Term. Philadelphia: Paul
Dry Books, 2011. 160 pages, $16.95.
David Carl
The Greeks had but one word, logos, for both speech and
reasoning; not that they thought there was no speech
without reason, but no reasoning without speech; and the
act of reasoning they called syllogism, which signifieth
summing up the consequences of one saying to another.
—Hobbes, Leviathan I.iv.14
What is the relationship between what we say and what we think, or
how we think? In her new book Eva Brann demonstrates that these
questions are among the oldest (and most interesting) questions taken
up by Western philosophy, and that they find their origin in the Logos
of Heraclitus. This Logos, however, is not initially something spoken,
but something heard, and much hinges on the content and the nature
of Heraclitus’s hearing.
What Heraclitus heard was the Logos, for the Logos speaks (is a
Speaker) and the philosopher is one who hears. Heraclitus is “that
aboriginal listener to the Logos” (87).* But this is the beginning of the
mystery, not its solution; and teasing out the implications, the ambiguities (or ambivalencies), the paradoxes and possibilities of what the
Logos says is the primary task of Ms. Brann’s book. How exactly did
he hear what the Logos said? To whom or what was he listening? How
did he learn to hear so well? And how will he share, across the centuries, the timeless truth of what he heard?
Brann begins her account of Heraclitean hearing by introducing
us, by means of an analysis of Raphael’s School of Athens, to the figDavid Carl is a tutor at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
*
Page numbers in parentheses refer to Eva Brann’s Heraclitus.
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ure of Heraclitus, and briefly relates the history of logos, as distinct
from the Heraclitean Logos. She then turns her attention, over the
course of four closely reasoned pages, to a detailed consideration of
a two-line fragment from Heraclitus’s lost treatise known as On Nature, D-K 50:1
To those hearing not me but the Saying, to say the same is
the Wise Thing: Everything [is] One. (16)
Through consideration of etymological detail informed by an imaginative intimacy with the history of Western philosophy and literature,
an understanding of this fragment emerges which highlights the stakes
of Heraclitus’s hearing: the Logos is a “Wise Thing,” and it is wise
for us to have knowledge of it “since it governs the relation of all
things to everything” (19). As we will see, the key word in this understanding is “relation.”
Seeing as Hearing
In the next sections of her book, Brann leads her reader towards an
appreciation of how the Logos both embodies and reveals the unity
“of all things to everything.” She first shows us that Heraclitus is particularly interested in the within and without of the cosmos, and that
he looks within in order to understand the without: “no one has ever
listened harder to the Logos within!” (87). This is not an unconscious
mixing of metaphors: this looking that is a form of listening is part of
the essential doubleness of Heraclitus’s thinking—a doubleness which
is as apparent in his form and style as it is in the content of his writing.
Brann’s discussion of fragmentation (“his inherent fragmentariness
entails a certain philosophical completeness” [93]), metaphor, and
Heraclitean punning is illuminating in this regard.
Twenty-five hundred years after Heraclitus composed the writings
we know as his Fragments, Wallace Stevens observed that “[t]he
world about us would be desolate except for the world within us,”2
and “it is a violence from within that protects us from a violence from
without.”3 Brann shows us that this salutary tension between the
within and the without, together with Stevens’ notion of violence, is
essential to the way Heraclitus listens to the Logos. Indeed, as we will
see, salutary tension is at the heart of Heraclitus’s understanding of
the cosmos.
His hearing will constantly merge with metaphorical forms of see-
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ing, for Heraclitus pays a great deal of attention to the physical world
around him. (“[O]f what there is sight, hearing, learning—these I
honor especially” [75].4) Moreover, the Logos he hears “is not audible
to the ears but to the soul” (76), nor is the cosmic Fire he sees visible
to the physical eye. For Heraclitus the eye and the ear are both
metaphors for forms of knowing, namely, listening and seeing. There
is deliberate, salutary tension in a mixed metaphor, and the harmony
at the core of Heraclitus’s view of nature is driven by tension—the
kind of tension that goes into stringing a bow or tuning a lyre. This is
why Heraclitus says that “[a]ll things come to be by strife” (106).5
Because of this strife, wrestling is another illuminating metaphor
in Heraclitus’s “tautly vital, twangingly alive, strainingly static cosmos”—a cosmos “locked in inimical embraces” that displays “a mode
of being that is a harsh, ever-unfulfilled striving” (90). On the way toward understanding how Heraclitean harmony (“there is a Unity relating Everything and All Things” [18]) arises out of this notion of
strife and tension, Brann treats us to insightful observations about Heraclitus’s relationships with Aristotle, Parmenides, Pythagoras and the
Milesian “proto-physicists”; she discusses the importance of metaphor
and ratio (“the Greek name for ratios is logoi, and logoi are the cosmic
unifying relations” [124]); she interprets Heraclitus’s notion of Fire
(“that pervasive quasi-material that allows all the elements to enter
into quantitative ratio-relations with each other” [44]); and she delves
into the etymological details of Heraclitus’s Greek in a revealing and
delightful way that is free of pedantic stodginess.
Ratios and Fire are both ways of putting things into relation with
one another. Relation “bonds two terms without merging them” (38),
and this is the key to understanding Heraclitus’s notion of the Logos.
Brann’s claim is a radical one, startling and yet compelling: she suggests that Heraclitus not only pondered what made “the multifarious
world one” (perhaps an inevitable question for a philosopher), but also
went on to posit that The Logos (as distinct from logos) was “all at
once the relater of all relations, beyond and within them, a maker of
the world-order and himself that order, a world governor, and also the
world—a doer, a sayer, and perhaps himself a listener” (42). Thus
Brann reveals the extreme possibilities of a Heraclitean “world-order,”
an order that is coherent and unified—a (contentiously) harmonious
and beautiful order—but also mysterious and enigmatic, for “non-
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sensory logoi govern the sensory world” (43). It is consequently an
order that demands a careful listening. But how do we listen to the
non-sensory? By developing the faculty that is capable of hearing
what Thinking itself has to say, both to us and about itself.
At this point Heraclitus sounds like something of a mystic. But
Brann’s book grounds Heraclitus’s thinking so firmly and compellingly in the context of musical ratio, chemistry, and physics that
the potential vagaries of mysticism are firmly left behind (“I don’t
think so ultimately uncompromising a philosophical physics ever
again comes on the scene” [89]). More importantly, Brann shows us
how Heraclitus’s thought transcends such distinctions as “mystic/rationalist” or “poet/philosopher” by taking us behind the screen of such
divisions. “One : Everything” [21] is the ultimate expression of the
Heraclitean philosophy. Heraclitus speaks to us from a time before
the distinctions between philosophy, science, and religion had been
so starkly delineated. For Heraclitus, investigating the cosmos was
the work of an entire human being, and understanding it required an
understanding of how “One : Everything” makes sense. This understanding requires us to grasp the relationship between the human and
divine as well as between man and nature. Thus Brann’s book ranges
through discussions of painting, sculpture, music, mathematics, theology, poetry, philosophy, and physics to reveal the prismatic aspect
of Heraclitus’s thought. It is not mysticism, but a way of thinking that
precedes the division between mysticism and rationalism. It is not science, but a mode of inquiry that antedates the schism between science
and philosophy.
Fire
Not surprisingly, in Brann’s account Fire is the key to the Heraclitean
system. What is surprising is how coherent a picture of the cosmos
Brann reveals behind the enigmatic darkness of Heraclitus’s fragments. Aristotle may have called him, “the obscure one,” but for
Brann the Heraclitean view is unified and eminently comprehensible
because it is rational. And because it is rational, it is measurable. The
measurability of everything is at the heart of Brann’s radical interpretation of Heraclitean unity, and it is Fire which makes this possible:
“Fire enables the Logos to inform the cosmos with the most determinate relationality thinkable, that expressed in number-ratios” (63). For
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a long-time reader of Heraclitus, this claim hits like a stunning revelation. Suddenly the possibility of a coherent Heraclitean system
emerging from those “darkly oracular sayings” (68)—sayings that
Socrates claimed it would require a Delian diver to understand6—
seems not only possible, but positively inevitable. Through her discussion of ratio and measure Brann carries us down to the bottom of
Heraclitus’s dark sea, and she reveals the hidden treasures buried
there.
Brann’s account of the Heraclitean notion of fire has something
in common with the following lines from Sir Thomas Browne’s Hydriotaphia:
Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within
us. A small fire sufficeth for life, great flames seemed too
little after death, while men vainly affected precious pyres,
and to burn like Sardanapalus, but the wisedom of funerall Laws found the folly of prodigall blazes, and reduced
undoing fires unto the rule of sober obsequies, wherein
few could be so mean as not to provide wood, pitch, a
mourner, and an Urne.7
Browne would have agreed with Brann’s description of fire’s double
nature “as being one element among elements and as acting like a
principle through them all” (69). Again we see in “One : Everything”
a union of poetic imagery and suggestiveness with a deep philosophic
insight into the nature and workings of the cosmos.
Other revelatory (and controversial) statements in Brann’s book
include the claims that he is the first philosopher in the West as well
as the first physicist (that is, the first to give an account of the conservation of matter); that he is the “discoverer of transcendence” (99);
that scholars have deformed a central aspect of Heraclitus’s thought
be replacing the ratio aspect of his thinking with various forms of the
copula “is,” thereby misunderstanding the importance of relation to
the Logos; and that he is not the infamous and perplexing philosopher
of flux many of us have long considered him to be—especially those
of us who formed an early impression of Heraclitus from our encounters with Nietzsche.
Tension vs. Flux
Brann’s argument that Heraclitus is not a relativist is easy enough to
accept. That he is also not the enigmatic philosopher of flux, however,
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is a more disconcerting, but equally well-supported thesis of Brann’s
book.
Brann does not resolve all of Heraclitus’s “paradoxes and contradictions” (68), nor would she care to; for paradoxes are “the expressions precisely adequate to his world-order” (86). Moreover,
“Heraclitus speaks paradoxically because that is how the world is”
(88). Paradox is a form of verbal and logical tension—and tension,
for Heraclitus, is the source of harmony. Tension is “Heraclitus’s most
remarkable physical notion” (78), and this notion replaces the more
familiar notion of Heraclitus’s flux. It is tension that makes the fundamental ratio “One : Everything” cohere. Brann explores the idea of
this unifying tension through discussions of war and wrestling, music
and harmony, punning, paradox, and metaphor.
In a consideration of the way in which Heraclitus uses metaphor
(helpfully set out in contrast to the way Homer uses metaphor), Brann
observes that “Heraclitean aphorisms are meant to be unsettling”
(71)—but not therefore unintelligible. Unlike Homer’s often consolatory or comforting metaphors, Heraclitus employs metaphors that
highlight the “antagonistic opposition” (72) of his terms. Understanding how Heraclitus’s metaphors express this antagonistic opposition
helps us to comprehend the role that tension-dependent harmony plays
in the overall ratio-based ordering of the cosmos. (The famous image
of stringing the bow and the lyre in D-K 51is a perfect example of
this sort of metaphor.)
The cosmic ordering based on the ratio “One : Everything” is the
touchstone to which Brann’s book constantly returns. However far her
reasoning or examples wander, she always comes back to this fundamental way of understanding how tension holds the Heraclitean account of the cosmos together, and how the “pervasive mutuality of
force is the principle of oneness—of coexistence in a force-community” (79).
“The universe isn’t mine: it’s me.”8
And at times the book does wander far, but it is a wonder-full wandering. Brann’s book, divided into five sections of unequal lengths,
considers the figure of Heraclitus, the history of logos, Heraclitus’s
unique Logos, the afterlife of the Logos, and the Soul of Heraclitus.
Along the way, and especially in the “afterlife” section, there are brief
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but fruitfully provocative accounts of Euclid, Homer, John the Evangelist, Nicholas of Cusa, Descartes, Galileo, Newton (she calls Newton’s Third Law “the dynamic formulation of Heraclitus’s world”
[79]), wrestling, war, Hegel, Baudelaire, Heidegger, the coining of
money, logic, Force, matter, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Zoroaster, Plotinus, and perhaps most surprisingly of all, co-author of The Federalist
James Madison.
Brann’s claim that Madison’s theory of faction (developed in The
Federalist, No. 10) is Heraclitean and that therefore “the Founders’
classical liberalism . . . honors the Heracliteanism of the world” (121)
may be the most delightfully audacious moment in the book. Yet she
presents her case with such calmly reasoned grace that even her most
spectacular suggestions seem obvious. It had never occurred to me,
before reading Brann’s book, that there was such a thing as “the Heracliteanism of the world,” and certainly not that it found expression
in the Founding Fathers’ notion of liberalism. But her argument presents us with convincing reasons for both hypotheses.
In the “afterlife” chapter, Brann considers not so much the disciples of Heraclitus as those figures who have contributed to the ongoing development of the Heraclitean Logos, figures like Plato, Aristotle,
Hegel, Nietzsche, and Madison. I would like to briefly consider another such figure here—an author who may never have read a word
of Heraclitus and yet whose work seems to express in twentieth-century terms the “Heracliteanism of the world” that Brann reveals in the
works of earlier writers and thinkers.
The connection with Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa was suggested to me by a footnote in which Brann says that Heraclitus was
one who “declined to travel—except within himself” (151). I was reminded of a passage from Pessoa’s mysterious prose work The Book
of Disquiet. Pessoa refers to himself as a “nomad in my self-awareness”9 and exhorts his reader to be “the Columbus of your soul.”10
And he also wrote of the Logos: “there are also, in prose, gestural
subtleties carried out by great actor, the Word, which rhythmically
transforms into its bodily substance the impalpable mystery of the universe.”11 Pessoa’s “great actor” is a descendant of Heraclitus’s Logos,
performing the Heraclitean act of transforming “impalpable mystery”
into “bodily substance.” Even the fundamental ratio “One : Everything” finds expression in Pessoa’s writing:
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And so, in order to feel oneself being purely Oneself, each
must be in a relationship with all–absolutely all–other beings, and with each in the most profound relationship possible. Now, the most profound relationship possible is that
of identity. Therefore, in order to feel oneself being purely
Oneself, each must feel itself being all the others, absolutely consubstantiated with all the others.12
Reading this passage in light of Brann’s emphasis on relationality as
the key to understanding Heraclitus’s view of the cosmos one is reminded of D-K 10: “Out of everything one and out of one everything”
(56).
One and/or Many
One of the most intriguing parts of Brann’s book is her account of the
relationship between Parmenides and Heraclitus—a relationship that
will be characterized by tension, and thus ultimately be more Heraclitean in its nature than Parmenidean. These thinkers are usually understood as presenting us with a clear choice: being or becoming.
Brann’s reading is more nuanced, and if her book deprives us of the
romantic notion of Heraclitus as the wild philosopher of chaos and
flux and the bête noire of formalists, systematizers and the methodologically hidebound (“the picture of Heraclitus as the philosopher of
ultimate instability, of radical mutability, is just ludicrous” [100)]),
then she gives us something much richer in return.
By rejecting the picture of Heraclitus as “a fluxist all the way
down” (102) and as a “philosophical whirling dervish” (104), Brann
allows his thinking to enter into provocative relation with that of Parmenides. Brann places Heraclitus and Parmenides “into a time-and
space-indifferent dialectic” (102). While Heraclitus will appeal to
those who “are gripped by the strife-locked unity of the physical cosmos” (102) his view is nevertheless no longer presented as an either/or
alternative to Parmenidean being. Instead Brann poses for us what
may well constitute the most interesting question of Western philosophy: What is the relation between Logos and Being? Tracing the
forms that this question has taken in epistemology, metaphysics,
ethics, and aesthetics over the past 2,500 years would be a massive
undertaking, but Brann opens the question up for us in a few pages,
starting with the provocative claim that “Being is largely mute sub-
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stance, Logos mostly talkative relationality” (103). Brann finds common ground for Heraclitus and Parmenides in the claim that “they
both see the same, a Whole, an All, a One, and search out its nature”
(104). The nature of this “One” is different for each of them, but the
fact that they are both intent on searching out the nature of what is
and how it is unites them in a common philosophic endeavor.
Whether what is is Being itself or the tension-unifying Logos
(“the Logos works in self-opposing ways” [106]) is a millennia-old
philosophical question. By analyzing brief passages from the two writers and focusing on their uses of pan, “all,” and panta, “everything,”
Brann reintroduces her reader to the timeless immediacy of philosophical investigation.
Soul
Throughout her book, Brann reveals Heraclitus as psychologist,
philosopher, poet, proto-chemist, and physicist (“the first modern scientist” [46]). In the unity of these various modes of inquiry the fundamental ratio of the Logos, “One : Everything,” is embodied in his
own work. Brann constantly revisits Heraclitus from the different perspectives that characterize his work: the human side, the cosmic side,
and the divine overview that unifies the immanent and transcendent
aspects of the first two perspectives.
The final chapter of The Logos of Heraclitus sums up, steps back,
and takes a swing at what, along with Logos and Being, may be the
most perplexing of Western philosophic categories—that of Soul.
Brann’s distinction between logos—what, at the human level, is
“the more or less thoughtful utterance of our mind and its mindfulness”—and Logos—“which is divine but perhaps not a nameable
deity” and which “governs and pilots the cosmos” (123)—reminds
us that in terms of the ordered relations that constitute and govern
the cosmos it is the Logos “as cosmic fire” that makes sense of the
“One : Everything” relation, even when it comes to understanding
the relation between the human and the divine. Even here some form
of rigorous measurement is possible.
At the end of her book, Brann returns to her thesis that “Logos is
both nature and its language, and it expresses itself in measures”
(125). All ratios are forms of measurement, and measurement is an
essentially scientific way of approaching the cosmos. She raises the
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question that has been looming since we first heard of Heraclitus’s
enigmatic hearing: “how does Heraclitus himself come to know and
understand this language?” (126). In exploring this question, Brann
suggests an answer to the question, “What is the soul?” Her answer
begins with D-K 101: “I searched myself.” Heraclitus’s searching
ranges across the dual realms that Stevens referred to as “the world
about us” and “the world within us,” because for Heraclitus there is
no understanding that does not encompass and unify these worlds.
There can be no distinction between outer and inner; harmony requires
tension, but not chaos; unity requires conflict, but not dissolution.
“Heraclitus walks the ways of his soul, which are boundless,” and
Brann is our guide on this exploration of “the never-ending ways of
an enormously capacious inner place” (126). She offers us a conception of the soul as “a mirror of the cosmos”; yet the journey she leads
us through remains mathematical and grounded in measurement (“this
world soul is a concatenation of compounded ratios” [127]), so that it
avoids the abyss of vague mysticism. There is no flabbiness in this
inner journey. If Heraclitus is to remain a mystical thinker he will have
to do so on the most rigorous of terms, and only by unifying mysticism
with a scientific account of the cosmos—another unifying tension in
Heraclitus’s thought.
Personal Knowing
Heraclitus’s accomplishment—the most radical form of fulfilling the
Delphic injunction to “know thyself”—is open to anyone. Unlike Parmenides, he was not specially chosen to be a unique human passenger
in a god’s chariot. Heraclitus’s conveyance is not a magic carpet; it is
rigorous introspection aimed both at self-knowledge as a form of cosmic awareness and at cosmic understanding as a form of self-knowing.
This is serious thoughtfulness, engaged, sustained, and maintained.
Thoughtfulness by means of the Logos is available to anyone, as Heraclitus says in D-K 113: “Common to everyone is thinking.” Brann
points out the pun on xynon, “common,” and xyn nooi, “with mind,”
that appears in several of Heraclitus’s fragments (129-30). In D-K
107, he excludes only those with “barbarian souls” from participation
in this common cognition, for they are “the speechless souls of those
who are incapable of hearing and agreeing with the Logos and of employing logoi, rational expressions” (76).
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Brann’s investigation of Heraclitus is witty, personal, insightful,
and scholarly; but she remains on guard against the pitfalls of traditional academic scholarship. She is right to interpret D-K 40 as saying
that “heaps of learning lead to knowing everything and nothing. It
drowns out the Logos” (27). And she is also right to approach Heraclitus as she does: as a fellow eavesdropper and co-conspirator in his
investigations rather than as a stuffy academic parading out an impressive knowledge of Greek grammar and the Western tradition to
show us how much she has read. Brann’s book does not drown out
the Logos; it strives to clear a space for its greater resonances. Her
take on Heraclitus is a personal one, and therefore an intimate and revealing one. The Logos of Heraclitus shows us by example how to be
“keenly and extensively observant” (27), and leaves us, as inspired
and excited readers, to determine for ourselves the quality and nature
of what we see and what we hear.
There is an overarching perspective from which “human beings
have the life of divinity within them” (136). “Gods may always have
some touch of mortality in their nature and humans may become immortal in time” (82). This is the most inclusive perspective that Brann
reveals to the reader, a perspective from which the paradox of fathoming man’s relation to the divine and the relation of divinity to the
human are equally puzzling, and equally necessary to our own fullest
self-understanding. Attaining this perspective is the task of the Heraclitean philosopher, the person determined to understand how “everything is one.” But Brann does not rest content with mere understanding.
The final fragment to which she turns her attention completes the
bridge between saying (a form of the logos) and doing (a form of
being). “What does it mean to do true things?” she asks (138). This is
the note on which Brann chooses to end her book, the note that completes the hearing of Heraclitus, who learned how to listen to the cosmos. But he learned to listen in order to do what? That question
remains to be taken up by the reader.
NOTES
1. The fragments of Heraclitus’s text, which survive mostly in the form of
quotations in the works of later authors, were compiled and numbered in Die
Fragmente der Vorskratiker, translated by Hermann Diels, edited by Walter
Kranz, Vol. I (Berlin: Weidman, 1903; reprint of 6th ed., Munich: Weidman,
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1992). This book has become the standard text for citing the fragments, which
are usually referred to by “D-K number”; for instance, the passage cited here
is known as D-K 50.
2. Wallace Stevens, The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination (New York: Vintage, 1942), 169.
3. Ibid., 36.
4. This is Brann’s translation of D-K 55.
5. Brann’s translation of D-K 8.
6. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, trans. Robert Drew
Hicks (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1925; reprint with an introduction by Herbert Strainge Long, 1972), II.22.
7. Thomas Browne, Hydrotaphia, Urne-Buriall; or, A Brief Discourse on
the Sepulchrall Urnes lately found in Norfolk (London: Henry Brome, 1658),
80-81.
8. Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, trans. Richard Zenith (New York:
Penguin, 2001), 112.
9. Pessoa, Disquiet, 101.
10. Ibid., 400.
11. Ibid., 198.
12. Fernando Pessoa, Always Astonished, translated by Edwin Honig (San
Francisco: City Lights Books, 1988), 30.
�
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Pastille, William
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Hunt, Frank
Sachs, Joe
Van Doren, John
Williamson, Robert B.
Zuckerman, Elliott
Arnaiz, Deziree
Sachs, Joe
Carey, James
Kalkavage, Peter
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Thoms, Hollis
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The St. John’s Review
Volume 54, Number 1 (Fall 2012)
Editor
William Pastille
Editorial Board
Eva T. H. Brann
Frank Hunt
Joe Sachs
John Van Doren
Robert B. Williamson
Elliott Zuckerman
Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant
Deziree Arnaiz
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�THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
�Contents
Essays & Lectures
The Dispassionate Study of the Passions ..............................1
Eva Brann
On Biblical Style .................................................................17
Tod Linafelt
What is the Surface Area of a Hedgehog?...........................45
Barry Mazur
Some Reflections on Darwin and C. S. Peirce ....................87
Curtis Wilson and Chaninah Maschler
Poem
The Laws of Physics .........................................................124
Marlene Benjamin
�THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
�ESSAYS & LECTURES
1
The Dispassionate Study
of the Passions
Eva Brann
Plato’s dialogue Gorgias ends with a long speech culminating
in a rousing cry by an aroused Socrates. He is speaking to
Gorgias’s student Callicles about his swaggering opinionatedness and their common uneducatedness. The words he uses
are neanieusthai, ‟to act like a youth,” to behave like a kid,
and apaideusia, ‟lack of teaching,” ignorance. And then he
concludes with a condemnation of Callicles’s whole ‟way of
life”—tropos tou biou—‟to which you summon me, believing in it”—hōi su pisteuōn eme parakaleis. esti gar oudenos
axios, ō Kallikleis—‟For it is worth nothing, Callicles!” My
fine 1922 edition of the Gorgias by the classicist Otto Apelt
rightly translates the address O Kallikleis, jingling in the Gorgian manner with parakaleis, as ‟My Callicles,” for there is
a curious, straining intimacy in Socrates’s peroration.1 The
rest is silence. It is a favorite question of mine to ask our
freshmen at St. John’s College, who all read this dialogue,
what happened that night at home, when Callicles was, perhaps, by himself.
Now some of you may have heard of the late Seth Bemardete, a student of Leo Strauss and a brilliant classicist at
New York University. In our youth we traveled together, and
Seth once imparted to me the following wild conjecture.
‟Plato,” it was said, was a nickname given to him because
of his broad shoulders.2 His real name was Aristocles: Callicles, Aristocles—he of noble fame, he of good fame; kalos
Eva Brann is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis. This lecture was
presented to the graduate students of the School of Philosophy at the
Catholic University of America on March 30, 2012.
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k’agathos was the Greek way of denominating what Chaucer
calls ‟a verray parfit gentil knicht,” a good and noble knight,
a perfect gentleman.3 So Plato represents himself in this dialogue as a noble yet rudely unregenerate youth in his moment
before conversion, a conversion accomplished by a usually
imperturbable Socrates impassioned to speak, for once, extendedly and hotly.
Do I believe this clever combination of clues? Not really.
Plato was, after all, of good family and a writer of tragedies
before Socrates captivated him, and the swaggering surly
youth Callicles has little of the high-bred, suave poet about
him, a poet who was, moreover, probably already philosophically involved when he met Socrates.4
Nonetheless, this anecdote about a conjecture seems to
me thought-provoking. Here, for once, Plato permits us to
see the spectacle of rational Socrates in a passion, un-ironic,
touched to the quick—surely this is not a mere mean anger
at being dissed by a Gorgiastic know-it-all.
Many of you are already teachers, though perhaps young
in comparison to Plato (b. 427 B.C.E.) when he wrote the
Gorgias (c. 387 B.C.E.). He was probably forty, and his
Socrates (b. 470) was probably about the same age at the dramatic date of this dialogue (shortly after 429, the year of Pericles’s death, which is mentioned as a recent event in 503c).
You will have experienced the unbalancing sense that the
stakes are high and souls are to be pierced and that passion,
or an exhibition of it, is in order. It is, to be sure, a wonderful
question about the nature of passion whether deliberate
demonstrativeness or disciplined reticence, either in the
speaker or the listener, does more to nourish it or to dampen
it, and how spontaneity and artfulness play into the effect.
But we do know that Aristotle believed Socrates’s display in
the Gorgias was effective. He tells of a Corinthian farmer
who was inspired by his reading of the dialogue to leave his
vineyard to its own devices, to join the Platonic circle, and
henceforth to make his soul the ‟seedbed,” that is, the seminar, of Plato’s philosophy.5
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3
The Gorgias is, therefore, a good reference for beginning
to talk about the affects as an object of study. Not merely because it documents, so to speak, that people concerned with
the soul have in fact plenty of temperament—be it sober
Socrates or meek Jesus (e.g., Matt. 21:12, Jesus wreaking
havoc in the temple)—and that they don’t leave their affect
at the entrance to their inquiries or preachings. I don’t, of
course, mean the little negative furies that Socrates calls
‟eristic,” the eruptions of the contentious desire to win arguments, but I’m thinking of a large positive passion.
So this is where I zero in on my particular problem for
this talk. I have read my way through a tiny fraction of the
huge mass of contemporary writing on the emotions. I’ve
come away with the cumulative—documentable—impression that there is a thoroughgoing misapprehension about a
putative pagan rationalism and a supposed Western tradition
for which it is held responsible and which breaks out with insidious virulence in the Enlightenment. This view owes
something, I suppose, to Nietzsche’s brilliantly skewed portrait of the ‟despotic logician,” Socrates, the monster with
the ‟one, great Cyclopean eye,” in whom “the lovely madness of artistic enthusiasm never glowed.”6 The attribution of
monocular Cyclopeanism—i.e., vision without depth, carrying with it the charge of despotic sobriety—implies thought
unravished by beauty. All this imputed to a man who thought
that our soul contained a world that we could recover by
going within,7 and believed that true poetry requires a
Dionysiac frenzy inspired by the Muses, one cognate in kind
to the philosophical longing for beauty!8 All this ascribed to
a man who, attending a drinking party, bathed for once and
wearing shoes, slyly paints a verbal picture of Eros that is in
fact a self-portrait—Socrates looking at himself from a distance and recognizing the unwashed and unshod god!9
So much for the picture of Socrates the rationalist. And
something similar holds for Aristotle the intellectualist. His
great work, the founding book of institutionalizable philosophy (since it pre-sets the problems to be solved in Meta-
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physics III), begins with an appetite, a root passion, which,
in the form of the desire to know, is humanly universal and
culminates in a passionate portrait of the ultimate object of
appetition. This ultimate object is a divinity that attracts,
without returning, love—an object that satisfies, that fulfills,
by its mere actuality, by its unadulterated energeia (Metaphysics II; XII.7), as in Shakespeare’s Sonnet 94:
Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,
unmoved . . .
except that the pure energeia of the divinity is the very opposite of the practically complete inertia of those unaffectable
human objects of attraction, these beautiful but hyletic lumps
of mere resistance that the speaker of the poem is excoriating.
Would it be too much to claim that this is the difference
between the philosophical Greeks and the God-regarding Hebrews, more significant than Homer’s anthropomorphic polytheism, which is in any case more characteristic of the poets
and the people than of the philosophers? I mean the lack of
reciprocity between adoring human and worshipped divinity:
The Socratic forms are great powers (Sophist 247e), but even
when they come on the comic stage in visible shape—which
they do in Aristophanes’s Clouds where they appear as
wordily nebulous beings, as shaped mists—they don’t do a
thing for their summoning worshipper, Socrates. In fact they
abandon him to possible suffocation in his thinkaterion—the
play leaves this uncomic outcome open—and exit satisfied
with their ‟temperate” performance (Clouds 269, 1509). The
Aristotelian divinity, Nous, is similarly unresponsive, an object of uninvolved attraction. The God of the Jews, on the
other hand, is beneficently or banefully involved with his
people, and when a certain Jewish sect grows into a great religion, He becomes caring outreach itself, namely, Love (e.g.,
Exodus 20:1-6, I John 4:8, 16).
Why am I dwelling first on the pagans and on the Chris-
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN
5
tians in talking to you about the study of the passions, when
the contemporary writers on the emotions simply drown out
these earlier voices by their volume? It’s not that I have much
faith in the explanatory power of chronology or in those longitudinal studies by which a genetic history is attributed to
ideas, and which tend to develop more arcane information
than illuminating depth. I can think of a half-dozen reasons
for my distrust, which there is no time to set out at the
podium, though we might talk about the implied historicism
of such studies in the next few days. Moreover, it is probably
less necessary at a Catholic university than at any other to try
to induce respect for the tradition. There is, however, a particular way in which I think that emotion studies should begin
with, or pick up at some point, the great ancient and medieval
works—of the latter, above all, Thomas’s ‟Treatise on the
Passions,” which he placed in the very center of the Summa
Theologiae, for this monk knew—God knows how—everything about human passion.
I think these pre-modern works should be studied for their
shock value, for the news they contain for us. Such a reading,
a reading that places them not in the bygone superseded past
but in a recalcitrantly unfashionable present, requires a difficult and never quite achievable art, one that graduate students
should certainly be eager to acquire: first, the art of summing
up, with some credibility, what a philosopher is really and at
bottom about (I don’t mean ‟all about,” a hand-waving locution, but the compact gist of his intention); and second, the
art of discerning how the particular part on which you mean
to focus is, or fails to be, properly derivative from that central
intention. Then, opposing gist to gist and consequence to consequence, there will emerge a coherent and discussable
schema both of the general notions that preoccupy the
denizens of modernity willy-nilly and of the sophisticated
twists that studious scholars and trendy intellectual elites
have given them. Approached in this way, emotion studies
seem to me as necessary to our self-understanding as any subject can be—necessary to us as human beings with a contem-
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porary affectivity.
So now let me give you some, perhaps vulnerably sweeping, observations about more recent emotional studies, particularly in English-speaking lands. The groundbreaking
works for us were English; I will name Errol Bedford (1956)10
and Anthony Kenny (1963).11 But the American father of this
field is Robert Solomon with his book The Passions (1976).12
The Solomonic beginning and its consequences are full
of oddities. (I am avoiding the harsher term ‟self-contradictions.”) The thesis of the book is ‟to return the passions to
the central and defining role,” snatched from them by
Socrates, and ‟to limit the pretensions of ‘objectivity’ and
self-demeaning reason that have exclusively ruled Western
philosophy, religion, and science” since his days.13
Well, I guess we’ve read different works of Western philosophy. But now comes a surprise. How will this salvation
from two and a half millennia of despotic rationalism be
achieved? We must recognize that ‟an emotion is a judgment.”14 Of course, this dictum runs into difficulties concerning the meaning of non-rational judgments. Indeed, Solomon
eventually accepted that his claim is actually a cognitive theory. As such, he says rightly, it has ‟become the touch-stone
of all philosophical theorizing about emotions.” He could, in
any case, hardly escape this cognitivist denomination, since
it turns out that we become responsible for our emotions by
adopting this very theory of cognitive emotion. For as the
theory works its way into our unconscious volitions, it will
become true, and our emotions will indeed be as much in our
control as our judgments;15 so control is what it’s—after all—
about.
The Stoics are the moderns among the ancients. Their
cognitive theories, the first truly representational theories, are
more future-fraught than any others in antiquity that I know
of; they dominate modernity until Heidegger’s Being and
Time. The Stoics are hard to study, because the deepest of
them, belonging to the so-called Early Stoa, exist only in
fragments. But we have an extended text on Stoic passion
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN
7
theory, the third and fourth books Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations. Some of you, who have read the work, will recognize
that the modern dictum ‟an emotion is a judgment” is pure
Neostoicism. Neostoicism has, in fact, dominated modern
emotion studies. One major work in this vein is Martha Nussbaum’s Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions
(2001).16
But how strange! The Stoics meant to reduce emotions
to mistakes, to diseases, to pathologies, of judgment. An emotion is a false appraisal, a perturbed opinion about what matters: an ‟upheaval of thought.” It is a deep and complex
theory underwritten by the Stoics’ fearless physicalism, their
notion of a material substratum, the pneuma, on whose
ground the psychic capacities can morph into one another.
But there is no question that, taken summarily, rationality
trumps affect. How odd, then, that modem theories so largely
save the emotions from rationalism by rationalizing them.
And I’ll list associated oddities.
First is the pervasive fear for the emotions, the sense that
we moderns have suppressed and demeaned them, that they
need saving. What teacher of the young (as scholars by and
large are) or observers of the world (as some of them may
be) could possibly think that that was what was troubling the
nations, cities, neighborhoods!
Second is a curtailed sense of thought in the West. I think
I’ve given some prime examples of the interpenetration of
thought and affect, even of the primacy of appetition in the
human soul in antiquity. When the ancients fight the passions
it is because they are so alive, experientially alive, to the
meaning of the word pathos, ‟suffering,” and the effect of its
licensed reign, its invited tyranny. It is really, I think, a modern idea of emotion that is at work here, among our contemporaries, one which pits its softness against hard reason.
Inherited Enlightenment terminology indeed conveys this
sense that our passions are attenuated, all but quelled by reason. The pivotal figure here is Hume. In his Treatise of
Human Nature, the term ‟passion” begins to be displaced by
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‟emotion.” He uses both, mostly interchangeably. But emotion is the word of the future. Solomon’s book is entitled The
Passions, but the key word inside is ‟emotions.” Your own
conference called for papers on ‟Emotion.”
‟Emotion” derives from e-movere, Latin for ‟to move
out.” The significance of this substitution of emotion for passion is powerful. Ancient pathos, passion, was an affect emanating from an object; the object elicited the responsive
affect, from the outside in. Modern emotion comes from inside out; it emphasizes expression; subject prevails over object. It is the Romantic worm eating its way out of the
Enlightened apple.
At the same time, the non-affective, the rational part of
the subject becomes mere reason. Hume, famously, says:
‟Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of passions, and
can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey
them.”17 He can say that because Humean and enlightened
reason is not deeply affective, not driven by love, and so its
relation to emotion may indeed be one of subservience, standoff, or finally, enmity. I need hardly add that with this transformation of the appetitive, longing, loving, intellect into
manipulative, instrumental, willful rationality, philosophy
loses its proper meaning and becomes a profession. My brush
here is broad, but, I think, it has some good overlap with the
case. So my second oddity is the severely foreshortened view
of the capabilities of passionate thought.
Now a third curious notion, the oddest one of all: the unreflective launching of an enterprise which is, on the face of
it, like embarking on a destroyer with the idea of going swimming. The vessel of war displaces, cleaves, churns up the element, but, absent a shipwreck, the sailor stays dry. So the
student of emotion banishes perturbations, analyzes wholes,
whips up terminology, and, unless melancholy seizes him,
sails high and dry over the billowing depths of feeling, with
much solid bulkhead keeping him from immersion in the element to be apprehended. This not very elegant simile is just
a way of expressing my surprise at the fact that emotion stud-
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN
9
ies tend to precipitate themselves into a dispassionate subject
without much thought about how such a subject can come to
be—about how emotion can be subjected to thought without
being denatured in the process.
Here, incidentally, lies, it seems to me, the best reason
why cognitive scientists, and those philosophers who like to
be on solid ground, are by and large physicalists and might
well regard the Stoics as their avatars.18 What matter-and-itsmotions has in its favor in emotion studies is that in this spatial form the different motions of the mind appear not to
occlude each other; spatio-temporal events, laid our in extension and sequence, have patency. However, since cognitive
brain studies, including the emotion research, depend on prior
conceptualization and introspective protocols, it is hard to
think of them as independent of a philosophical phenomenology.
Therefore, in the unavoidable preparatory philosophical
exploration, the perplexity of thinking about feeling remains
a vexing one, the more so since it appears to me to be a variant of the greatest quandary, now and always: How is thinking about any form of our consciousness even conceivable?
How is it—or is it, indeed—that thought about awareness
does not collapse into a union, as does ‟thinking of thinking,”
the noēsis noēseōs of the Nous?19 How can we know that
thought about itself or its fellow internalities does not transform its object out of its true being?
Just this latter eventuality makes emotion studies problematic. Study does have its own affect, one of the most interesting in the list of feelings, namely, interest itself. The
word—from interesse, ‟to be in the midst of”—signifies what
student parlance calls ‟being into it.”20
To study is to bring to bear received learning and native
analytic and combinatory capacities on a determinate object.
If study is of a high quality, it is preceded and accompanied
by its opposite, leisure—free time for meditating or musing,
during which original questions rise up and take shape. But
the business itself focuses on problems such as Aristotle first
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set for himself and left for his successors. Nowadays it’s the
dissertation advisor’s job. Now all the questions become formulated as demands for reasoning, and under reasoning all
things turn to reason—as under studious production all thinking turns to footnoted paper-writing.
It is indeed curious that this fact is not more of a perplexity to students of the emotions. Yet on second thought, it is
perhaps not so surprising that emotion studies seem so desiccated—perhaps they are not really more so than serious
scholarship ever must be. Robert Browning has his lovingly
respectful students sing at the “Grammarian’s Funeral”:
Learned we found him.
Yea, but we found him bald, too, eyes like lead,
Accents uncertain:
‟Time to taste life,” another would have said,
‟Up with the curtain!”
This man said rather, ‟Actual life comes next?
Patience a moment!
Grant I have mastered learning’s crabbed text,
Still there’s the comment.”
Here is the picture of interest raised to the pitch of passion. There is a sort of pure, dry, professional love (Browning’s grammarian’s passion was for Greek syntax, the
particles in particular) that can capture the loving admiration
of students. I know this from my own student days. But I
doubt that it suits philosophy, and, in particular, philosophizing about the emotions. Here another poem expresses our
condition more aptly: Wordsworth’s ‟The Tables Turned.” It
begins:
Up! up! my Friend and quit your books;
and this is its seventh verse:
Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN
11
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:—
We murder to dissect.
To be sure, there are now less intrusive ways of getting
inside Nature. Yet the conceptualizing of feeling will ever
and always be an abstraction in the basic sense—a removal,
a drawing away, from life. And in respect to the affects, this
sort of abstraction is doubly dubious. For in ordinary abstraction, the concept incarnate in concrete things is, by a specifically human cognitive operation, separated off from them.
But it is simply a premature, a prejudicial notion that the affects ‟stand under” (to use Kantian diction) abstractable concepts in the same way as do things.
It might follow that to view as problematic the dispassionate, studious study of the affects—be they impositions
from without or stirrings from within—is a sine qua non for
beginning rightly. I think it does follow.
There are early bonuses. I’ll give you in turn a suspicion,
a conjecture, and a figure. The suspicion is that we really are
partite beings, so that our affective and our thinking capacities are terminally distinct, structurally and dynamically heterogeneous. The conjecture is that it is this very disjunction
in their being which makes possible their conjunction in
thought and action, their effective complementarity. Here I’ve
written a sentence that I don’t even quite understand as I’m
reading it to you, and yet I have some faith in it. Finally, my
figure is that our affective capacities lie deeper in our nature
than our reflective powers.
To be sure, neuroscientists also say that certain brain
structures expressly subserving the emotions are located
deeper within the brain and appeared early in evolutionary
history, but that is not dispositive: What is biologically primitive might, after all, not be humanly primary. What I mean,
rather, is that affectivity has a certain abysmal, incomprehensible character that makes it feel—I don’t know how else to
put it—submersed; affects touch us (‟to feel” is related to the
Latin palpare, to pat) in intimate, that is, ‟innermost” regions,
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while articulable thought-activity intends, ‟stretches toward,”
emerges, towards comprehension of objects. We might be
constitutionally bipolar, extended between emotional depth
and thoughtful height. Perhaps an original question might be
formulated from this figure. It is something we could discuss
later, if you like.
Wordsworth’s lines imply that the murderous dissection
is performed on a lovely, living object. I must tell you that
emotion studies sometimes—too often—read as if they were
carried out on a latex-injected corpse that suffers every cut
with supine springiness. This is, as I’ve tried to show, a partly
inevitable result of making affectivity a ‟subject,” a thing
lying still under thought, literally ‟thrown under” its wheels.
Nonetheless, I feel tempted, by way of an ending, to say
how I think we can mitigate the dilemma, for if we can’t think
about our feelings, we’ll come apart. I’ll try to be practical.
First, then, you can’t study emotions at even the kindliest
advisor’s prompting. They are a subject that requires experiential urgency, some pressure for the relief of confusion. In
brief, you not only have to be a feeling being—as are we
all—but also a being enticingly oppressed by the enigma of
emotionality, the arcanum of affectivity. Some topics are well
approached in the brisk spirit of pleasurable problem-solving.
Not this one, I think.
Second, listen to what Socrates says in the Apology. He
does not say, as is often reported, that ‟the unexamined life
is not worth living.” What he really says is, I think, something
stronger: that such a life is ‟not livable for a human being,”
ou biōtos anthrōpōi (38a), is not a possible life, not a lived
life. That is what the -tos ending of biōtos signifies: ‟livable
or lived.” He means, I think, that experiences, passions
among them, that are not internally re-viewed, introspectively
re-lived, are in effect unlived—an unexamined experience is
not yours. A nice corroborating illustration comes in Thomas
Mann’s Magic Mountain, whose hero—meant to be a paradigm of simple humanity—engages in an introspective discipline he calls regieren, “ruling, regulating,”—in short,
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digesting, appropriating his affects and images.21 For as experimental emotion research requires protocols drawn from inner
experience, so conceptual emotion studies cannot do without
introspection. And unlike egocentric self-analysis, which is a
spontaneous sport, disciplined self-inspection is an art learned
by practice. So now I seem to have contravened everything I’ve
just said, which was that feeling is choked by thinking.
Here, then, is my last attempt at being practical about our
problem as students: how to keep feeling before ourselves while
bringing thought to bear on it. Or, more learnedly put: how to
turn what is, regarded in itself, the most subjective element of
our being, perhaps our very subjectivity itself, into an object. (I
will get myself into a word muddle here, unless I remind you
that before the eighteenth century “subject” meant just what we
now call “object”—for example, the being that arouses passion,
and we still use it in this way, as in “the subject to be studied.”
But by means of an inversion that is only partial, “subject” is
now used for the host of the emotion rather than for its object,
and “subjective” signifies a feature of emotional affect.)
Deliverance from the quandary of objectifying the essentially subjective seems to me to come from our great representational faculty, the imagination. Mental images are summoned
by feeling, arouse feeling and are, famously, affect-fraught, feeling-laden. There are those who deny that we have analogue images before an inner eye, but they are in retreat. The cognitive
scientist Stephen Kosslyn (the prime defender of mental analogue images),22 lay persons in general, and most students of
the imagination are convinced by their own inner experience of
imaginative vision and its affectivity—and what claim could
possibly override such personal, one might say, eye-witness
knowledge? (I might add here that the very latest neuroscience
seems, though incidentally, to clinch the argument for mental
visuality; mental images are directly machine-retrievable.23)
These affect-laden sights can indeed be held in mind, and
thinking can turn to them, play over them, study them. So, it
seems to me, emotion studies require an imaginative life. Here
is a practical consequence: Your profession requires you to read
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scholarly articles, but your mission needs you to read works of
fiction, particularly novels. For these not only stock your minds
with visualizable scenes of passion on which to dwell while you
think, they also school you in the adequately expressive diction
with which to articulate what you discovered. For, my fellow
students, if you speak of feeling either in flabbily pretentious or
technically formalizing diction, your papers will be worth—
well, next to nothing.
NOTES
1. Platons Dialog Gorgias, ed. Otto Apelt (Leipzig: F. Meiner, 1922),
166. This is the very end of the dialogue, at 527e.
2. Debra Nails, The People of Plato (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002), 243.
3. Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, Middle-English edition, Prologue, l. 72 (New York: Penguin Classics, 2005), 5.
4. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, Book III, Chapter 5, “Plato,” trans. R. D. Hicks, Loeb Classical Library 184 (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1925).
5. This anecdote is found in a fragment from Themistius in the so-called
Akademie-Ausgabe of Aristotle’s works edited for the Prussian Academy
of Sciences by Immanuel Bekker (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1870), 1484b. The
fragment is translated in The Works of Aristotle, ed. W. D. Ross, Vol. 12
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), 24. The story is translated in its original
context in Robert J. Penella, The Private Orations of Themistius (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 122.
6. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, section 14: “das eine große
Zyklopenauge des Sokrates . . . in dem nie der holde Wahnsinn künstlerischer Begeisterung geglüht hat.”
7. Plato, Meno, 81c.
8. Plato, Phaedrus, 245a, 249d.
9. Plato, Symposium 203d.
10. Errol Bedford, “Emotions,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society,
LVII (1956-57), 281-304.
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15
11. Anthony Kenny, Action, Emotion, and Will (London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1963).
12. Robert Solomon, The Passions: Emotions and the Meaning of Life
(New York: Doubleday, 1976).
13. Solomon, The Passions, xiv.
14. Ibid., 185.
15. Ibid., 188ff.
16. Martha Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
17. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), 2.3.3. Emphasis
added.
18. See, for example, Antonio Damasio, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain (New York: Harcourt, 2003), 275.
19. Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book XII, Chapter 9.
20. See Silvan Tomkins, Affect, Imagery, Consciousness, 4 vols. (New
York: Springer, 2008), Volume I, Chapter 10, “Interest–Excitement,” 185202.
21. In Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, Chapter 6, “Of the City of
God and of Evil Deliverance.”
22. See, for example, Stephen Kosslyn, Image and Brain: The Resolution
of the Imagery Debate (Boston: MIT Press, 1996).
23. Francisco Pereira et al., “Generating text from functional brain images,” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 5 (August, 2011): Article 72.
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�ESSAYS & LECTURES
17
On Biblical Style
Tod Linafelt
The western tradition has not focused much attention on the
literary style of the Bible. Although it is true that the classical
literary critic Longinus (or “Pseudo-Longinus”), writing in
the first century C.E., makes a brief but famous reference to
the opening lines of Genesis in his treatise On the Sublime,1
the context for the reference is his treatment of “greatness of
thought” rather than any strictly literary qualities. More typical of pre-modern literary attitudes toward the Bible is Augustine’s judgment that biblical literature exhibits “the lowest
of linguistic style” (humillimum genus loquendi), and had
seemed to him, before his conversion, “unworthy of comparison with the majesty of Cicero.”2 Of course, readers have
not traditionally gone to the Bible in search of literary artfulness but rather for its religious value—that is, primarily as a
source for theology or for ethics. For Augustine, as for so
many religious readers after him, the Bible’s theological
truths and ethical teachings won out over its literary art or
lack thereof.3 But the fact is that the Bible—and my concern
here is more particularly with the Hebrew Bible or Christian
Old Testament—presents to the reader distinctly literary narrative and poetic works that both demand and reward expressly literary attention. Not only can we speak about the
literary style of the Bible, then, but we can and ought to speak
more precisely about its narrative style or poetic style, since
biblical narrative and biblical poetry each work with a very
different set of conventions and techniques—with different
Tod Linafelt is professor of biblical literature in the Theology Department
at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
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literary toolkits, we might say. Reading the Bible “as literature,” then, means more than just close reading, as it is often
understood. It also means becoming familiar with and attending to the distinctive and specific workings of narrative texts
and poetic texts. It seems clear that the ancient authors were
very much aware of the differing conventions and possibilities associated with narrative and with poetry, respectively,
and that their audiences would have responded differently to
these two primary literary forms. The better we understand
these forms, the better readers we will be.
I. ANCIENT HEBREW NARRATIVE
One must admit that Augustine was not entirely wrong. It is
hard to deny that from a certain angle the Bible is among the
most “unliterary” works of literature that we have. Working
as it does with a very limited vocabulary and often repeating
a word several times rather than resorting to synonyms, biblical Hebrew narrative exhibits a style that can seem simple,
even primitive, in comparison with the classics of world literature. (Things are very different with biblical poetry, as we
will see below.) Its syntax too seems rudimentary to modern
ears, linking clause after clause with a simple “and” (what
the linguists call parataxis) that reveals little about their syntactical relation, instead of using complex sentences with subordinate clauses (hypotaxis). Notice, for example, the dogged
repetition of “face” and the run-on syntax in the following
very literal translation of Genesis 32:21 (where Jacob is sending ahead of him a very large gift to his estranged brother
Esau, in hopes that Esau will be placated over Jacob’s earlier
stealing of his blessing): “For he said, ‘Let me cover his face
with the gift that goes before my face and after I look upon
his face perhaps he will lift up my face.’” Although modern
translations tend to obscure these features, even in translation
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one is bound to notice the paucity of metaphorical description, the brevity of dialogue, the lack of reference to the interior lives of characters, the limited use of figural
perspective, and not least the jarring concreteness with which
God is sometimes imagined to be involved in human history.
Many of these features are elements of biblical literature’s
economy of style, or essential terseness. We may compare,
for example, Homer’s use of sometimes startling metaphors
in describing a scene with the practice of biblical authors (all
of whom are essentially anonymous), who by and large avoid
such elaborate figurative language. Contrast this description
in the Iliad (16.480-85, Fagles’ translation) of the death of a
single, obscure Trojan charioteer:
Patroclus rising beside him stabbed his right jawbone,
ramming the spearhead square between his teeth so hard
he hooked him by that spearhead over the chariot-rail,
hoisted, dragged the Trojan out as an angler perched
on a jutting rock ledge drags some fish from the sea,
some noble catch, with line and glittering bronze hook4
with the blunt recounting in Genesis 34 of the massacre of
an entire city by two of Jacob’s sons: “Simeon and Levi,
Dinah’s brothers, took their swords and came against the city
unawares, and killed all the males. They killed Hamor and
his son Shechem with the sword” (Gen 34:25-6). This brief
passage is typical of the tendency in biblical narrative to
avoid description of any sort, metaphorical or otherwise. The
principle applies, with some exceptions of course, not only
to physical description—so that we are rarely told what either
objects or people look like—but also, and more importantly,
to the inner lives, thoughts, and motivations of characters in
the narratives. It would be a mistake, however, to take this
economy of style as an indicator of the Bible’s essential sim-
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plicity or primitiveness as a work of literature. In fact, it is
primarily this terseness that lends biblical narrative its distinctive complexity as literature.
In beginning to think about the workings of biblical
narrative one could do no better than to read Erich Auerbach’s
“Odysseus’ Scar,” the opening chapter of his book Mimesis,
in which he compares biblical narrative style with Homeric
epic style.5 Auerbach offers the first and best modern articulation of how the austere terseness of biblical narrative is not
just the absence of style but is in fact a distinctive and profound literary mode in its own right. Auerbach describes Homeric style as being “of the foreground,” whereas biblical
narratives are by contrast “fraught with background.” In other
words, in the Iliad and the Odyssey both objects and persons
tend to be fully described and illuminated, with essential attributes and aspects—from physical descriptions to the
thoughts and motivations of characters—there in the foreground for the reader to apprehend. But with biblical narrative such details are, for the most part, kept in the background
and are not directly available to the reader. So, as noted
above, we are very rarely given physical descriptions of either objects or people in the biblical narrative.6 What do
Adam and Eve look like? We do not know. Abraham? Sarah?
Moses? We do not know. As Auerbach puts it in his comments on Genesis 22, where God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, it is unthinkable that the servants, the
landscape, the implements of sacrifice should be described
or praised, as one might expect in Homer: “they are servingmen, ass, wood, and knife, and nothing else, without an epithet.”7 Occasionally a certain quality is ascribed to some
person or object: we are told that Eve perceives that the tree
of knowledge is “a delight to the eyes” (Gen. 3:6), and likewise we are told that Joseph is “handsome and good-looking”
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(Gen. 39:6). But as a rule such minimal notations are given
only when necessary to introduce some element that is important to the development of the plot. In the present cases
the attractiveness of the tree of knowledge leads, of course,
to the eating of its fruit (But what kind of fruit? We are not
told, the long tradition of the apple notwithstanding), and
Joseph’s attractiveness leads, in the next verse, to the sexual
aggression of Potiphar’s wife, and thus indirectly to Joseph’s
imprisonment. And even here one notices that we are not told
what it is that makes the fruit lovely to look at or what exactly
makes Joseph so beautiful.
Beyond a lack of physical description in the biblical stories, descriptions of personal qualities are also largely absent.
That is, characterization is rarely explicit, but rather must be
teased out of the narrative based on what characters do and
say (on action and dialogue, in other words, rather than on
direct evaluation by the narrator). The presentation of Esau
and Jacob in Genesis 25 illustrates this nicely. We are told
that Esau is “a man skilled in hunting, a man of the field” (v.
27), but the essential characterization of Esau as impulsive
and unreflective, indeed almost animal-like, is conveyed by
action and dialogue. Thus, coming in from the field to discover that his brother Jacob has prepared a stew, Esau inarticulately blurts out, “Let me eat some of that red, red stuff,
for I am famished” (v. 30). Robert Alter notes that Esau “cannot even come up with the ordinary Hebrew word for stew
(nazid) and instead points to the bubbling pot impatiently as
(literally) ‘this red red.’”8 And then, after agreeing to trade
his birthright to Jacob in exchange for some of the stew,
Esau’s impetuous, action-oriented character is suggested by
the “rapid-fire chain of verbs”: “and he ate and he drank and
he rose and he went off.”9 The character of Esau is starkly
contrasted in the story with the character of Jacob. If Esau is
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all instinct and action, Jacob is all calculation and deliberateness. The stew is prepared and waiting for the return of Esau
from the field, and one cannot fail to notice the businesslike
manner in which Jacob first suggests, and then demands formal confirmation of, the trading of the birthright: “And Jacob
said, ‘Sell now your birthright to me.’ And Esau said, ‘Look,
I am at the point of death, so why do I need a birthright?’ And
Jacob said, ‘Swear to me now’” (vv. 31-33). These initial
thumbnail characterizations of Esau and Jacob will be
fleshed-out further two chapters later, in Genesis 27, where
the blind Isaac is deceived into bestowing his blessing on
Jacob rather than the intended son Esau. The elaborate ruse
carried out by Jacob with the invaluable help of his mother
Rebekah, in which he impersonates Esau, confirms his calculating ambition even as it adds outright deceit to his resume
of character traits. Jacob will become a consummate trickster
as the story proceeds—though he will also, as an elderly man,
be tricked by his own sons (ch. 37)—but he is never actually
described by the narrator as tricky or deceptive, in the way
that Odysseus is described repeatedly in terms of his resourcefulness or Achilles in terms of his rage, for example,
but instead has his character revealed by what he says and
what he does. Esau, for his part, will play a lesser role in the
narrative that follows, although his reappearance in Chapter
33 is striking and in some ways unexpected, but both his inarticulateness and his utter lack of calculation are revealed by
his response upon hearing that Jacob has stolen his blessing:
“he cried out with an exceedingly great and bitter cry and he
said to his father, ‘Bless me, me also, Father’” (v. 34); and
again, a few verses later, “‘Do you have but one blessing my
father? Bless me, me also, Father.’ And Esau lifted up his
voice and wept” (v. 38). By not directly revealing the qualities of character of the actors in the narrative, the narrator
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puts the onus of interpretation on the readers, who must work
out on their own—albeit with hints given—what they think
of these characters. To repeat, this is not the absence of characterization, but is a certain mode of characterization, and in
fact a fairly complex mode at that.
We may best see the complexity of this mode of characterization, and indeed of the Bible’s economy of style more
generally, when it comes to the inner lives of the characters.
Readers are often used to having access in one form or another to the thoughts, feeling, and motivations of the characters about whom they read. Again, Auerbach on Homer:
“With the utmost fullness, with an orderliness which even
passion does not disturb, Homer’s personages vent their inmost hearts in speech; what they do not say to others, they
speak in their own minds, so that the reader is informed of it.
Much that is terrible takes place in the Homeric poems, but
it seldom takes place wordlessly.”10 And so, for instance, the
tragic death of Hector at the hands of Achilles near the end
of the Iliad (in book 22) has devoted to it, in the Greek, fourteen lines of lament by Hector’s father, seven lines by his
mother, and fully forty lines by his wife Andromache. We
may compare this with the brief notations of grief in biblical
narrative. On the death of Sarah: “And Sarah died at KiriathArba (that is, Hebron) in the land of Canaan, and Abraham
went in to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her” (Gen. 23:2).
On the death of Moses: “And the Israelites wept for Moses
in the plains of Moab thirty days; then the period of mourning
for Moses was ended” (Deut. 34:8). One might object that
since both Sarah and Moses had lived long and fruitful lives
their deaths lack the tragedy of noble Hector being cut down
in his prime over the affairs of his less-than-noble brother
Paris, so that their deaths inspire less intense expressions of
mourning. But even with more obviously tragic deaths we
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see in biblical narrative the restraint of the narrator, who acknowledges the grief of the survivors but refrains from allowing them full expression of it. We noted above, for
example, Jacob’s response to what he takes to be evidence of
the death of his young, beloved son Joseph: “A vicious beast
has devoured him, Joseph torn to shreds!” (Gen. 37:33). In a
scene that seems intended to characterize Jacob as an extravagant mourner, the narrator goes on to describe Jacob as rending his clothes and donning sackcloth and refusing to be
comforted by his other children: “‘No, I shall go down to
Sheol to my son, mourning.’ Thus his father bewailed him”
(37:35). Yet even here the few scant lines in Hebrew do not
come close to matching the sixty lines of direct lament over
the death of Hector, not to mention the extended scene in
Book 24 of the Iliad where Hector’s father Priam goes to the
tent of Achilles to beg for the return of his son’s much-abused
corpse.
Consider also the notoriously ambiguous story in Leviticus 10 of the burning Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron.
The reader is told that the two young priests brought “strange
fire” or “alien fire” (‘esh zara) before the Lord, “and fire
came out from before the Lord and consumed them, and they
died before the Lord” (10:2). Moses very quickly offers a sort
of cryptic theodicy, cast in verse form, in the face of the
shocking event: “This is what the Lord spoke, saying,
‘Through those near me I will show myself holy / and before
all the people I will be glorified’” (10:3). No more laconic
response could be imagined, both to the death of the young
men and to Moses’ extemporaneous theologizing, than that
attributed to Aaron: “And Aaron was silent.” Surely we are
to imagine Aaron’s grief as real and deep—indeed, a few
verses later Moses forbids Aaron and his other sons to go
through the public rituals of mourning while they are conse-
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crated for service in the temple (10:6-7)—and yet all we are
given is his silence. Unless one imagines this silence to indicate a complacent assent to what has just been witnessed, the
narrator gives us, to borrow from Auerbach again, “a glimpse
of unplumbed depths.” It is, in short, a silence that is “fraught
with background,” a silence that demands interpretation on
the part of the reader. Is Aaron feeling pure shock? Overwhelming sadness? Anger at God? Confusion or despair? Is
his silence a rejection of Moses’ statement of God’s intent?
And if so, on what basis? The fact is that we are given no access whatsoever into the inner life of Aaron, and because we
do not know what he is thinking we also do not know what
motivates his silence.
It is with regard to this latter issue, the question of character motivation, that we may see the importance of recognizing the distinctively terse mode of biblical narration. As I
noted above in considering the story of Jacob and Esau, the
narrator reveals very little about the inner lives of characters,
instead reporting mainly action and dialogue, what the characters do and what they say. If we are given little or no access
to the thoughts and feelings of the characters about whom we
read, then it follows that the motivation behind what they do
and say is also largely obscure. The importance of this obscurity of motivation can scarcely be overstated for any literary reading biblical narrative, since it more than anything
else is what gives the literature its profound complexity as it
forces the reader to negotiate the many possible ways of
imagining the characters’ inner lives. Let me try to justify this
claim with reference to the literature itself.
A classic example of the ambiguity of character motivation in the Bible may be seen in Genesis 22. In a story that
has never failed to engage the imagination of interpreters ancient and modern, God commands Abraham to take his son
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Isaac and sacrifice him as a burnt offering. Although a few
chapters earlier we have seen Abraham challenge the justness
of God’s decision to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, here
Abraham says nothing in response. Instead, there is the narrator’s terse report: “So Abraham rose early in the morning,
saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him,
and his son Isaac; he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and
set out and went to the place in the distance that God had
shown him” (vv. 3-4). Abraham’s silent obedience here is
often taken to be motivated by an untroubled and unquestioning faith in God, which, depending on one’s perspective, may
be seen positively as an expression of ultimate piety, or negatively as an expression of unfeeling religious fanaticism. But
both interpretations fail to recognize the fundamental literary
convention of the refusal of access to the inner lives of characters. The fact that we are not told of Abraham’s inner, emotional response to the demand that he slaughter his son does
not mean that he has no inner, emotional response. Surely we
are to imagine that he does, but rather than describing it for
us or allowing Abraham to give voice to it the narrator leaves
us guessing as to what that response might be and thus also
as to his motivation for his actions. Now, it is possible to fill
that gap left by the narrator with an inner calm that reflects
absolute faith, but it is equally possible to imagine that Abraham is feeling anger, disbelief, and even disgust. (With God
for demanding the slaughter? With himself for not protesting?) And however one fills the gap of Abraham’s inner life
initially, surely it is complicated by Isaac’s calling out to him
in v. 7, “Father!” and by the plaintive question that follows,
“The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a
burnt offering?” It is precisely because we do not know what
Abraham is thinking or feeling that his brief response to
Isaac’s question (“God will see to the lamb for the offering
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my son,” v. 8) takes on a deeply ironic double meaning. On
the one hand, it may be read as a ruse, if not an outright lie,
to deflect any suspicions that may be dawning on the son; on
the other hand, it may be read as a straightforward statement
of faith that a sheep will indeed be provided. It may even be
the case here that the author makes use of the ambiguities of
Hebrew’s seemingly rudimentary syntax in order to signal
the potential irony to the attentive reader. For there is no
punctuation in the Hebrew text and one may also construe
the syntax to mean: “God will see to the lamb for the offering:
namely, my son.”
To go back to Abraham’s initial response to Isaac, we
may see how what at first instance looks like wooden repetition may in fact be a subtly modulated use of a key word or
theme. When God first calls out to Abraham to begin the
episode, Abraham’s response is “Here I am”; when Isaac calls
in the middle of the episode, on the way to the place of sacrifice, Abraham’s response is, once again, “Here I am, my
son”; and when, at the climactic moment when the knife is
raised over the boy, the angel of Lord calls out “Abraham,
Abraham!” (22:11) his response is again “Here I am.” In each
case the single Hebrew word hinneni, “here I am” or “behold
me,” is repeated by Abraham. To substitute a synonym for
the sake of variety, as for example the JPS Tanakh does in
translating the second occurrence as “Yes, my son,” is to lose
a concrete expression of what is certainly a central theme for
the story, namely the anguished tension between the demands
of God and the ethical demands of another human being
(Abraham’s own child no less!). Surely every ethical impulse
demands that Abraham not kill his son, and yet precisely this
is what God demands that he do. He responds “Here I am”
to both God and Isaac, and yet he cannot be fully “there,”
fully present, to both equally. It is only with the third, very
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late, repetition of “Here I am” that the tension is resolved and
Abraham is no longer caught between these opposing demands on his loyalty. One might say that Abraham’s threefold
response provides the underlying armature for the story,
marking in a classically Aristotelian way the beginning, the
middle, and the end. Although the single word hinneni is literally repeated each time, it acquires a new depth of meaning—and certainly a new tone—with each repetition. And to
the end of the story it remains the case that we are never quite
sure what Abraham is thinking as he first travels in silence,
then responds to his son, then binds and raises the knife, and
finally sacrifices the ram instead.
If we do not know what motivates Abraham in Genesis
22, it is also the case that we do not know what motivates
Isaac to make his enquiry as to the whereabouts of the sheep
or what he is thinking as his father binds him and lays him
on the makeshift altar. But by this point we are not surprised
by this fact, since we have begun to see that the biblical authors make use of this convention in order to allow for depth
of character and depth of meaning. It is perhaps somewhat
more surprising to note that this convention applies to God
too, who is, after all, a character in these narratives as well,
and so the literary art of biblical narrative has distinct theological implications. What motivates God to demand the sacrifice of Isaac? The narrator refuses to tell us, though for any
reader, religious or not, this must certainly be a compelling
question. We are told that “God tested Abraham” (22:1); but
this does not give us an answer to our question. The sense of
the word “test” (Hebrew nissah) is something like “trial” or
“ordeal,” and so God decides to put Abraham through an ordeal, presumably to test his mettle. (A comparison with the
opening chapters of Job is apt.) But why, and to what end? Is
it to find out how strong Abraham is under pressure? To see
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whether he values his son more than he values God? Does
God genuinely learn something new about Abraham, about
humanity, or about God’s self through this test? (“Now I know
that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me
your son, your only son” [22:12].) Without knowing what
motivates God or what God is thinking as the knife is raised,
we cannot finally even know whether Abraham has passed
or failed the test. Most readers assume that he has passed, but
a few have dared to suggest that God wanted not blind obedience from Abraham but bold resistance—after all, such resistance was honored when Abraham argued on behalf of
Sodom and Gomorrah—and that in failing to argue with God,
Abraham failed to show the strength of character that God
hoped to see.11 This reading may seem to go against the grain
of the narrative, especially in light of 22:16-17: “By myself
have I sworn, said the LORD, for because you have done this
thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son: That
in blessing I will bless you, and in multiplying I will multiply
your seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is
on the sea shore.” But the fact that such a reading is nonetheless possible—if only just—witnesses to the profound but
productive ambiguity of Hebrew literary style, which exploits
to great effect its distinctive economy of style.
There is very much more that could be said about the literary art of Hebrew narrative, especially about the patterns
or structures that authors and editors have used to construct
both individual stories and larger blocks of material, but before moving to consider poetry, I want to point out one final
way in which the literary and the theological are bound together. I mentioned at the beginning of this essay the jarring
concreteness with which God is sometimes imagined in the
Bible as active in the world: God walks in the garden of Eden
and enjoys the evening breeze; God shows up at the tent of
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Sarah and Abraham to promise them offspring; God destroys
Pharaoh’s army at the Red Sea; God inscribes with God’s
own hand the tablets of the covenant at Sinai; and in the final,
poignant scene of the Torah at the end of Deuteronomy, God
buries Moses after allowing him a vision of the promised land
that he is not finally to enter. But if the Hebrew literary imagination is relentlessly concrete in its workings, including its
imaginings of God, it does not follow that it is without craft
or nuance. In fact, divine agency and human agency are almost always imagined in these narratives as being inextricably but ambiguously bound together in such a way that
neither agency is autonomous or effective in and of itself.12
And so, God announces to Rebekah in Genesis 25 that the
elder of her twins (Esau) will serve the younger (Jacob); but
two chapters later, when the time has come to deliver the
blessing to the proper son, God has apparently left the matter
to Rebekah to work out, which she does with great effectiveness (see ch. 27). In Genesis 50, Joseph may declare to his
brothers, who had sold him into slavery thirteen chapters and
many years earlier, that “Even though you intended to do
harm to me, God intended it for good”; but the story also suggests that it is largely his own wits and talent, rather than any
supernatural intervention, that allows him to survive and
prosper in Egypt.
Even in the Exodus story, where God’s salvific power
seems more tangible than anywhere in the Bible, the divine
plan requires human agents for implementation. And so, after
a flurry of first-person active verbs by which the Lord resolves to liberate Israel from slavery (“I have seen . . . , I have
heard . . . , I have come down to rescue . . . , I will bring them
up [3:7-8]), God shifts unexpectedly to the second person,
saying to Moses, “And now, go and I will send you to
Pharaoh, and you will bring my people the Israelites out of
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Egypt” (3:10). Moses quite naturally responds, “Who am I,
that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should bring out the Israelites from Egypt?” God’s answer is telling with regard to
the interdependence of divine and human agency: “I will be
with you” (v. 12). Who is it that liberates Israel—God or
Moses? It is both. But even that answer is too simple, since
the liberation of Israel requires not only the cooperation of
God and Moses but of Israel as well. Thus, Moses dutifully
announces to the enslaved Israelites God’s plan to liberate
them, which is again stated in a surge of first-person verbs:
“I will take you out . . . , I will rescue you from bondage . . . ,
I will take you . . . , I will be your God . . . , I will bring you
to the land I promised” (Ex. 6:6-8). The response? “They did
not heed Moses because their spirits had been crushed by
cruel slavery.” The point would seem to be a sociological one:
that the people cannot be liberated before they are ready, and
after generations of bondage and hard labor it will take more
than promises to get them ready. Only after seeing the very
real power of Pharaoh broken by repeated plagues are the Israelites able to summon the energy to come out of Egypt.
Pharoah himself is also a locus for this fundamental tension—in this case it is paradoxical—between divine sovereignty and human agency. On the one hand, God claims
responsibility for “hardening” Pharaoh’s heart so that he refuses to allow Israel to leave (Ex. 7:3; 14:4); but on the other
hand, Pharaoh is said by the narrator to have hardened his
own heart (8:11, 28). At other times a passive voice is used,
so that Pharaoh’s heart “was hardened” or “became hard”
(7:14; 8:15; 9:4)—thereby leaving the agency behind the
hardening unclear. This shifting of agency allows the narrative to retain a sense of God’s sovereign activity in history,
while at the same time affirming the moral culpability of
Pharaoh, whose repeated failure to fulfill his promise of free-
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ing the Israelites represents rather realistically the psychology
of a tyrant. Logically, we readers may want to know, Which
was it? Did God harden Pharaoh’s heart, or did Pharaoh
harden his own heart? But the story refuses to settle the question, giving us a “both/and” that reflects a pronounced trend
in biblical narrative to render not only the inner lives of both
humans and God, but also creation and history itself, as unfathomably complex and finally unresolvable mysteries.
II. ANCIENT HEBREW POETRY
“If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off,”
Emily Dickinson once wrote, “I know that is poetry.”13 Dickinson was, of course, somewhat more than averagely tuned
in to the effects of poetry. In truth, poetry—even great poetry—often fails to take the top of one’s head off, and even
sometimes goes unrecognized as poetry. There is no more
striking example of this than the Bible, which contains a distinctive body of poetry that has been, for two thousand years,
only rarely and inconsistently represented on the page in the
form of verse rather than prose. Though some passages are
lined out in the ancient and medieval manuscript traditions,
these include not only ones that we would now recognize as
poetry but also lists of names that are clearly not poetry (in
the same way that the phonebook is not poetry just because
it is lined out). And printed Bibles from Guttenberg on, until
the twentieth century, represent most of the poetic sections
of the Bible as blocks of text indistinguishable from prose.
The question of whether biblical poetry even exists has
been around since ancient times, and it has been exacerbated
by the fact that our primary models for what counts as poetry
are drawn from the highly metrical verse found in classical
literature. Already in the first century C.E., Jewish intellectuals like Philo and Josephus, feeling the need to defend their
cultural heritage in terms of Greek and Roman ideals, went
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looking for iambs and hexameters in the Torah. And they
were followed in this task by later Christian writers such as
Origen (in the early third century) and Jerome (in the fourth
and fifth centuries), who also assumed that if poetry existed
in the Bible then it must exist in metrical form. The search
for meter in biblical literature has been revived on occasion
in the modern period as well, but it has never amounted to
much, for the simple fact that ancient Hebrew verse is not
metrical. This lack of conformity to classical standards—as
well as to virtually all poetry in the West until the nineteenth
century—has no doubt been a major factor in the tradition’s
lack of appreciation for biblical poetry, but so has the Bible’s
status as religious literature. Attention to literary form has
been a low priority for interpreters of the Bible, eager as they
have been to move to the content or the meaning of any given
passage. There has been very little allowance in biblical interpretation for the possibility that, as Wallace Stevens puts
it, “poetry is the subject of the poem.”14
A major breakthrough in understanding biblical poetry
came with Robert Lowth’s Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of
the Hebrews, first delivered in association with Lowth’s chair
in poetry at Oxford and then published in 1753. Lowth’s most
lasting contribution, for good and ill, was his identification
of parallelismus membrorum, or parallelism of lines, as the
primary structuring principle of ancient Hebrew verse.
“Things for the most part shall answer to things, and words
to words,” Lowth writes, “as if fitted to each other by a kind
of rule or measure.”15 From Psalm 114, for example:
The mountains skipped like rams,
the hills like lambs.
Or from the Song of Songs:
Love is strong as death,
jealousy harsh as the grave.
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Notice how “mountains” matches “hills,” and how “rams”
matches “lambs.” And notice the strict parallelism of
“love//jealousy,” “strong//harsh,” and “death//grave.” Lowth
admitted that many lines of biblical poetry did not display
the same equivalence of terms that we see here, but nonetheless the recognition that lineation was based on the matching
of two or three short lines in a couplet or triplet form, which
did not depend on meter, opened the way for more sustained
attention to such poetry as poetry, rather than just repetitioussounding prose.
For 200 years after Lowth nearly all attention to biblical
verse was on this phenomenon of parallelism, and most especially semantic parallelism (or parallelism of meaning),
which too often was reduced to the idea that the second or
third line in a couplet or a triplet simply restates the basic
idea from the first line. But recent scholarship has shown that
the relationship between lines is more intricate and more interesting than this. Adele Berlin, Michael O’Connor, F. W.
Dobbs-Allsopp and others have shown that that parallelism
involves not only semantic features but also grammatical,
syntactical, and phonological patterns (generally not apparent
in translation), and that there are complex syntactical constraints that underlie the ancient Hebrew poetic line, which
are not in the end reducible to “parallelism.”16 Moreover,
Robert Alter and James Kugel have shown that even when
the relationship between lines looks to be semantically parallel at first glance, there is often a subtle dynamism in which
the second line moves beyond the language or imagery in the
first by making it more concrete, more specific, more intense,
or more emotionally heightened.17 Thus, in the matched lines
quoted above from the Song of Songs: jealousy is a more specific emotion associated with love; harsh heightens and intensifies the connotation of strong; and the grave serves as a
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concrete symbol of death.
Beyond the question of line structure, however, the cluster of other features that typify biblical verse has mostly been
overlooked by scholarship of recent decades. But one can get
a much richer sense of the distinctive workings of biblical
poetic style by recognizing these features—features that can
be seen more clearly when compared with the workings of
biblical prose narrative. As we saw above, ancient Hebrew
authors developed a prose style that was especially suited for
narrative (or storytelling) and that prefigured in important respects the style and techniques of both modern novelistic fiction and history-writing. Virtually all other long narratives in
the ancient world—from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Babylonian Enuma Elish to the Canaanite epics to the Iliad and
the Odyssey—take the form of verse, reflecting the oral origins of the epic genre. By casting their stories in the form of
prose, biblical authors pioneered a “writerly” form of narrative that did not depend on the rhythms of oral poetry and
that allowed for the development of a genuine third-person
narrator, whose voice could be distinguished from the direct
discourse attributed to characters within the narrative. It also
allowed for a depth-of-consciousness and an opaqueness in
its literary characters, so that, as we saw above, readers are
seldom told what characters are thinking or feeling at any
given moment, even though it is often vitally important to
characterization and to plot development.
Stylistically, however, biblical poetry works very differently. There are in the first place the formal differences that
mark the poetry as verse (instead of prose): not only lineation,
but also a compressed syntax that tends to drop particles and
pronouns in order to achieve the conciseness of the poetic
line. (Unfortunately, such syntactical structures are mostly
invisible in translation.) And biblical poetry is, to borrow
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Terry Eagleton’s vague but appropriate characterization of
poetry in general, much more “verbally inventive” than biblical prose narrative.18 The terse, straightforward style of biblical narrative means that it tends to avoid elevated diction or
figurative language. But the poetry is filled with figurative
language, from the mostly conventional imagery found in the
psalms, for example, to the more inventive imagination of
the book of Job, to the double entendres of the Song of Songs.
Thus, the troubled fate of the psalmist is, often as not, imagined in terms of “the pit” that threatens to swallow or “the
flood” that threatens to overwhelm; and God is imagined as
a “rock,” a “fortress,” or a “shield.” As the suffering Job
imagines blotting out the day of his birth, he both personifies
and eroticizes it, imagining night longing for day which, in
his counterfactual curse, never arrives:
Let the stars of its dawn be dark;
let it long for light in vain,
and never behold the eyelids of morning. (Job 3:9)
Later, Job imagines God’s enmity toward him in terms of the
ancient grudge between God-as-creator and the chaotic force
of the personified Sea:
Am I the Sea, or the Dragon,
that you set a guard over me? (7:12)
Answering Job, thirty chapters later, God returns to this
image, but redefines and re-personifies the chaotic Sea not
as an enemy combatant but as an infant to be nurtured:
Who is it that contained the Sea
as it emerged bursting from the womb?—
when I clothed it in clouds,
and swaddled it with darkness. (38:8-9)
The Song of Songs, erotic poetry set in the alternating voices
of two young lovers, prefers a lush, bodily-based array of
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metaphors. For example, the male voice proclaims:
Your breasts are like two fawns,
twins of a gazelle,
that feed among the lilies. (4:5)
Or this, from the female voice:
Like an apple tree found in the forest
is my beloved among the youths;
I delight to sit in his shade,
and his fruit is sweet to my taste. (2:3)
If line structure and other formal markers are enough to
establish the presence of verse in the Bible, they still do not
tell us much about its use or function. Again, a comparison
with biblical prose is instructive, since one of the most striking features of biblical poetry is that it is relentlessly nonnarrative. Once ancient Hebrew culture had developed the
flexible prose form that gets used for recounting stories, both
long (e.g., Genesis, 1 and 2 Samuel) and short (e.g., the books
of Ruth and Esther), it seems that verse was reserved for more
specialized, highly rhetorical uses. For example, the prophets
are most often represented as casting their messages in poetic
form. Note the parallelism and figurative language in, for example, Amos’ well-known cri de coeur,
Let justice roll down like the waters,
and righteousness like a mighty stream. (5:24)
This familiar parallel structure is combined with hyperbole
and a striking visual imagination (both very much lacking in
biblical narrative, though common in the ancient epic tradition)19 in the prophet Isaiah’s utopian vision of the future:
The wolf shall live with the lamb,
and the leopard shall lie down with the kid. (11:6)
Verse also seems to have been the preferred form in ancient
Hebrew, as in so many languages, for the aphorism—the
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pithy and often didactic observation on the nature of the
world—which, like poetry more generally, aims for a maximum of meaning in a minimum of words. The book of
Proverbs is filled with such aphorisms in verse form, such as,
A soft answer turns away wrath;
a harsh word increases anger. (15:1)
For more skeptical versions of such aphorisms, one can turn
to the book of Ecclesiastes, as in
All streams run to the sea,
but the sea is never filled . . .
The eye is not satisfied with seeing,
nor the ear filled with hearing. (1:7)
or
With much wisdom comes much grief;
to increase knowledge is to increase sorrow. (1:18)
But one of the most interesting uses of biblical verse is
as an early form of what will later go by the name of “lyric
poetry,” that intensely subjective, non-narrative and non-dramatic form that has dominated modern poetry at least since
Wordsworth. This early form of lyric foregrounds two final
characteristics of biblical poetry, both of which further distinguish it from biblical prose narrative. First, biblical poetry
is invariably presented as direct discourse, the first-person
voice of a speaking subject (a precursor of the modern “lyric
I”). Again, ancient Hebrew narrative separates the third-person narrator from the dialogue spoken by characters, which
is grammatically marked (by expressive forms and deictics,
to use the technical terms) as direct discourse, whereas the
narrator’s voice is not.20 Biblical poetry is also marked in this
way; it is, in other words, always presented as if it were dialogue. So, for example, the biblical narrator will never be represented as speaking in poetry, but characters can be, as in
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the deathbed blessing of Jacob near the end of the book of
Genesis or the Song of Deborah in the book of Judges.
The second way that biblical lyric poetry distinguishes itself from narrative is in its willingness to give access to the
inner lives of its speakers. If biblical narrative trades in
opaqueness of characterization, biblical poetry fairly revels
in the exposure of subjectivity. When biblical authors wanted
to convey feeling or thought, they resorted to verse form. Obvious examples of this formal preference include poetic
books like the Psalms and the Song of Songs, where the expression of passion, whether despairing or joyful, is common.
We find also in narrative contexts briefer poetic insets that
serve to express or intensify emotion. Take, for example,
Jacob’s reaction to the bloodied robe of Joseph, which as
Alter has pointed out is rendered as a perfect couplet of Hebrew poetry: hayya ra’ah ‘akhalathu / tarof toraf yosef (“A
vicious beast has devoured him, / torn, torn is Joseph!”).21
The book of Job serves as an example on a much larger scale.
It begins in the narrative mode and gives precious little insight into Job’s thoughts or feelings. But when the story
moves to Job’s anguished death wish (“Blot out the day of
my birth, / and the night that announced, ‘A man-child is conceived’”), narrative gives way to the passionate but finely
modulated poetic form of chapter 3, followed by many chapters in verse containing Job’s impassioned defense of his integrity.22
T. S. Eliot’s pronouncement that “when we are considering poetry we must consider it primarily as poetry and not
another thing” might seem like a truism, but it’s a sentiment
that sometimes needs repeating.23 This is especially true when
it comes to considering the poetry of the Bible, which has so
often been treated precisely as “another thing”—traditionally
as theology or as ethics, but more recently, under the guise
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of literary criticism, as narrative. By the latter, I mean that
even in recent “literary approaches” to the Bible, critics often
look for things like plot or characterization in biblical poetry,
categories more appropriate to narrative texts. But biblical
poetry is, in both the simplest and the most complicated ways,
poetry. To consider a biblical poem as poetry is to pay attention to its line structure, to its status as direct discourse, to
the sort of speaking voice it presents, to its diction and imagery, and to its willingness to express inner thought and
emotion as biblical narrative rarely does. It is, in other words,
to attend not only to what the poem means but also to how it
means.
NOTES
1. Longinus, On Sublimity, trans. D. A. Russell, in Ancient Literary Criticism: The Principal Texts in New Translations, ed. D. A. Russell and M.
Winterbottom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), 470: “Similarly,
the lawgiver of the Jews, no ordinary man—for he understood and expressed God’s power in accordance with its worth—writes at the beginning of his Laws: ‘God said’—now what?—‘Let there be light,’ and there
was light; ‘Let there be earth,’ and there was earth.”
2. Confessions, VI.v and III.v, respectively.
3. So for example, C. S. Lewis, The Literary Impact of the Authorized
Version (London: The Athlone Press, 1950), 4: “There is a certain sense
in which ‘the Bible as literature’ does not exist. It is a collection of books
so widely different in period, kind, language, and aesthetic value, that no
common criticism can be passed on them. In uniting these heterogeneous
texts the Church was not guided by literary principles, and the literary
critic might regard their inclusion between the same boards as a theological and historical accident irrelevant to his own branch of study.” It is
not as clear as Lewis suggests that literary principles played no role in
the formation of the biblical canon; but even if one conceded the point
that does not mean that literary qualities are absent from the Bible, as this
essay endeavors to show.
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4. Homer, Iliad, trans. Robert Fagles (New York: Penguin, 1991), 426.
5. Erich Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western
Literature (trans. Willard R. Trask; Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1953), 3-23.
6. This contrasts with non-narrative cultic or liturgical prose texts where,
for example, we are given quite detailed descriptions of the tabernacle
and its furnishings; see, e.g., Exodus 25-27.
7. Ibid., 9.
8. Robert Alter, Genesis: Translation and Commentary (New York: W.
W. Norton, 1996), 129.
9. Ibid., 131-32.
10. Auerbach, Mimesis, 6.
11. Elie Wiesel, Messengers of God: Biblical Portraits and Legends (New
York: Summit, 1976), 93-94; Danna Fewell and David Gunn, Gender,
Power, and Promise: The Subject of the Bible’s First Story (Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 1993), 52-54.
12. In a related vein, see Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (New
York: Basic, 1981), 33-34, who writes of the dialectic between “God’s
will” and “human freedom.” For Alter, the “refractory nature” of human
freedom is imagined primarily as working against God’s will, whereas to
my mind that is not always the case.
13. Emily Dickinson, Letter 342a (to Thomas Wentworth Higginson), in
Selected Letters (ed. Thomas H. Johnson; Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1985), 208.
14. Wallace Stevens, The Man with the Blue Guitar and Other Poems
(New York: Knopf, 1937), 22.
15. Robert Lowth, Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews, translated from the Latin by G. Gregory (London: Thomas Tegg, 1839), 205.
16. M. O’Connor, Hebrew Verse Structure (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1980); Adele Berlin, The Dynamics of Biblical Parallelism
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985); F. W. Dobbs-Allsopp,
“Poetry, Hebrew,” New Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible, vol. 4
(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2006).
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17. James Kugel, The Idea of Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and its History
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981); Robert Alter, The Art
of Biblical Poetry (New York: Basic, 1985).
18. Terry Eagleton, How to Read a Poem (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 25.
19. This visual quality is what Aristotle might refer to as enargeia (Poetics
1455a; Rhetoric 1410b) or “vividness.” So also Demetrius, On Style, 209220. On enargeia in classical poetry, see Egbert J. Bakker, “Mimesis as
Performance: Rereading Auerbach’s First Chapter,” Poetics Today 20:1
(1993), 11-26, who ties it to the nature of orally performed epic; also Andrew Ford, Homer: The Poetry of the Past (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1993). On vividness in epic poetry more generally, see Suzanne
Fleischman, Tense and Narrativity: From Medieval Performance to Modern Fiction (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990); and in classical
history writing Andrew D. Walker, “Enargeia and the Spectator in Greek
Historiography,” Transactions of the American Philological Associaton
123 (1993): 353-377. This quality of vividness, present also in biblical
Hebrew poetry, is largely absent in biblical Hebrew narrative.
20. On this phenomenon, see Robert Kawashima, Biblical Narrative and
the Death of the Rhapsode (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
2004), ch. 3.
21. Alter, Genesis, 215.
22. Chapters 1 and 2 and then 42:7-17 of the book of Job take the form
of prose narrative, but the long central section of the book in 3:1-42:6 is
in verse form. Modern scholarship has mostly taken this as an indication
of different authors (though recent years have seen a rethinking of this),
without recognizing that the shift in literary form can be understood as
motivated by the differing literary resources offered by Hebrew prose and
Hebrew poetry. By convention, verse form allows the necessary access
to Job’s inner life in a way that prose does not, and it also allows for the
sometimes extravagant figurative language that we find in the poetic section of the book.
23. T. S. Eliot, Preface to the second edition of The Sacred Wood: Essays
on Poetry and Criticism (London: Methuen, 1928), viii.
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45
What is the Surface Area
of a Hedgehog?
Barry Mazur
Well, I don’t know the answer to the question of the title and
no hedgehog will be harmed, or even mentioned again, until
the very end of my lecture.
Eva Brann suggested tonight’s lecture might address the
question, What is area? I’m delighted to do this, and I’m delighted to be here, and to be among people—you, the St.
John’s community—with whom it will be such a pleasure to
contemplate this question.
In this lecture I’ll discuss the concepts of
• area—how it is familiar to us, and how when we
push it to the limit we get some surprises;
• length—since, at least at first impression it is a
more primitive “prior” concept— seemingly simpler than area;
• proportion—crucial to the understanding of both
length and area;
• invariance—as a way of characterizing length and
area;
• quadrature—as a crucial “format” for expressing
profound area relationships in geometry.
And I’ll conclude by alluding to Archimedes’ wonderful “mechanical method” in which he transmutes the problem of
computing area into the problem of computing something
akin to weight1 and thereby achieves the quadrature of the
Prof. Barry Mazur is the Gerhard Gade University Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University. This was the annual Steiner Lecture, delivered on Friday 30 September 2011 at St. John’s College in Annapolis.
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parabola. This offers us a glimpse of the power of analogy,
and the use of the thought-experiment as already practiced in
ancient mathematics.2 It also gives us the opportunity to touch
in passing on broader issues in mathematical thought such as
analogy, heuristic, paradox, invariance, and something I’ll
call characterization (a version of axiomatization).
1. AREA AS FAMILIAR
We all know what the word area signifies. It often refers to a
territorial cordon, as in restricted area or hard-hat area or
even area studies. It sometimes comes as a number, but always with a unit attached, such as square miles, square feet,
square inches, acres, or if it’s a bed area you’re interested in,
you can ask for it to be King-size or Queen-size, or a size of
lesser nobility.
Fig. 1
If you want to approximate the area of the enclosed shape in
Fig. 1 on a grid with a mesh of one-foot by one-foot squares,
you might count the number of one-square-foot patches that
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47
comprise a union of squares that completely cover the figure
(in the above case it is 81) and count the number of onesquare-foot patches that the figure covers completely (in the
above case it is 39). Then you know that the area of the figure
in units of square feet is squeezed between these two numbers; that is, the area is smaller than the first number (or equal
to it), and bigger than the second. In the above case, we
would have
81 square feet ≥ area of figure ≥ 39 square feet.
If you want a better estimate, do the same thing with oneinch by one-inch squares.
If any of us were asked to calculate the square-footage of
this auditorium we’d come up with some figure or other, confident that we could refine it to any degree accuracy required.
And you may be painfully aware of the area of your dorm
room. So, what else is there to say?
Fig. 2
2. HOW GOOD ARE YOU AT COMPARING AREAS?
I’m not very good. Here’s an example. The area of the two
shaded triangles in Fig. 2 are equal.
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I know this thanks to Proposition 37 of Book I of Euclid’s
Elements. All of you either know that proposition now, or will
after your freshman year. This is the proposition that says that
triangles with the same base and height have the same area.
Proposition 37 of Book I will be a recurring theme in my lecture; it is a marvelous piece of mathematics that demonstrates
many things, including the maxim that to be profound and to
be elementary are not mutually exclusive virtues.
But if I simply compared those figures visually—without
either explicitly remembering or somehow “internalizing”
Euclid’s proposition—I would probably grossly underestimate (if that’s a possible phrase) the area of the spiky triangle
in comparison with the seemingly fat one. In a sense, then,
Euclid’s proposition–embedded in my central nervous system
as it is—has improved (a tiny bit, not much) my ability to
make off-the-cuff judgments and rough comparisons. Our native intuition, combined with a data bank of geometric experiences, determines our effectiveness in making judgments
about all sorts of attributes belonging to objects that we see.
I’m guessing that our eyeball comparisons are more reliable
in relation to straight-line lengths than in relation to curved
lengths,3 and much more reliable than our ability to estimate
area and volume, given the variety of possible configurations.
In teaching Euclid’s Elements, one often emphasizes “logical
thinking” as the great benefit that students take away from
learning geometry. But I also see a type of pre-logical—if I
can call it that—or intuition-enriching benefit as well. This
is hard to pinpoint, but it comes out as a general sharpening
of faculties in regard to thinking about, guessing about, negotiating, comparing, and relating geometric objects.
Such a benefit is very different from the other valuable
reward just mentioned—that is, being able to actually argue
the proof of Proposition 37 of Book I by making the elegant
construction shown in Fig. 3.
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Fig. 3
To continue our review of how good our intuitions are, let’s
pass to a slightly deeper basic geometric comparison authored by Archimedes that astonishes me now just as it must
have astonished Archimedes’ contemporaries. We will get
into this in more depth later on,4 but consider the following
striking way of recreating the area of any circle: the area of
any circle is equal to the area of a right-angle triangle defined
by the property that the two of its sides making the right angle
have lengths equal to the radius of the circle, and to the length
of the circumference of the circle, respectively. (Fig. 4)
Fig. 4
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Here, as in the previous example, I “see” it not visually (if
this can be said), but only with the help of my memory of its
proof. (I will say more about this below).
Let us push a bit further. The two examples we’ve just
reviewed are examples of nicely enclosed, finite figures. We
are even poorer in intuition when faced with planar figures
(no matter how smooth and simple their boundaries seem to
be) that “asymptote” off to infinity. It may be quite difficult,
even if given long chunks of such a shape, to extrapolate and
guess by eyeball alone whether it extends out to a figure with
infinite area or finite area.
For example, consider Fig. 5, which was drawn as accurately as possible. I wonder whether you can guess if the area
bounded by the blue curve or the pink curve has finite area.
My point is that there’s no reason why you should be able to
do it no matter what talents of visual acuity you may possess.
Fig. 5
But, just in case you are wondering, if you continued tracing the curved regions ad infinitum in the manner smoothly
begun by the sketch—meaning that the pink curve is the
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graph of the function y = 1/x and the blue curve is the graph
of the function y = 1/x2—then the (infinite) red-bounded region happens to have infinite area while the (infinite) bluebounded region has finite area. As a side issue, many calculus
students are amazed to find that if you “construct” an infinite
“trumpet” by rotating the red curve of the above figure
around the x-axis, then its surface area is infinite, even though
the volume it subsumes is finite. To put it in colloquial, but
misleading, terms: you can fill this trumpet with a finite
amount of paint, but you need an infinite amount of paint to
paint it.
This phenomenon illuminates much, especially for people
who know calculus, and could be the subject of a question
following the lecture. But I won’t dwell on this; I mention it
as a hint that there are things to dwell on here.
3. PUSHING TO THE LIMIT
You might wonder what is to be gained by asking questions
about infinite area versus finite area, or by considering the
concept of area in various extreme contexts. Mathematics
often does that sort of thing: it is a useful strategy to examine
a concept when it is brought to its limit, in the hope that the
strains inflicted on the concept will reveal important facets
of it that would be hidden in less stressful situations. If you
push a concept to its extreme border, you may see things that
would otherwise be overlooked if you remain in the comfortable zones. For example, you can learn what its precise borders are. Some of the most beautiful mathematics—and the
deepest—has emerged by seeking the extremes.
The issue we have just addressed, areas of infinitely extended regions, can be broadened, for it raises the question:
exactly how many subsets of the plane deserve to have a
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well-defined area? Do all subsets have a reasonable notion
of area?
4. AREA AS PARADOXICAL
To get the blood circulating, let’s contemplate something that
is evidently impossible: Can you
(1) take a square S in the Euclidean plane, cut it (say,
with a scissors) into four pieces A, B, C, D of equal
area—so no two of these pieces overlap, and the four of
them cover the square?
In standard notation:5
S = A ! B ! C ! D;
(2) and now can you throw away two of the pieces (say
C and D) and move the other two (A and B) around by
Euclidean motions to get congruent shapes Aʹ, Bʹ in the
plane so that these two pieces cover the exact same
square again, i.e.,
S = Aʹ ! Bʹ ?
The answer, of course, is No, you can’t do this. Certainly not
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if the concept of area has the properties that we expect to
have. By “properties” I’m referring to these two self-evident
axioms:
(1) the area of a union of non-overlapping figures is
the sum of the areas of each of the figures; and
(2) the area of a figure is preserved under Euclidean
motion.
For if you could do this, then our two formulas for S displayed above will give contradictory answers to the question,
What is the area of S?
With this in mind, consider the following strange fact
about spherical rather than Euclidean geometry. Let S be the
surface of a ball (that is, what mathematicians call the twodimensional sphere). There is a way of separating S into four
sets A, B, C, D, no two of which overlap, such that each of
these sets are—in an evident sense—congruent to any of the
others. (This means that, for example, there is a way of rotating the sphere that brings A precisely to the position that
B occupied (before that rotation)—and similarly, there are
ways of rotating the sphere to bring A to B and to C and to
D. Nevertheless, you can throw two of them away (say, C
and D) and find a way of rotating the sphere so that A is
brought to a set A′ and a (different) way of rotating the sphere
so that B is sent to a set B′ and these maneuvers have the
strange property that A′ and B′ together cover the sphere; i.e.,
S = A′ ! B′.
This is called the Banach-Tarski Paradox. Despite first appearances this is not actually a paradox although there is indeed a subtlety lurking in the way in which I worded things.6
It is merely a para-dox, that is: something contrary to expected
opinion.
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I brought this apparent paradox up not to confuse you but
rather to point out, at the very outset, that
• even though area is a concept we tend to feel perfectly
at home with, to get closer to its essence is to appreciate more keenly its complexity, and so
• in our discussion about area we had better start from
the very beginning, by noting that
• despite its reputation for having what are called
“proper foundations,” mathematics doesn’t seem to
have a “beginning.”
5. LENGTH IN EVERYDAY LIFE
Nevertheless, let’s begin with something seemingly a bit simpler than area: plain old lengths of straight line-segments. I
say “seemingly” because as often happens in mathematics,
the simpler-seeming concept (in this case, length) contains,
in a more visible form, lots of the essential aspects of its complicated companions (e.g., area and volume).
We all know what is meant when someone says “a ten
foot pole.” This is a relative statement, comparing the pole
to some foot-long ruler, and claiming that we can lay ten
copies of our measuring device onto the pole, covering it
completely with no overspill or overlap. Usually, of course,
the speaker of this phrase has something on his mind other
than this length-measuring thought-experiment.
In slight contrast, when we are told that the circumference
of this cup is eight inches long and we want to verify this directly, we must set aside our rigid, calibrated, ruler and use
something like a tape-measure, wrapping it around the rim
of the cup.7 Of course, there is also a well-known indirect
way of verifying this measurement which starts by using our
rigid ruler to calculate the diameter of the cup—but this indirection already involves a certain amount of mathematical
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experience with π.
In even greater contrast, when we are told that the star
cluster NGC 1929 within the Large Magellanic Cloud (a
satellite galaxy of our own Milky Way shown in Fig. 68) is
179, 000 light-years away from us, other measuring devices
are required, and—given relativistic issues—what distance
means is already a subtle business.
Fig. 6
6. EQUALITY [OF LENGTH] IN EUCLID
The concept length occurs—in a somewhat cryptic form—
early in the Elements. It appears as mēkos in the definition of
line (Def. 2):
A line is breadthless length.
The concept reappears as diastēma (translated often as distance but meaning, more specifically, interval or gap) as
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something of a surprise. Euclid slips it into the discussion in
Book I in the definition of circle (Def. 15), which is described
as—and I’ll put it in modern vocabulary—a figure bounded
by a curve the points of which are equidistant from a given
point.
Thanks to this definition and the ability we have—given
to us by Postulate 3—of drawing a circle with any center and
any radius, we can begin to construct many line segments
that, in Euclid’s terms, are “equal” (meaning, are of equal
length). Even better, we are supplied with tools for establishing equality. Euclid wastes no time making use of these tools:
the very first proposition (Proposition 1 of Book I, see Fig.
79) goes straight to the task of constructing, on any line segment, an equilateral triangle, that is, a triangle in which all
three sides are “equal.” And we’re off and running, at least
as far as understanding equality of length goes.
On the facing page you see it in its full glory, ending with
a triumphant hoper edei poiēsai—i.e., “as was to be constructed.”
When later mathematics takes on the issue of length,
things proceed quite differently from the way Euclid proceeded. Modern mathematics throws a spotlight on transformations in a way that ancient mathematics did not.
Nowadays, as we introduce a new concept or new type of
structure, often—at the same time—we make explicit the
types of transformations or mappings between exemplars of
this structure that we are willing to consider (or rather, that
we are willing to allow). These allowed transformations are
the ones that respect the inner coherence of the structure we
are studying. In Euclidean geometry, the allowed transformations are the mappings of the Euclidean plane onto itself
that preserve the notion of congruence. They consist of rotations about points in the plane, translations, and also those
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transformations that can be viewed as the composition of a
“flip,” (that is, a symmetry about some straight line) with a
translation or rotation. In one of the modern formats, the concept of Euclidean length and the collection of the allowed
transformations of Euclidean geometry are yoked concepts,
working in tandem:
• The allowed transformations are precisely those transformations that preserve length of all line-segments,
while
• two line-segments have equal length if and only if
there are allowed transformations bringing any one
of them onto the other.
In effect, these notions—“length between points in Euclidean geometry” and “the transformations that preserve Euclidean geometry”—are yoked, chicken-and-egg style, in that
each can be used to begin the discussion and characterize
(that is, explicitly determine) the other. Think of it this way:
We could invoke each of these concepts to provide the vocabulary for a system of axioms in a geometry, and the other
concept would then be one of the many features of that geometry. You can have length as your basic concept and stipulate
the transformations that preserve your geometry to be those
that preserve length, or you may start with the stipulation of
transformations of your geometry and derive length as one
of its invariants—in effect, deriving the entire geometry from
its group of symmetries. (The second viewpoint represents a
celebrated shift of emphasis, known as the Erlangen Program.) But there is also an important difference of mood between “axiomatization,” which sets up a theory starting from
one direction or the other, and presenting things in a balanced
way, where each concept “characterizes” the other.
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7. PROPORTIONS
Length is, at bottom, a relative concept: that is to say, “length
compared to what?” is a bona fide question. What are the
units? Inches? Feet? Miles?10 That is, when we deal with
length, we are dealing—unavoidably—with a proportion.11
This puts us in the mood of Euclid’s Book V, a work that
deals exclusively with proportions among magnitudes.
Say we are interested in the length of our ten-foot pole P.
We compare it to our one-foot ruler F, we might emphasize
the proportional aspect of length by recording the answer
symbolically this way:
(*) P : F “=” 10 : 1
I’ve put quotation-marks around the equality sign to emphasize that it is indeed a serious abbreviation of thought, turning
what began as an analogy (P is to F as 10 is to 1) into an
equality (the relationship that P has to F is the relationship
that 10 has to 1)—turning an as into a straight is. This is a
curious transition. The older notation for equality sign in quotation marks is a double-colon,
(**) P : F :: 10 : 1,
capturing equally well, I believe, the “as” aspect of the relationship. That a proportion of lengths is interpretable as a
proportion of numbers may well be self-evident, but that it is
an interpretation is worth bearing in mind.
The legacy of the Pythagoreans offers us yet another interpretation for the versatile notion of a proportion of lengths:
As the length is to the length,
So the heard tone is to the heard tone.
After this discussion it is safe to remove the quotation
marks in formula (*) displayed above, and write
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P/F = 10/1.
We thereby see arithmetic in geometry (that is, by going from
left to right in the above equation). In other words, we have
an “arithmetic” (of proportions of straight line segments) that
mirrors “ordinary” arithmetic (of ratios of numbers). For example, you can add proportions of lengths of line segments:
A· − − − − − − ·B· − − − − − − − − − − − − − − ·C
D· − − − − − − ·E
AB/DE + BC/DE = AC/DE
and multiply proportions of lengths of line segments:
A· − − − − − − ·B
C· − − − − − − − − − − − − − − ·D
E· − − − − − − − − − − − − − − − − − − − − ·F
AB/CD × CD/EF = AB/EF
and we have a natural interpretation of inequalities between
these proportions. These behave formally “just like fractions,”
as the notation indicates, and we have a veritable algebra of
geometrical proportions.
8. COMMON MEASURES, AND UNCOMMON MEASURES
All this makes perfect, and natural, sense and conforms to
the most elementary basic ideas we have about arithmetic as
long as we treat proportions of lengths that “admit a common
measure.”
That is, imagine that you are given two intervals,
A· − − − − − − ·B
C· − − − − − − − − − − − − ·D
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and you know that there is a certain unit measure, say given
by another interval EF,
E· − − ·F
such that AB and CD are measured by (whole) number multiples of EF. For example, say AB is seventeen EFs long and
CD is four hundred ninety one EFs long; so we may write:
AB/EF = 17/1 and CD/EF = 491/1.
We then say that EF is a common measure for the line segments AB and CD. And, in this particular case, we then comfortably write
AB/CD = 17/491.
But the fun, as I think you all know, is already there at
the very outset of geometry for one of the most fundamental
of geometric proportions—that between the diagonal and the
side of a square
the diagonal AC / the side AB
—was shown to have no common measure,12 and nevertheless
the proportion AC/AB (alias √2/1) was still regarded as a genuine object of study, with the consequence that it forced us—
by the analogy between proportions of lengths and proportions
of numbers—to extend our very idea of what it means to be a
number. It is worth thinking about what it means for geometry
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to guide us in our evolving concept of number.
For all this is a beginning of one of the great analogies,
arithmetic ↔ geometry,
in which each profoundly influences the other. This type of
thinking goes against a view held by Aristotle (a view often
referred to as purity), namely:
We cannot, in demonstrating, pass from one genus to another.
We cannot, for instance, prove geometrical truths by arithmetic.13
9. THE UBIQUITY OF “ANALOGY” IN MATHEMATICAL THOUGHT
In the previous section we have been working through the
idea that straight line segments stand in relation to each other
“just as” numerical quantities stand in relation to each other;
that is, we are now faced with—as we’ve mentioned—one
of the primordial analogies between geometry and arithmetic.
That this “just as” relation is an analogy and not a direct
equality takes some convincing. A curious phenomenon occurs with many mathematical analogies once they get embedded in our thought. If A is seen to be analogous to
something else, B, there is the impetus to think of A and B
as, somehow, special cases of, or aspects of, a single more
encompassing C; and somehow to rethink the analogy as
equality. This switch is a form, but not the only form, of abstraction that is indigenous to mathematical sensibility. Versatile switching of viewpoints is one of the reasons for the
power of a mathematical frame of thought. This replacement
of a pair of analogous contexts for a single encompassing
context occurs so often that people with experience in mathematics have this type of thought engrained in them as second
nature.14
As I mentioned, replacing the two parts of an analogy by
a common generalized concept is powerful and occurs often
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in mathematics, but in other contexts of thought it might seem
a strange thing to do. One rarely does this kind of generalizing with analogies and metaphors that occur in literature:
when thinking about the metaphorical comparison in
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
do we conceive of a more general entity that encompasses
“thee” and “summer’s day” as instances?
10. LENGTH AND STRAIGHT LINE SEGMENTS
You may have noticed that, although I’ve gone on at some
length, I never defined straight line segment. Now, you can
postpone talking about straight line segments if you phrase
things in terms of distance. That is, for any two points P and
Q on the Euclidean plane, if you have a notion of the distance
between P and Q—denote it by dist(P, Q)—you can pick out
the points on the straight line segment between P and Q as
precisely those points X such that
dist(P, Q) = dist(P, X) + dist(X, Q).
But the ancients seem not to have defined straight line segment this way. Euclid’s definition (Def. 4 of Book I) is elegantly enigmatic:
A straight line is a line which lies evenly with the points on itself.
This is reminiscent of Plato’s definition of a straight line segment as “whatever has its middle in front of its end” (Parmenides 137e). Here, Plato seems to be taking his straight
line segment up to his eye to view it as you would look
through a telescope, noting that the only thing he sees is its
endpoint. In effect, a straight line is a line of sight.15 A much
later take on the matter defines a straight line segment with
endpoints P and Q as the unique curve joining P and Q such
that among all curves joining P and Q it is the one having
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the shortest length.16 But to make sense of this you must
know, at the very least, what it means for a curve to have a
length. Hence . . .
11. LENGTHS OF SMOOTH CURVES
Nowhere in Euclid’s Elements is the length of a curve that is
not a straight line, or polygonal, segment discussed. The first
nonpolygonal curve whose length was considered (in the
texts that I know) is the circumference (called the perimeter)
of a circle, as studied in Archimedes’s The measurement of
the circle.17 And there the length of the circumference of a
circle enters the mathematical discussion in the context of the
elegant statement about area18 that we have already briefly
discussed in Section 2.
Here it is as Proposition 1 of Archimedes text:
Proposition 1: Every circle is equal to a right-angled
triangle, whose radius [R] is equal to one of the [sides]
around the right angle while the perimeter [i.e., circumference T of the circle] is equal to the base [of the
triangle].
This is proved by approximating the circle by a regular polygon with a large number of sides, and arguing appropriately.
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This is an amazing theorem, of course, but the more specific
reason I’m mentioning it is that it exemplifies the general rule
that the computation of the length of any curvy curve depends—perhaps very indirectly—on relating it to the length
of approximating polygons. This is (quite directly) Archimedes’s method here. He makes use of a result about polygons analogous to Proposition 1, where the polygons in
question will be made to approximate the circle. For a slightly
more extensive sketch of Archimedes’s argument, see the Appendix, Section 20 below.
12.
LENGTHS
OF
CRINKLY CURVES
It has been said that there
is no way to measure the
length of the coastline of
Scotland.
It is just too crinkly,
and the length you find
yourself computing depends on how fine a grid
of measurements you
make—the result getting
longer and longer as the
measurements
grow
finer. Mathematicians
can easily model such an
effect, the most famous
construction being something called the Koch snowflake.
This is a closed curve obtained by taking the limit of an infinite sequence of crinkle-operations. Start with an equilateral
triangle and on an interval one-third the size of each side construct a small equilateral triangle. Here are the first few stages:
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At each stage you are faced with a longer curve, and in the
limit, you have seemingly contained a curve within a finite
region that is so crinkly so as to have—in effect—infinite
length.
13. WHAT IS AREA?
We’ll be interested primarily in the areas of figures in the Euclidean plane. Given our discussion of length it won’t be a
surprise to learn that we will be dealing, again, with proportions; in this case, the proportion of (the area of) one figure
to (the area of) another. Nor will it be much of a surprise to
find that just as straight line segments played a fundamental
role in all discussions of length, so too polygonal figures will
play such a role in our treatment of area.
Euclid is again very helpful here. The first time he discusses area, it is—in his vocabulary— parallelogramatic
area: Proposition 34 of Book I tells us that the diagonal of a
parallelogram bisects the (area of) the parallelogram. He fol-
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lows this up with the propositions (including the beautiful
Proposition 37 I’ve alluded to already) stating that two triangles with the same base and height have the same area, as do
two parallelograms with the same base and height.
And once we have these tools, we are in good shape to
deal with areas of polygonal figures. We can even go further,
as we saw in Section 11 above with Archimedes’s proof that
transforms the area of a circle into the area of a triangle by
means of polygonal figures. (As I’ve said, we will discuss
more in the Appendix, Section 20 below.)
14. AREA AS AN “INVARIANT”
Here is an exercise: make a (short) list of “axioms” that (you
guess) characterizes the concept of ratios of areas for a large
class of (plane) figures. You’ll surely include a number of
basic properties of the intuitive concept of area as hinted at
in section 4 above. But let me start the game by insisting that
one of your axioms be this:
Axiom of Invariance under Euclidean motions:
If A, B are a pair of plane figures for which you
have defined the ratio
area of A / area of B
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(or, for short, A/B) and if A′ is the image of the
figure A under a Euclidean transformation, then
we have the equality:
area of A / area of B = area of A′ / area of B
This is worth thinking about, but this is just a start, and
note that in your personal “theory of area,” part of the chore
is to make precise exactly what class of figures you are going
to be assigning a well-defined area. This might be a bit of
fodder for discussion following the lecture. This exercise was
solved elegantly and in somewhat astounding generality before World War II by the Hungarian mathematician Alfréd
Haar.
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15. SHEARS AND SIMILARITIES
Given a well-working “theory of area,” certain properties will
follow as consequences. For example, here are two basic features—two further invariance properties for the concept of
area.
(1) Shears
By a horizontal shear transformation let’s mean a transformation of the Euclidean plane to itself that keeps every
horizontal line in place, but moves it by a translation that is
dependent on the “height” of that line above the x-axis. That
is, for any point (x, y) in the plane it keeps the y-coordinate
fixed but allows the x coordinate to change by a rule:
x ↦ x + F(y)
where F(y) is some civilized (e.g., continuous) function of y.
This type of motion of the plane keeps all lines parallel to the
x-axis intact, but translates them by different amounts depending on their height. By a general shear transformation
let’s mean an analogous transformation, but with respect to
lines parallel to any fixed line: the line needn’t be the x-axis.
The area of figures is preserved by shears!
Now we’ve actually seen examples of this in our previous discussion: think of Proposition 37 of Book I of Euclid’s Elements. One way of revisiting the content of Proposition 37 is
to note that any two triangles with the same base and same
height can be brought one to another by a shear.
The three-dimensional version of this (where the question
is about volume rather than area) is sometimes referred to as
Cavalieri’s Principle, and is illustrated, for example, by the
following picture, where Cavalieri’s Principle would state
that the two stacks of coins on the next page occupy the same
volume.
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(2) The behavior of area under similarity transformations.
If
• A and A′ are in the class of figures for which you have defined the ratio
area of A / area of A′
and if
• P, Q are points in the figure A with P′, Q′ the corresponding
points in the similar figure A′,
then the square of the ratio
length of PQ / length of P′Q′
is equal to the ratio
area of A / area of A′
This square relation tells us that we are dealing with a twodimensional concept.19
Dimensionality as a concept opens up a host of marvelous
questions to explore, not the least of which is the grand idea,
initially due to Hausdorff, that the full range of possible geometric figures admits a continuous gamut of dimensions—
not just dimensions 0, 1, 2, 3, . . .
That such strange figures possessing non-whole-number
dimensions may have some bearing on questions in the nat-
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ural sciences, economics, and finance—let alone pure mathematics—is the energy behind Benoît Mandelbrot’s wellknown fractals.20
16. I NVARIANCE
AS FEATURE ;
I NVARIANCE
AS CHARAC -
TERIZATION
I have been alluding to the invariance properties of length
and of area. Here is a summary and comparison.
Euclidean Length and the collection of Euclidean motions
suit each other’s needs perfectly:
• The (Euclidean) concept of length is invariant under the
Euclidean motions (i.e., translation, rotations, symmetries
about straight lines, and compositions of these). That is,
these transformations preserve Euclidean distance.
• Any distance relation between points that satisfies certain
natural axioms and that is invariant under any Euclidean
motion is (after appropriate rescaling of its values) equal
to the (Euclidean) concept of length.
• Moreover, any transformation that preserves length between any two points in the plane is a Euclidean motion.
In contrast to length, the invariance properties of (Euclidean) concept of area is stranger:
• The (Euclidean) concept of area is invariant under Euclidean motions, of course— but it is also invariant under
a much greater collection of transformations. For example, any of the shear transformations we have discussed
in the previous section (Section 15) preserves area.
• But as for characterizing this concept by invariance properties, things go the other way: area is characterized (up
to a mere change of scale) by its invariance under translations alone—that’s all the invariance you need invoke
to pinpoint this concept!
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It is quite fitting, then, that Euclid inserts his Proposition
37 in Book I, very early in his discussion of area: the proposition is, of course, a critical tool in establishing the simplest
arguments regarding area—but from a modern perspective,
it also points to one of the deep properties of the concept visà-vis invariance: there is a huge collection of transformations—far more of them than just Euclidean motions—that
preserve area.
17. CLASSICAL QUADRATURE PROBLEMS
The phrase quadrature of . . . loosely refers to the problem
of finding the area of . . . , which usually means expressing—
as some simple numerical ratio—the proportion of the area
of one figure to another figure.21 First, here is a simple example related to Euclid’s Proposition 37 in Book I of the Elements that we discussed earlier, and whose proof can be
found by putting together propositions in Book I of Euclid’s
Elements:22
Proposition: Let P be a parallelogram and T a triangle, such
that P and T have the same base and the same height. Then
P : T = 2 : 1.
This proposition follows the format of what I’ll call a
“Classical Quadrature Problem,” which I want to mean to be
a statement that the proportion of areas (or lengths, or volumes) of two geometric figures, all described entirely in clear
general geometric terms,23 is equal to a specific numerical
ratio.
There are quite a number of classical problems that fit
this mold, that is, problems expressing the proportion of the
areas of two figures, or volumes of two solids (described in
general terms) in terms of specific rational numbers. For example, Proposition 10 of Book XII of Euclid’s Elements tell
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us that
the ratio of the volume of a cone to a cylinder
that have the same base and the same height
is 1 : 3.
This “1 : 3” reoccurs as the ratio of the volume of a conical solid built on any base to the cylindrical solid built on
the same base, and of the same height. The earliest text I
know that “explains” the “1 : 3” in this more general context
is Arithmetica Infinitorum by John Wallis, who did his work
before the full-fledged invention of Calculus; for the people
who know Calculus, this is an exercise.24
As with much of Archimedes’s work there are stories that
surround it. In one of his treatises,25 Archimedes showed that
the ratio of the volume of a sphere to that of
the cylinder that circumscribes it is 2 : 3.
and according to legend, this being his favorite result, he had
it engraved as a sculpture for his tomb.
The most intriguing, and thorny, of the ratios of elementary areas or volumes are the proportion relating the area of
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a circle to that of the square that circumscribes it, and the proportion relating the volume of a sphere to that of the volume
of the cube that circumscribes it. The story of the many attempts to understand these ratios leads us in interesting directions. For example, Hippocrates of Chios in his attempt to
square the circle studied classical quadrature problems relating the areas of lunes (which are figures consisting of the
outer portion of a small circle when superimposed on a larger
one, as in the figure below26)
to areas of triangles constructed in relation to those lunes. He
proves, for example, that the area of the lune (defined as the
region between E and F in the figure above) is equal to the
area of the triangle ABO. His results, however, go significantly beyond this.27
18. WEIGHING AREA
A famous example of a classical quadrature problem is
Archimedes’s “Quadrature of the parabola” and this is dealt
with in not one, but two of his treatises in quite different
ways:
• Propositions 14-16 of The quadrature of the parabola, and
• Proposition 1 of The Method.
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The aim is to “find” the area of a segment of a parabola
bounded by a chord.
We know, of course, that this means finding a proportion
between the red area of the above kind of figure and the area
of some other figure.
This problem is especially illuminating in that Archimedes
offers two approaches to it. The method in The quadrature of
the parabola is via exhaustion, i.e., approximation by polygons—which is a method similar to the one we have already
seen in the Measurement of the circle. This actually does
prove what he wants. But the more curious method is the one
that he himself refers to as a mechanical method—a mode of
reasoning to which he does not give the full authority of
proof: it’s an example of a heuristic28—perhaps the first example of such a not-quite-a-proof of which we have any
record.
A major tool Archimedes uses in this heuristic is his famous “law of the lever,”29 which proclaims that if weights W
and w are placed on the plank that is the lever, at opposite
sides of the fulcrum but at distances D and d from the fulcrum
respectively, then the lever will balance if and only if
D·w=d·W
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“Now what in the world does this have to do with area?” you
might ask. The answer is that Archimedes is engaged here in
an ingenious thought-experiment, where the rules of the game
are dictated by some basic physical truths, and the link to
area (he will also treat volume problems this way as well) is
by a profound analogy. In the figure below, imagine the point
K as the fulcrum of a lever. The plank of the lever is the line
segment HK. Archimedes will construct a triangle FAC deployed onto the plank as shown, and will be weighing (yes,
weighing) the parabolic segment P by weighing in a laminar
manner each line in the parabolic segment parallel to the diameter of the parabola against corresponding lines in the triangle FAC placed at an appropriate distance (at H) on the
other side of the fulcrum. Archimedes is thinking that you
can view the parabolic segment and triangle as swept through
by a continuum of line segments, and the area of these figures
is somehow distributed as slivers dependent on the varying
lengths of these line segments. So he uses his “law of the
lever” to find the balance, thereby concluding his heuristic
argument.
We can discuss this at greater length after the lecture if
you like, but here—a bit more slowly—is a recap of what
I’ve just said, broken up into the steps that Archimedes uses.
In the figure below, which is taken from one of the diagrams for Proposition 1 in the traditional text for The Method,
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the chord is AC and the parabolic arc we are to study is the
curve bounded by A and C. We are interested in the area of
the parabolic segment—let us call it P. Specifically, P is that
region bounded by that chord AC and the parabolic segment
that joins with it. For this task, the figure will give us all the
constructions necessary.
(1) The lever and fulcrum: We are going to weigh things
and balance thing so we need some apparatus. Don’t
mind that it is on a slant; but the straight line through C
and K is going to be our lever, and K will be our fulcrum.
(2) The tangent line: We draw the line CF through C tangent to our parabolic arc at C (I’ll say what F is in a
moment).
(3) Let D be the bisector of AC and construct a straight line
through D parallel to the diameter of the parabola. (Para-
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bolas do have well defined “diameters.” In simple English,
if we draw the full parabola, rather than the piece of it as
occurs in the above figure, the diameter is that straight
line piercing the parabola around which the parabola is
symmetric: in other words, flipping about the diameter
preserves the parabola.) This straight line will intersect
CF at a point that we’ll call E, and the parabolic arc at a
point B. So we can call the line ED.
(4) The basic triangle: Draw the lines AB and BC to form
the basic triangle ABC (which I’ll also call T).
(5) Note that T sits neatly in the parabolic segment P.
Clearly the area of P is bigger than that of T, but how
much bigger? The upshot of this proposition, after
Archimedes finishes proving it, is that we get an exact relationship, namely, P : T :: 4 : 3.
(6) Laminating by lines parallel to the diameter: The line
ED is parallel to the diameter. In the figure above, you
find a couple of other labeled lines parallel to the diameter: MO, and FA. What Archimedes wants to do is to think
of the family of all lines that are parallel to the diameter
and how they slice the figure as they sweep across it.
(Think of them as forming a moving family). We will
refer to any member of that family (and there are finitely
many of them!) as a laminar slice. In a moment we will
be slicing two figures by the lines of this family.
(7) The big triangle: This is FAC, built with edges the line
FA parallel to the diameter and the chord AC. Simple
geometry shows that FAC : T = 4. So, thinking of the formula above, we want to prove that P : FAC = 1 : 3.
(8) Weighing slices on the balance beam: Archimedes
hangs the big triangle FAC from its center of gravity, W,
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on the balance bar HK, as indicated in the figure. He then
considers laminar slices of it, comparing them to laminar
slices (by the same line parallel to the diameter) of the
parabolic segment ABC. He proves that to put each laminar slice of the big triangle FAC in equilibrium with the
corresponding slice of the parabolic segment ABC you
have to “hang” the laminar slice of the parabolic segment
ABC at the point H on the other side of the fulcrum. This
uses, of course, his law of the lever.
(9) Weighing the figures themselves: He then says that he
has hung the parabolic segment at point H and the big triangle at point W and, again, the law of the lever gives the
proportions of their areas.
There is a great amount of geometry that one can learn
by considering this result. First, note that we do indeed have
here an example of what I described as a “classical quadrature
problem” in that (a) we specified each of our figures merely
by generic prescriptions (take any parabolic, and cut it with
any chord, etc.), and (b) we asserted that the proportions of
these figures are given by a fixed rational ratio (4:3). That
alone deserves thought.
You might wonder: how many other interesting generic
geometric proportions can one come up with that have a fixed
rational ratio? Or, perhaps, a fixed ratio involving, say,
surds?30
What is gripping here is how we, using Calculus, could
immediately convert into a genuine theorem what Archimedes
does with his “method,” and how a dyed-in-the-wool Euclidean could also come to terms with this by offering an appropriate menu of axioms and common notions. Each of these
revisions of Archimedes’s work—via Calculus, or via appropriate axioms—would have the effect of reframing
Archimedes’s mechanical analogy by encompassing it with
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something non-analogical that has, perhaps, the authority to
explain more. And yet for me, the lesson offered by The
Method lies—to return to the issue of purity I mentioned previously in Section 7 above—in the unconstrained impurity
of the ideas behind it. The Method works on the strength of a
correctly guiding, but nevertheless difficult to justify, analogy
combining previously disparate intuitions that had originated
in somewhat different domains—the experience one has with
a certain weighing apparatus and the intuition one has via Euclidean geometry.
This type of thinking (working with profound analogies
and relating them to, or turning them into, equalities) is today,
as it was in Archimedes’s time, the source of much of the
most powerful mathematics.
19. HEDGEHOGS AGAIN
We have largely talked about areas of figures in the plane,
except for our excursion in the spherical geometry with the
Banach-Tarsky Paradox. This deserves more discussion,
which I hope will happen in the upcoming conversation period.
20. APPENDIX: SKETCH OF A PROOF OF ARCHIMEDES’ MEASUREMENT OF THE CIRCLE.
To describe Archimedes’s argument succinctly, we need some
vocabulary. Define the radius of a regular polygon to be the
length of a line interval that is obtained by dropping a perpendicular to any side of the polygon from the center N of
the regular polygon. Define the perimeter (or circumference)
of a polygon to be the length of its perimeter, i.e., the sum of
the lengths of the sides of the polygon. If the polygon is a
regular M-gon, then the circumference is M times the length
of any side.
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Here is “my” version of Proposition 1 for regular polygons,31 which is analogous to Archimedes’s Proposition 1 for
circles:
Archimedes’s Proposition 1 adapted to regular
polygons: The area subsumed by a regular polygon
is equal to the area subsumed by a right-angled triangle for which the two right-angle sides are of lengths
equal to the radius and the circumference (respectively) of the polygon.
In contrast to the actual Proposition 1 of the Measurement of
the Circle, this “polygon-version” of Archimedes’s Proposition 1 is now nicely within the scope of Euclidean vocabulary; its proof is within the scope of Euclid as well.
Some comments:
(1) Both this “polygon-version” and Archimedes’s Proposition 1 deal with a right-angled triangle whose base is
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the circumference and whose height is the radius of the
figure to which this triangle is being compared. One
could rephrase these propositions by omitting the requirement that the triangle be right-angled.
(2) A visual proof of this polygonal proposition can be
effected simply by cutting and “straightening out to a
line” the perimeter of the polygon, and then arguing that
this paper-doll figure has the same area as the triangle
displayed below.32 (In the figure below we illustrate this
with a 3-gon, otherwise known as a triangle, which produces, when cut-and straightened-out, the three triangles
in a line labeled A,B,C. Each of these triangles have the
same area as the three triangles that make up the large triangle in the lower figure, which has as base the perimeter
and as height the radius.) This relies only the fact that the
area of a triangle depends only on its base and height.
NOTES
1. Since you read Archimedes’s On the equilibrium of planes in Freshman
Laboratory, this may not come as a complete surprise.
2. I am grateful to Paul Van Koughnett who drew most of the figures, and
to Paul Dry for helpful and incisive comments about early drafts of these
notes.
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3. Straight-limbed geometry;
In her arts’ ingeny
Our wits were sharp and keen.
From “Mark Antony,” a poem by John Cleveland (1613-1658). See The
Best Poems of the English language: From Chaucer through Robert
Frost, ed. Harold Bloom (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), 154-55.
4. A sketch of its proof is in the Appendix, Section 20 below.
5. The ∪ (“cup”) notation means “union.” That is, if X and Y are sets, then
X ∪ Y is the set whose members are either members of X or members of
Y or members of both X and Y.
6. For people who are familiar with group theory, a fairly complete description of what is going can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banach–Tarski_paradox.
7. A delightful book that discusses calculations of this sort, and of more
theoretical sorts, is John Bryant and Chris Sangwin, How Round is Your
Circle? Where Engineering and Mathematics Meet, (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2011.)
8. The composite image in Fig. 6 was created by the Chandra X-ray Observatory. The X-ray component was produced by NASA/CXC/U.Mich./
S.Oey; the Infrared component by NASA/JPL, and the optical component
by ESO/WFI/2.2-m.
9. Fig. 7 is drawn from Euclid’s Element of Geometry, an edition of the
Greek text with new English translation by Richard Fitzpatrick (Austin:
Richard Fitzpatrick, 2007), 8.
10. Two cowboys:
A: “My ranch is so big I can ride Old Paint from morning to night
and still not cover it.”
B: “I know exactly how you feel. My horse is like that too!”
11. This issue is taken up by Kant from a slant perspective. (That’s typical
for Kant.) In Book I, Sections 25 and 26 of The Critique of Judgment, in
discussing what he calls the mathematical sublime, he points out that in
comprehending in our imagination a specific magnitude (say, this pole is
ten feet long) one is engaging in two acts, of different natures: there is
the mathematical one of counting a number of feet (and comprehending
that act of counting) and then there is the essentially aesthetic one of comprehending—or internalizing in some way or other—what a foot is. From
Kant’s perspective, then, considering a proportion, per se, is an act that
extracts the purely mathematical aspect of “comprehension of a magni-
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tude” from the underlying, and otherwise unavoidable, aesthetic aspect:
comprehending the unit. Of course, it is the latter that interests him.
12. At least if we insist that both intervals be measured by a whole number
of multiples of the chosen “common measure.”
13. Aristotle, Posterior Analytics 75a29-75b12.
14. Here is an important example of this that originated over a century
ago, and is everywhere to be seen in modern mathematics: numbers are
analogous to functions. There are whole branches of mathematics
where these concepts are treated as not merely analogous, but as particular exemplars of a larger encompassing concept.
15. See, for example, the marvelous essay on this subject in Euclid: The
Thirteen Books of the Elements, ed. Thomas Heath, 3 vols. (Mineola, New
York: Dover Publications, 1956), 165-69.
16. This property distinguishes straight line segments as geodesics in
modern terminology.
17. For source material, various translations, commentary, and more related texts, please go to:
http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k53966
(which is on the “Teaching” page of my web site).
18. That the ratio of the area of a circle to the length of its circumference
is a simple expression in terms of its radius is what is behind the beauty
of Proposition 1. This is a phenomenon that proliferates in higher dimensions; e.g., the ratio of the volume of a sphere to its surface area is, similarly, a simple expression in terms of its radius. This is worth pondering.
19. But neither of the above “invariance properties” need be, nor should
be, included as axioms, for they will follow from your list of axioms (if
you’ve formulated them correctly).
20. See Benoît Mandelbrot, The Fractal Geometry of Nature (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1982).
21. Quadrature is the basic topic in the oldest existent Greek text, that of
Hippocrates of Chios.
22. Or better, by doing it yourself.
23. This is admittedly a bit vague, but I hope the examples convey the
kind of problem I’m referring to.
24. Hint: ∫ x2 dx = ⅓ x3 when evaluated over the interval 0 to x.
25. On the Sphere and Cylinder I.
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26. This figure can be found online at:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Lune.svg
27. I think that there are truly interesting (entirely mathematical, not historical) issues that lurk in this, and it is one of my plans to understand it
in depth.
28. This is especially fitting since it comes from the pen of the celebrated
shouter of “Eureka,” which derives from the same root.
29. There is an extensive earlier tradition of discussion about equilibrium
and disequilibrium on a balance, and on the action of levers of all sorts.
For example, this observation from Part Seven of Aristotle’s On the motion of animals: “A small change occurring at the center makes great and
numerous changes at the circumference, just as by shifting the rudder a
hair’s breadth you get a wide deviation at the prow.” I want to thank Jean
de Groot for conversations about this; I look forward to her forthcoming
commentary on Aristotle’s Mechanics.
There is also, to be sure, an extensive later tradition on this topic—
notably, Ernst Mach’s marvelous critique of the “law” itself, in the Introduction and first few chapters of his wonderful book The Science of
Mechanics (Chicago and London: Open Court, 1919.)
30. That is, square roots. This is not an idle question.
31. I say “my” version because, even though it is—in my opinion—implicitly invoked in Archimedes’s text, it isn’t dwelt on.
32. I’m thankful to Jim Carlson for this suggestion.
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ESSAYS & LECTURES
Some Reflections on Darwin
and C.S. Peirce
Curtis Wilson and Chaninah Maschler
Introduction
On a Saturday morning in the mid-1950s, I attended a St.
John’s faculty seminar on a selected reading from Darwin’s
Origin of Species. What chiefly remains in memory is an
overall impression: the discussion was halting and desultory,
failing to get airborne. In those days the available edition of
the Origin was the sixth and last (1872); compared with the
first edition of 1859, it suffers from excessive backing and
filling, Darwin’s attempts to answer his critics. Yet, even had
our text been from the sprightlier first edition, I doubt our
discussion would have got off the ground. After one spell of
silence a senior tutor spoke up to ask: Isn’t it [Darwin’s theory]
just a hypothesis? The implication, I thought, was: Can’t we
just ignore the whole idea?
The short answer to that second question is: we can’t, because Darwin’s theory is the grand working hypothesis (yes,
it’s a hypothesis!) of biologists everywhere, and as aspirant
generalists at St. John’s, we need to seek out its meaning. The
search can be exhilarating as well as disquieting.
Major features of Darwin’s theory are contained in his
phrase “descent with modification through natural selection.”
The descent of present-day organisms from organisms of preCurtis Wilson was a long-time tutor, and twice Dean, at St. John’s College
in Annapolis. Sadly, he passed away on 24 August 2012, shortly after this
article was completed. Chanina Maschler is tutor emerita at St. John’s
College in Annapolis. The Introduction, in the form of first-person reminiscences, was written by Mr. Wilson. Part 1 is by Ms. Maschler. The last
three parts were worked out by the two authors jointly.
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ceding generations is obvious; Darwin requires us to keep
this fact in focus. The offspring inherit traits from their parents, but some variation occurs. Since far more offspring are
produced than can survive and reproduce, the variants best
suited to surviving and reproducing are the ones that win out.
Relative to a given environment, the surviving form will be
better adapted than the forms that failed. Darwin saw this
process as leading to diversification of kinds, or speciation,
as indicated by the title of his book, On the Origin of Species.1
Darwin opened his first notebook on “Transmutation of
Species” in July, 1837. In a sustained effort of thought from
1837 to 1844, he constructed the theory. The empirical evidence consisted chiefly of the biological specimens that he
had observed and collected during his tour as naturalist
aboard H.M.S. Beagle, from Dec. 27, 1831 to Oct. 2, 1836.
(This voyage was sent out to chart the coasts of South America and determine longitudes round the globe; taking along a
naturalist was an after-thought of the captain’s.)
At the beginning of the Beagle voyage, Darwin was a few
weeks short of his twenty-third birthday. So far in his life he
had had no clear goal. Enrolled in medical school at age sixteen in Edinburgh, he dropped out, unable to endure seeing
patients in pain. His father (a physician, skeptical in religion)
then sent him to Cambridge with the idea that he might fit
himself out to become a country parson, but young Darwin
found the course of study uninteresting. He completed the
A.B. degree, but later acknowledged that his time at Cambridge was mostly wasted. A chance by-product of it was a
friendship with John S. Henslow, the professor of botany.
Henslow it was who arranged Darwin’s being offered the post
of naturalist on the Beagle. Darwin’s father flatly rejected the
idea at first, but Josiah Wedgewood, young Darwin’s maternal uncle, persuaded him to change his mind.
In hindsight, we can say that young Darwin was ad-
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mirably suited to his new post. From boyhood he had been a
persistent collector of a variety of objects, from stamps to
beetles. As a naturalist he would prove to have an unstoppable drive toward theoretical understanding, seeking to connect the dots between his numerous observations. The voyage
of the Beagle, proceeding first to the coasts of South America
and the nearby islands, could not have been more aptly
planned to yield observations supporting the theory that he
would develop. The observations were chiefly of three types.2
Fossils from South America were found to be closely related
to living fauna of that continent, rather than to contemporaneous fossils from elsewhere. Animals of the different climatic zones of South America were related to each other
rather than to animals of the same climatic zones on other
continents. Faunas of nearby islands (Falkland, Galapagos)
were closely related to those of the nearest mainland; and on
different islands of the same island group were closely related. These observations could be accounted for on Darwin’s
theory; on the opposing theory of fixed species they remained
unintelligible.
But why the uproar over Darwin’s Origin, and why does
it still today produce uneasiness? It is not merely that it appears contrary to the creation story in Genesis. As John
Dewey put it in 1910:3
That the publication of the Origin of Species marked an
epoch in the development of the natural sciences is well
known to the layman. That the combination of the very
words origin and species embodied an intellectual revolt
and introduced a new intellectual temper is easily overlooked by the expert. The conceptions that had reigned in
the philosophy of nature and knowledge for two thousand
years, the conceptions that had become the familiar furniture of the mind, rested on the assumption of the superiority of the fixed and final; they rested upon treating change
and origin as signs of defect and unreality. In laying hands
upon the sacred ark of absolute permanency, in treating the
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forms that had been regarded as types of fixity and perfection as originating and passing away, the Origin of Species
introduced a mode of thinking that in the end was bound
to transform the logic of knowledge, and hence the treatment of morals, politics, and religion.
More recently Ernst Mayr has characterized Darwin’s
new way of thinking as “population thinking,” and the mode
of thinking prevalent earlier as “typological thinking”:
Typological thinking, no doubt, had its roots in the earliest
efforts of primitive man to classify the bewildering diversity of nature into categories. The eidos of Plato is the formal philosophical codification of this form of thinking.
According to it, there are a limited number of fixed, unchangeable “ideas” underlying the observed variability,
with the eidos (idea) being the only thing that is fixed and
real, while the observed variability has no more reality than
the shadows of an object on a cave wall. . . .
The assumptions of population thinking are diametrically
opposed to those of the typologist. The populationist
stresses the uniqueness of everything in the organic world.
What is true for the human species—that no two individuals are alike—is equally true for all other species of animals and plants. . . . All organisms and organic phenomena
are composed of unique features and can be described collectively only in statistical terms. Individuals, or any kind
of organic entities, form populations, of which we can determine the arithmetic mean and the statistics of variation.
Averages are merely statistical abstractions, only the individuals of which the populations are composed have reality. The ultimate conclusions of the population thinker and
of the typologist are precisely the opposite. For the typologist, the type (eidos) is real and the variation an illusion,
while for the populationist, the type (average) is an abstraction and only the variation is real. No two ways of looking
at nature could be more different.4
Mayr’s abruptly nominalist “take” on the nature of
species is not required by Darwin’s theory, nor do all biolo-
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91
gists espouse it.5 One thing the theory does require is a new
attention to individual differences. Species may result from
processes that are fundamentally statistical, and yet be real.
For young Darwin, gentleman naturalist, noting individual
differences came naturally. His curiosity about connections
may also have been natural to him, but he developed it into a
powerful drive toward unifying theory.
Before coming to St. John’s in 1948, I had taken undergraduate courses in zoology and embryology in which Darwin’s theory was referred to; I accepted the theory as established. An
occasion for reading Darwin’s Origin had not arisen. On becoming a St. John’s tutor, I immersed myself chiefly in problems of the laboratory on the side of physical science, to
which my interests inclined me and for which my more recent
graduate studies in the history of science to some degree prepared me.
In multiple ways, during my early years at St. John’s, I
took my cue from Jacob Klein. My admiration for him was
unbounded. I respected him for his scholarly knowledge,
shrewdness, and sharp discernment. It was he who drew the
College community out of its 1948-49 leadership crisis and
communal slough of despond in the wake of Barr’s and
Buchanan’s departure, and he did so single-handedly and
spiritedly. During his deanship (1949-1958), he gave the College a new lease on life, a new stability, and an incentive to
move forward: testing, selecting, and improving the Program.
Our debt to him is incalculable.
As dean, Mr. Klein in the opening lecture each year undertook to address the question of what we were doing here,
what liberal education was. It was with trepidation, he told
us, that he addressed this question. Typically, his lecture took
a Platonic turn, as when he described the metastrophē, or turning round, of the prisoner in the cave of Plato’s Republic. The
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former prisoner had to be brought to recognize that the shadows he had previously taken for truth were in fact only images of conventional images. Getting at the truth was a matter
of penetrating beyond that scrim of images.
During the academic year 1954-55 I was co-leader with
Mr. Klein (“Jasha” as we tutors called him) of a senior seminar. On one evening the assignment was from Darwin’s Origin—this was perhaps the only place in the program where
Darwin’s theory was addressed in those days. I recall nothing
of the discussion, but at its end Jasha asked the students: Did
they consider Darwin’s book important to their lives? One
after another they replied with a decisive “No!”—a flood of
denial.
Though failing to lodge a protest, I thought the indifference to Darwin a mistake, and I was disappointed by Jasha’s
standoffishness with respect to it. My opinion was reinforced
in conversations I had at the time with Allen Clark, a Ford
Foundation intern at the College in the years 1954-56.6 Clark
had done graduate studies at Harvard on American pragmatism, reading widely in the writings of C.S. Peirce, William
James, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and the Harvard-educated
Spanish émigré George Santayana. He was especially attracted to the writings of Peirce, who had been both a working scientist and a close student of philosophy, and had set
himself to making philosophical sense of natural science.
Peirce had embraced Darwin’s theory and interpreted it.
Attempting to catch up with Clark in philosophy, I began
reading such writings of Peirce as were readily available.
These were two collections of essays, the earliest assembled
by Morris R. Cohen under the title Chance, Love, and Logic,
and a later one due to Justus Buchler, The Philosophy of
Peirce. There were also the six volumes of The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, published by Harvard Uni-
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93
versity Press in 1931-35 under the editorship of Hartshorne
and Weiss, but these were formidable, leaving the inquirer
puzzled as to where to get a leg up or a handhold.
My enthusiasm for Peirce was challenged one summer
evening in the later 1950s. During an informal discussion of
a Peirce essay at Jasha’s home, Jasha took exception to
Peirce’s “Monism,” the doctrine that the world is made of a
single stuff. Jasha saw this doctrine as contradicted by the intentionality of human thought. What was that?
The doctrine had been put forward by the Austrian
philosopher Franz Brentano in 1874.7 According to Brentano,
to think is to think of or about something. Analogously, to
fear or hope entails that there are objects (Jasha sometimes
called them “targets”) of these modes of consciousness. Their
objects need not be existents in the empirical world. I can
think of a unicorn, or imagine riding like Harry Potter on a
broom stick, or fear an imagined bogeyman in a closet.
Brentano therefore spoke of “intentional inexistence,” meaning that such an object is somehow contained in the thought
(cogitatio à la Descartes!) of which it is the object. Brentano
sought to make Intentionality definitive of the mental. He
concluded that mind, because of its intentionality, is irreducible to the physical.
Edmund Husserl, one of Jasha’s teachers, had been a student of Brentano. For Husserl, Brentano’s idea of intentionality became the basis of a new science which he called
Phenomenology. Husserl followed Brentano in treating intentionality as coextensive with the mental, and in asserting
the impossibility of a naturalistic explanation of intentional
acts. Jasha’s rejection of Peirce’s Monism, I am guessing,
stemmed from his acceptance, at least in part, of Husserlian
philosophy.8
Jasha may have been unaware that what he regarded as
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Peirce’s Ontological Monism was an application of the
maxim Do not block the road of inquiry. Dualism, as Peirce
saw it, drew a line in the sand; naturalistic explanations were
guaranteed to be impossible beyond this line. The line in the
sand inevitably becomes a dare.
But I was still far in those days from understanding how
the various parts of Peirce’s thinking held together—or failed
to. A major difficulty with the Cohen and Buchler collections
and with The Collected Papers was that they did not present
Peirce’s papers in their order of composition. The editors did
not sufficiently appreciate that Peirce’s ideas developed over
time. Throughout his life, Peirce’s thought (like science as he
understood it) was a work in progress.9 When he died in 1914
he had not completed any single major work. During his last
active decade, however, he succeeded in resolving certain
major difficulties in his earlier philosophizing. A chronological edition of his work—published papers, lectures, and unpublished notes and correspondence—has now been
undertaken by Indiana University Press. Of these post-1950
developments I was made aware only recently. And their full
import did not dawn on me until encountering a book by the
Chairman of the Board of Advisers to the Peirce Edition Project, Thomas Short. It is Peirce’s Theory of Signs.10
Parts 1 and 2 of our essay provide an account of Peirce’s
pragmatism and of his progress from Kantian idealism to scientific realism. In Parts 3 and 4, with the help of Short’s
analysis, we shall indicate how Peirce accounts naturalistically for the emergence of intentionality and conscious purposefulness in the course of evolution.
Part 1. Peirce and Pragmatism
Peirce is the man through whom the word “pragmatism” enters upon the world scene as a philosophic term. According
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to his own recollection,11 confirmed by the report of his friend
William James,12 this happened in the early 1870s, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, amongst a group of young Harvard
men, who used to meet for philosophical discussion. Later in
the 1870s the opinions Peirce had defended viva voce were
issued in print in two articles, “The Fixation of Belief” (1877)
and “How to Make our Ideas Clear” (1878).13 The first of
these two essays prefigured what Peirce would in the course
of a life-time come to say about science as an enterprise of
ongoing inquiry rather than a collection of upshots of investigation.14 The second was sent into the world, as the title indicates, as advice on how to go about gaining greater
intellectual control over one’s ideas than is furnished by the
ability correctly to apply, or even verbally to define them.
The advice runs as follows: “Consider what effects, which
might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the
object of our conceptions to have. Then our conception of
these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.”
Note that the first person plural is out front. Also, that conceiving remains irreducible!
Peirce never became a full-time professor. Not even at
Johns Hopkins, where John Dewey was briefly a student in
his logic class. But just about every major American author
in professional philosophy—William James, Josiah Royce,
John Dewey, George Herbert Mead, C.I. Lewis, Wilfrid Sellars—acknowledges being profoundly indebted to Peirce’s
teachings, pragmatism being one of these.
Pragmatism is, in itself, no doctrine of metaphysics, no attempt to determine any truth of things. It is merely a
method of ascertaining the meanings of hard words and of
abstract concepts. All pragmatists of whatsoever stripe will
cordially assent to that statement. As to the ulterior and indirect effects of practicing the pragmatistic method, that
is quite another affair.15
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Some of the Cambridge friends whom Peirce initially
persuaded to try bringing a laboratory scientist’s “let’s try it
and see” approach to bear on the study of “hard words,” particularly those used in metaphysics, suggested that he call
what he was offering “practicism” or “practicalism.” No,
Peirce responded, he had learned philosophy from Kant, and
in Kant the terms praktisch and pragmatisch were “as far
apart as the poles.”16 Praktisch belongs to the region of
thought where no mind of the experimentalist type can make
sure of solid ground under his feet. Pragmatisch expresses a
relation to some definite human purpose. “Now quite the
most striking feature of the new theory [is] its recognition of
an inseparable connection between rational cognition and
human purpose.”17
Here are two more statements of what pragmatism
amounts to:
I understand pragmatism to be a method of ascertaining the
meanings, not of all ideas, but only of what I call “intellectual concepts,” that is to say, of those upon the structure of
which arguments concerning objective fact may hinge. Had
the light which, as things are, excites in us the sensation of
blue, always excited the sense of red, and vice versa, however great a difference that might have made in our feelings,
it could have made none in the force of any argument. In
this respect, the qualities of hard and soft strikingly contrast
with those of red and blue. . . . My pragmatism, having
nothing to do with qualities of feeling, permits me to hold
that the predication of such a quality is just what it seems,
and has nothing to do with anything else. . . . Intellectual
concepts, however, the only sign-burdens that are properly
denominated “concepts”—essentially carry some implication concerning the general behavior either of some conscious being or of some inanimate object, and so convey
more, not merely than any feeling, but more too than any
existential fact, namely, the “would-acts” of habitual behavior; and no agglomeration of actual happenings can ever
completely fill up the meaning of a “would be.”18
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Again,
Pragmaticism19 consists in holding that the purport of any
concept is its conceived bearing upon our conduct. How,
then, does the Past bear upon conduct? The answer is selfevident: whenever we set out to do anything, we “go upon,”
we base our conduct on facts already known, and for these
we can only draw upon our memory. It is true that we may
institute a new investigation for the purpose; but its discoveries will only become applicable to conduct after they
have been made and reduced to a memorial maxim. In
short, the Past is the sole storehouse of all our knowledge.
When we say that we know that some state of things exists,
we mean that it used to exist, whether just long enough for
the news to reach the brain and be retransmitted to tongue
or pen or longer ago. . . . How does the Future bear upon
conduct? The answer is that future facts are the only facts
that we can, in a measure, control. . . . What is the bearing
of the Present instant upon conduct? . . . There is no time
in the Present for any inference at all, least of all for inference concerning that very instant. Consequently the present object must be an external object, if there be any
objective reference in it. The attitude of the present is either
conative or perceptive.20
Part 2. Peirce’s Transition from an Initial Idealism
to Scientific Realism
As Peirce has told us, he learned philosophy from Kant. Yet
from the start there was one Kantian doctrine he could not
stomach: the doctrine of “things-in-themselves” (Dinge an
sich) somehow standing behind the objects we meet with in
experience—inaccessible beings of which, Kant says, we
must always remain ignorant. In papers of the late 1860s,
Peirce insisted that all of our cognitions are signs, and that
each sign refers to a previous sign:
At any moment we are in possession of certain information, that is, of cognitions which have been logically de-
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rived by induction and hypothesis from previous cognitions which are less general, less distinct, and of which we
have a less lively consciousness. These in their turn have
been derived from others still less general, less distinct,
and less vivid; and so on back to the ideal first, which is
quite singular and quite out of consciousness. The ideal
first is the particular thing-in-itself. It does not exist as
such.21
According to Peirce at this stage, all thoughts are of one
or another degree of generality, each referring to an earlier
thought, and none immediately to its object. Only if a cognition were immediately of its object, could it be certain, hence
an intuition. Our lack of intuition, as thus argued by Peirce,
was his initial ground for rejecting Descartes’ Cogito, ergo
sum. The real, as Peirce conceived it at this time, was an ideal
limit to a series of thoughts, a limit to be reached in the future:
The real . . . is that which, sooner or later, information and
reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore
independent of the vagaries of me and you. Thus, the very
origin of the conception of reality shows that this conception essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY, without definite limits.22
Peirce here conceived all conceiving as in an infinite sequence of thoughts, stretching backward toward the non-existent
thing-in-itself (an external limit) and forward toward the real, to
be achieved at some future time (a limit located within the
thought sequence). A consequence was that any individual, considered as an “it” other than the universals true of it, is unreal.
With this consequence of his late-1860s theory of knowledge, Peirce was uncomfortable. If the aim is to get outside one’s
head and find a purchase on reality, it is indeed disastrous.23
Peirce at last found a way out in his “The Fixation of
Belief” of 1877:
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To satisfy our doubts . . . it is necessary that a method
should be found by which our beliefs may be caused by
nothing human, but by some external permanency—by
something on which our thinking has no effect. Such is the
method of science. Its fundamental hypothesis . . . is this:
There are real things, whose characters are entirely independent of our opinions about them; those realities affect
our senses according to regular law. . . .24
In “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” (1878), Peirce combined the hypothesis of real things on which our thinking has
no effect with his earlier notion of indefinite progress toward
human knowledge of the real:
Different minds may set out with the most antagonistic
views, but the progress of investigation carries them by a
force outside of themselves to one and the same conclusion. . . . The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed
to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth,
and the object represented in this opinion is the real.25
In the years 1879-1884, Peirce was a part-time lecturer
in logic at the Johns Hopkins University, and he and his students O.H. Mitchell and Christine Ladd-Franklin (independently of Frege in Germany) introduced quantifiers into
predicate logic and the logic of relations. Thus the familiar
universal and particular propositions of Aristotelian logic,
“All S is P,” “Some S is P,” come to be replaced by
(x)(Sx ⊃ Px) [read: For all x, if x is S, then x is P], and
(Ǝ x) (Sx·Px) [read: There is an x such that x is S and x is P],
where we have used a notation now standard. Note that the
“x” denotes an individual in whatever universe of discourse,
fictional or real, we have entered upon, without any presumption that the essence of this individual is known to us. In relational logic, which is needed for mathematics, indices are
crucial for representing dyadic, triadic, n-adic relations, e.g.,
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Rxy (read: x bears the relation R to y). All our thinking, according to Peirce in the 1880s and later, is laced with indexical elements, tying discourse to the world we’re in. The
index asserts nothing; it only says “There!” Like such words
as “here,” “now,” “this,” it directs the mind to the object denoted.
The discovery of the nature and indispensability of indices led to a vast extension of Peirce’s understanding of
signs and significance (the science of semeiotic he was seeking to build). An index is anything that compels or channels
attention in a particular direction. The act of attention responding to an index does not have to be a component of a
thought. For instance a driver, on seeing a stoplight go red,
may brake automatically without thinking; he thus interprets
the red light as a command. Therefore the effect of a sign, in
triggering an interpretation, need not be a thought; it can be
an action or a feeling. The extension of semeiotic to nonhuman interpreters is now in the offing, as will become apparent
in Part 4 below.
At the same time, Peirce has burst out of the closed-in
idealism of his earlier theory of knowledge. The result is what
we may call Scientific Realism.
Part 3. Anisotropic Processes
Just twelve years after the first copies of Origin of Species
landed in the U.S.A., Peirce wrote:
Mr. Darwin proposed to apply the statistical method to biology. The same thing had been done in a widely different
branch of science, the theory of gases. Though unable to
say what the movements of any particular molecule of a
gas would be on a certain hypothesis regarding the constitution of this class of bodies, Clausius and Maxwell [had
been able, eight years before the publication of Darwin’s
immortal work], by the application of the doctrine of prob-
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abilities, to predict that in the long run such and such a proportion of the molecules would, under the given circumstances, acquire such and such velocities; that there would
take place, every second, such and such a number of collisions, etc.; and from these propositions [they] were able
to deduce certain properties of gases, especially in regard
to their heat relations. In like manner, Darwin, while unable to say what the operation of variation and natural selection in any individual case will be, demonstrates that in
the long run they will adapt animals to their circumstances.26
Thus Peirce took explanation in both statistical mechanics
and Darwinian natural selection to be statistical. He meant,
Short argues, irreducibly statistical, and not mechanistic.27
Analyzed logically, a mechanistic explanation starts from a
particular disposition of certain bodies at some time, and by
applying general laws of mechanics, gravitation, chemistry,
electromagnetism, or other general theory, derives the particular disposition of these bodies at a later time. “Particular”
here is opposed to “general.” The explanations of Celestial
Mechanics are of this kind. The celestial mechanician, starting from the positions and velocities of the bodies in the solar
system at one instant, and assuming gravitational theory,
computes the positions and velocities of these bodies at a later
instant. If we should propose to ourselves a similar calculation for molecules of a gas confined in a container, we would
find it impracticable. The number of molecules is too large
(in a cubic centimeter of gas at one atmosphere of pressure
and 0°C. that number is about 2.7 × 1019, or 27 quintillion).
Ascertaining the positions and velocities of all these molecules at a specified “initial” instant is humanly impossible.
Moreover, the motions are not governed by a single law like
gravitation, but involve collisions of the molecules with each
other and the walls of the container; these introduce discontinuities that are difficult to take into account.
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But the crucial conclusion is this: even if such a computation were possible, it would not yield the conclusion for
which statistical mechanics argues. Statistical mechanics
seeks to establish that notably non-uniform distributions of
molecules in the gas will in time be replaced by a more uniform distribution, with reduction in the spread of velocities
amongst the molecules. The statistical argument invokes
probability.
How to understand probability in this context is by no
means settled, and we shall give only a rough indication of
the type of solution that is believed necessary.28 Consider a
system of n molecules of gas contained in a volume V. Let V
be divided into a large number m of equal cells, m being less
than n (if n is in quintillions, m could be in the millions or
billions). If the molecules were distributed with perfect uniformity throughout V, then each cell would contain n/m molecules. This distribution is a particular microstate—an
extremely special one, hence unlikely. We would expect that,
in most imaginable distributions, the numbers of molecules
in different cells would be different. To take this likelihood
into account, consider microstates in which the number of
molecules in all cells falls within the range n/m ± e, where e
is much less than n/m. Let the class of all microstates thus
characterized be called C, and let the complementary class,
or class of all microstates in which the number of molecules
in some cells falls outside the range n/m ± e, be called Cʹ′.
In the work of the earlier theorists, distinguishable microstates compatible with the overall energy of the gas were
assigned equal probabilities, since no reason presented itself
for assigning different probabilities to different microstates.
Later theorists sought grounds other than “equal ignorance”
for assigning probabilities to microstates. Whatever the mode
of assigning probabilities, the outcome must show the gas
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progressing from less uniform to more uniform distributions,
both spatially and with respect to the spread of velocities. For
that is the empirical result: a quantity of gas under high pressure, when let into an evacuated chamber, spreads out
through the chamber and is soon more homogeneously distributed, with a uniform temperature and pressure lower than
the original temperature and pressure.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics extends this kind
of reasoning to all natural systems. It says that in any closed
system the processes have a direction: they progress toward
greater homogeneity and reduced capacity to do mechanical
work.29 For processes that are directional in time, Short uses
the term anisotropic (a-privative + iso, “equal” + tropos, “direction”). Anisotropic processes are defined by the type toward which they progress. We shall see that there are
anisotropic processes other than those that instantiate the Second Law of Thermodynamics. All such processes, however,
differ from mechanical processes, which proceed from a particular configuration to a particular configuration.
Whether the universe is a closed system we do not know,
but everywhere in the observable world we see the effects of
the Second Law, the “degradation of energy.” Nevertheless,
we also see that new forms of order, though improbable,
sometimes emerge. They are produced in open systems that
absorb energy from, and discard unused matter and energy
to, the environment. Ilya Prigogine has described such forms
of order, calling them “dissipative systems.”30 Locally, in the
newly created form, the second law appears to be violated,
but if account is taken of the exhausted fuel and other waste
materials ejected to the environment, the second law is found
to hold. Higher forms of order come to be at the expense of
a decrease in order elsewhere, an increase in homogeneity
and a lessened capacity to produce novelty.
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The first coming-to-be of living forms in the universe presumably occurred in the manner of Prigogine’s “dissipative
systems.” Such is the hypothesis generally accepted by scientists today. Living systems differ from the cases studied by
Prigogine in their greater complexity and in having the capacity to self-replicate. In 1953 the graduate student S.L.
Miller under the guidance of H.C. Urey circulated a mixture
of methane, ammonia, water vapor, and hydrogen through a
liquid water solution, and elsewhere in the apparatus continuously passed an electrical discharge through the vaporous
mixture. After several days the water solution changed color,
and was found to contain a mixture of amino acids, the essential constituents of proteins. Since then, most if not all of
the essential building-blocks of proteins, carbohydrates, and
nucleic acids have been produced under conditions similar to
those obtaining when the Earth was young (the atmosphere
needs to be free of oxidizing agents such as oxygen). The sequences of conditions and chemical pathways by which these
building-blocks may have been assembled into a living cell
remain matters of speculation.
Darwin’s evolutionary theory, taking the existence of living things as given, goes on to show how, chiefly but not
solely by means of natural selection,31 biological evolution
can occur. Our little word “can” here goes to signal what
Nicholas Maistrellis calls “the highly theoretical, and even
speculative character” of Origin chapter 4, dedicated to expounding that and how Natural Selection “works.”
We should not expect a series of examples of natural selection designed to win us over to his theory on purely empirical grounds. Even if Darwin had wanted to proceed in
that way, he could not have done so, for such examples do
not exist—or at least were not known to Darwin. . . . Notice
that all the examples of natural selection in this chapter are,
as Darwin repeatedly acknowledges, imaginary ones.32
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Contemporary readers of Darwin have sometimes become so blasé about the shocking idea that order may emerge
out of disorder that they don’t notice how subtle, complex,
and distributed the over-all argument of Origin is. We have
found C. Kenneth Waters’ “The arguments in the Origin of
Species,” along with the other essays included in Part 1: Darwin’s Theorizing of The Cambridge Companion to Darwin,
particularly conducive to waking us up.
Peirce wrote, in A Guess at the Riddle (1887):
Whether the part played by natural selection and the survival of the fittest in the production of species be large or
small, there remains little doubt that the Darwinian theory
indicates a real cause, which tends to adapt animal and
vegetable forms to their environment. A remarkable feature
of it is that it shows how merely fortuitous variations of
individuals together with merely fortuitous mishaps to
them would, under the action of heredity, result, not in
mere irregularity, nor even in statistical constancy, but in
indefinite progress toward a better adaptation of means to
ends.33
A little later in this same manuscript Peirce sums up the basic
idea of Darwinian selection as follows:
There are just three factors in the process of natural selection; to wit: 1st, the principle of individual variation or
sporting; 2nd, the principle of hereditary transmission . . . ;
and 3rd, the principle of elimination of unfavorable characters.34
Darwin and Peirce lacked the benefit of a workable theory of inheritance. Nothing like our genetics was available
to them. We today single out genetic make-up as the causally
significant locale of “sporting,” And Peirce’s phrase, “elimination of unfavorable characters,” is replaced in more recent
neo-Darwinian formulations by the phrase “relative reproductive success,” meaning, the having of more numerous off-
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spring. The process is statistical: If one variant of a species
has more numerous offspring than do others, and if in addition these offspring survive to reproduce, the original variant,
possessed of one or more genetic alleles (alternative forms
of a gene), is more successful in propagating its genome to
later generations.
The hypothesis of Natural Selection confers little in the
way of predictive power. Its chief value is to provide a posthoc explanation of what has occurred. For example, visual
acuity is crucial to the survival of both predators and prey.
Evidently predators are better off with eyes in the front of
their heads as they pursue prey, and potential prey are better
off with eyes on the sides of their heads to detect predators
coming from any quarter. Another example: Flowers evolved
as a device by which plants induce animals to transport their
pollen (hence sperm) to the egg cells. The evolutionarily
older plants had been pollinated by the wind. The more attractive the plants were to an insect, the more frequently they
would be visited and the more seeds they would produce.
Any chance variation that made the visits more frequent or
made pollination more efficient offered immediate advantages.35
We can only guess at the detailed processes by which such
adaptations have been brought about. What Darwin gives us
is a heuristic for research, not a set of biological laws.36 Partly
on this account, because Darwinian explanation does not fit
the model of explanation in mechanics, it has taken a long
time before philosophers of science became willing to award
a comparable degree of intellectual dignity to Darwinian as
to Galilean and Newtonian science. The books listed in the
Bibliography appended to Maistrellis’s Selections help overcome the physics envy that stands in the way of appreciating
Darwin. Particularly helpful have been Sober’s persevering
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efforts to clarify and show the interconnections amongst the
fundamental concepts of Fitness, Function, Adaptation, and
Selection, while steadily reminding us of the ineliminably
probabilistic character of most of the theorizing of modern
evolutionary biology.
One of Sober’s helps into the saddle is his distinction between selection for and selection of:
Selection-for is a causal concept. To say that there is selection for trait T in a population means that having T
causes organisms to survive and reproduce better (so having the alternative(s) to T that are present in the population
causes organisms to survive and reproduce worse). In contrast, to say that there is selection of trait T just means that
individuals with T have a higher average fitness than do
individuals who lack T.37
Here is an illustration of the contrasting terms being put to
use:
Worms improve the soil, but that does not mean that their
digestive systems are adaptations for soil improvement;
rather, the worm gut evolved to help individual worms survive and reproduce. The benefit that the ecosystem receives is a fortuitous benefit—a useful side-effect
unrelated to what caused the trait to evolve. The gut’s ability to extract nutrition for individual worms is what the gut
is an adaptation for.38
To balance our earlier quotation from Maistrellis stressing
the not strictly empirically encountered character of Darwin’s
examples in his chapter about natural selection-at-work, notice that Sober feels quite comfortable about urging against
the philosopher Jerry Fodor, a critic of Darwinism, that “biologists often think they have excellent evidence for saying
that agricultural pests experienced selection for DDT resistance, [or] that there has been selection for dark coloration in
moths.”39
Short adopts Sober’s selection of/selection for contrast
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and, integrating it with Peircian ideas of explanation by final
causes, adapts it to new uses. The context is as follows. He
asks us to distinguish four kinds of physical process:
Mechanical processes that proceed from one particular
configuration to another and are reversible.
The processes described by statistical dynamics, which
are anisotropic and result in an increase in entropy and disorder.
The non-equilibrium processes studied by Prigogine,
which are also anisotropic, but produce open systems that
have increased order and diminished entropy. The dissipative structures can sustain themselves in the given environment for a time. Living things, we assume, are of this
kind—complex open systems that metabolize and have an
apparatus for replicating themselves.
With living things, a third sort of anisotropic process
comes into play: Natural Selection, the selection of characteristics for types of effect that conduce to reproductive
success.40
Given living things and their struggle for existence, given
heritable variability, given phenotypic features that in a given
state-of-its-world enhance a creature’s relative chance of producing fertile offspring, a new kind of directional process
comes into being, natural selection. And with it, the possibility of purpose comes on the scene.
Not that anything is a purpose or has a purpose in biological evolution before the actual occurrence of a mutation
that happens to be selectively retained because of some advantage that it confers. Only at that time, that is, when a
feature is selected for its effect, does the effect, say visual
acuity, become a purpose. There was no purpose “visual
acuity” or “adaptedness” or “survival” hanging around
waiting for an opportunity. But once eyes with adjustable
lenses become a feature of mammals, then it would only
be mechanicalist prejudice that could keep us from saying
that eyes exist for the purpose of seeing.41
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Sober’s polar terms selection of/selection for are perhaps
worked harder and a little differently than they were previously:
It is because lenses and focusing increase visual acuity that
genetic mutations resulting in lenses and focusing were retained in subsequent generations; in fact, that happened in
independent lines of animal evolution. The selection in
those cases was for the visual acuity and of concrete structures (or the genes that determine them) that improved visual acuity in specific ways. . . . The of/for distinction is
relative to the level of analysis, but the object of ‘for’ is always an abstract type and the object of ‘of ’ is always
something genetic or genetically determined, hence concrete. . . . As the type selected-for is essential to explanation
by natural selection, such explanation is like anisotropic
explanation in statistical mechanics [in that] both explain
actual phenomena by the types they exemplify. Hence it is
not mechanistic. . . . It is qua adaptation—hence in that aspect—that [an adaptive feature, say S] is explained by natural selection. S could also be explained, had we knowledge
enough, as a product of a complicated series of mechanical
events. But, then, S’s enhancing reproductive success
would seem a surprising coincidence, a bit of biological
luck. S’s being an adaptation would not be explained.42
The “aptness” of organisms is one of the facts of life
that the Darwinian program of explanation seeks to account
for. Having had some success in this explanatory endeavor,
we easily forget that there is no guarantee that evolution
will bring about an increase in complexity or intelligence
or other quality that we admire. Overstatement here, Short
warns us, is common, and disastrous.43 Notice too that natural selection was not itself selected, and therefore does not
have a purpose. It just occurs.
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Part 4. The Emergence of Intentionality and
Conscious Purposes
Cleverly joining Peircean reasoning to the more recent formulations of neo-Darwinian theory, Short’s Theory sketches
a narrative that strives to make intelligible the eventual emergence of the possibility of deliberately produced tools and
self-controlled action out of advantageous anatomy and biologically useful animal behavior. Here one must go slow and
notice that it is as the world comes to hold new kinds of entity
that new kinds of explanation become applicable.44 Short is
not reducing biological explanation to chemical explanation.
Nor will he assimilate human discourse to animal signaling.45
The last three chapters of his book are given over to exploring the implications of applying Peirce’s ideas of sign-action
(= semeiosis) to distinctively human language, thought, and
life. But unless we work from the bottom up, there is no explaining of emergents.
“Working from the bottom up” means for Short that he
must develop so general an account of Peirce’s semiotic triad
Sign-Object-Interpretant that it will be applicable both to
infra-human sign-interpretation—end-directed animal responses to stimuli—and, duly amplified, to distinctively
human life and thought. For Short, this behaviorist interlude
is in the service of Peirce’s Synechism:46 If successful in his
defense of Peirce’s ways, he will have warded off both Cartesian dualism and Reductionism.47
Among social animals, group behavior is determined by
mechanisms that cause one individual to respond to another.
A forager bee, for instance, having located nectar, returns to
the hive and there exhibits what look like dances. The bees
in the hive react to these dances as signaling the direction and
distance in which the nectar will be found. Ethologists have
instructed us that there is an immense variety of animal be-
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haviors that operate as though they were intended as communicative signs. By what criteria one determines the intendedness
of a bird- or monkey-cry the emission of which tends to result
in fellow-birds or fellow-monkeys reacting with behavior that
makes sense for the creatures in question (e.g., escaping in
an appropriate way from a certain kind of predator, or overcoming reluctance to approach more closely) has been a topic
for ethological investigation. But every parent is familiar with
the fact that infant wailing and screaming is not, in the earlier
phases of its life, an expression of the infant’s intention to
rouse its protectors. Yet when the infant is a little older its
jealous brother may justly complain: “She is not crying for a
reason. She’s crying for a purpose!”
We have deliberately introduced the word “intend” in its
ordinary sense before returning to the topic of intentionality
in Brentano’s scholastic and technical sense. (Unhappiness
about the lack of a non-dualist treatment of Intentionality was
what initially motivated our exploration of Short’s book on
Peirce’s semeiotics.) Unlike many semioticians, Short follows in Peirce’s footsteps by beginning with interpretive behavior, not with the sending of signs.48 This permits him to
take off from responses. For instance:
The deer does not flee the sudden noise that startled it, but
a predator; for it is to evade a predator that the deer flees.
The instinct to flee is based on an experienced correlation
of sudden noises to predators; the correlation is weak, but,
unless the deer is near starvation, it is better for it to risk
losing a meal than to risk being one. If no predator is there,
the deer’s flight is a mistake, albeit justified. Mistaken or
not, the flight interprets the noise as a sign of a predator.
A response is not merely an effect if it can be mistaken. It
ranks as an interpretation.
In what manner and measure this idea of mistake is available to infra-human animals is a hard question. When the dog
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that was, in some human observer’s estimation, “barking up
the wrong tree,” corrects itself and, redirecting its bark to the
neighboring tree, glimpses the spot where the cat in fact now
is, does the dog think to itself, “Now I’ve got it right”? Consider two other examples of interpretive responses, both reported by the ethologist Niko Tinbergen: male sticklebacks,
during the breeding season, tend to adopt a “threat posture”
toward potential rivals.
When the opponent does not flee . . . the owner of the territory . . . points its head down and, standing vertically in
the water, makes some jerky movements as if it were going
to bore its snout into the sand. Often it erects one or both
ventral fins.49
Tinbergen’s Plate I is a photo of a Stickleback exhibiting this
posture to its own reflection in a mirror! We know this fish is
making a mistake. Does he?
Lorenz reports . . . an incident which demonstrates the
power of [some varieties of Cichlid] to distinguish between
food and their young. Many Cichlids carry the young back,
at dusk, to a kind of bedroom, a pit they have dug in the
bottom. Once Lorenz, together with some of his students,
watched a male collecting its young for this purpose. When
it had just snapped up a young one, it eyed a particularly
tempting little worm. It stopped, looked at the worm for
several seconds, and seemed to hesitate. Then, after these
seconds of “hard thinking,” it spat out the young, took up
the worm and swallowed it, and then picked up its young
one again and carried it home. The observers could not
help applauding.50
The antelope that fled from a lion that wasn’t there, the stickleback that threatened a rival that wasn’t there, did they interpret something heard, something seen, as to-be-run-from,
to-be-ousted? Their behaviors, while in error in the particular
cases, were appropriate. And this holds true whether or not
these individual animals “knew what they were doing.”
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Something like this is, we take it, what Short meant when he
wrote: 51
The purposefulness of interpretation accounts for the significance of that which is interpretable. In particular, as
that which has a purpose may fail of its purpose, the purposefulness of interpretations accounts for the possibility
that what is signified is not. Because what is signified
might not be, significance exemplifies Brentano’s idea of
intentionality, which he defined as having an “inexistent
object,” i.e., an object that is an object independently of its
existing. Brentano asserted that intentionality is unique to
human mentality, but the argument of [Short’s] book is that
sign-interpretation occurs independently of conscious
thought and, hence, that Peirce’s semeiotic applies to phenomena well beyond human mentality. Thus it provides for
a naturalistic explanation of the mind. But that is possible
only if purposefulness can occur without consciousness.
Peirce’s doctrine of final causation c. 1902 provides a defense of that assumption. For it identifies causation with
selection for types of possible outcome, regardless of
whether that selection is conscious. And it does so consistently with modern physics and biology.52
But the question that arose when we considered the dog
that eventually managed to bark at the cat is still with us: The
dog, in our judgment and in fact, “corrected itself.” And we
know that learning, in the sense of an individual’s behavior
being shaped “for the better” by its experience, is a constituent of the lives of very many (all?) animals. But did the
dog know that it corrected itself? Consider Lorenz’s much applauded Cichlid father, which had its worm and its baby too.
Mustn’t it have had some sort of “inner representation” of the
alternative courses of conduct between which it chose?
We seem at last to have reached the question of when and
how conscious purpose, planning, and self-control emerge.
Short’s entire book, not just the chapter bearing the name
“Semeiosis and the Mental,” is in pursuit of it. Given that
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Peirce regarded thought to be internalized discourse, and that
an individual’s power of discourse is a skill that could not
have been acquired had that individual’s “instinct to acquire
the art” (as Darwin put it) not been activated in the course of
apprenticeship to speakers, Short and Peirce are clearly right
that “the capacity to think for oneself and to act in despite of
society is . . . social in origin.” He adds: “Individual autonomy and varied personality are further examples of the irreducibility of new realities to their preconditions.”53 Among
such “new realities” are not only new means to accomplish
existing purposes but also new purposes.
Because Short, under Peirce’s tutelage, is wholehearted
about accepting the Reality of purpose and purposiveness and
is unembarrassed about following Darwin in naturalizing
man, his investigation of how purpose can and has become
“emancipated” from biology has real content.54
Conclusion
We have seen that, according to Peirce, both statistical mechanics and Darwinian natural selection entail anisotropic
processes, defined by the type of result they lead to. The
“population thinking” that Darwin and later biologists introduced into biology was aimed at accounting for the emergence of biological types or species. The new thinking
differed from the typological thinking of pre-Darwinian times
in that the types or species arose in time.
Among the virtues of Short’s presentation of Peirce is that
he gives a sufficiently detailed description of Peirce’s Categories (in Ch.3) for readers to be supplied with opportunity
to become persuaded that Peirce’s trinitarian categorial
scheme accommodates Individuals and Kinds as mutually irreducible. Here is, however, not the place to exhibit or argue
the point.
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Why was the reception of Darwin at St. John’s so lukewarm in earlier days? The theoretical physicist’s impatience
with fussy descriptive details such as are dwelt on in Origin
(and must be by natural historians) was probably a contributing factor; and one that would have been exacerbated if the
assigned selection from Origin was pedagogically haphazard.
But vague apprehensions about the moral and philosophical
import of Darwin’s theory may have contributed more heavily to avoiding serious intellectual engagement with it.
Darwin himself anticipated this reaction. He explains (in
the Introduction to Descent of Man) that it was in order not
to stand in the way of the reading public’s making fair trial
of his general views that he allowed himself just one tiny
paragraph, on the final pages of Origin, that makes direct
mention of man:
In the distant future . . . psychology will be based on a new
foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown
on the origin of man and his history.
Twelve years later, in Descent of Man, the scope of Darwin’s intellectual ambition is made manifest. In Ch.3 he takes
on Kant:
“Duty . . . whence thy original?” . . . As far as I know, no
one has approached [this great question] exclusively from
the side of natural history.
So “approaching it,” Darwin writes:
The following proposition seems to me in a high degree
probable—namely, that any animal whatever, endowed
with well-marked social instincts, would inevitably acquire
a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well developed, or nearly as well developed, as in man.55
His plan is to show how, granted the rest of our mental at-
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
tributes and the world’s make-up, the human species does
better with than it would without morality. Otherwise morality (sense of duty, conscience) and the instruments for its acquisition and maintenance could not have become “selected.”
But isn’t there something topsy-turvy about an explanation that subordinates, as means, something better, namely a
creature competent to have a sense of duty, to an end less
good, namely, mere comparative fitness for producing fertile
offspring? The complaint, we urge, limps, because it fails to
register that when something is fruitful and multiplies or fails
to, it is as a creature possessed of certain attributes that it
does so. Darwin freely ascribes sociability, intelligence, and
emotions (sympathy, jealousy, ennui, curiosity, courage, maternal affection, and so forth) to, for instance, domestic animals.56 Nevertheless, he reserves morality for human beings:
As we cannot distinguish between motives, we rank all actions of a certain class as moral, when they are performed
by a moral being. A moral being is one who is capable of
comparing his past or future actions or motives, and of approving or disapproving of them. We have no reason to suppose that any of the lower animals have this capacity;
therefore when a monkey faces danger to rescue its comrade, or takes charge of an orphan monkey, we do not call
its conduct moral. . . . It cannot be maintained that the social
instincts are ordinarily stronger in man than, . . . for instance, the instinct of self-preservation, hunger, lust. . . .
Why, then, does man regret . . . and why does he further
feel he ought to regret his conduct? . . . Man, from the activity of his mental faculties, cannot avoid reflection. . . .
Whilst the mother bird is feeding or brooding over her
nestlings, the maternal instinct is probably stronger than the
migratory; but . . . at last, at a moment when her young ones
are not in sight, she takes flight and deserts them. When arrived at the end of her long journey, and the migratory instinct ceases to act, what an agony of remorse each bird
would feel if, being endowed with great mental activity, she
could not prevent the image continually passing before her
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | WILSON AND MASCHLER
117
mind of her young ones perishing in the bleak north from
cold and hunger. At the moment of action, man will no
doubt be apt to follow the stronger impulse. . . . But after
their gratification, when past and weaker impressions are
contrasted with the ever enduring social instincts, retribution will surely come. Man will then feel dissatisfied with
himself, and will resolve with more or less force to act differently for the future. This is conscience; for conscience
looks backwards and judges past actions, inducing that kind
of dissatisfaction which, if weak, we call regret, and if severe remorse.57
Darwin seems to have come upon Aristotle late in life and
recognized a soul-mate in him. He would, we believe, have
been in delighted agreement upon reading Aristotle’s observation in History of Animals, Book 1, 488b24, that we are the
only creatures capable of deliberating (bouleutikon):
Many animals have the power of memory, and can be
trained, but the only one that can recall past events at will
(dunatai anamimnēskesthai) is man.
Where are we then? Conscience, says Darwin in the
opening sentence of Descent of Man, Ch.3, is the chief mark
of distinction of the human race. Conscience cannot come
into existence or operate without the power of recollection.
The power of recollection (though no texts come to mind
where anyone of our three authors says this expressly) depends upon the power to learn and employ not just a communicative medium but an articulate language.58 Beings of
this sort, Peirce the logician will come to argue ever more
strenuously as he ages, are capable of acting not just in a motivated way, but in accordance with an ideal:
Every action has a motive; but an ideal only belongs to a
line of conduct which is deliberate. To say that conduct is
deliberate implies that each action, or each important action, is reviewed by the actor and that his judgment is
passed upon it, as to whether he wishes his future conduct
�THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
118
to be like that or not. His ideal is the kind of conduct which
attracts him upon review. His self-criticism followed by a
more or less conscious resolution that in its turn excites a
determination of his habit, will, with the aid of sequelae,
modify a future action; but it will not generally be a moving
cause to action.59
Permit us to conclude with an anecdote. A recent movie
presented a small group of adults with the situation of a male
high-school teacher accepting seduction by one of his beautiful girl-students. Ever intent on discussing la difference, one
of the men in the group of movie watchers asked “Do you
blame the teacher?” “Yes,” was the answer, “because although it may indeed be true that it is harder for young men
than for young women to resist sexual arousal, the teacher
knowingly entered upon a profession that he could foresee
would present him with such situations as he was now in. He
should, taking advantage of the human power of imagination,
have rehearsed inwardly how he would act if the world presented him with an opportunity that he should turn down.”60
With Peirce’s help, and instructed by Short, we hope to
have shown in this essay that nothing in Darwin interferes
with acknowledging the emergence of organisms competent
to entertain and criticize ideals. This is the kind of organism
we human beings are.
NOTES
1. According to Ernst Mayr in his One Long Argument: Charles Darwin
and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1991), what later authors think and speak of
as “Darwin’s Theory” is a combination of four or five strands—evolution
as such, common descent, multiplication of species, gradualism, and natural selection.
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | WILSON AND MASCHLER
119
2. See Ernst Mayr’s Introduction to Charles Darwin, On the Origin of
Species: A Facsimile of the First Edition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1972), xii.
3. John Dewey, The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy (New York:
Henry Holt, 1910).
4. Ernst Mayr in Evolution and Anthropology (Washington: Anthropological Society of Washington, 1959), 2; also given in Mayr’s Introduction to Darwin’s On the Origin of Species: A Facsimile, xix-xx.
5. See Elliott Sober, “Evolution, population thinking, and essentialism,”
Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology, ed. Elliott Sober, (Boston:
MIT Press, 2001).
6. In the seminar described at the beginning of this essay, Clark was the
sole participant to speak up in defense of Darwin’s theory.
7. In his book Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkt (Leipzig:
Duncker und Humblot, 1874).
8. Jasha spoke with admiration of Husserl’s repeated efforts to start all
over again from the beginning, in formulating the archai of philosophy.
Husserl’s notion of sedimentation in the sciences—our tendency to take
earlier achievements for granted—was a theme that Jasha took up in his
studies of the origins of algebra and of the work of Galileo. Seeking to
understand Jasha’s Husserlian antecedents, I read a good deal of Husserl
during the years I was reading Peirce. A lecture I gave in September, 1959,
was based on Husserl’s Erfahrung und Urteil.
9. The importance of this fact was first established by Murray Murphey,
in The Development of Peirce’s Philosophy, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1961.)
10. Thomas L. Short, Peirce’s Theory of Signs (Cambridge: Cambridge Universty Press, 2007). I was introduced to this book by Chaninah Maschler.
11. The Essential Peirce, edited by the Peirce Edition Project, 2 Vols.
(Bloomingdale, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1998), Vol. 2, 400. In
further references to this publication will be abbreviated to EP.
12. Ibid., 516.
13. These articles are reprinted in EP, Vol. 1, 109-123, 124-141.
14. Thomas L. Short, in a forthcoming second book about Peirce, gives
a detailed defense of this Peircean understanding of the sciences.
15. EP, Vol. 2, 400. Italics added.
16. See Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, “Of the Canon of Pure
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Reason,” A800 = B828 ff. Kant there explains, “By the practical I mean
everything that is possible through freedom.”
17. EP, Vol. 2, 333.
18. Ibid., 401.
19. Peirce eventually (as here) made the name of the -ism ugly, “to keep
it safe from being kidnapped.” Consider what Peirce writes about how his
thinking does or doesn’t differ from that of William James, EP, Vol. 2, 421.
20. EP, Vol. 2, 358f. For a lucid brief description of Peirce’s later “subjunctive” version of pragmatism, one which acknowledges that “modern
science . . . is practice engaged in for the sake of theory,” see Short,
Peirce’s Theory of Signs, 173, second paragraph.
21. EP, Vol. 1, 52.
22. Ibid.
23. For other difficulties with his theory in the 1860s, see Short, Peirce’s
Theory of Signs, ch. 2.
24. EP, Vol. 1, 120.
25. EP, Vol. 1, 138-139.
26. EP, Vol. 1, “The Fixation of Belief,” 111; for the square bracketed
emendations, see ibid., 377.
27. Cf. EP, Vol. 1, 289f.
28. See Paul Ehrenfest and Tatyana Ehrenfest, The Conceptual Foundations of the Statistical Approach in Mechanics (New York: Dover, 1958.)
29. Cf. EP, Vol. 1, 221.
30. Ilya Prigogine, From Being to Becoming (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1980). See also Stuart A. Kauffman, “Antichaos and Adaptation,”
in Scientific American, August 1991, 78-84.
31. See the concluding sentence of the potent last paragraph of Darwin’s
Introduction to On the Origin of Species. Gould and Lewontin, in their
famous protest against unrestrained Adaptationism (“The Spandrels of
San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptionist
Programme,” in Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology, ed. Elliott
Sober, [Boston: MIT Press, 2001]), cite this sentence and add an approving reference to George. J. Romanes’s essay “The Darwinism of Darwin,
and of the Post-Darwinian Schools” (in The Monist 6:1 [1895], 1-27).
Romanes would join Gould and Lewontin when they write: “We should
cherish [Darwin’s] consistent attitude of pluralism in attempting to ex-
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | WILSON AND MASCHLER
121
plain Nature’s complexity” (82).
32. Selections from Darwin’s The Origin of Species: The Shape of the Argument, ed., Nicholas Maistrellis (Santa Fe: Green Lion Press, 2009), 43.
33. EP, Vol 1, 200. For a correction of this overly cheerful scenario of inevitable progress see, e.g., Elliott Sober, “Selection-for: What Fodor and
Piattelli-Palmarini Got Wrong,” 11. This essay is available on the internet
at the following URL:
http://philosophy.wisc.edu/sober/Fodor%20and%20Piatelli-Palermini%20april%209%202010.pdf
34. EP, Vol. 1, 272. Cf. Darwin, On the Origin of Species: A Facsimile,
127.
35. Helena Curtis, Biology (New York: Worth, 1979).
36. Equally important, perhaps, is the inspiration of Darwin’s intellectual
attitude—omni-observant, persevering, sober—to which Maistrellis calls
attention.
37. Elliott Sober, The Nature of Selection: Evolutionary Theory in Philosophical Focus (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1984).
38. The example stems from Williams via Elliott Sober and David Sloan
Wilson, “Adaptation and Natural Selection Revisited,” in the Journal of
Evolutionary Biology 24 (February 2011), 462-8. In this article, the authors are “revisiting” George C. Williams’s book on adaptation in order
to make sure the world knows that the book was a landmark in the development of evolutionary theory.
39. Elliott Sober, “Fodor’s Bubbe Meise Against Darwinism,” in Mind and
Language 23 (February 2008), 43. (Bubbe meise is Yiddish for “old wives’
tale.”) This article is also available on the internet at the following URL:
http://philosophy.wisc.edu/sober/fodor's%20bubbe%20meise%20published.pdf
40. When Herbert Spencer attempted to explain evolution on mechanical
principles, Peirce countered that the endeavor was illogical. See EP, Vol.
1, 289. Among Peirce’s arguments was this: the law of conservation of
energy implies that all operations governed by mechanical laws are reversible. Whence follows the corollary that growth is not explicable by
those laws, even though they are not violated in the process of growth.
41. Private communication from Thomas Short, March 19, 2012.
42. Short, Peirce’s Theory of Signs, 130. Italics in last sentence added.
43. Ibid., 145
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
44. Ibid., 144-145.
45. As Allen Clark wrote in a manuscript never published (“The Contributions of Charles S. Peirce to Value Theory,” 4), “No philosopher . . .
would be less inclined than Peirce to minimize the tremendous importance of the transformation that occurs when inquiry [or any other adaptive behavior] rises from the unconscious to the conscious level. For it is
at this second stage that man transcends the animal faculty of merely responding to naturally given signs, those perceptual clues furnished by nature; he begins to make signs, and to respond to signs of his own making,
and thus learns to provoke his own responses.”
46. “Synechism is Peirce’s doctrine that human mentality is continuous
with the rest of nature,” writes Thomas Short in his exchange with the
critics of his book, “Response,” in Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce
Society 43 (Fall 2007), 666.
47. Ibid. Dewey’s essay of 1896, “The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology” (Psychological Review 3 [July, 1896], 357-370) is offered in the
same, perhaps Hegel-inspired, spirit of synechism. (This article is available on the internet at the following URL:
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Dewey/reflex.htm.) But a more instructive
comparison would be between Thomas Short’s account of Peirce and the
life-long work of James J. Gibson, for instance, The Senses Considered
as Perceptual Systems (Boston: Houghton Miffin, 1966) and The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin,
1979.).
48. See Short, Peirce’s Theory of Signs, 156f.
49. Niko Tinbergen, Social Behavior of Animals, Methuen’s Monographs
on Biological Subjects, Vol. 1 (New York: Taylor and Francis, 1953), 9.
50. Ibid., 45. The following anecdote of Darwin’s in his chapter comparing the mental powers of lower animals with human mental powers seems
to be to the same effect: “Mr. Colquhoun winged two wild ducks, which
fell on the opposite sides of a stream; his retriever tried to bring over both
at once, but could not succeed; she then, though never before known to
ruffle a feather, deliberately killed one, brought over the other, and returned for the dead bird.” Charles Darwin, Descent of Man (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1981), 48.
51. Further clarifying remarks on Intentionality are given by Short in
Peirce’s Theory of Signs, 174-177.
52. Elliott Sober, “Fodor’s Bubbe Meise Against Darwinism,” 669.
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | WILSON AND MASCHLER
123
53. Short, Peirce’s Theory of Signs, 147.
54. Ibid., 148.
55. Darwin, Descent of Man, 71.
56. See Charles Darwin’s 1872 book Expression of the Emotions in Man
and Animals, ed. Paul Ekman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
57. Darwin, Descent of Man, Ch.3, 88-91.
58. Ibid., Ch.2, 54.
59. EP, Vol. 2, 377. Survey the Index to EP, Vol. 2 under “self-control.”
60. The answer is inspired by Peirce’s report of his childhood memory of
his younger brother’s having prepped himself in imagination for preventing the spread of a small fire. See EP, Vol. 2, 413.
�THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
124
The Laws of Physics
Marlene Benjamin
In Memoriam
People say that the Laws of Physics
Are immutable,
Beyond the reach of hopes and dreams,
Immune to wishes,
And entirely indifferent to desire.
They say that the Laws of Physics
Are as solid in their abstractness as the materials
Whose movements they describe,
Whose broad encompassing axioms
Place with near precision all heavenly bodies,
All rocks and debris,
All breathing creatures—even us,
With all our singularity—
Within the vastness of this complicated
And wholly relational world,
Measuring all places with a confidence
In basic principles (as if some genius had bestowed upon
them personality)
The rest of us admire but so rarely can attain.
There is beauty in the Laws of Physics,
The beauty and elegance of those simple Euclidean equations
I struggled over long ago,
The amazing loveliness of a singularly striking accomplishment.
Marlene Benjamin is Associate Professor Emerita at Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts, and now lives in California. She is currently working on a
book entitled The Catastrophic Self: Philosophy, Memoir, and Medical Trauma.
�POEM
125
And yet this question haunts us:
Why should we not believe as Greeks believed?
Why should we not believe
That what we now call myths are really legends,
Embellished, we agree, yet legends nonetheless . . .
Why should we not have the confidence with which the
Greeks were blessed,
And take some tales of ordinary people, whose lives were touched
By strange and unexpected happenings, as legends of our own,
So that the Laws of Physics or Biology
Or of all the Natural Philosophies
Were not, as we believe, constraining,
But rather showed us ourselves as god-like,
Whose dreams inscribe upon the world what pleases us,
Able, like Athena, come full blown out of Zeus’s head
To enact the Laws of Physics to suit ourselves?
Then would you come walking back
To family and friends,
But especially, most especially, to wife and daughter;
All your molecules and atoms shaped perfectly again
Into your singularly recognizable form,
Striding purposefully and with that grin of yours
And, as on any ordinary day,
There would you be,
Arriving home,
Whole and un-bloodied,
Back into the life you should be living still.
�
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The St. John’s Review
Volume 54, Number 2 (Spring 2013)
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Elliott Zuckerman
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��Contents
Essays & Lectures
Unbecoming Conduct in the Reign of Tiberius ....................1
According to Tacitus
David Appleby
Dionysus: The Therapeutic Mask .......................................35
Richard B. Carter
Fields, Particles, and Being .................................................57
Dylan Casey
Miracles and Belief .............................................................89
Joseph Cohen
The Question of Questions ...............................................115
Michael W. Grenke
Review
The Rehabilitation of Spiritedness ....................................135
Book Review of Gary Borjesson’s Willing Dogs
and Reluctant Masters: On Friendship and Dogs.
Eva Brann
��1
ESSAYS & LECTURES
Unbecoming Conduct in the
Reign of Tiberius According to
Tacitus
David Appleby
Besides, there is a great difference between doing what one does not approve of
and feigning approval of what one does:
the one is the part of a weak man, but the
other belongs only to the habits of a valet.
—De Tocqueville1
1. INTRODUCTION
One of the few positive characteristics Tacitus attributed to
Tiberius was an interest in public moderation: the proper, the
decorous, and the fitting. A memorable example occurs in 22
AD, a year of peace abroad but anxiety in Rome about possible measures to curb rampant luxury. Aware of the princeps’
old fashioned frugality, and in view of widespread neglect of
the existing sumptuary law, the senate simply referred the
matter to Tiberius. He had often remarked in private that attempting to limit these excessive appetites might not be worth
the indecency (indecorum) of trying and failing, or succeeding through coercive measures and bringing great men into
dishonor and ill-repute (ignominiam et infamiam). He answered the senate in a letter decrying shameful luxury: vast
houses and domestic retinues, rich furnishings and ornament,
foppish attire for men, exotic gems for women, over-the-top
banquets. All were symptoms of an illness of the soul, one
that harms the state even as it ruins great families. “May decency (pudor) change us for the better—the poor because they
must; the wealthy because they have had enough.”2
The Annales make it clear that self-interest, ambition, and
David Appleby is a tutor at Thomas Aquinas College in Santa Paula,
California.
�2
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
vice led Tiberius to present himself as an enemy of unbecoming conduct. By contrast, Tacitus’s own concern for decorum
was deep and sincere. The obligation to speak and behave
with dignity and seemliness, with the attendant imperative to
avoid unbecoming conduct, was a principle of his moral and
social world-view. I shall argue that one of his greatest objections to the new regime under the Caesars was that it created a climate in which members of the senatorial order,
Roman society’s natural leaders, were induced to behave in
disreputable ways. When the public arena in Rome became
a sort of theater in which great men routinely presented themselves in ways that were false, unworthy, and ridiculous, not
only individuals and their families were disgraced, but the
whole class was placed in an unflattering light. In Tacitus’s
judgment, this was one of the most unforgiveable effects of
the tyranny.
Why did Tacitus take such an interest in seemliness? Two
main reasons present themselves, the first more obvious than
the second. In the first place, Tacitus was keenly aware of
style and its effect upon readers. As we shall see, an important
aspect of decorous speech and behavior was paying attention
to how others perceive one’s words, gestures, and facial expression. Educated Romans knew that identifying what is
seemly involves anticipating how one’s interlocutors will perceive one’s words and appearance. As annalist, historian, biographer and ethnographer, Tacitus represented reality in a
highly personal and even idiosyncratic manner. But his words
seem always to have been chosen for their likely impact upon
readers. He created the effects that he sought through vivid
description, asymmetrical construction, oblique narration,
and epigrammatic brevity, disposing readers not only to behold the spectacle in a certain light, but to judge along with
the author. Anticipated impact upon his reader seems to dictate word choice, sentence structure, and narrative strategy.
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | APPLEBY
3
What he described—wars and mutinies, plots and murders,
above all the gloomy sense of impending dread under the
Julio-Claudians—is memorable in large part because of the
way he described it.3
His arresting style tends to obscure the second reason for
his interest in seemliness, namely his practical experience as
magistrate and orator. The son of a senatorial family in southern Gaul or northern Italy, Tacitus belonged to a privileged
social order whose members felt entitled to honor their ancestors by exercising authority and generally playing the
leading roles in affairs of state. Along with this came an obligation to present oneself in word, gesture, and deed in conformity with one’s social standing. With this innate sense of
duty and appropriateness, he began an official career under
Vespasian (r. 69-79), continued it during the difficult reign of
Domitian (r. 81-96), and in 97 became consul under Nerva
(r. 96-98). Under Trajan (r. 98-117), Tacitus delivered an important funeral oration, joined his friend Pliny the younger
in a high profile prosecution, and served as proconsular governor of Asia. He was known as an impressive speaker, and
around the year 100 he published a treatise on style and various sorts of oratory. In short, as man of action no less than
as man of letters, Tacitus was attuned to appearance and how
one is perceived.
2 DECORUM
Before investigating seemliness in the Annales, it is worth
considering the idea in the tradition within which Tacitus
worked and in the pages of one of his distinguished Roman
predecessors. The noun decorum refers in the first place to
the beauty or pleasing appearance of a thing or person; it applies secondarily to non-visual beauty, elegance, charm, and
distinction; and then it opens onto other things that are appropriate, seemly, and fitting in ways that attract honor and
approval. Like to prepon, its Greek counterpart, decorum is
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hard to render consistently with one word in English because
of its range of aesthetic, histrionic, forensic, and moral meanings. In the rhetorical tradition to prepon had been a principle
since Aristotle and Theophrastus, and by the time of Quintilian (d. ca.100) decorum applied to invention, style, arrangement, and delivery. Quintilian owed an immediate debt to
Cicero (106-43 BC) whose remark in De oratore that “by action the body talks, so it is all the more necessary to make it
agree with the thought”4 bears some relation to the subject at
hand.
Cicero’s expansive account of decorum as a moral concept in Book I of his De officiis helps us to approach the intellectual milieu of the Annales; for Tacitus, while not himself
a Ciceronian, still wrote for, and belonged to, a class that understood itself as embodying the urbanity and standards of
conduct that Cicero assumed as normative.5 The discussion
of what is honorable that occurs in Book I of De officiis includes a consideration of the four cardinal virtues as the
source of all moral goodness, and hence the source of all that
is honorable.6 Decorum and the duties it entails spring from
the broader virtue of moderation.7
Decorum consists in thinking, saying, and doing what one
should, and in appearing to be as morally well ordered as one
is. Since the decorous is neither deficient nor excessive, it reflects moderation, and this is understood not only with respect to particular objects or actions, but as the overall
balance, order, and harmony of the soul, and as the beauty of
the life of one who enjoys such moral equilibrium. Cicero
presents decorum as the outward manifestation of the soul’s
integrity, the moral analogue of physical beauty.8 Decorum
is thus the perceptible aspect of moral goodness; every act of
moral rectitude, whether in thought, word, or deed, reveals
some element of propriety. Just as the beauty of the body reflects bodily health, decorum reflects moral virtue.9
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Cicero also emphasizes the social aspect of decorum: the
good person’s speech, actions, and appearance make his
moral virtue discernible to others; and the good person has
modesty (verecundia)—that is, he shows consideration for
the sensibilities of others. Much of the discussion of decorum
in De officiis aims at instilling in the reader a greater awareness of the impression he makes upon others. Cicero explains
that playwrights have just this aspect of decorum in mind
when they craft words and actions to express the qualities of
a particular role (persona).10 The audience knows the characters in the play only by what it can infer from their words,
expressions, gestures, and deeds. As a sort of playwright outside the theater, nature assigns us the parts (personae) of consistency, moderation, and self-control, but also teaches us to
have respect for others and to attend to how we appear to
them. Once again comparing decorum to physical beauty,
Cicero says that just as the order and symmetry of the limbs
of a body attract the eye and please the viewer, decorum,
which illuminates the whole life, is an order, consistency, and
moderation of every word and deed that attracts the approval
of the people among whom we live.11
According to Cicero, the duties associated with propriety
are rooted in nature. This means, in the first instance, submitting the appetites to the control of reason, especially in
one’s pastimes, joking, and pleasures. One thereby avoids the
vulgarity and sensuality of an uncontrolled, irrational, or bestial life, and instead lives with the self-control and steadiness
appropriate to man’s rational nature.12 These are fundamental
matters of decency, but are not the only duties associated with
propriety.
Specifying these other duties is hard, not only because
propriety is assessed with respect to circumstance, occasion,
and context, but because it is also inextricably linked to one’s
personality and character. Cicero explains that nature clothes
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each of us in two roles (personae), one common and universal, the other individual and proper to each. Our common
human role provides us with our dignity as rational beings,
our moral goodness, and thus our decorum; we must use our
rationality to control our appetites and observe at least minimal standards of decency and consideration.13
The particular role that nature has assigned each one of
us accounts for the other duties associated with propriety.
Just as one person differs from another in bodily size and
physical constitution, so too we find diversity of manner,
temperament, and aptitude. While harmless in themselves,
these differences have to be taken into account when determining what is fitting and proper for each person. Cicero explains that, within the limits set by universal human nature,
the gentleman will attend carefully to his own particular nature in order to determine what is proper and seemly: “nos
studia nostra nostrae naturae regula metiamur.”14
On the other hand, just as nothing is so becoming as to
find the way of life suited to one’s own nature and then to
follow it in a steadfast and consistent way, the inconsistency
of a moral lightweight is highly indecorous.15
Decorum of the sort Cicero described stayed on the minds
of educated Romans during the principate. Lucius Annaeus
Seneca (d. 65), for example, pictured the happy life of the
self-consistent man in terms reminiscent of Cicero’s account.16 Again, the correspondence of the younger Pliny
shows that in its general outline Cicero’s view of decorum
was still influential during the lifetime of Tacitus. Although
these letters adhere to a different formality than that of the
philosophical manual or discourse that Cicero and Seneca
had written, the elements of upper-class seemliness nevertheless appear frequently.17
3 PRINCEPS AS TONE-SETTER
Like Cicero, Tacitus was aware of decorum and its social di-
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mension, and like him Tacitus accepted it as a principle of
civilized conduct. But as moralist and political philosopher,
Cicero concerned himself with action as it should be, with
theory more than practice. As historian, Tacitus reported how
people actually behaved, which in many cases fell far short
of the norms and ideals of the theorist. Perhaps there had once
been a time when prominent citizens had conformed to standards of decency and comportment rooted in nature and discovered by reason. What Tacitus saw in his own generation,
and what he could learn of the reign of Tiberius, however,
was that the princeps himself more and more became the
axial pole of decorum; that is, the place that Cicero had attributed to nature and reason in determining the criteria of
decorous behavior, Tacitus found, in practice, had been taken
over by the princeps himself. This is not to say that Tacitus
knew nothing of nature as norm, or of reason as the guide to
understanding nature. Indeed, as we shall see, the men he
praised had moral strength and good character consistent
with, if not explicitly related to, natural law. But for many
prominent Romans the preponderance of the first citizen
eclipsed any view of a natural standard. For them it seemed
more expedient to conform themselves to his perspective and
his way of doing things than to an abstract ideal of natural
virtue. The reason they used to determine their behavior was
the prudence involved in first trying to discern the expectations of the princeps and then attuning themselves accordingly.
The princeps came to set the standard of decorous behavior because of the character of the regime. Force and political
inequality lay at the root of the principate, but its day-to-day
aspect was the tone set by the princeps himself. Augustus
himself had established the pattern of effective autocracy tacitly juxtaposed with republican institutions and the semblance
of liberty for the senatorial elite. He took the lead in matters
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of public behavior, holding or declining certain magistracies
and official posts, nominating friends as candidates for others. Sometimes setting the tone meant giving direct advice
and instructions, but more often it involved modeling this or
that behavior, enacting or showing how things were to be
done. The poetry of Virgil and the histories of Livy reflect
the classicizing and patriotic outlook of Augustus and his circle. So do buildings and statues like the Ara Pacis and the
Augustus of Prima Porta.18 Even Augustus’s epitaph, which
he composed for himself, has a calm tone, evokes a sense of
its author’s modesty, and presents an image of strength in
service of the common good.19
Noble Romans accommodated themselves as best they
could to the example or standard of the first man. As Tacitus
puts it, “with political equality gone, everyone looked to the
commands of the princeps.”20 They did this for various reasons. Tacitus is aware that people often unconsciously emulate their superiors, and sometimes this urge to get into line
(amor aemulandi) is more effective than the threat of punishment in promoting conformity of mores and behavior.21
Other people realized that the new social and political order
presented opportunities for advancement or enrichment to
those who could adapt properly. But apprehension and outright fear were more important incentives to conformity. Augustus had dealt harshly with his opponents in the civil war
and afterwards, and from the outset it was evident that
Tiberius was not a man to cross if one could avoid it.
But how was one to avoid crossing him? Conformity was
bound to be difficult insofar as the standard to which people
sought to conform kept shifting. A mutable standard of propriety was to some extent endemic to the new regime. Always
in the principate there was disparity between appearance and
reality, between the appearance of liberty of a republic restored by the first citizen and the fact of one man’s hege-
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mony.22 The norm of behavior always tended to oscillate between the image of liberty and the reality of domination, because such oscillation reflected the nature of the regime itself.
A princeps whose public character was affable, fair, and
steady might minimize this oscillation and thereby make it
easier for others to attune themselves. He would moderate
his own speech and behavior in ways the leading men could
decipher and respond to with as much dignity as the circumstances of the autocracy would allow. But a weaker princeps
might not.
Whether Tacitus judged Augustus to be a better ruler, less
tyrannous than Tiberius, is not clear. There are signs that he
viewed the regime’s founder with irony and skepticism.23 But
at least Augustus had presented a consistent figure and a
steady face. This made it possible to live with the new order
and its master. According to Tacitus, life was more difficult
under Tiberius because of the dissonance between his public
mask and his real thoughts and intentions.
Tacitus’s censure and disapproval of Tiberius are open,
though at first somewhat muted, for he mentions that the
tyranny emerged in stages, as the man’s character gradually
showed itself. Before the death of Tiberius’s son Drusus in
23, business had been conducted in the senate, where there
was still some free discussion. The princeps himself had discouraged flattery, and tried to make sure that offices and magistracies went only to those whose birth, merit, and distinction
made them worthy. Taxes and provincial administration were
handled equitably. After 23, with Drusus out of the way, Sejanus, Tiberius’s sinister lieutenant, gained greater influence,
with the consequence that moderate policies were dropped,
and Tiberius eventually withdrew from the city.24 Another
turning point came in 29 at the death of the Augusta,
Tiberius’s mother. Livia, who had been a match for her
smooth and voluble second husband, Augustus, was also
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equal to the secretiveness and dissimulation of her son. She
had exercised a moderating influence upon Tiberius and Sejanus, but once she was dead, they openly took action against
those they perceived to be enemies of the government.25
The depth of Tiberius’s corruption may have become
more apparent over the years, but all along he had been hard
to deal with because he was cryptic and obscure, cruel and
vindictive. Even before he assumed overall power, he was
secretive and prone to dissemble. When Augustus grew old
and ill, speculation as to his successor quickly brought
Tiberius into consideration. He had the maturity and the military experience necessary to rule but suffered from the congenital arrogance of the Claudian family, and “many signs of
a cruel character broke out, try though he might to control
them.” His time spent on Rhodes, which was called retirement but was in fact exile, had been filled with anger, deceit,
and hidden passions.26
The first notable deed of Tiberius’s principate was one of
violence and deception. He ordered the murder of Postumus
Agrippa, grandson of Augustus and possible rival for
supreme power, and then pretended his father had commanded it.27
In his treatment of the senate and the magistrates Tiberius
was also hard to read. Immediately after the death of Augustus, he acted “as though the republic still existed and as
though he was doubtful about taking up command: even the
edict by which he summoned the senators to assemble was
issued in virtue of the tribunician power that he had accepted
from Augustus. The words of the edict were few and very
modest.”28 But in sharp contrast to the edict and his apparent
concern for republicanism were his actions. He had armed
guards at the court, soldiers in the forum, soldiers in the senate house; he sent letters to the army as a veteran leader
would, and never showed hesitation except when he spoke
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in the senate.29 Tacitus reports that the main cause of
Tiberius’s fear was the thought that his nephew, Germanicus,
who commanded a large army and was extremely popular at
home, might prefer to have rule instead of just waiting for it.
Also, Tiberius wanted to make it seem that he had been called
and chosen by the state rather than forced on it through his
mother’s ambition in getting Augustus to adopt him. Tacitus
adds that it later became known that Tiberius pretended to
hesitate in order to ferret out the intentions of the senators,
carefully remembering what he took to be their expressions
of hostility so that he could eventually exact revenge.30
At times it seemed that Tiberius was reserved and cryptic
because he suspected treachery. Certainly he had enemies,
some open, others camouflaged. Germanicus, Agrippina, and
their supporters he considered rivals, and mistrusted.31 Augustus was said to have given Tiberius a list of men to
watch.32 In public or private, he was capable of receiving insult with apparent equanimity, but he did not forget a slight,
storing up his anger even over a period of years.33 Sejanus
knew Tiberius’s suspicious and credulous (suspicionum et
credendi temeritas) character, and after the princeps’ withdrawal to the island of Caprae in 28 he supplied information
carefully selected to arouse and channel it.34 People even
wondered about the quality of the relationship between
Tiberius and his mother, which looked amicable on the surface but which included unmistakable indications of bitterness.35
Misdirection was a tactic for Tiberius, as, for instance, in
16 when he showed favor and friendship to Marcus Scribonius Libo Drusus, who had been denounced privately for treasonous plotting. In private conversation with Libo, “Tiberius
could have halted all his words and deeds, but he preferred
to know them.”36 But in the sequel the utility of concealment
was less apparent. Once Libo came to trial before the Senate,
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he directed supplications to Tiberius who listened with a
blank expression, and Tiberius read out the charges and
names of the accusers in a moderate tone of voice that
seemed neither to minimize nor exaggerate the charges.37
At other times, shame caused Tiberius to avoid the public
gaze. Tacitus reports that Tiberius’s son Drusus led a life of
frivolity—theater and arena by day, banquets by night—pursuing the pleasures often sought by young men. His father,
by contrast, kept to himself and led a joyless life of dark
watchfulness and malevolent undertakings.38 Tacitus suspects
that Tiberius withdrew permanently from Rome in 26 not
only because of the influence of Sejanus and an aversion to
his mother, but to lead his vicious and licentious life in secret.39
Quite aside from their utility, however, opacity and concealment seemed to suit Tiberius. He prized dissimulation as
his own greatest virtue, clinging to it all his life.40 He projected his personal preference for secrecy onto the divine
when in 15 he rejected a proposal to open the Sibylline books
to seek guidance in responding to recent destructive flooding
of the Tiber.41 He habitually mingled jest and earnestness,42
and routinely spoke in euphemisms.43 Only shock or crisis
provoked outbursts of frankness, and these could be dangerous, as when anger toward personal enemies caused lapses
in his prudent moderation.44 Even when advanced age and
illness brought him close to death, Tiberius pretended (simulans) to be healthy, and Tacitus remarks that dissimulation
(dissimulatio) was the last power to leave him.45
Although the speeches of Tiberius often carried a double
meaning,46 sometimes they were simply inscrutable. After the
funeral of Augustus, his address to the senate was so uncertain and ambiguous that his intended meaning was impossible
to understand.47 Again, in 20, at the trial for treason, magic,
and adultery of Lepida from the illustrious gens Aemilia,
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Tiberius “mixed signs of anger and clemency,” and intervened in the proceedings in ways that some considered nonautocratic, but others saw as prejudicial to the defendant.
Lepida was condemned and exiled.48
Doubt often enshrouded the real thoughts and feelings of
Tiberius, but it must have been apparent to all that he was
watching. The more they looked to him for clues of his expectations, the more they were aware of being under scrutiny.
He and his friends and informers attended to their words and
actions, their gestures and appearances.
He watched the senators carefully, twisting their words
and facial expressions into criminal significance, and storing
them away in his memory, as was mentioned earlier.49 Even
at a distance Tiberius was informed not only about the actions
of important men, but about their appearance and comportment. While Germanicus toured Egypt, word reached
Tiberius of the manner of his dress and behavior, that it was
disagreeably informal and Hellenic, comparable to that of
Scipio Africanus while he was in Sicily.50 Thus, finding themselves under scrutiny, those around him sought to make sense
of Tiberius’s thoughts and desires so as to conform themselves to his expectations.
4. VARIETIES OF CONFORMITY
People who came into contact with Tiberius behaved in ways
that reflected not only the opacity of the princeps but also
their own fear, ambition, corruption, and sometimes even
moral strength. That is, in most—but not all—cases their
words and comportment mirrored not a Ciceronian standard
of nature and reason but their more or less accurate reading
of how best to save themselves, or how best to profit in the
prevailing climate. Here I shall survey the main varieties of
conformity as Tacitus presents them.
Those who were most like Tiberius accommodated themselves best to him. Men like the astrologer Thrasyllus51 un-
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derstood him, and so were able to conform their behavior to
his expectations. It is no accident that the two people Tacitus
presents as most successfully attuning themselves to him
were the villainous Lucius Aelius Sejanus and Gaius Julius
Caesar Germanicus. Sejanus was an equestrian whom
Tiberius appointed commander of the Praetorian Guard and
then came to depend upon to carry out his policies in the Senate, especially after retiring to the island of Capreae. To Sejanus alone Tiberius disclosed his secret designs in an
unguarded way. Decent outwardly, inwardly Sejanus was
consumed with lust for power.52 He hounded the adherents
of Agrippina in a series of treason trials, but his hope to marry
into the imperial family came to nothing, and he was eventually purged for aiming at the principate itself. Ominously, it
was Gaius, or Caligula as he was called, the grandson and
terrible successor of Tiberius, who came to mirror the mood
and even the words of Tiberius more closely than any other
person Tacitus mentions.53 His reign began with the murder
of Tiberius.
Those who were not like Tiberius, or less like him, found
life challenging. Most conformed in more or less indecorous
and shameful ways. Some went beyond disgrace to the active
commission of crimes. Some refused to conform and usually
perished before their time. A few managed to serve and lead
public careers worthy of their ancestors almost as though the
free republic still existed. All experienced a public discourse
that was “narrow and slippery under a princeps who feared
liberty but hated flattery.”54
From the outset many dishonored themselves by composing their appearance and words in false, and therefore indecorous, ways. When the news arrived in Rome that Augustus
was dead and Tiberius in charge, “consuls, senators, and
knights rushed headlong into servitude; the more noble were
also more false and hasty, with expression carefully arranged
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to appear neither happy at the death of the princeps nor sad
at the accession, they mingled tears and joy, lament and flattery.”55
People tried to read the meaning behind Tiberius’s words,
and then to articulate responses that mirrored well enough—
but not too clearly—what the listener thought Tiberius was
getting at. The results were always dishonorable, sometimes
absurd, and occasionally dangerous.
In 14, after the funeral of Augustus, Tiberius ostentatiously refused the leading role. The senators, who were
afraid to show that they saw he wanted to be asked and to be
persuaded to accept power, poured out tearful prayers to him,
reaching toward the gods, the statue of Augustus, Tiberius’s
knees. Declining to bear the whole burden of government,
Tiberius expressed a willingness to accept whatever part was
entrusted to him. Gaius Asinius Gallus then made the mistake
of asking what part of the government Tiberius wished to be
given. Tiberius registered his annoyance with a dark look and
protracted silence, but then reiterated his preference to be excused altogether, and said he refused to pick and choose. Gallus tried to smooth over his blunder, saying that he had only
tried to get Tiberius to acknowledge that rule could not really
be divided at all. This and further flattery failed to allay
Tiberius’s irritation with Gallus, who was also the object of
hostility for having married Tiberius’s ex-wife, Vipsania.56
Flattery took the form of undeserved civil or military honors.57 An ironic example occurred in 29 when, seeking a remedy in flattery (remedium adulationis) for the fear generated
by the wave of treason trials, the senators voted to erect altars
to Mercy and Friendship, the latter flanked by statues of
Tiberius and Sejanus.58
Flattery often shaped elections, as in the year 21, when
Tiberius recommended two men to the senate for consideration as governor of Africa, one a distinguished noble, the
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other the uncle of Sejanus. It was assumed that the latter was
the approved candidate. While both men begged to be excused, Sejanus’s uncle was less convincing, and a chorus of
flatterers urged him to accept.59
Flattery also led men beyond disgrace into active wrongdoing. In the year 22, the new consul, Decimus Haterius
Agrippa, proposed death as the fitting punishment for the
equestrian author of scurrilous verses about Tiberius’s son,
Drusus. Marcus Aemilius Lepidus countered by proposing a
lesser sentence better proportioned to the offense. All but one
of the senators, Gaius Rubellius Blandus, supported Haterius,
and the equestrian was immediately put to death. Tiberius rebuked the senate, but with enough ambiguity not to preclude
similar punishments in future. Lepidus and Blandus had been
unable to prevent shameful adulation from becoming outright
injustice.60
Although at first it seemed a means of attaining safety,
flattery quickly became equivocal, for in an environment of
corrupt mores, express servility could be dangerous by its
presence as well as its absence.61 This fact may have intensified the search for new strategies to protect the frightened,
and new strategies of advancement for the ambitious.
Servitude rapidly assumed the colors of liberty. In the
year 14, when Marcus Valerius Messalla Messallinus proposed in the senate that the oath of allegiance to the new princeps be repeated annually, Tiberius asked him to
acknowledge that he had not put him up to that proposal.
Messalla said that when it came to public business, he would
express his own thoughts, no matter who took offense. The
historian’s terse judgment is that this was the only sort of flattery left.62
Again, in 22, Lucius Ennius, an equestrian, found himself
before the senate charged with treason for melting down a
silver statue of the princeps. In response to Tiberius’s inter-
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cession on behalf of the accused, Gaius Ateius Capito made
a show of independence, urging that the senate’s power of
judgment ought not be diminished, and pointing out that the
offense had serious public implications, even if Tiberius was
willing to overlook the injury to himself personally. Tacitus
remarks that Capito’s behavior was all the more infamous because, as a civil and religious jurist of note, he dishonored
these arts as well as himself.63
Shameful displays of independence became competitive.
In 16, the senators Gaius Asinius Gallus and Cnaeus Calpurnius Piso disagreed over whether the senate should conduct
business during the absence of Tiberius. Piso claimed the
“speciem libertatis” by asserting that it would be worthy of
the republic that senators and equestrians could continue their
official work even in the absence of the princeps. Gallus answered that nothing would be more illustrious or worthy of
the Roman people than to do business only in the presence
and under the eyes of Caesar. Tiberius listened in silence to
these undignified invocations of the dignity of the state. No
action was taken.64
Unbecoming conduct grew worse. Just as the treacherous
path of public discourse led great men to competitive adulatory assertions of liberty, so too did compliance and obsequiousness gradually degenerate into wickedness, as
members of the aristocracy turned informer.65
A remarkable instance occurred in 16, when Firmius
Catus, a senator eager for advancement, and Lucius Fulcinius
Trio, a well-known prosecutor who hoped to increase his notoriety, brought Marcus Scribonius Libo Drusus to trial for
conspiracy against the princeps. The charges were trumped
up; Libo’s consultations of astrologers and necromancers
were inept and pathetic, not threatening. But Trio presented
the matter as “res magna et atrox,” and by the time the case
came before the senate, Catus and Trio had been joined by
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Fonteius Agrippa and Gaius Vibius Serenus. Libo anticipated
the guilty verdict by taking his own life. His property went
as reward to the accusers, along with the rank of extraordinary praetor to those of the senatorial order.66
Libo’s posthumous condemnation triggered a flurry of
sycophantic proposals and resolutions in the senate. Tacitus
omits nothing: Cotta Messalinus moved that the image of
Libo be barred from the funeral processions of his descendants; Cnaeus Cornelius Lentulus proposed that no Scribonianus should bear the cognomen of Drusus; Lucius
Pomponius Flaccus suggested that days be set aside for public thanksgiving; Lucius Munatius Plancus, Gaius Asinius
Gallus, Marcus Papius Mutilus and Lucius Apronius voted
thank-offerings to Jupiter, Mars, and Concord, and they
moved that 13 September—the date of Libo’s death—should
be a public holiday. Two astrologers were executed, and the
senate ordered that the rest be expelled from Italy. The historian’s explicit purpose in cataloguing all this is to make
known how early the public disgrace began.67
Some of the doings of spies, informers and accusers were
ludicrously outrageous. In 28, four senators hoping for advancement sought to please Sejanus by prosecuting an illustrious equestrian friend of Germanicus, Titius Sabinus,
ostensibly on charges of treason, but really because of the enmity between Sejanus and Agrippina, the widow of Germanicus. Tacitus records the names of the four, and explains how
one of them, Latinius Latiaris, lured Sabinus into his confidence and induced him to complain about Sejanus and
Tiberius. To strengthen their case, the others hid between the
roof and the ceiling with their ears pressed to holes and cracks
while Latiaris conversed with Sabinus in the room below
about recent hardships. Then in a letter to Tiberius, the four
detailed their findings as well as their disgraceful (dedecus)
ploy.
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This was material better suited to the comedian or satirist
than to the historian, but the unfortunate truth was that the
main actors were among the most prominent members of the
senatorial order. Sabinus was immediately condemned and
put to death. Tacitus reports this event’s chilling effect upon
public life: fear emptied the roads and squares; conversation
ceased even among friends; people eyed the very walls and
ceiling with suspicion; it was assumed that Tiberius was tightening the noose on Agrippina and her son.68
Since they were entitled to claim a part of the property of
those condemned for treason, accusers had strong incentive
to file charges. The grotesque results went beyond injustice to
impiety, as son accused father and brother sister.69 The senate
was filled with informers; friends turned against one another;
no place, public or private, was safe for open conversation. It
was like a plague in the city.70
Those foolish or honest enough to speak their minds were
at risk, as Agrippina discovered. After the poisoning of
Drusus, son of Tiberius, there was widespread but secret rejoicing at the prospect of one of Germanicus’s sons eventually succeeding Tiberius. While the senate and people
“concealed their joy with expressions of sorrow,” Agrippina,
widow of Germanicus, concealed her hope less effectively,
and thereby brought down a quicker ruin, when Sejanus, who
had planned the murder of Drusus and had imperial ambitions
for himself, was able to point to Agrippina’s hope and her
popularity in order to intensify Livia’s animosity toward the
sons of Germanicus.71 It seems likely that the brutal Sejanus
would have targeted these boys whether or not their mother
had disguised her thoughts more effectively. But according
to the historian her failures to dissemble and conceal her true
thoughts at least hastened (adceleravere) their destruction.
Another example of the high cost of open expression is
the outspoken and independent-minded Lucius Calpurnius
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Piso. He openly registered his disgust with the corruption and
aggressive tactics of prosecutors, and was bold enough to
bring charges against a protégée of Livia. Although he announced his withdrawal from public affairs and resolved to
leave the city, he apparently did not leave, and a few years
later was charged with treason. Piso’s timely death, whether
by suicide or natural causes, prevented the case from coming
to court.72
In the year 25, the historian Aulus Cremutius Cordus
faced the senate charged with treason for praising the assassins of Julius Caesar in his own Annales. Because his accusers were minions of Sejanus, and judging by the grim
expression (trux vultus) of Tiberius, the outcome of the case
was not in doubt. Knowing that death was near, Cremutius
defended himself with dignity, calmly adducing examples
from the Roman tradition of legitimate free expression. Cremutius was allowed to starve himself to death. The senate
voted to have his books burned.73
Because Tacitus’s Annales contain many examples of the
danger of openness and candor, we suspect irony when he reports candor going unpunished. In the wake of Sejanus’s fall,
the backlash that engulfed his associates prompted most people to pretend they had not been his friends. But the equestrian Marcus Terentius was unapologetic. He had been the
friend of Sejanus, who was himself the friend of Caesar; it
was more fitting for an equestrian to obey than to challenge
the policies of his superiors; and his friendship with Sejanus
had ended when Tiberius’s did. Terentius escaped punishment. His accusers suffered exile or execution. Tacitus cannot
have missed the irony that the only person saved by telling
the truth in a brave speech (constantia orationis) was an associate of Sejanus.74
Although he admired their refusal to accommodate themselves to the expectations and tone set by the autocrat, Tacitus
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did not give his highest praise to those who courted death
through outspoken opposition. Whether what bothered Tacitus about these men was the jarring quality of their extreme
dissonance or their failure to benefit the state in a more sustained way, he did not say. But it is clear that he reserved his
highest admiration for those who managed to have dignified
and honorable public careers despite the princeps. Doing so
under Tiberius was very difficult—but not impossible.
Marcus Aemilius Lepidus was praised as dignified and
wise because he so often managed to reduce the harm done
by flatterers, and because he possessed enough moderation
to stay on working terms with Tiberius. His case even led
Tacitus to wonder whether fate and chance of birth control
men’s destinies, or whether their own decisions allow some
men to find a safe course between dangerous insubordination
and ugly servility.75 In 17, Marcus Furius Camillus, the proconsular governor of Africa, revived his family’s ancient reputation for military glory (decus militiae) by defeating the
Numidian leader Tacfarinus. Tiberius praised him in the senate, and he was voted an honorary triumph which he lived to
enjoy, Tacitus comments, because of his modest behavior.76
We read of some others who also lived in a manner worthy
of their great family and died peacefully.77
In the Annales, references to distinguished men in the
reign of Tiberius who managed to avoid the extremes of base
conformity and perilous honesty but still have careers of public service are few and not presented in much detail. To see
clearly portrayed the career and record of the sort of man Tacitus most admired, one may turn to his own father-in-law,
Gnaeus Julius Agricola (40-93), about whom Tacitus composed a Vita.78
The son of a senator from Gallia Narbonensis (the modern Provence), he had an impressive administrative and military career. His extensive military campaigns in Britain
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occurred during the reign of the tyrannical Domitian (81-96),
and Tacitus admired his ability to distinguish himself on behalf of the state without incurring the lethal wrath of the princeps.79 When confronting the notoriously hot-headed
Domitian in person, Agricola softened him with his prudence
and moderation, and refrained from seeking renown and a
swift end by open defiance and the useless assertion of liberty.80 “Let those who habitually admire disobedience know
that even under bad rulers there are great men, and that a decent regard for authority, if backed by hard work and military
toughness, is even more praiseworthy than the death-seeking
perilous course, of no use to the state, through which some
became famous.”81 In short, Tacitus praised Agricola for his
noble public service under difficult circumstances. Avoiding
both craven compliance and ostentatious martyrdom, Agricola played his part with a seemliness worthy of his forebears. He might have lived longer but could not have lived
better.82
5. CONCLUSION
With few exceptions, then, the Tiberian books of the Annales
are as somber as the reign they chronicle. Tacitus was aware
of this, and expressed regret over the tedious character of the
ills he catalogued,83 and in general over the narrow and inglorious scope of his project (in arto et ingloriosus labor).84
The times he chronicled were infected and dirty with servility
(infecta et adulatione sordida). But the historian had a moral
purpose, to record the virtue of those who had measured up,
and the disgrace of those who had fallen so short of the dignity of their family and order. The wicked might be deterred
by the certainty of posthumous infamy.85 Even when the
books of historians are burned, it is folly to imagine that the
power of today can snuff out the memory of the future. Quite
the reverse, for repressed thought grows in prestige, and conquerors, together with those who behave as brutally as con-
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querors, only achieve dishonor (dedecus) for themselves and
renown for their victims.86
Besides its moral aim, Tacitus mentioned one other value
of the work. Admitting that the dossier of minor events centered on the princeps makes tedious reading, Tacitus insisted
that such a history is useful for examining “matters that seem
trivial at first glance, from which the movements of great
things often arise.”87 Here, the modern reader might anticipate a reference to patterns of group behavior that set in motion impersonal and potentially disruptive social forces.
Persistent dishonorable behavior of the leading men might
bring their entire order into disrepute. In turn, questions about
the possible disjunction between reality and appearance in
the leading order could easily provoke tremors of doubt about
social hierarchy. In such a scenario, decorum would be not
only a matter of the self-respect of a few score senators, it
would also ultimately be linked to something elemental and
tectonic in Roman society itself. Whether Tacitus thought
along these lines is not clear. But he wrote that, since the balanced and mixed form of government is seldom found in
practice, and is short-lived even when it is found, the prudent
man will familiarize himself with the leading actors in whatever form of government happens to prevail currently: the
rule of the best men, of the many, or, as in Tacitus’s time, of
the autocrat. For most people, the best way to learn how to
behave effectively and honorably is to study the experience
of others.88
Half a century ago Ronald Syme remarked that as “a form
of government the principate was essentially equivocal, and
the nobilitas was called to play a false role therein, forfeiting
power but ostensibly retaining honour and prestige.”89 False
the part might have been, but at least under a morally and
psychologically steady princeps one could play it with some
dignity. As de Tocqueville saw, weakness might compel one
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to play a false part, but one who feigns approval of that false
part is truly base. Under Tiberius, however, the quest for security or advancement led men to guess at, and conform to,
his desires and expectations. They gradually attuned themselves to a standard far removed from any persona nature
might assign or reason discern. It was Tacitus’s somber genius to recognize that the danger of such attunement was that
a man might become the person he pretended to be, thereby
confirming the contemptuous judgment of Tiberius himself
that the senators were “men fit to be slaves.”90
NOTES
1. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America,, trans. Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000),
246. For their helpful comments on drafts of this essay, I am grateful to
Bob Haynie, John Goyette, and Meghan Parker. I dedicate the article to
Mark Morford, my teacher and friend.
2. Cornelii Taciti Annalium ab excessu divi Augusti libri, ed. C. D. Fisher
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1906), 119-120. (Hereafter abbreviated
Annales.) For comments on Tacitus’s views within the context of Roman
thought about luxury, see Christopher Berry, The Idea of Luxury: A Conceptual and Historical Investigation (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1994), 67-70. See also Annales, 92-95 for Tiberius’s statement
about decorous and moderate public mourning.
3. As Ronald Syme put it, “men and dynasties pass, but style abides.”
Ronald Syme, Tacitus, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958),
Vol. 2, 624. Still worthwhile for understanding Tacitus’s literary strategies
are Einar Löfstedt, “On the Style of Tacitus,” Journal of Roman Studies
38 (1948): 1-8, and Uwe Rademacher, Die Bildkunst des Tacitus
(Hildesheim: Olms Verlag, 1975). Francesca Santoro L’Hoir, Tragedy,
Rhetoric, and the Historiography of Tacitus’ Annales (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006) draws attention to the influence of Greek
drama upon Tacitus.
4. Cicero, De oratore, trans. E. W. Sutton and H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 349 (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1942), 178: “Est
enim actio quasi sermo corporis, quo magis menti congruens esse debet.”
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5. That Tacitus wrote for “elite males of senatorial and equestrian status,”
is demonstrated in S. H. Rutledge, “Trajan and Tacitus’ Audience: Reader
Reception of Annals 1-2,” Ramus 27.1 (1998): 141.
6. Cicero’s view of decorum occupies a place within a longer moral tradition that reached back at least as far as Panaetius of Rhodes (second
century BC), whose own treatise, On Duty, was a main source for Cicero’s De officiis. See the editorial introduction to Cicero: On Duties, ed.
M. T. Griffin and E. M. Atkins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press),
xix-xxi.
7. Cicero, De officiis, Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 30 (Boston: Harvard
University Press, 1913), 182.
8. Cicero, De officiis, 14-16.
9. Cicero, De officiis, 98.
10. Cicero, De officiis, 97; see also Cicero, De oratore, Loeb Classical
Library, Vol. 348 (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1942), 378, for another example of the convergence of theatrical and oratorical decorum.
11. Cicero, De officiis, 100.
12. Cicero, De officiis, 102-108. Still illuminating for a discussion of Cicero’s place within the history of doctrines of natural law is Felix Flückiger, Geschichte des Naturrechtes: Altertum und Frühmittelalter (Zurich:
Evangelischer Verlag, 1954), 221-238.
13. Cicero, De officiis, 108.
14. “We may judge our activities by the measure of our own nature.” Cicero, De officiis, 112. In connection with discerning what is right for oneself, Cicero mentions two more personae that we must play, one imposed
by chance or circumstance, the other a matter of our own choice. See De
officiis, 116-118; and for discussion see Christopher Gill, “Personhood
and Personality: The Four-Personae Theory in Cicero, De Officiis 1,” Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 6 (1988): 169-199.
15. Cicero, De officiis, 122 and 126-128.
16. Seneca, Letter 120 in Epistola, trans. Richard M. Gummere, Loeb
Classical Library, Vol. 77 (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1925), 386
and 388. On this passage within a larger context see Christopher Gill, The
Structured Self in Hellenistic and Roman Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 163. See also Seneca, De constantia sapientis, Loeb
Classical Library, Vol. 214 (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1928), 102
and 104.
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17. Pliny praises those who manifest constantia, dignitas, verecundia, or
decor in word, deed and appearance; his disapproval attaches to their opposites. For a careful study of the letters see Stanley Hoffer, The Anxieties
of Pliny the Younger (Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1999).
18. See Paul Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1988).
19. See Res gestae divi Augusti: The Achievements of the Divine Augustus, ed. P. A. Brunt and J. M. Moore (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1967), 34-36.
20. Tacitus, Annales, 3: “omnes exuta aequalitate iussa principis aspectare.”
21. Tacitus, Annales, 121: “obsequium inde in principem et aemulandi
amor validior quam poena ex legibus et metus.”
22. Two examples from the reign of Tiberius should suffice to illustrate
a characteristic that Tacitus attributes to the regime as a whole. When
Tiberius speaks of free elections open to men of talent, Tacitus (Annales,
47) comments: “speciosa verbis, re inania aut subdola, quantoque maiore
libertatis imagine tegebantur, tanto eruptura ad infensius servitium”
(“things attractive in speech, but in fact meaningless or deceptive, and
the more they were represented in the figure of freedom, the more they
were preparing to break out into more dangerous subjection”). In a different context, Tacitus remarks (Annales, 122): “Sed Tiberius, vim principatus sibi firmans, imaginem antiquitatis senatui praebebat postulata
provinciarum ad disquisitionem patrum mittendo.” (“But Tiberius, while
establishing the power of the principate in himself, was keeping up the
image of the old senate by sending the demands of the provinces to be
dealt with by the senators.”)
23. For evidence and discussion see Syme, Tacitus, Vol. 1, 397-416.
24. Tacitus, Annales, 135-136. Note the turning point that occurs with the
words “Tiberio mutati in deterius principatus initium ille annus attulit”
(“that year brought for Tiberius the beginning of the principate’s change
for the worse”) and “donec morte Drusi verterentur” (“until things
changed with the death of Drusus”).
25. Tacitus, Annales, 177: “Ceterum ex eo praerupta iam et urgens dominatio” (“But from that point on there was precipitate and acute despotism”). For another statement of the gradual disclosure of Tiberius’s real
character, see Annales, 211.
26. Tacitus, Annales, 3: “sed vetere atque insita Claudiae familiae super-
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bia, multaque indicia saevitiae, quamquam premantur, erumpere. . . ; ne
iis quidem annis quibus Rhodi specie secessus exul egerit aliud quam
iram et simulationem et secretas libidines meditatum” (“but the old and
innate arrogance of the Claudian family, together with many indications
of cruelness, although repressed, burst forth. . . ; not even during the years
he passed in exile on Rhodes under the cover of retirement was he meditating anything but anger and dissimulation and concealed lust”). Even
Augustus acknowledged objectionable irregularities in Tiberius’s deportment, dress, and habits; see Annales, 8: “Etenim Augustus paucis ante
annis, cum Tiberio tribuniciam potestatem a patribus rursum postularet,
quamquam honora oratione, quaedam de habitu cultuque et institutis eius
ieceret quae velut excusando exprobraret.” (“Even Augustus a few years
earlier, when he was once again requesting from the senators the tribunician power for Tiberius, although speaking approvingly, let fall certain
indications about his attitude, dress, and manners of which he disapproved, even though he was excusing them.”)
27. Tacitus, Annales, 4: “Nihil de ea re Tiberius apud senatum disseruit:
patris iussa simulabat.” (“Tiberius discussed nothing of this with the senate: he pretended it was the father’s command.”) Again, for the murder
of Sempronius Graccus in 14 Tiberius tried to shift blame from himself
onto the proconsul of Africa. See Annales, 31: “Quidam non Roma eos
milites, sed ab L. Asprenate pro consule Africae missos tradidere auctore
Tiberio, qui famam caedis posse in Asprenatem verti frustra speraverat.”
(“Some have said that these soldiers were not sent from Rome, but by L.
Asprenas, proconsul of Africa, at the urging of Tiberius, who had hoped
in vain that the blame for the murder could be pinned on Asprenas.”)
28. Tacitus, Annales, 5: “. . . tamquam vetere re publica et ambiguus imperandi: ne edictum quidem, quo patres in curiam vocabat, nisi tribuniciae
potestatis praescriptione posuit sub Augusto acceptae. Verba edicti fuere
pauca et sensu permodesto.”
29. Tacitus, Annales, 5: “nusquam cunctabundus nisi cum in senatu loqueretur” (“never hesitant except when he was speaking in the senate”).
30. Tacitus, Annales, 5: “Postea cognitum est ad introspiciendas etiam
procerum voluntates inductam dubitationem: nam verba vultus in crimen
detorquens recondebat.” (“Afterwards it was recognized that the hesitation was also put on in order to observe the intentions of the leaders: for,
twisting a look, he would store up insults.”)
31. For example, Tacitus, Annales, 36 and 40-41.
32. Tacitus, Annales, 10.
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33. Tacitus, Annales, 144, in relation to the slight of Lucius Calpurnius
Piso, several years earlier: “Quae in praesens Tiberius civiliter habuit:
sed in animo revolvente iras, etiam si impetus offensionis languerat,
memoria valebat.” (“And at the time, Tiberius took these things courteously: but in his mind, which ruminated over resentments, the memory
was intense, even if its initial force had dissipated.”)
34. Tacitus, Annales, 170.
35. Tacitus, Annales, 125.
36. Tacitus, Annales, 60: “Atque interim Libonem ornat praetura, convictibus adhibet, non vultu alienatus, non verbis commotior (adeo iram
condiderat); cunctaque eius dicta factaque, cum prohibere posset, scire
malebat.” (“And meanwhile he granted Libo the praetorship, invited him
often to parties, neither unfriendly in his appearance nor excited in speech
[so completely he had concealed his anger]; and Tiberius could have
halted all his words and deeds, but he preferred to know them.”)
37. Tacitus, Annales, 60: “Mox libellos et auctores recitat Caesar ita moderans ne lenire neve asperare criminia videretur.” (“Next Caesar read out
the complaints and the accusors, controlling himself so that he seemed
neither to soften nor harshen the charges.”)
38. Tacitus, Annales, 112: “Solus et nullis voluptatibus avocatus maestam
vigilantiam et malas curas exerceret.” (“Alone and withdrawn from all
pleasures he was engaged in gloomy vigilance and wicked plans.”)
39. Tacitus, Annales, 165 and 170.
40. Annales, 173: “Nullam aeque Tiberius, ut rebatur, ex virtutibus suis
quam dissimulationem diligebat: eo aegrius accepit recludi quae premeret.” (“Tiberius, so he thought, liked none of his virtues as much as
dissimulation: all the more angrily, then, he took the disclosing of the
things he concealed.”)
41. Tacitus, Annales, 44: “Renuit Tiberius, perinde divina humanaque
obtegens.” (“Tiberius refused, thus keeping hidden both things divine and
things human.”)
42. Tacitus, Annales, 181: “Tiberius tamen, ludibria seriis permiscere solitus.” (“Tiberius, however, customarily mixed jests with serious matters.”)
43. Tacitus, Annales, 143: “Proprium id Tiberio fuit scelera nuper reperta
priscis verbis obtegere.” (“It was characteristic of Tiberius to cover over
recently invented crimes with long venerated formulas.”)
44. Tacitus, Annales, 15: “Haec audita quamquam abstrusum et tristissima
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quaeque maxime occultantem Tiberium perpulere.” (“These things coming to his attention impressed him deeply, although he remained reserved
and kept secret everything that was very sorrowful.”); see also Annales,
44, where Tiberius gets angry enough to break his customary taciturnity,
and Annales, 128: “prudens moderandi, si propria ira non impelleretur”
(“skilled at observing moderation, if his own anger was not incited”).
45. Tacitus, Annales, 208: “in patientia firmitudinem simulans” (“in suffering simulating good health”) and 210: “Iam Tiberium corpus, iam
vires, nondum dissimulatio deserebat.” (Now his body was forsaking
Tiberius, now his strength, but not yet the power of dissimulation.”)
46. Tacitus, Annales, 30: “magis in speciem verbis adornata quam ut penitus sentire crederetur” (“more embellished with words for show than so
that he might be believed to feel it in his inmost heart”).
47. Tacitus, Annales, 9: “Plus in oratione tali dignitatis quam fidei erat;
Tiberioque etiam in rebus quas non occuleret, seu natura sive adsuetudine,
suspensa semper et obscura verba: tunc vero nitenti ut sensus suos penitus
abderet, in incertum et ambiguum magis implicabantur.” (“There was
more grandeur in this sort of speech than credibility; either by nature or
by custom, halting and unintelligible language was Tiberius’s style even
in things he was not trying to hide: but then, when he was striving to conceal his meaning entirely, it got even more wrapped up in uncertainty and
obscurity.”)
48. Tacitus, Annales,103: “Haud facile quis dispexerit illa in cognitione
mentem principis: adeo vertit ac miscuit irae et clementiae signa.” (“It
was not easy for anyone to discern the mind of the princeps at this trial:
so much did he interchange and mingle the signs of anger and clemency.”)
Also “Quod alii civile rebantur . . . quidam ad saevitiam trahebant.”
(“What some thought considerate . . . others took for cruelty.”)
49. See note 30.
50. Tacitus, Annales, 78: “Tiberius cultu habituque eius lenibus verbis
perstricto . . . increpuit.” (“Tiberius remonstrated a bit in mild terms about
his bearing and attire.”)
51. Tacitus, Annales, 192. Although Tiberius believed Thrasyllus was a
true oracle, Tacitus presents his real skill as that of reading Tiberius.
52. Tacitus, Annales, 132: “Mox Tiberium variis artibus devinxit adeo ut
obscurum adversum alios sibi uni incautum intectumque efficeret.”
(“Soon he subdued Tiberius by various means, so much so that he made
him—so covert toward others—open and sincere with himself alone.”)
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Also, “palam compositus pudor, intus summa apiscendi libido” (“outwardly all propriety, inwardly the greatest lust for acquisition”).
53. Tacitus, Annales, 192: “Qualem diem Tiberius induisset, pari habitu,
haud multum distantibus verbis.” (“Whatever humor Tiberius put on, his
attitude was the same, and his speech not very different”). See also Annales, 207 for the observation that Gaius had learned dissimulation
through contact with Tiberius.
54. Tacitus, Annales, 91: “Angusta et lubrica oratio sub principe qui libertatem metuebat adulationem oderat.”
55. Tacitus, Annales, 5: “Ruere in servitium consules, patres, eques.
quanto quis inlustrior, tanto magis falsi ac festinantes, vultuque composito
ne laeti excessu principis neu tristiores primordio, lacrimas gaudium,
questus adulationem miscebant.” For another example of false mourning,
see the public response to the death of Tiberius’s son, Drusus, in the year
23, Annales, 138-139: “Senatus populusque habitum ac voces dolentum
simulatione magis quam libens induebat, domumque Germanici revirescere occulti laetabantur.” (“The senate and the people put on the attitude and the tone of mourners insincerely rather than willingly, and they
rejoiced secretly that the house of Germanicus was reviving.”)
56. Tacitus, Annales, 9-10.
57. Tacitus, Annales, 116: “Dolabella Cornelius dum antire ceteros parat
absurdam in adulationem progressus.” (“Dolabella Cornelius, while trying to outdo the others, went forward with a ludicrous bit of flattery.”)
Quintius Haterius gained infamy in 22 (Annales, 122) through a “most
disgustingly servile” proposal that the senate’s resolution honoring
Drusus should be recorded in gold letters. The same Haterius had narrowly escaped death in 14 (Annales, 10) when, shamefully groveling, he
accidentally tackled Tiberius. In 34 (Annales, 195), the senate voted
thanks to Tiberius for allowing Agrippina to die in exile instead of having
her strangled.
58. Tacitus, Annales, 175.
59. Tacitus, Annales, 111.
60. Tacitus, Annales, 117-118.
61. Tacitus, Annales, 142: “[adulatio], quae moribus corruptis perinde anceps, si nulla et ubi nimia est” (“flattery, which, when mores have been
ruined, is just as dangerous when there is none and when there is too
much”).
62. Tacitus, Annales, 8: “Ea sola species adulandi supererat.”
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63. Tacitus, Annales, 128-129.
64. Tacitus, Annales, 64. Tacitus presents Cnaeus Calpurnius Piso as
standing up to Tiberius at Annales, 44, not so much because of republican
sentiments as from a sense of his own worthiness to rule. That insubordination ran in the family; see Annales, 69. As for Gallus, Tacitus records
another public disagreement with Tiberius that, perhaps inadvertently,
penetrated to the very heart of rule (Annales, 64): “Eam sententiam altius
penetrare et arcana imperii temptari.” (“This motion penetrated more
deeply and made an attempt at the secrets of the imperium.”) Tiberius,
however, managed to turn this to his own advantage.
65. Tacitus, Annales, 126: “Paulatim dehinc ab indecoris ad infesta transgrediebantur.” (“After this they gradually passed over from shameful
deeds to outrageous ones.”)
66. Tacitus, Annales, 60-61.
67. Tacitus, Annales, 62: “Quorum auctoritates adulationesque rettuli ut
sciretur vetus id in re publica malum.” (“I have reported the motions and
the flatteries of these men so that this old evil in the state might be recognized.”)
68. Tacitus, Annales, 171-173.
69. Tacitus, Annales, 147 and 149. See also Annales, 149, where it
emerges that even the property of those who anticipate a guilty verdict
by suicide is subject to confiscation and division among the accusers.
Also at Annales, 170, there is an accusation within an extended family.
70. Tacitus, Annales, 184.
71. Tacitus, Annales, 138-139; see note 55 above, which comments on
the hypocrisy of the many. The rest of this chapter discusses Sejanus’s
effort to magnify Livia’s hatred. In another instance during the year 32,
Tacitus records that a mother was condemned and executed for weeping
for her executed son (Annales, 186).
72. Tacitus, Annales, 144.
73. Tacitus, Annales, 151-152.
74. Tacitus, Annales, 185-186.
75. Tacitus, Annales, 143-144: “Hunc ego Lepidum temporibus illis
gravem et sapientem virum fuisse comperior: nam pleraque ab saevis adulationibus aliorum in melius flexit. neque tamen temperamenti egebat,
cum aequabili auctoritate et gratia apud Tiberium viguerit. unde dubitare
cogor fato et sorte nascendi, ut cetera, ita principium inclinatio in hos,
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offensio in illos, an sit aliquid in nostris consiliis liceatque inter abruptum
contumaciam et deforme obsequium pergere iter ambitione ac periculis
vacuum.” (“I am convinced that this Lepidus was a serious and wise man
for those times: for he turned very many things arising from the cruel flatteries of others to better effect. Nor did he lack moderation, since he retained steady influence and esteem with Tiberius. Hence I am compelled
to doubt whether, as with other things, the favor of leading men toward
some and their disfavor toward others is from the fate and chance of birth,
or whether it is something within our own purvue, and one has the freedom to pursue a course between severe autonomy and base servility that
is also free from dangers.”). His obituary in the year 34 (see Annales,
196), praises his moderation and wisdom, presenting him as a worthy
member of a family rich in good citizens (“genus fecundum bonorum
civium”).
76. Tacitus, Annales, 74: “Quod Camillo ob modestiam vitae impune
fuit.” (“And this was safe for Camillus because of his unassuming conduct in life.”)
77. Tacitus, Annales, 167, mentions Marcus Asinius Agrippa, a man
“claris maioribus quam vetustis vitaque non degener” (“with distinguished rather than ancient ancestors, and not ignoble in his way of life”),
who died in 27.
78. Tacitus, Cornelii Taciti de vita Iulii Agricolae liber (hereafter abbreviated as De vita Agricolae), ed. M. Winterbottom and R.M. Ogilvie, in
Cornelii Taciti Opera Minora (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975).
79. Tacitus, De vita Agricolae, 29: “Ceterum uti militare nomen, grave
inter otiosos, aliis virtutibus temperaret, tranquillitatem atque otium penitus hausit, cultu modicus, sermone facilis, uno aut altero amicorum comitatus, adeo ut plerique, quibus magnos viros per ambitionem aestimare
mos est, viso aspectoque Agricola quaererent famam, pauci interpretarentur.” (“Moreover, to moderate his military renown—which is imposing
for civilians—with other virtues, he yielded completely to tranquility and
leisure, dressing simply, conversing affably, accompanied by just one or
two friends, so much so that most people, whose custom is to judge great
men by their ostentation, having seen Agricola and scrutinized him, would
wonder about his good repute, but few could comprehend it.”)
80. Tacitus, De vita Agricolae, 30: “Domitiani vero natura praeceps in
iram, et quo obscurior, eo inrevocabilior, moderatione tamen prudentiaque
Agricolae leniebatur, quia non contumacia neque inani iactatione libertatis
famam fatumque provocabat.” (“Now Domitian’s nature was inclined to
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33
anger—and the more disguised, the more implacable—nevertheless it
was mollified by the guidance and judgment of Agricola, because he did
not provoke public opinion or fate by arrogance and empty displays of
personal liberty.”)
81. Tacitus, De vita Agricolae, 30: “Sciant, quibus moris est inlicita mirari, posse etiam sub malis principibus magnos viros esse, obsequiumque
ac modestiam, si industria ac vigor adsint, eo laudis excedere, quo
plerique per abrupta, sed in nullum rei publicae usum ambitiosa morte
inclaruerunt.”
82. Tacitus, De vita Agricolae, 31: “Et ipse quidem, quamquam medio in
spatio integrae aetatis ereptus, quantum ad gloriam, longissimum aevum
peregit. Quippe et vera bona, quae in virtutibus sita sunt, impleverat, et
consulari ac triumphalibus ornamentis praedito quid aliud adstruere fortuna poterat?” (“And he indeed, although snatched away at the midpoint
of a complete life, he completed the longest possible course of life in regard to honor. Since, in fact, he had acquired the real goods which depend
on virtues, what else could fortune add to someone who had received the
distinctions of the consulship and several military triumphs?”)
83. Tacitus, Annales, 185.
84. Tacitus, Annales, 149-150.
85. Tacitus, Annales, 126.
86. Tacitus, Annales, 152: “Quo magis socordiam eorum inridere libet
qui praesenti potentia credunt extingui posse etiam sequentis aevi memoriam. nam contra punitis ingeniis gliscit auctoritas, neque aliud externi
reges aut qui eadem saevitia usi sunt nisi dedecus sibi atque illis gloriam
peperere.” (“One is disposed to laugh all the more at the folly of those
who believe that, using their present power, they can extinguish the memory of the following generation. For on the contrary, when natural superiority is penalized, its influence flares up, and foreign kings or those who
have acted with the same sort of cruelty have generated nothing but dishonor for themselves and renown for the others.”)
87. Tacitus, Annales, 150: “illa primo aspectu levia ex quis magnarum
saepe rerum motus oriuntur.”
88. Tacitus, Annales,150.
89. Syme, Tacitus, Vol. 2, 573.
90. Tacitus, Annales, 126: “homines ad servitutem paratos.”
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35
Dionysus: The Therapeutic Mask
Richard B. Carter
Part I
Myths in General and
the Myth of Dionysus in Particular
One of the best accounts of the essence of myth occurs in
Jacob Klein’s unpublished explanation of Aristotle’s concept
of coming-to-be, or generation. In relation to Nature’s great
cycles—the seasons, birth and death, and the like—Klein
writes:
The old myths tell this story over and over again. In fact,
genesis is the very soul of any myth. To understand the
world, the story of its genesis has to be told. To understand the gods, the study of their genesis has to be told.
Cosmogony and Theogony are the primary subjects of
any myth. To understand properly any event in human
life, or character of a people or a city, this event and this
character has always to be related, it seems, to its mythical origins. To tell the myth of something means to tell
how this something came to be. An enterprise of this kind
does not make much sense unless one relates everything
ultimately to beginnings, which make any genesis possible. These are precisely the mythical origins. They contain, of necessity, these two elements: the Male and the
Female. And however distant the sobriety of Aristotle is
from the exuberance of those ancient tales, still the same
aspect of the world as a chain or as cycles of generation
dominates his thought.1
In accordance with Klein’s account, I intend to uncover the
thing itself of which the myths tell the origins, keeping in
Richard Burnett Carter is now retired from over forty years of teaching
as a professor of philosophy. He has written on Descartes’s invention of
mechanistic medicine, and has recently published several novels as well
as a book explaining key terms in the language of Zen.
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mind that the Greek word for the plot of any story or play
was the word mythos.
The principal mythical roles of Dionysus are these:2 He
is the patron deity of the theater and the god of drunken revel.
He is also the god of manic possession of women, who under
his influence, butchered baby animals and their own infants
while suckling the young of deer and lions, wore poisonous
snakes around their waists under their clothing to prevent
men from raping them while they lay senseless in the wake
of their mad mountain revels. He was also known as dendrites—tree-like—and indeed we find representations of him
as a post with a mask tied to it. In a different key, one ancient
source tells us that Dionysus was identical with Hades, claiming that Dionysus is both the god of the dead and the god in
whose honor processions of drunken revelers carry huge
leather phalluses and sing filthy songs.3
Comparing the various collections of myths, we find
eight distinct elements that describe the conception, birth,
death, resurrection, and subsequent deeds of Dionysus.
1. He was the child of Zeus and the mortal Semele,
a princess of the royal house of Thebes. Semele
was destroyed when she looked at Zeus in his full
glory, and, as she was being consumed in the
flames, Zeus rescued the fetus from his mother’s
womb and inserted it into his own leg, where the
child was nurtured and came to term. According
to this myth, Dionysus is thus twice-born—once
from the womb of his mortal mother, Semele, and
again from the leg of his divine father, Zeus.
2. After Dionysus was born the second time,
Zeus’s jealous wife, Hera, set Titans upon the newborn babe, who tore it into countless fragments.
The pieces were subsequently gathered together,
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reassembled, and resuscitated by the Titan, Rhea,
the mother of the newer gods.
3. Dionysus was then reared on Mt. Nysa by
nymphs, among whom were three of special note:
Erato, Bromie, and Bacche. He cultivated wine
there, and then he subsequently traveled around
the world teaching people how to plant vines and
make wine. When people opposed his missionary
efforts, his punishments were ghastly—for instance, he flayed some alive. For a period during
these travels he was driven mad by the ever-jealous Hera, but he then regained his sanity.
4. Known as Bromius after the nymph Bromie
who raised him on Mount Nysa, he led a large
band of women through Asia and around the
Mediterranean basin spreading vine-culture, winemaking, and wine-drinking. His attendants then
were called Bacchae after his nurse-nymph, Bacche. Lycurgus, the king of Edonia, resisted the
proselytizing of Dionysus. They fought, and the
king drove Dionysus into the sea. Lycurgus then
killed many of the Bacchae with an ox-goad. The
vengeful Dionysus drove Lycurgus mad, so that he
mistook his son for a grapevine, killed him with a
pruning knife, and then pruned off his ears and
nose. Lycurgus himself was later torn apart by wild
horses.
5. Dionysus eventually made his way to his
mother’s city, Thebes. There, King Pentheus, his
uncle, rejected him. For this insult, he was torn
limb from limb by the Bacchae. His head was
ripped from his body his own mother, Agave, who
had joined with nearly all the Theban women in
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following Dionysus into the mountains.
6. When women rejected the worship of Dionysus,
their punishment was to be driven into delirium,
so that they would tear their own nursing children
limb from limb. Sometimes they would even devour the dismembered corpses, not recognizing the
parts as belonging to their own infants.
7. One myth tells us that Dionysus married Ariadne of Crete after she had been abandoned by
Theseus of Athens.
8. Other women who rejected his worship seem to
have been punished by being made to kill and devour their own babies; but, when they repented,
and when their menfolk and their kings accepted
Dionysian worship, these women joined his joyful
band of singers and dancers who continued to rend
asunder fully grown lions and oxen and deer in the
mountains where they held their revels. They are
sometimes pictured as suckling the young of all
these animals, and even the young of poisonous
snakes.
This is enough to show that Dionysus is something of a
protean figure. From the evidence of the myths, Dionysus
was the god of wine and the god of the dead, of spring growth
and of magic possession. He acquired other characteristics
after the main myths had been created. For instance, he seems
to have become the god of theater by association with the
satyrs who worshipped him, and who were also thought to
be the originators of play-acting. Homer imputes diametrically opposed qualities to Dionysus, calling him both “raging” (mainomenoio, Iliad 6.132) and “joy of mortals”
(charma brotoisin, 14.325). Dionysus had his own oracle at
Delphi, who was considered just as important as the oracle
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39
of Apollo. Indeed, the Dionysian oracle may have been the
original oracle of Delphi: Plutarch, himself a priest at Delphi,
says that the oracle speaks mainomonoi stomati, with raging
mouth, and this reference to Homer’s “raging” may indicate
that Dionysus is the divine power behind the oracle’s pronouncements.
If we recall Klein’s notion that myths are always about
beginnings, this almost bewildering list of different attributes
accruing to Dionysus forces us to ask, With the genesis of
what in particular—that is, with the very first “pre-historic
beginnings” of what—are the myths of Dionysus concerned?
Modern attempts to address such questions are characteristically anthropological in nature. Ultimately, this viewpoint
will not be sufficient to help us understand the originary significance of Dionysus. To show this, let me begin the investigation by explaining some of the things that Dionysus did
not represent.
Part II
What Dionysus was not
In his Dionysus: Myth and Cult,4 Walter Otto critiques what
seem to be the two principal schools of interpreting ancient
myths in relatively modern times: the anthropological school
and the philological school. The first group uses the methodologies developed by academic anthropology starting in the
late nineteenth century. The second group is comprised of literary analysts who are also classics scholars. We can gain
some insight into what Dionysus is not by listening to Otto’s
criticism. Discussing one of the leaders of the philological
school, Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Möllendorf,5 Otto says:
His attacks on the views and methods of the “anthropologists” were so sharp and, indeed, frequently so bitterly
scornful that we had the right to expect to find in his own
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presentation an entirely different answer to the basic
questions involved. But we were disappointed. It became
clear that the philological school, for which he could
speak as a legitimate representative, actually agrees completely—in all its crucial points—with its opponents.
Both apply the biological concept of evolution in exactly
the same way.6
Otto then goes on to explain what he means by the expression, “the biological concept of evolution.”
Just as biology thought it was justified in believing that
a line of constant development leads from the lowest to
the highest organisms, so these two schools also place
so-called “simple” concepts at the beginning of an evolution of religious thought out of which are to grow,
through gradual change, the forms which the great deities
assume at their peak. To be sure, in the course of time biology itself had to become a little more modest and had
to acknowledge sudden new creations where it had formerly seen only continuous processes. Yet this is not the
crucial objection to the methods used in our study of religion. When biology talked of evolution, it always put
an organism at the beginning—an organism which still
had to have, in every instance, no matter how simple it
was thought to be, the main characteristic of an organism: it had to be a self-established whole. Only that
which is alive is capable of developing. But in the dialectic advanced by the study of religion, evolution does not
proceed from a simple form of life to a more complex
and higher form but from the Lifeless to the Alive. For
the elements of faith which this study considers primal
are nothing but conceptual systems from which life is
completely lacking.7
Otto then gives a striking example of the character of the sort
of thinking he is criticizing, in which the analysts attempt to
base a vital religious belief on an empty concept:
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In origin, the god Hermes is supposed to have been nothing more than a protector, and the stone pillars and heaps
of stones in front of farm houses point to his presence.
But all the features which define his character—the paradox of his guiding and his leading astray, the sudden
giving and taking away, the wisdom and cunning, the
spirit of propitious love, the witchery of twilight, the
weirdness of night and death—this diverse whole, which
is inexhaustible and yet nowhere denies the unity of its
being, is supposed to be only a complex of ideas which
had gradually developed from the way of life of the worshippers, from their wishes and inclinations, ideas enriched by the love of story telling.
For the primal and solely true belief, there is left, according to Wilamowitz, only the thought of a protecting
and helping god, in short, the idea of an X which lends
assistance but which has no other properties except, perhaps, the power necessary for help.
At the beginning of the process called evolution
there is, then, a mere Nothingness, and the concept of
evolution has consequently lost its meaning. For, a god
like the one assumed here has no real substance, and that
which has no essence is nothing. . . . That which should
be respected as the most sacred object of belief turns out
to be “not there” the first time it is tested, and the objection which Wilamowitz himself raised against Usener’s8
theory—“no man prays to a concept”—applies to Wilamowitz’s theory as well. . . .
As for the “Vegetation Deity,” the “Death God,” and
similar generalities into which we now like to dissipate
living deities as if we had in them the primal concepts of
religious consciousness—these too are nothing but lifeless ideas. How could they ever have fulfilled the demands of devotion, lifted up the spirit, elicited the
powerful forms of cultus? No life proceeds from a concept, and if the great forms of the gods, which could motivate the creative spirit of a culture of highest genius,
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are to be understood historically, then there would be no
more unproductive application imaginable than this.9
One final quotation from Otto reveals the reason why the
philological and anthropological approaches are insufficient
for understanding the essence of a god or for entering the
realm in which such a being has its life:
[O]ur fragmented, mechanistic thinking knows nothing
of such realms of Being, nothing of their unity. How,
then, could it understand their divinity? It examines belief in deity with an astounding naiveté, dissipating its
forms only to place them together again artificially to fit
the pattern of a historical process. . . . That it is suspiciously like our dynamic way of thought is a serious
charge against it.10
In short, human begins are not so constructed, nor have they
ever been so constructed, that they could worship anything
like the pallid verbal constructs described as deities by the
anthropological school and the philological school. The
essence of Dionysus is not an empty concept.
Part III
What Dionysus might have been to
some of his ancient followers
The evolutionary, synthetic approaches used by modern
physics and biology does not and cannot explain the belief
in deities who are almost always characterized by a large
number of mutually contradictory powers. Otto insists that it
is precisely the inability of an evolutionary view of religion
to construct a deity with numerous conflicting powers that
most strongly justifies rejecting the evolutionary accounts of
the anthropological and philological schools of interpreting
religion. How could the same primary concept, such as a
power signified by a pile of rocks on the roadside, grow into
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43
a great god by the gradual addition of powers that were mutually contradictory to one another? On what grounds could
a people choose to relate contradictory elements in order to
construct a synthetic whole? To Otto, the most outstanding
evidence that the ancients believed in gods as truly existing
substances of some sort—rather than as unconsciously synthesized psychological projections of fears and hopes—was
precisely that one and the same deity did have so many conflicting powers. The Hermes of the ancients did not grow into
Hermes gradually. On the contrary, there first had to be a belief in a single, truly existent deity. Only an existing deity
could be the ground a diverse collection of mutually conflicting attributes. Hermes was not built up out of his many different qualities; rather, he was the vessel into which the
attributes could be poured, the container that could hold a
true mixture of the attributes within its substantial unity.
But what are we to think about these different, often contradictory, powers and attributes? Are they merely different
facets of one and the same god, as though the divinity were
a gem that revealed different colors depending of the angle
of the incident light? Is Dionysus the baby-killer merely another manifestation of the same Dionysus who is also the
giver of joy to mortals? If so, it would seem to follow that
the ultimate meaning of baby-killer is identical to the ultimate
meaning of giver of joy to mortals. And this would seem to
mean that Dionysus was conceived by his most fervent
votaries as being both of these identically in his inmost
essence. In the context of psychological anthropology, the
consequence of these considerations would imply that the
human psyche is constructed in such a way that it takes deep
delight in the most ghastly of butcheries; that the horrifying
rituals of child-murder answer a deep need in the human soul;
and that this need is at root identical with the tender love of
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a mother for her child.
But is this true? Are nurturing and destroying really only
“symbolic” expressions of a single underlying unity? If so,
then the absence or presence of such manifestations are must
be merely different modes of expression, different symbolic
representations of an essence in which there is no fundamental distinction. In this view, however, the issue of whether one
mode of expression or another comes to the fore becomes
merely a cultural and historical matter, not a psychological
or anthropological one, since the structure of the psyche is
not reflected in the mode of expression. The appearance of
different symbols is purely relative to time and place.
Moreover, this view of symbolic expression does not address the question, Does every in the psyche have its own
particular expression? Or are we to think that one and the
same thing in the psyche can have distinctly different symbolic expressions? If so, we find ourselves committed to an
anthropology in which all the expressions of inner drives or
impulses would be theoretically reducible to a single drive
or impulse.
Inasmuch as Otto appears to hold this view of symbolic
relativism—for he never even raises this rather obvious problem—it seems that he may have agreed fundamentally with
the cultural anthropologists he attacked so forcefully.
In any case, the approaches of the philologists and the anthropologists are insufficient for us. Let us begin, instead, by
approaching the myths directly. Since drunkenness is deeply
associated with the cult of Dionysus, we will begin our own
analysis of this question by asking about the relationship between drinking and the worship of Dionysus.
Part IV
Dionysus and drunkenness
Different levels of intoxication give rise to different degrees
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45
of visual impairment. The sober person sees things clearly.
Moderate inebriation leads to distorted vision. In this condition, a person sees just what he sees when sober, but with all
sorts of errors, such as double vision and shaky vision. Extreme intoxication, however, induces delusions. In this condition, a person sees things that are not there, experiences
hallucinations, and falls into delirium. Delirium, the result of
extreme drunkenness, was Dionysus’s punishment for the
women who refused to worship him. His proper votaries,
however, were only moderately drunk, and in this state, liberated a bit from the strictures of sobriety, they were lighthearted and joyful.
It might seem at first glance that moderate drunkenness
is a mean between sobriety and delirium, but this is not the
case. Delirium withdraws a person entirely from the world
of shared experience that characterizes sobriety and moderate
intoxication. Hence, moderate drunkenness is not a mean between the two extremes: on the contrary, it groups itself together with its cousin sobriety. Nevertheless, we tend place
people into one of three categories in relation to their state of
inebriation: the sober, the moderately drunk, and the delirious.
Now what if we ask, How drunk must a worshipper of
Dionysus be in order to perceive one and the same god as
being both a baby-killer and a bringer of joy to mortals? Attitudes toward this question would differ depending on the
category of the person hearing it. The sober, for whom the
contradiction is anathema, would think that only a delirious
person could imagine such blasphemies. The delirious, for
whom the contradiction is not a difficulty, would think that
only a blind person could raise such a doubt. And the moderately drunk—who have loosened the bonds of sobriety
enough to entertain the question but, not being delirious, have
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not settled the matter—would be regarded negatively by both
the other groups. The sober person regards even the moderately drunk person as addled for not keeping the distinctions
clear, whereas the delirious person regards him as cloddish
for breaking up an obvious unity. Thus, the moderately drunk
seem to be opposed in different ways to the other two groups.
To the moderately drunk, on the other hand, both of the other
groups appear to be delirious: the sober because in their literalness they can make nothing of anything; the delirious because in their associative fugue they make anything of
nothing at all. Both extremes are mistaken in not making the
right things of the right things.
The attitude of the moderately drunk, therefore, is open
to the possibility of transformation, to the possibility that distinctions might become unities or vice versa. Hence the importance in the cult of Dionysus of the image of the serpent,
which remains what it is although it continually sheds its own
form. But does this idea come too close to imputing to the
votaries of Dionysus the empty abstraction of the philologists
and anthropologists, namely, the idea that Dionysus is the single, constant entity underlying the many symbolic manifestations he throws off, just as the snake is the single, constant
entity underlying the many skins it throws off?
Part V
The Masks of Dionysus
Fortunately, another Dionysus steps forward to block this line
of thought. Dionysus of the theater was surely a master of
images, and so he certainly knew what any child dressing up
in costume knows—that the essence of an image is to present
itself as just what it is not. The serpent’s shed skins need not
be interpreted as different manifestations thrown off by a single, constant entity; they could instead be the remnants of
what the serpent is not. Of course, this would mean that each
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47
skin showed the serpent as what it was not even while the
serpent was wearing it. Or, translating this idea into the realm
of theater, the different aspects of Dionysus, each one an
image left behind after a transformation, are just so many
masks, just so many presentations of what he is not. If this is
the case, then one of the central teachings of the cult of
Dionysus must be this: To unmask is not to know.
Dionysus’s different masks, then, cannot be merely disguises. They cannot be coverings worn by a single, self-same
being of false fronts intended to hide the identity of a single,
self-same being from onlookers. And yet, isn’t that what
masks are? Perhaps not. Perhaps we need to think more radically about the concept of a mask.
Masks are essentially superficial. They belong in the
realm of externalities, of surfaces, of things-as-they-present
themselves. Curiously enough, this makes them similar to
solid bodies, which likewise manifest themselves to us as “all
surface.” If we carve away the surface of a wooden block,
for instance, we reveal a new solid that presents itself to us
in a new way. But the new solid was not “contained by” the
original one, except perhaps in a metaphorical sense. This
point may be easier to grasp by means of a negative example.
A box with another box fitting snugly inside it is not a solid.
That is why there is room in it for the second box. Solids, on
the contrary, do not have space for containment within them,
and thus they cannot contain other solids. Nor do they contain
some sort of originary object that remains the same through
every alteration of surface. Each solid has only one surface,
each surface is the surface of only one solid, and two different
solids have two different surfaces. Similarly, each mask, because of its essential superficiality, cannot mask another
mask, let alone some originary object that remains the same
through every change of mask.
The multiple masks of Dionysus, then, cannot be thought
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of as containing one another; they are not a set of nested
boxes in which the outermost box conceals those within.
Each mask presents itself as a distinctly different thing with
an identity of its own, just as the carved wooden block presents itself as distinctly different from the block from which
it was carved. Nor do his masks contain some originary being
that remains the same through transformations of the masks,
any more than solids contain originary objects. Consequently,
the masks of Dionysus are not disguises: nothing is concealed
within them, neither other masks nor an originary being. So
trying to penetrate his masks in order to unmask a wearer is
clearly a pointless task. It may not be quite so clear at this
point that this task is also perilous.
Part VI
Masks, Shame, Orgies, and Horror
If we continue to view a mask as a sort of disguise, we continue to think of it as a sort of magic shield of invisibility, a
ring of Gyges. Wearing a mask as a disguise seems to be a
way of hiding one’s identity, of concealing what one really
is with a surface that presents what one really is not. The
wearer of a disguise seems unaccountable for his actions, and
hence free to do things that he would be ashamed to acknowledge in his own person. But since, as we have seen, a mask
is not in fact a disguise, we should expect that the attempt to
hide one’s identity with a mask should fail, should show itself
as impossible in some way. And so it does: the unaccountable
masked person is not at all the same as the unmasked person.
The one does things that the other will not do. The one has
shame, the other does not. It is simply a mistake to think that
the masked person is somehow identical with the unmasked
one. Looking aside from this error for the time being, however, we can see that the notion of a mask understood as a
disguise raises the issue of shame, and this brings us to another central aspect of Dionysus and of his cult: the orgy.
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49
The word orgy comes from the Greek orgia, which is related to the word ergon, a deed, a task, or something accomplished. In classical usage, an orgy is not a celebration of
wildly licentious sexual abandon—this meaning appears in
English only in the seventeenth century—but rather an enjoined task, specifically of a religious character. It refers to
religious rites such as the rites of Demeter, of Orpheus, and,
most frequently, the rites of Dionysus. An orgiastic act, then,
is like that part of a religious service in which every word
and gesture of the officiating priest is ordained by preset ritual—as opposed to, say, a sermon, in which the officiating
minister can speak in his own name.
Another example of an orgiastic act in classical times was
the presentation of a play by actors, in which the speeches
had been ordained by the play’s author and—as we know was
the case with the actors of Dionysus’s theater—the masks
worn by the actors were ordained by tradition. The orgies of
the cult-worshippers of Dionysus dramatize—that is, act out
in prescribed word and deed—the great myths of the deity.
The drama is portrayed by masked actors who are precisely
what their masks show them to be, and who can be so because all their speeches and actions are prescribed to be exactly the speeches and actions belonging to the mask.
Conversely, at the same time, the actors’ masks are precisely
the surfaces appropriate to them in their character as worshippers of Dionysus in the orgiastic performance. And this
relationship is very strict: thus, no single actor presents two
different characters with the same mask or the same character
with two different masks. (If the latter should happen, as with
Oedipus before and after he blinds himself, it indicates that
the character has changed radically.)
These characteristics of orgiastic performance teach us
about the nature of Dionysus, the god of play-acting. His
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manifestations, on the one hand, as the god of baby-killing
and, on the other hand, as the god who brings joy to mortals
must not be understood as two different masks of the selfsame deity. The dreadful mask of the baby-killer, the amiable
mask of the joy-giver—these indicate simply that masks
exist. They do not reveal any persisting entity behind the
masks. Moreover, the plays that embody the orgiastic tradition tell us that our insistence on trying to unmask the nonexistent entity behind the mask is not just pointless, but
dangerous. And indeed, that is what we should expect, since
all attempts to put mistaken beliefs into practice can only
meet with tragic consequences. In the plays, the raving characters represent those who try to unmask others. Agave—
who claimed that Semele had become pregnant with
Dionysus by a mortal rather than by Zeus—attempted to unmask Semele as a liar. Pentheus—who was certain that the
rites of Dionysus were wild, unsanctioned, and licentious
rather than prescribed religious performances—tried to unmask Dionysus himself. Their delirium is a symptom, as we
saw earlier, that they have left the realm of shared experience.
The proper votaries of Dionysus do not rave; madness belongs to those who are outside communal awareness, and
thus outside of the celebration—as Euripides saw so clearly.
And the punishment for the attempt to unmask is terrible:
first, it leads to raving, since the person making the attempt
is trying the impossible, namely, to make something out of
nothing by reducing two different masks to expressions of
one nonexistent entity; second the raving leads to self-destruction as the person tries to act on the basis of delusion.
Thus Agave is led to dismember her own son and Pentheus
is compelled to dive headlong into the bevy of Bacchae who
will tear him apart. The attempt to unmask comes to grief,
because unmasking is impossible.
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This is what the myths of Dionysus are trying to tell us:
We human beings are masked. The baby-killer is a mask just
as much as the nurse or mother is a mask. If the nurse or
mother mask is transformed into the baby-killer mask, this is
not because the bloodier mask is another version of the more
pleasing one, and certainly not because it is the true being
concealed by the pleasing mask. On the contrary, the bloody
mask is the consequence of trying to unmask at all. The attempt to unmask is the cause of the bloody mask that is found
“underneath” the pleasant mask. The lesson of the dreadful
myths of Dionysus is that, as we tear off our masks, each successive mask will be a bloodier, more horrifying result of the
attempt to tear off the previous mask. On this view, Otto was
right inasmuch as he thought that the various contradictory
aspects of Dionysus point toward a sort of unity, but he was
wrong in believing this unity to be a substance of some kind.
The masks of Dionysus point toward a unity in the sense that
they show us the self-same process repeating itself in the successively more horrifying masks that come into being from
each previous attempt to unmask.
We can relate this insight to our daily lives in this way:
In contemporary terms, we describe the attempt to unmask
in various ways—to “find ourselves,” to “act on our true feelings,” to “be our authentic selves,” and so on. The myths of
Dionysus teach us, however, that we are masked actors in an
orgiastic performance. The grief we suffer for rejecting this
insight, and for trying to unmask ourselves in spite of it, is
that we flay our own faces in the attempt to unmask ourselves. By tearing off our mask, we rend the flesh, leaving a
bloody layer of pulp that had previously been protected by
the mask. The original face, the mask, was not disguising the
horror that appears after removal; the horror comes into existence only as a result of the attempt to unmask.
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Part VII
The therapeutic mask
In what we have said up to this point, there are some indications that moderate drunkenness, with its openness to transformation, might be preferable to the anti-Dionysian
literalness of absolute sobriety and the anti-Dionysian madness of delirium. What does this tell us about everyday existence? What might be the analogue of moderate drunkenness
in our daily lives? What would it mean to live in such a way
that we are neither utterly sober nor intoxicated to the point
of delusion? Here we will benefit from two other aspects of
the deity we are studying: Dionysus as the god of marvels
and Dionysus as the god of the dead.
As the patron of theater, Dionysus is the god of the marvelous, the miraculous, and the wonderful. He is in the first
instance, then, the patron of comedy, the genre in which a
marvelous turn of events—such as the appearance of a deus
ex machina or an unexpected savior or a startling revelation—brings about a change from imminent bad fortune to
good fortune. This last consideration also shows the link between comedy and tragedy: if the marvel does not occur, imminent bad fortune comes to pass. And this too is wonderful
in a different way: we wonder why the marvel did not occur,
why the bad fortune was not averted, why the suffering had
to be. Dionysus is in the second instance, then, also the patron
of tragedy.
For the moment, we are going to set aside Dionysus as
the patron of comedy and tragedy to investigate yet another
side of the god. As we saw very early on, Dionysus was also
identified with Hades, the god of the dead, and was worshipped by drunken revelers carrying leather phalluses while
singing lewd songs. The connections among the ghosts of the
dead, leather phalluses, and filthy songs will reveal one more
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aspect of Dionysus to us, which will, in combination with
Dionysus’s role as the god of theater, teach us the final lesson
that can be drawn from the myths of Dionysus.
We begin by asking, What do the leather phalluses and
filthy songs have to do with the worship of the god of the
dead?
We know from many sources that in Athens in early
spring, during the month Anthesterion, a three-day festival
of flowers included two days of Dionysian merry-making followed by a third day, called the Chutroi, the feast of pots, a
festival of the dead at the end of which ghosts were exhorted
to leave the city.11 But, during this very somber third day,
comedies—represented in parade as outsized phalluses and
dirty songs—were presented. It appears that the Athenians
regarded theater performance as suitable either for entertaining the benevolent ghosts, or for distracting the malevolent
ghosts, who walked abroad during the festival. In either case,
Dionysus the god of theater was the appropriate deity for laying ghosts to rest. Dionysus thus begins to come to light as
the god of rest, as the deity who blesses leisure. And this is
not very surprising. After all, are not drinking and theater
both acts of leisure? Perhaps the most all-encompassing of
Dionysus’s aspects is that he is the god of leisure.
But leisure presupposes trust. No one can rest comfortably without trusting in a multitude of protective guardians
and helpers, from family members to neighbors to policemen
to public service providers to soldiers. When we are made to
question this trust—when one of these protective figures violates our trust—our sense of complacency is disturbed, and
our ability to experience leisure evaporates. Violation of trust
is, therefore, the supreme sin. It undermines the faith that humans need to feel safe in their own lives. Perhaps this is why
Dante, in the Divine Comedy, places Brutus, Cassius, and
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Judas—exemplars of treachery—in the gnashing jaws of
Satan himself—also a traitor—at the heart of Hell, which is
the Christian version of Hades. If violation of trust is the destruction of faith and the leisure that depends on it, Dionysus
the god of leisure must be opposed in all ways to treachery.
He must be the guardian of guardianship and of all forms of
protective care. Indeed, the female worshippers of Dionysus
were called by the honorific title tithēnai, that is, nurses. The
worship of Dionysus involves nurture and guardianship,
without which leisure is impossible.
As we said, theater is also a leisure activity. Hence we
should also expect it to relate in some way to nurture and
guardianship. This relationship is found in the realm of sight:
theater cultivates and civilizes vision for sake of increasing
trust, and thus securing leisure. The epitome of self-involved
vision is solitary dreaming. In our dreams we are drawn into
a self-contained world into which intrude only phantoms
from our shared, waking life. Theater borrows these intruders, as it were, and introduces them to the companions of our
shared life for their approval or disapproval. Theater civilizes
our dreams by teaching us to distinguish between things that
belong only to our solitary reverie and those that belong to
our shared life with others. In doing so, it transforms our selfcontained consciousness into shared, civil consciousness.
This civil consciousness is conscience. Conscienceless
theater is anti-theater. Conscienceless theater tries to undo
the transformation of our dreams by tearing off what seems
to be their civil mask, and recklessly presenting our solitary
consciousness to the prying eyes of strangers. Conscienceless, unmasking, theater is pornographic theater. It demands
of its spectators that they publicly unmask and share all their
dreams—the more private the better. But we have seen the
consequences of the attempt to unmask, and those conse-
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quences can be expected to occur if unmasking theater is not
checked: waking life will become a nightmare. Dionysus the
god of theater reminds us that conscience, the mask of consciousness, is also its nurturer and its guardian.
Dionysus is, therefore, the guardian deity of civilized
consciousness. His dual realm is the underworld of solitary
dreaming together with the portion of it that can be seen in
civil consciousness. Human beings see the light of day only
when they are masked. It is only as masked that we humans
see the true light of day. Unmasked, we live in nightmare.
Without our masks, we are as insubstantial as dreams; we are
phantoms whose thinness is proved by the fact that they cannot withstand the light of day. Ultimately, then, the mask of
Dionysus is the mask of conscience, the mask that allows
some of our dreaming visions to be seen communally in the
light of day. Dionysus, finally, is the god of that which is
properly visible, the god of the properly shared, the god of
civility.
NOTES
1. Unfortunately, the source of this quotation—most probably one of
Klein’s many lectures delivered at St. John’s College—is not known.
2. The stories of the Greek Gods are described in exhaustive detail in
Robert Graves, The Greek Myths, 2 vols. (New York: Penguin, 1960).
3. Heraclitus, Fragment 15. See Heraclitus, Fragments: A Text and Translation with a Commentary (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981),
17.
4. Walter Otto, Dionysos: Mythos und Kultus (Klostermann: Frankfurt
am Main, 1933). References in these notes will be to the English translation by Robert B. Palmer, Dionysus: Myth and Cult (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1965).
5. Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Möllendorf (1848-1931) was an expert on the
literature of ancient Greece. He championed the notion that surviving an-
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cient manuscripts, besides being objects of literary history, could also be
mined for biographical, political, and general historical information.
6. Otto, Dionysus, 8.
7. Otto, Dionysus, 8-9.
8. Hermann Usener (1834-1905) was a philologist and historian of religion, and a teacher of Wilamowitz. The statement made here seems to be
Wilamowitz’s version of something Usener used to say, not a quotation
from a publication.
9. Otto, Dionysus, 9-11.
10. Otto, Dionysus, 11.
11. See, for instance, Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 2.15,
and Aristophanes, Acharnians, 1076.
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Fields and Particles and Being
Dylan Casey
1 Introduction
Particles and fields, broadly speaking, describe two basic accounts of what the world is made of. The particle is the quintessential ball, grain of sand, or individual. It contains the
notion of individuation—the very criterion of distinguishing
this from that. The field is an expanse, a continuous entity
that occupies space, has shape, contour, and variation, but
these qualities are always reflected back onto the field itself.
The rolling, wheat-covered hills comprise a field. These two
options correspond to two claims about the world in general:
that it is discrete, like particles, or continuous, like fields. As
with all good arguments, there are respectable proponents
on both sides, each offering a little twist on the common
theme.
For example, Lucretius, on the face of it, is a particle
guy. Accordingly, he writes:
All nature, then, as it is in itself, consists of two things;
for there are bodies and the void in which they are located
and through which they move in different directions.1
The world is full of a variety of fundamental particles zipping around in an otherwise empty container, colliding with
one another making all that we see. I should mention that
there is the possibility of intrinsic self-motion—the
swerve—of these particles (or at least one of them) in addition to the motion imparted by collisions, but that would lead
to a different lecture.
Dylan Casey is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis. This lecture
was originally delivered on 22 April 2011 as part of Mr. Casey’s tenure
as the National Endowment for the Humanities Chair in Modern
Thought. It has been modified slightly for publication.
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Newton, more or less, is also a particle guy. For him, light
is corpuscular—a view that might be considered prescient
given the photonic understanding of light that appeared over
two centuries following his work. The action-at-a-distance
interpretation of his gravitational theory also implies a particle
view of the world in which each particle acts on the others,
not just through collision, but also directly and instantaneously. In the end, action at a distance is a refinement of the
Lucretian world of colliding particles to account for remote
actions like magnetism and gravity.
I should note that Newton had grave misgivings about action at a distance:
That one body may act upon another at a distance through
a vacuum without the mediation of anything else, by and
through which their action and force may be conveyed
from one another, is to me so great an absurdity that, I believe, no man who has in philosophic matters a competent
faculty of thinking could ever fall into it.2
Roughly in the field camp, Descartes gives us the plenum.
He insists that the world be full and continuous. There are no
essential entities, but rather amorphous extension combined
with swirling vortices. Descartes expected the world to be a
self-contained whole—motion and extension together—
though he might have conceded that the ball needs to start
rolling at some point.
Also standing in the field camp, in his own way, is Leibniz. His world is full as well, but his monads are discrete, essential entities colliding in a motion ultimately governed from
the outside by God. While agreeing with Descartes about the
necessary fullness of the world, Leibniz takes issue with
Descartes’s inability to account for individuation. The monads go some way toward keeping the notion of individual entities in a full world.
Obviously, the preceding accounts are just sketches of the
ideas of the authors. And I do not intend to give the impres-
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sion that all particle views and all field views are the same.
They’re not. But all particle views emphasize certain features
and address certain questions in common, as do all field
views. For the particle guys, the emphasis is on distinction
and difference. Their ultimate standpoint is that there must
be, somewhere, essential differences that are ineradicable,
maybe even eternal. There is something naturally attractive
about this view. One of the manifest features of the world is
the distinction between this and that. The individuation that
underlies the simple act of counting presumes boundaries between things as a precondition for counting them. Furthermore, we break up individual things into smaller individuals
all the time, and many of them have natural boundaries. Like
a ball or a grain of sand, such things maintain their integrity
over time. Extrapolating to smaller pieces and to elementary
particles is a straightforward exercise of the intellect: the
smallest things ought to embody (or even exemplify) the distinctions that are manifest to us everyday.
If individuation is a common feature of particle views,
then the void is a common problem. The void seems to be
an amorphous nothing that functions as a container for
everything that exists—and, of course, speaking of nothing
is difficult. Similarly, the genuine separation of individual
entities that characterizes particle theories gives rise to the
problem of action at a distance. There are certainly phenomena, like magnetism, in which it is difficult to explain how
separated individuals interact with one another when action
between those individuals isn’t easily attributable to simple
collision. If you dispense with the void, you are left asking
what fills it up.
For the field guys like Descartes and Leibniz, the emphasis is on wholeness and continuity—on the fullness and completeness of the universe. This emphasis on oneness doesn’t
seem incidental. Rather, it seems fundamental to scientific
activity to assume a whole with respect to which measure-
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ments are made. For measuring to work at all, one needs a
whole. Once the whole is assumed, however, the problem of
distinction and identity is ever-present. One is left wondering
about the cause of differences between individuals, or questioning whether such differences aren’t necessarily illusions.
This is particularly true of Leibniz. By filling the universe
with monads, he creates the appearance of individuality that
is characteristic of the particle view. Since the monads fill the
world, it seems that it might be possible to sidestep the void.
But in the end, the monads form a whole in which their independence is utterly illusory. Rather, each monad is a mirror
of the whole universe through its internal connection with
everything else in the universe.
Here is an image of a physical system that highlights
these problems and tensions: two conducting spheres, each
hanging from a string, each holding some net negative
charge. Since like charges repel and the two spheres are relatively close to one another, they push each other away. We
can tell this is happening because the strings from which the
spheres hang are neither parallel nor plumb, but angled away
from each other. If we push on one of the spheres, we see the
other move away, and if we move one sphere around, the
other moves as well. Now this is not an everyday sort of observation. We don’t usually have charged spheres hanging
around near us. But, it isn’t difficult to arrange and, nowadays, isn’t likely to surprise many people. It’s so easy, in fact,
that we do very similar demonstrations in our Junior Laboratory classes with pith balls hanging from threads. An initial
account of this phenomenon might go like this: charges exert
electromagnetic force on each other and, since the charges
are confined to the spheres, that force overcomes the uniform
downward tendency of the spheres due to gravitation. The
relative angle of the strings reflects the net force acting on
the spheres.
This system of hanging charged bodies incorporates the
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most important questions about fields and particles, about
wholes and parts, about the continuous and the discrete. What
is happening between these spheres? This is, in short, the
field question. Second, how do I understand these spheres
themselves? This is, in short, the particle question.
2 Classical Fields
Although Descartes and Leibniz laid the foundations for field
theory with their emphasis on continuity and the fullness of
the universe, it was the work of Michael Faraday that marked
the beginning of our modern notion of the field. During his
research into the nature of electricity and magnetism, he
coined the term field to refer to the interstitial action between
charged parts of matter and between magnetized parts of matter. In his experiments he had located and measured charges,
confirmed the discreteness of charge, and demonstrated that
changing magnetic forces induce electric currents in nearby
wires. These electric and magnetic forces could penetrate
matter and persist in a vacuum. The effects of charges on one
another, as well as the effects of magnetism and electromagnetic induction, seemed like instances of action at a distance,
and all of them could be described by contemporary mathematical formulations.
Faraday didn’t buy it. For him, something had to travel
between the charges and between the magnetic poles. Ultimately, the world had to be full, and action couldn’t happen
without touching. Although one might call this a metaphysical predisposition on Faraday’s part, he nevertheless searched
tirelessly for the smoking gun that would reveal the presence
of a field as the medium through which separated pieces of
charged matter could touch. First of all, he considered the
time required for electrical action to occur as evidence of the
presence of a field. Using a very long wire, he could measure
how long it took for electricity to travel through a circuit. The
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fact that such action was measurably non-instantaneous revealed that there was a moment when the action of one
charged particle was “emitted” but not yet felt by another
charge. If the whole long electrical interaction takes any time
at all, the smallest communication of action must also take
time. At some moment, therefore, the action was somewhere
in between the two charges.
For Faraday, this amounted to direct evidence against an
action-at-a-distance account of electrical and magnetic force.
The action between the charges must be contained within a
field, within a continuous entity that was not confined by a
particle of matter. The action of one charge on another had
to occur through time and through space, of course, but it
needn’t itself be particle-like in nature. By hypothesizing the
existence of the field, Faraday imagined a new type of substance in the world.
In holding this view, Faraday put himself at odds with a
well established camp of believers in action at a distance who
denied the necessity of a continuity of action from here to
there. In their minds, each bit of charge acted directly on
every other bit of charge. This notion was similar to Newton's
account of gravity, in which each bit of matter exerted an instantaneous gravitational pull on every other bit of matter,
with the strength of that force decreasing as the square of the
distance between the bits.
(As an aside—and this probably reveals my own disposition on the subject—I would note that the sensitivity to distance in action-at-a-distance theories is puzzling at the outset,
if action is supposed to take place entirely between one particle and another. How do the particles sense the distance between them in order to regulate the force? Even if the
information took no time to propagate, which creates a new
problem concerning instantaneous transmission of anything,
this sort of action at a distance still requires a radical sensitivity of each part to the global arrangement. It cannot be the
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case that the action is determined by only the two bits in
which we happen to be interested; each part must know
where every other part is within a larger context. In a funny
way, action at a distance presumes a radical wholeness of all
things due to the instantaneous activity of the putative parts
upon each other.)
Faraday’s field idea reaches fruition in James Clerk
Maxwell’s reformulation that is eventually embodied in his
equations for the electromagnetic field. Maxwell adds mathematical clarity and refinement to Faraday’s initial notions
of the field. Among his greatest clarifications was rendering
Faraday’s field as a mathematical quantity whose value depends upon spatial locations. This is how the field is continuous: it has a value at all points in space. Temperature is a
good and typical example of a field. Each point in the room
has a temperature and the mathematical function in three spatial directions that describes the temperature is called the temperature field.
Maxwell’s account of electromagnetism invokes electrical and magnetic fields that persist throughout all space. If
we return to our two hanging charged spheres, Maxwell
would say that there is an electrostatic field—electrostatic
because we don’t have to account for any magnetism in this
system—between the two spheres and that the field is described by a field strength at each point between the spheres.
It’s worth noting that the mathematical form of an electrostatic field is richer and more complicated than a temperature
field. For instance, the electrostatic field is represented mathematically at each point in between the spheres by three components corresponding to the field strength in each of three
spatial directions. And each of those components depends on
three coordinates of position as well. That makes it what is
called a vector field, but it’s still a field, which is to say, an
extended whole in between two things. (The simpler temperature field would be called a scalar field, since each point is
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represented by a number and not a vector.)
Following Maxwell, we can refine the system of our
hanging spheres in this way: The spheres are aggregates of
charge and the force between them is the action of a connecting electromagnetic field. Each charge is the source of an
electromagnetic field that pushes the other. In this way of seeing things, the world consists of particles floating on an ether
sea in which the motions of the particles touch off waves of
force that act on other particles.
This, in large part, is the ontology of classical fields: there
are, on the one hand, particles that are sources and recipients
of disturbance, and, on the other hand, fields which communicate the disturbance between the sources. And one of the
most amazing aspects of Maxwell’s theory is the consequence that these disturbances become the manifestation of
light. Light itself is revealed as electromagnetic action born
out of the motion of charges.
This unifying character of the field, its ability to communicate action between charges, was a wonder to Maxwell.
Here is just a taste of his enthusiasm from his article “On Action at a Distance”:
The vast interplanetary and interstellar regions will no
longer be regarded as waste places in the universe, which
the Creator has not seen fit to fill with the symbols of the
manifold order of His kingdom. We shall find them to be
already full of this wonderful medium; so full, that no
human power can remove it from the smallest portion of
space, or produce the slightest flaw in its infinite continuity. It extends unbroken from star to star; and when a
molecule of hydrogen vibrates in the dog-star, the
medium receives the impulses of these vibrations; and
after carrying them in its immense bosom for three years,
delivers them in due course, regular order, and full tale
into the spectroscope of Mr. Huggins, at Tulse Hill.3
Now stipulating a field as a new kind of entity that acts
as the mediator of action between particles doesn’t settle the
discreteness/continuity problem. What is a field anyway? Is
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it like water connecting one shore to another in such a way
that the waves from a dropped stone lap upon the other side,
dislodging stones there? This is exactly the sort of image that
comes to mind when we think about point charges moving
in the continuous field that propagates vibrations at the speed
of light. If this is the case, then what is the field made of?
Does it have parts, as water surely does? Is it composed of
particles? If it is, what holds those particles together? Some
of these questions arise from the very notion of extension. It
is difficult to see how any extended thing can exist without
being made up of “sub-things.” Any successful account of
things will need to address these questions about extension
and its sub-structure.
On the other hand, what is a particle? Where are its
boundaries? How is it distinguished from the force field of
which it is the source? Where would one cross from charge
to field? These questions of crossing and transformation from
one thing to another are at the root of discreteness, difference,
and individuality. Looking for an elementary particle is looking for a fundamental “this” that is clearly distinguishable
from some different “that.”
Behind all these questions lurk the nagging problems I
mentioned at the outset: the problems associated with the attempt to come to terms with the distinctions between continuity and discreteness. A satisfying understanding of fields
and particles ought to reveal some resolution of the tensions
between these two accounts of world. To obviate the need for
the void, we need a full universe. To articulate identity, we
need ways of isolating individuals from the whole while
maintaining connections so that we still have a whole.
Maxwell’s field theory is looks like marbles and goo: the particles—the marbles—are point sources of mass and charge;
the field—the goo—sticks all the particles together, communicating their separate actions to one another.
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3 Quantum Field Theory
While Faraday and Maxwell pioneered the notion of the field,
its ultimate expression is found in modern quantum field theory, which represents our best current account of the structure
of all matter. This account is called the Standard Model. If
the name evokes for you a simultaneous sense of elevation
and dreariness, you feel much the same way as most particle
physicists, for whom the Standard Model is both a triumph
and an affliction.
In the Standard Model, the world contains elementary
particles like electrons, neutrinos, and up quarks, which interact with one another by means of four forces: the electromagnetic force, which holds together everything from atoms
to asteroids, and is the mediator of all chemical interactions;
the strong force, which holds together the nuclei of atoms;
the weak force, which doesn’t hold together anything, but mediates some forms of radioactive decay; and the gravitational
force, which holds together planets, stars, solar systems,
galaxies, and so on. Gravitation doesn’t really fit in the Standard Model very well right now. This is regarded as an acceptable dilemma, because particle physicists still need jobs
in this struggling economy.
The Standard Model contains sub-theories associated
with each of the forces. The part dealing only with electromagnetism is called QED, an acronym for “quantum electrodynamics.” The part dealing with the strong force is called
QCD, for “quantum chromodynamics.” The part dealing with
the weak force is an extension of QED called the “electroweak” theory. All of these are quantum field theories and
anytime you hear or read things like “quark,” “lepton,”
“QED,” “W and Z Boson,” or “Higgs Boson” you’ve wandered into the land of quantum field theory.
It is completely uncontroversial that quantum field theories are the most successful accounts ever devised about the
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structure of the world. By “successful” I simply mean that
they are the most precise accounts verified by experiment.
Calculations of phenomena based on the Standard Model
agree more closely with our best measurements than any
other physical theories that we have. The best example of this
is the value of something called “the fine-structure constant,”
which is a number that characterizes the strength of electromagnetic interactions. The quantum-theoretical value of this
number agrees with the physical measurement to 10 decimal
places—better than one part in one billion. As an experimentalist, I would like to point out that it is a pretty wicked measurement that has an uncertainty of one part in a billion!
Now, quantum field theory is kind of a crazy thing to try
to cover in my remaining time. To do so succinctly, I would
have to present you with some challenging, but extremely
beautiful mathematics. But rather than try your patience in
that way, I’ll attempt to describe as much of the theory as I
can in plain English. I’ve provided a short annotated bibliography for those of you who would like to study some of the
details in more depth.
For now, I’m going to try to present some of the salient
points of quantum field theory and talk a bit about what it requires us to think about the world. So let’s begin with this
question: What do we buy when we buy a quantum field theory?
3.1 Relativity and Quantum Mechanics
First and foremost, quantum field theory is a complete synthesis of special relativity and quantum mechanics that attempts to account for the physics of the entire universe.
Because it incorporates special relativity, quantum field theory is “relativistically invariant,” which means that all the results of all calculations remain unchanged under a Lorentz
transformation. This tells us that two identical experiments
will get the same results even if one lab was here on earth
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while the other was hurtling through space at nearly the speed
of light. A physicist would say “all the physics in two systems
is the same regardless of the relative speed between them.” For
our purposes, there are two salient consequences of this fact:
1. All positions and times are determined relative
to each other. There is no absolute now and then,
no absolute here and there. And there is no simultaneity.
2. Mass and motion are aspects of the same
thing—energy. Mass and motion can be converted
into each other and, together, they embody the
total energy of the system. Energy rules.
Quantum field theories also encapsulate all of the ideas
of quantum mechanics. Maxwell’s account of a world of
charges communicating motion through vibrations in a field
fails miserably in its attempts to account for the structure of
the atom. Quantum mechanics solves those problems, but it
entails certain consequences. For one thing, fundamental
quantities like energy and angular momentum are discrete,
which means that they come in little units that are the smallest
amounts possible; or, as the physicists say, these properties
are quantized. For another thing, certain quantities, like position and momentum, don’t admit of being determined simultaneously. (This is the famous Heisenberg Uncertainty
Principle). Third, the fundamental quantity in a quantum mechanical system is called a “state,” which has a configuration
that depends upon how it is selected. And fourth, all predictions are made in terms of likelihoods and probabilities—not
because we are making estimates about large numbers of objects like, for example, the number of molecules in a container of gas, but because nothing in the quantum world is
determinate. Probability is intrinsic and goes all the way
down to the states, which are themselves sums of a number
of possibilities.
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3.2 The Lagrangian and Minimization
In any serious discussion about quantum field theory you’ll
very quickly run into the term “Lagrangian.” Joseph Louis
Lagrange was an eighteenth-century mathematician who developed the calculus of variations, in which differential equations are solved by taking into account the possible
constraints on the internal parameters to determine a global
solution. In physics, the term “Lagrangian” refers to a mathematical relation describing the dynamics of a system. First,
you write an equation that describes the internal dynamics of
the system fully, and then you integrate it over the whole time
during which the system is in motion, thus producing an expression for the total action of the system. If you then minimize that expression (that is, find the least possible action
that the system could possibly have used to get from its starting state to its ending state), you produce a differential equation expressing that least possible action terms of the
Lagrangian. Classical mechanics and electrodynamics can be
formulated in terms of minimizing action in cases for which
the Lagrangian can be identified as the difference between
the system’s kinetic energy and its potential energy.
As an example, consider the path of a projectile under the
influence of gravity—a potato, perhaps, launched from a potato cannon. Such a contraption looks pretty much like a cannon made of PVC pipe. To load it, the potato is pushed down
the muzzle to the edge of the firing chamber. Propulsion is
provided by igniting aerosol hair spray in the combustion
chamber using a sparking device. (I, myself, through trial and
error, have found that Aquanet® provides the biggest kick
per dose by far.) The kinetic energy of the potato is given by
its mass and speed, the latter of which depends upon position
and time. The potential energy of the potato is given by its
mass, the constant force of gravity, and its height, which also
depends upon position and time. The Lagrangian function
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would be the difference between the function for kinetic energy and the function for potential energy. Now, in principle
there are many possible paths between the starting point and
the landing point for the potato, each with its own action. For
instance, it could travel in a parabola. Or, it could fly up for
a while and do a few loop-the-loops before landing. Each of
these paths has an associated action given by adding up the
difference between the kinetic energy and the potential energy at all the points along the path. In the end, the path corresponding to the physical path—the path actually traced out
by the potato—is the one with the least total action.
One can perform a similar calculation in classical electrodynamics considering the motion and configuration of
charged spheres or even of electrons. Considering their total
kinetic and potential energies, the principle of least action
stipulates that their configurations and motions will always
be such that the action is minimized. All of the dynamics of
the system is contained in the Lagrangian, and all calculations
regarding the system would ultimately go back to that Lagrangian. Minimizing the action allows us to pick out which
arrangement of dynamics will be followed by actual physical
objects.
In quantum field theory, there are two important twists
on this classical principle. First, the Lagrangian is not in any
simple way the difference between the kinetic energy and the
potential energy; it is mathematically much more complicated
than that. Second, the dependent quantities are field configurations, not paths. In classical formulations the minimization
of the action is obtained by considering different paths
through spacetime, as in my potato example. In quantum field
theory, the minimization is obtained by considering different
field arrangements.
I don't have time to say more about least action here. But
I do want to emphasize that the Lagrangian is the key to the
physics of any system. For instance, when physicists speak
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of invariances under transformation (as they do in regard to
special relativity), they are implicitly saying, “the Lagrangian
doesn’t change under that transformation.” This amounts to
the claim that the Lagrangian contains all possible information about the system. In other words, the Lagrangian “holds
all the physics.”
3.3 Quantum Fields
So, as a structural matter, when you buy quantum field theory,
you are buying quantum mechanics, special relativity, and
least-action principles formulated in terms of a Lagrangian
function. Now for the fields. In quantum field theory, all of
the fundamental entities are space-permeating fields which
are themselves physically manifest as discrete quanta. These
fields is not made of anything else. They are their own entities, just as the fields of Maxwell and Faraday were their own
entities. The quanta of these fields are the so-called elementary particles, but the fields are prior to, and necessary for,
the existence of the particles. The particles are resonances,
modes of the field. Crudely put, the particles are vibrations.
All quantum mechanical entities are vibrations.
You can never touch a quantum field per se—it becomes
manifest only when there is a discrete interaction. Bumping
up against a quantum field means bumping up against a quantum of that field. Now there are two classes of fields—matter
fields and interaction fields, the latter also known as force
fields. A good example of an interaction field is the electromagnetic field, whose quanta are photons of light. A good example of a matter field is an electron field, whose quanta
are—you guessed it—electrons. A less familiar example of
an interaction field would be the strong nuclear field, whose
quanta are gluons (eight of them) that connect to quark fields
whose quanta are up and down quarks.
The earlier image of the two charged spheres can be refined a bit to reflect these fields. In Maxwell’s case, each
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sphere is a bundle of charge and the force that angles the support strings is communicated by the electromagnetic field
joining the charges. In the electron field, for instance, each
sphere is rendered as an individual electron, itself a quantum
of an electron field, and the electromagnetic force between
the two electrons is rendered as a photon, the quantum of the
electromagnetic field. The angle of the strings represents the
exchange of photons between the electrons.
Now, this is a bit of a conundrum, and you may well feel
like I’ve pulled a fast one. It’s quantum field theory, after all,
not quantum particle theory. How exactly did this particlerabbit get pulled out of that field-hat? The short answer (and
really the long answer too) is that the particles and fields
come together. In a quantum field, the quanta, the particles,
are the manifestation of the fields. There is no getting around
this stipulation in quantum field theory. The particles arise
out of the quantization of the field. The field holds all the
possibilities—that is to say, all the energy—for the particles.
The particles are the manifestation of the field. In this
way quantum field theory makes a choice that Maxwell’s
field theory does not. Maxwell’s theory has point sources that
are distinct from fields—charges that are independent of the
forces between them. In quantum field theory there is no distinction of this sort between source and force. Both are rooted
in continuous fields which become manifest as particles.
There are a few features of quantum fields that are worth
emphasizing:
1. The particle types associated with each field are
the same everywhere. All electrons, for instance,
are the same, because they are all quanta of the
same field.
2. The field endures, but particles can come and
go, transforming one into the other. There are constraints to the transformations, but, as a general
rule, “anything that can happen, will happen.” As
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in ordinary quantum mechanics, probabilities for
transformations can be assigned, but any given
transformation is undetermined. I can tell you the
possible final states for the decay of a muon and
on average how long it will take to decay, but I
can't tell you when it will happen. No one can.
The available possibilities for transformation
increase dramatically with increased energy. As a
typical example: colliding a high-speed (and therefore high-energy) electron and positron, one might
easily end up with showers of particles containing
ten pi mesons, a proton, and an antiproton.4 Together, those particles weigh thirty-thousand times
more than the original electron and positron. So
mass is not conserved, but rearranged with the
available energy. This is a direct consequence of
special relativity.
Such a collision is also a genuine transformation. The particles that resulted from the collision
of the electron and the positron just mentioned
were not hidden inside the electron and the
positron, just waiting to be unleashed by the force
of the collision. The electron and positron disappear and the available energy in the fields becomes manifest as the particles of the final state. I
also can’t tell you which final state particles will
appear in a given collision any more than I can tell
you when a muon will decay. The best I can do is
outline the possibilities.
A corollary is that impossible transformations
don’t happen. For all experimental purposes, the
muon is a heavy electron—all of its quantum numbers are the same as an electron, except that it’s
two hundred times heavier. And, it spontaneously
decays into an electron plus some other particles.
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The electron never decays. It is the end of the line.
The only account of this I know is that there is no
where for the electron to go, because there is no
smaller package in which energy prefers to manifest itself.
3. The quanta don’t constitute the field. The field
is not made up of quanta. The electromagnetic
field does not contain photons. It is not a bag of
marbles, nor a stack of blocks. The field has its
own motions, its own resonances, and these are
photons of various energies. Physicists use the
analogy of the vibrating string to try to explain this
fact: Just as a vibrating string has its overlapping
series of normal modes, the up quark, the down
quark, and the Z boson are all resonances in an underlying, undulating field.
4. For quantum fields, all interactions are pointlike, occurring at a specific point in space-time and
involving specific combinations of field quanta. In
other words, all interactions are discrete. Every interaction is broken down into individual interactions between individual quanta. And these quanta
are manifestations of the energy present in the underlying continuous field.
4 Interactions and Local Symmetry
So, what’s the big picture? We have a world filled with fields,
all of which are manifest only by particles, all interacting with
one another. But what does “interaction” mean? How are
these fields/particles related to their interactions? Considering
this brings us to the notion of invariance, the notion that despite the appearance of change, things stay the same. Physicists apply invariances by insisting that “the physics” of a
system doesn’t change under certain transformations. The use
of invariances (and the related notion of conservation) has a
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long history in physics, and in the sciences generally. One
might consider the story of physics as the search for the true
invariances within the world.
This is the idea that Huygens leverages in “Motions of
Colliding Bodies,” which we read here at St. John’s in the
Junior Laboratory. In that work, Huygens considers two balls
colliding with one another, and he works out the general kinematics of hard collisions. Here is the beginning of the proof
of his first proposition. (I’ve made minor edits that obviate
the mathematical proportions and variables):
Figure from Proposition 1 of Huygens’s
Motion of Colliding Bodies
Imagine that a boat near a bank is carried along by the
current, so close to the bank that a passenger standing in
it can stretch out his hand to a friend standing on the
bank. Let the passenger hold in his hands . . . two equal
bodies . . . suspended on strings, and . . . by bringing together his two hands with equal motions, understood in
relation to himself and the boat, until they touch, he thus
makes the two balls collide with equal speeds. The balls,
therefore, must necessarily rebound from their mutual
contact with equal speeds . . . in relation to the passenger
and the boat. Moreover, suppose that in the same time
the boat is carried to the left with . . . the same speed with
which the left hand . . . was carried toward the right. It is
therefore clear that the passengers [left] hand has remained motionless in relation to the bank and to his
friend, but that [his right hand], in relation to the same
friend was moved with [double the] speed. . . . Therefore,
if the friend on the bank is supposed to have grasped,
with his own [right hand], the passengers [left hand], together with the end of the string which supports [one
ball], but with his other [left hand] the passengers [right
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hand], which holds the string from which [the other ball]
hangs, it is apparent that while the passenger makes [the
two] balls strike one another with a speed equal in relation to himself and the boat, the friend on the bank, in
the same time, shoved [one ball against the other ball,
one at rest and the other with a speed double that of the
boat] in relation to the bank and to himself. And it is evident, however, that as for the passenger, who, as was
said, makes the two balls move, it makes no difference
that his friend on the bank has taken his hands and the
ends of the strings, since he only accompanies their
movement and doesn’t hinder them at all. For the same
reason, the friend on the bank who makes [one ball]
move toward the [motionless ball] is not disturbed at all
by the fact that the passenger has joined hands with him.5
Huygens determines the laws of collision by requiring
that the collision itself remain the same, even if it may seem
different to different viewers. Even though different viewers
would obtain different results for the speeds and directions
of the colliding bodies, Huygens presumes that all such views
would be ultimately commensurable, and that they could be
transformed into one another if we know the parameters of
the transformation. Indeed, this difference is plain, since the
passenger on the boat moves his arms at the same speed,
while his friend on the shore keeps one arm still and the other
rushes along at twice the speed of the boat. The leverage
Huygens has in this analysis is the presumption that the collision for the passenger and the collision for his shore-bound
friend are one and the same; indeed, it certainly seems that
there is only one collision, not two. Huygens reinforces our
presumption about this by having them touch hands in such
a way that the hands are in the same place, with the same motion, but neither pair disturbs the other. The difference in relative speed between the observers—that is, between the
passenger and his friend on the shore—cannot make a genuine difference to the physical laws involved, because then
there would be two collisions rather than one. Any distinction
between the two observers must be accounted for by a trans-
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formation that may render the component details different,
but must leave the collision alone. Huygens’s assumption of
invariance preserves the identity of the collision as a single
event, and this identity consists of a single interaction in a
particular place at a particular time.
The sort of leverage Huygens employs is very powerful
and is used over and over in physics. As an intellectual activity, it presumes that, in some articulable way, the world is
unchanging and that distinctions are variations that fill up that
unchanging whole. This is sensible and reasonable. In fact,
it is rational in an explicit way. The shapes of the parts and
the distinctions among them are measured with respect to the
whole. Physics articulates difference by means of ratio, that
is, by means of comparison. One might well say that the root
activity of all physics is the art of comparison: the physicist
hunts for invariances in order to articulate distinctions that
make a genuine difference.
There are many sorts of invariances in physics. For instance, there is invariance with respect to translations in location or time. The criterion of such an invariance is that the
equation describing the dynamics of the system, namely, the
Lagrangian, is unchanged after some transformation. If we
say, to give an example, “the physics of this system is invariant with respect to translations in location,” we mean that if
any increment is added to the variable for location in the Lagrangian, when we work out the algebra, the new Lagrangian
simplifies back into the original one.
Now this kind of invariance has a very special consequence. If a Lagrangian has an invariance, there is an associated conserved quantity and vice versa. In other words, if the
physics has an invariance something is conserved, and if
something is conserved there is an invariance. So space-translation invariance (invariance with respect to increments in
spatial locations, also called space-translation symmetry) implies conservation of momentum. Time-translation invariance
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(invariance with respect to increments in time, also called
time-translation symmetry) implies conservation of energy.6
The reverse is also true: momentum conservation implies
space-translation symmetry and energy conservation implies
time-translation symmetry. Conservation principles turn out,
therefore, to indicate symmetries in the physical world. Momentum conservation points at a fundamental homogeneity
in the universe: here and there aren’t different from the perspective of physical laws. Similarly, energy conservation indicates the same thing about time: now and then aren’t
different from the standpoint of physical laws.
These symmetries are not restricted to kinematical quantities, like momentum, associated with the motion of physical
objects. They can also be associate with the state functions
of quantum field objects; that is to say, there can be internal
symmetries in the different quantum fields and in the particular quanta that belong to them. One such internal symmetry
is called phase symmetry. In quantum mechanics, all the
states of any system have an associated phase, because the
mathematical descriptions of the states are very complex
wave functions, and every wave has a phase. Now phase isn’t
a very complicated idea; it’s just the marker of a repeating
motion. Imagine sitting in a boat on a lake as a wave passes
underneath, lifting and lowering the boat (and you with it)
over and over. If you were next to a dock, you might go from
looking at the barnacles under the dock while the boat is in
the wave’s trough to looking over and across the dock at your
neighbor’s yacht while the boat is riding at the wave’s crest.
And you would repeat this up-and-down trip with every complete cycle of the wave beneath your boat. This repeated upand-down motion is circular in nature: you go up a certain
height from trough to crest, then down again through the
same distance, then up again, and so on. You could even track
your relative position on the wave by marking out your position on the up and down cycle on the face of a clock, so that
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one turn around the clock corresponds to one cycle of upand-down motion. Assigning your highest point above the
dock to the twelve-o’clock mark, you’d descend to dock level
at quarter past, bottom out at half past, ascend to dock level
again at quarter to, and return to your highest point again
when the hand returns to noon. (Notice that you can choose
any point in the up-and-down motion to be the start of the
phase. You can assign the twelve-o’clock mark to the lowest
point of the motion, or to the point that is level with the dock
if you wish. Your boat will always be back at the same place
when the hand goes all the way around.) These points on the
clock, as well as all those in between, mark your phase,
which is the clock position that corresponds to your height at
any moment within one cycle of the wave’s motion.
Now consider your neighbor’s yacht on the other side of
the dock. Assuming that the wave lifts your boat first, travels
under the dock, and then lifts your neighbor’s boat, his boat
will also rise and fall. And depending on the phase of each
boat—that is, depending on the location of each boat in the
wave’s cycle—the relative motion of the two boats will be
different. If the boats are in phase, then both of them will go
up and down together. If the boats are completely out of
phase, and your boat will be at its highest point when your
neighbor’s is at its lowest point.
Quantum states are a bit like these boats, each moving up
and down, each having its own phase, akin to a hand sweeping around the face of a clock. (As a technical matter, this
phase is part of the complex number-value of a quantum mechanical wave function.) And, just as the starting point of the
phase doesn’t matter for the boats, it also doesn’t matter for
the quantum state. No measurement can reveal the absolute
value of the phase. In the end, only differences in phase between systems can ever be revealed experimentally. This is
akin to being able to know only the difference in the relative
heights of your boat and your neighbor’s, but not being able
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to know his height or your height absolutely. (Presumably,
this means that there is no reference point analogous to “sea
level” in the world of quantum fields. On the other hand, we
could be wrong in thinking that “sea level” is a useful reference point.)
Now, let’s consider some possible symmetries associated
with phase. One possibility would be to demand that physics
doesn’t change if all the phases in the whole universe are
modified by the same amount. This amounts to saying that
the results of my experiments won’t change if every internal
clock is modified by the same amount. Imagine moving all
the start times for all the clocks by the same amount. (This
is done mathematically by multiplying every state by the
same value.) Such a property would be a global symmetry
that reflected a global invariance. Global symmetry (or
global invariance; we will use the terms interchangeably,
since one implies the other) is good because it establishes a
closed system. For instance, it would be very nice if charge
were globally invariant: that would mean that charge is conserved, and that would be reflected in no net change of
charge in the universe at all. Conversely, global invariance
is bad because the closed system that it establishes is necessarily the entire universe, not just the one point in the universe where an interaction occurs. Global invariance
over-constrains the physics by tying the activity of the system at any given point to the activities happening at all other
points; it implies that every point in the universe is instantaneously sensitive to all the others. The problem with global
invariance is that the arbitrariness of the phase for each state
isn’t preserved; that is, it doesn’t allow me to arbitrarily decide where to start my phase clock. Under global invariance,
I am able to set the clock arbitrarily for one state, but doing
so fixes the phase for all other states—instantaneously,
everywhere. This is just the kind of action at a distance to
which Faraday objected, because it makes the entire the uni-
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verse one gigantic causal connection.
A better alternative, which neither violates special relativity nor implies action at a distance, is local invariance or
local symmetry. Mathematically, this means that the physics
doesn’t change if states are modified depending on their position in space-time. On the one hand, local invariance is an
even stronger restriction than global invariance, because we
are requiring the physics to be the same regardless of location—something that global invariance does not require. On
the other hand, local invariance liberates states from the
tyranny of the whole universe, subjecting them instead to the
less all-encompassing tyranny of their space-time locations.
Being tied to conservation, invariance is a whole-defining
or system-defining feature. Conserving momentum and energy, for instance, is a fundamental criterion for having a
closed system at all. A ball rolling across a table slows down
and stops due to friction. Such a system is non-conservative—the momentum at the beginning is not equal to the momentum at the end. Friction is like a sinkhole into which
flows all the energy and momentum of the ball. In the end,
non-conservative systems leak. The most basic ambition of
fundamental physics is an account of the world with no leaking. Any description of a fundamental system will need to
exhibit global invariance as a precondition for being satisfactory, but it’s really too coarse a requirement because it forces
us to look at the whole universe every time we want to look
at an interaction. Local invariance actually does more for us,
because it implies integrity in the parts that make up the
whole, and it requires a whole system at each space-time
point.
Now you don’t get local symmetry requirements for nothing; there are consequences to be met. To illustrate them,
consider a single free electron. Such a particle would be one
quantum of an electron field. It would be characterized by
having a particular momentum and energy. As a quantum
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state, this electron can have any phase at all—the hand on the
clock can be at any location. Now, stipulating global phase
invariance implies that the charge of this electron is conserved in the universe. And since my system has only one
charge, my physics will be constrained always to have a total
of one net charge in the universe. Now, if you go through the
mathematics, you'll find that the Lagrangian for the free election, which determines its physics, won’t be invariant under
a local phase transformation—that is, the physics won’t exhibit local symmetry. However, you can make the system be
locally invariant by adding two terms to the Lagrangian, one
term that corresponds to the electromagnetic field and its
quantum, the photon, and another term that corresponds to
the point coupling between the two fields. The upshot is that
making phase locally invariant requires that there be both
electrons and photons—and consequently both electron fields
and electromagnetic fields—in the world, together with all
their mutual interactions.
This sort of local phase symmetry is the underlying feature of all the quantum field theories comprising the Standard
Model. Indeed, each force is associated directly with an underlying local symmetry that individuates both the quanta of
the matter fields and the quanta of the force fields and joins
them in a local interaction. Local symmetry operates much
like Huygens’s assumption that there is a single collision to
which the parts can be related: the interactions among field
quanta become the primary source of connection and unification. So the electron and photon always and only come together as a single interaction called a vertex. This example
belongs to the theory of quantum electrodynamics—the oldest of the quantum field theories. The other parts of the Standard Model include different interactions. QCD has
quark-gluon vertices, electroweak theory has neutrino-W
boson vertices. Each kind of vertex is characteristic of the
type of interaction.
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This move from global to local invariance makes quantum field theories philosophically satisfying in a way that
older physical theories are not. As I’ve said, part of the problem with global invariance is that it smacks of action at a distance and feels like an imposed constraint. Such an invariance
amounts to a box for the activity inside, a box that is affected
in no way by the motions inside it. In this containerized
world, the problems of relating parts and wholes never come
up. Generating these boxes in order to gain leverage on understanding physical systems has long been a feature of fundamental physics. On the other hand, part of the intellectual
trajectory of fundamental physics has been to search immediately for ways to remove external constraints once they
have been characterized. This describes the reductionist activity of physics, epitomized by looking for new particles beneath the peeled-back skin of the current crop of fundamental
particles. First there were molecules, then atoms, then electrons and nuclei, then protons and neutrons, and now there
are quarks—and we’re just waiting for the next step down in
size.
Here lies the central difficulty of any kind of foundationalism: as we uncover the foundations we also experience the
disquieting realization that the foundations must rest on
something else. The solution to this problem, both physically
and philosophically, is to sort out a whole that is internally
constrained so as to allow individuation; to show how the internal characteristics serve to constrain the thing as a thing.
This is the effect of local invariance. In this sort of foundation, there can be fundamental things that are not marble-like
particles, but intrinsically active quantum mechanical states.
Furthermore, any account of the fundamental things that
includes individuation must also account for the way a connection is made to the rest of the world. Locally symmetric
quantum field theories provide an example of an account in
which the part maintains integrity while also being inextri-
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cably embedded within the whole. The solution in quantum
field theory is that the individual parts must interact with one
another in forming a dynamic whole. We see in quantum field
theory the ontological reflection of the necessary characteristics of self-constraint: internal variability and the fundamental coexistence of things unified by their interactions.
Indeed, in the end, the truly fundamental thing may in fact
be the interaction.
The structure of quantum field theories with local invariance provides individuation through local symmetry requirements, but requires interactions between localities if we are
to preserve the invariances essential to wholeness. The invariances are conditions of intelligibility and conditions of
individuation; there is no distinction possible without wholeness. Wholeness without distinction is possible, though completely amorphous. Individuation, however, isn’t possible
without appealing to something within which the individual
lies. Quantum field theories incorporate this relation into their
very structure through local invariance.7
5 Things, fundamental and otherwise
Are electrons and electron fields fundamental entities? Is one
properly prior to the other? There are at least two ways to answer this question: an answer from within the account and answer from outside the account.
Let’s try to answer from within the account first. The activity of science is generally very pragmatic, and the starting
point is to assume the essential integrity of the objects at the
scale under consideration. Thus, the fact that all the atoms and
molecules in the baseball are constantly in motion does not
bear on considering the baseball a thing that has its own properties—its own weight, shape, and so on. At this scale of examination, the baseball is the integral thing, the individuated
thing, to which we pay attention. Why? The individuation of
the baseball is, among other things, manifest by invariances
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of its motion with respect to other things in the world. For the
physicist (and the baseball player), the baseball’s collective
motion individuates it. The physicist considers it a whole by
ignoring the possibility that there may be tiny pieces flying
off of it or being absorbed into it. If we looked at a larger scale,
say the motion of the earth, we would ignore the motion of
the baseball. Similarly, if we looked on a smaller scale, say
the motion of an electron around a hydrogen atom attached to
one of the organic molecules in the leather of the baseball, we
would ignore the motion of the whole ball. This notion of
scale and relative individuation is natural in physics, and is
part of the pragmatic nature of the activity. And when I say
that we ignore some of the motions, I don’t mean to imply that
we are choosing to make some sort of approximation for the
sake of convenience. I mean to say that ignoring such motions
is the same as looking for the invariances that are the signs of
actual things.
So answering the question What is fundamental? from
within quantum field theory yields this result: the fields and
the quanta are certainly elementary, and priority is given to
the fields, even though it is only as quanta that fields ever
manifest themselves.
Now let’s try to answer the question from outside of the
account. Here we have to wonder whether the inside answer
can’t be undermined by seeing the situation from a wider perspective. One way to adopt that perspective would be to revise
the question slightly: Are fields and particles really fundamental—as in “at the bottom of things”—or will the unitary electron of today’s physicists become a composite like a water
molecule for tomorrow’s physicists?
To the extent that electrons are simply smaller that water
molecules and are constituents in making, say, a hydrogen
atom, it is natural to consider electrons elementary in comparison to hydrogen atoms. In some ways, it’s the same as saying
that hydrogen atoms have electrons inside them, therefore
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electrons must be more elementary than hydrogen atoms. On
the other hand, the deep result of local symmetry in quantum
field theory is that the constituents and their interactions are
naturally and irrevocably coexistent as a condition for having
a coherent whole. Such a whole is now a coherent activity of
parts with internal invariances characteristic of those parts.
This criterion applies to water molecules, baseballs, and oak
trees as much as it does to electrons and photons, and this
makes us wonder whether the electron is really fundamental
in relation to the water molecule. The elementary bit of water
doesn’t naturally seem to be an electron, but rather a water
molecule. The action of the water arises out of the interactions
of its constituent parts, each of which has its own activity—
which is to say, a proper activity bound up with certain invariances. Furthermore, the characteristic sizes and distances of
interactions within liquid water are given by the water molecule, not by the electrons that make up that molecule. Indeed,
it isn’t at all clear that the integrity of the electron and the
water molecule—the feature by which I individuate them
from each other and call them different things—isn’t essentially the same. Each is a zone of stability surrounding amorphous activity. Distinction itself, particleness, arises out of this
amorphous activity in the form of stability of activity characterized by an insensitivity to internal activity.
The question of whether the electron has substructure in
the way that an atom has substructure is, as my undergraduate
advisor in physics said to me years ago, “a research project.”
For now, the electron is a best candidate for a fundamental or
elementary particle. But it cannot be regarded as a building
block, as something subsisting by itself that can be stacked
with others like it to construct something larger, like a brick.
On the contrary, quantum field theory tells us that electrons
are parts of a self-constrained world in which their individual
existence always arises out of, and within, a whole. There is
no “fundamental particle” apart from a “fundamental field.”
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NOTES
1. Lucretius, De rerum natura, Book I, lines 419-421.
2. Isaac Newton, letter to Richard Bently, 25 February 1693.
3. James Clerk Maxwell, “On Action at a Distance,” in The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell, ed. W. D. Niven, 2 vols. (Cambridge: At
the University Press, 1890), Vol. 2, 322.
4. This particular numerical example is borrowed from the beginning of
Frank Wilczek, The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification
of Forces (New York: Basic Books, 2010).
5. The entire text is available online here:
http://www.princeton.edu/~hos/mike/texts/huygens/impact/huyimpct.html
6. This deep result is called Noether’s Theorem after the prolific German
mathematician Amalie Emmy Noether (1882-1935).
7. For the experts: I know that I’ve left out renormalization and that it
bears on the question of individuation. There is only so much I can fit
into such a small space.
Appendix:
Annotated Bibliography for Further Reading
I. J. R. Aitchison. “Nothing’s Plenty: The Vacuum in Quantum Field Theory.” Contemporary Physics 26 (1985): 333-391. A fine, detailed discussion of the vacuum in quantum field theory.
P. W. Anderson. “More is Different.” Science 177 (1972): 393-396. A famous article arguing that fundamental structure doesn’t correspond to
scale.
Sunny Auyang. How is Quantum Field Theory Possible? London: Oxford
University Press, 1995. A serious philosophical encounter with quantum
field theory.
William Berkson. Fields of Force: The Development of a World View
from Faraday to Einstein. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974. A
history of the idea of the field, focussing on classical fields, with an attention to philosophical ideas.
I. J. R. Aitchison and A. J. G Hey. Gauge Theories in Particle Physics: A
Practical Introduction. Boca Raton, Florida: CRC Press, 2012. A firstrate graduate-level quantum field theory text, focussed on the Standard
Model.
Robert B. Laughlin and David Pines. “The Theory of Everything.” Pro-
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ceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 97 (2000): 27-32. In line
with P. W. Anderson’s article and containing many physical examples.
Bruce Schumm. Deep Down Things: The Breathtaking Beauty of Particle
Physics. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. A
thoughtful, detailed presentation of the Standard Model, emphasizing
symmetry issues.
Steven Weinberg. “The Search for Unity: Notes for a History of Quantum
Field Theory.” Daedalus 106.4 (1977):17-35. A excellent overview of the
problems and solutions in QFT, set in a historical progression.
Steven Weinberg. “Newtonianism, Reductionism, and the Art of Congressional Testimony.” Nature, 330 (1987):433-437. A discussion of what
is meant by “fundamental physics.”
Frank Wilczek. The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification
of Forces. New York: Basic Books, 2010. A popular science book, wellwritten, that emphasizes mass and QCD.
The articles by Anderson, Laughlin and Pines, and Weinberg’s “Newtonianism” are all included in the recent collection Emergence: Contemporary Readings in Philosophy and Science, ed. Mark A. Bedau and Paul
Humphreys. Boston: MIT Press, 2008.
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Miracles and Belief
Joseph Cohen
Is belief in miracles compatible with
a scientific understanding of the world?1
The idea for this lecture grew out of a philosophy tutorial in
which the assignment for one meeting was to read and discuss two philosophic arguments on the topic of miracles.
They were the chapter entitled “Miracles” in Baruch Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise (1687) and the chapter
entitled “Of Miracles” in David Hume’s Enquiry Concerning
Human Understanding (1748).
I asked the class to consider whether the arguments of
Spinoza and Hume constituted a refutation of the possibility
of miracles, and if so, in what way such a refutation might
affect a belief in divine providence, or religious belief in general.
The students found these questions provocative and challenging, but were also troubled and perplexed by them. Why
should the presumed impossibility of miracles occasion such
difficulties? I propose this suggestion.
Let us assume as an appropriate and accurate starting
point that miracles are understood to be: (1) phenomena
which are contrary to and cannot be explained by the established laws of nature; and (2) caused by the intentional acts
of a Divine Agent.
Since the existence of miracles implies the existence of a
God who is their cause, an argument against the possibility
Joseph Cohen is a Tutor Emeritus at St. John’s College in Annapolis,
Maryland. This lecture was first delivered at St. John’s College in
Santa Fe, New Mexico on June 30, 2010. It has been revised slightly
for publication.
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of miracles further implies either the non-existence of this
God, or the absence in God of the attribute of providential
care and concern for particular individuals or peoples. It is
only by virtue of possessing this attribute that God would be
presumed to produce the intentional acts called miracles.
Therefore, to the extent that an argument against miracles is
persuasive, this would diminish the degree of certainty of a
belief in the existence of such a God or in God’s providential
care and concern.
Among the students who said they found persuasive and
worthy of acceptance the two philosophic arguments against
miracles, some volunteered that although they agreed that the
arguments were persuasive, they did not want to or were not
able to relinquish their belief in a providential God. Their
feelings and their faith committed them to this belief. Their
position seemed to be either that there was no real inconsistency in holding these apparently opposed convictions, or that
the inconsistency didn’t bother them.
The aim of this lecture is to explore further these questions and various responses to them. It has two parts: Part I:
Spinoza and Hume, and Part II: C. S. Lewis and Francis
Collins.
Part I: Spinoza and Hume
Spinoza
To place Spinoza’s discussion of miracles (Chapter 6) in the
context of the larger aims of his Treatise, it will be useful to
comment briefly on what precedes that discussion.
The peculiarly hyphenated title, Theological-Political
Treatise, makes us wonder what the connection of theology
and politics might be. On the title page, there is a subtitle that
summarizes Spinoza’s overall aim:
Containing some dissertations by which it is shown not
only that the freedom of philosophizing can be granted
while saving piety and the peace of the republic, but that it
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cannot be removed unless along with that very piety and
peace of the republic.
The Treatise is thus presented as a work of political philosophy, whose aim is to show how freedom, piety and peace
are necessarily interconnected within the framework of that
form of political organization known as a republic. Its argument as a whole can be divided into two parts, the theological
and the political. In order to achieve the aims of the political
part, Spinoza must first confront and overcome the claims of
the theologians and of the sacred texts from which they claim
their authority.
In the Preface, Spinoza reveals his motive for writing, describes and denounces the pervasive evils produced by superstition and prejudice, and sketches the main themes and plan
of organization of the Treatise.
The first sentence of the Preface, and hence of the Treatise,
declares:
If human beings could rule all their affairs with certain
counsel, or if fortune were always favorable to them, they
would not be bound by any superstition.2
With this, Spinoza launches a direct and sustained attack
against superstition, exposing its causes and tracing its pernicious effects. Superstition has its roots in fear (or dread)
and ignorance, joined with immoderate desires for the goods
of fortune and the incapacity of human beings to control either the turns of fortune or their own desires for her favors.
Being ignorant of the operation and order of Nature and fearful of supernatural powers, the people or their rulers place
their trust in those who claim to be able to interpret, and possibly to control, the course of events, whether determined by
fortune, or natural causes, or the will of the gods. Thus they
seek guidance from seers or prophets. In this way, superstition becomes associated with prophecy and religion.
Spinoza initially uses the examples of Alexander the
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Great and, closer to his own time, the empire of the Moslem
Turks, to highlight the pervasive and pernicious effects of
superstition. He then shifts the scene to the religious and political world dominated by Christianity. He declares he had
often wondered that those “who boast that they profess the
Christian religion—that is, love, gladness, peace, continence,
and faith toward all” should engage in such bitter hatred and
persecution of others. He finds “the cause of this evil” to be
the abuses arising from the admixture of religious belief and
political ambition, namely, the political abuse of religion and
the religious abuse of politics.
The Church has become an entrenched ecclesiastical and
political institution concerned with accumulation of honors,
privileges, and power, and “faith is now nothing else but
credulity and prejudice.” Reason is despised as being by nature corrupt, and the free judgment of each person to discern
the true and the false is impeded. Spinoza attacks this unholy
theological-political admixture, which makes it “seem as
though [it has] been intentionally devised for extinguishing
the light of understanding.” He therefore resolved “to examine Scripture anew in a full and free spirit,” contriving a
method of interpretation which would “admit nothing as its
teaching which was not taught by it very clearly.”3
As indicated in the Preface, the plan of organization of
the Treatise is keyed to a series of questions that guide the
course of argument of the following twenty chapters. The
questions pertaining to the chapter on miracles ask “whether
miracles happen contrary to the order of nature, and whether
they teach God’s existence and providence more certainly
and more clearly than do the things we understand clearly
and distinctly through their first causes.”4
How do human beings come to know “first causes”? Is
there more than one source available by means of which
knowledge can be acquired? In Chapter 1 (Prophesy) and
Chapter 2 (Prophets), Spinoza begins to explicate his account
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of natural knowledge as grounded in reason and experience,
in contrast to knowledge claimed through prophecy or revelation as grounded in imagination and faith.
Chapter 1 begins as follows:
Prophecy, or Revelation, is certain knowledge (certa cognitio) of some matter revealed by God to human beings. A
Prophet, moreover, is one who interprets the revealed things
of God to those who are unable to have the certain knowledge of the matters revealed by God, and so can only embrace the matters being revealed by mere faith.5 (Emphasis
added.)
Drawing on this definition, Spinoza then claims, “it follows that natural knowledge can be called Prophecy (cognitionem naturalem prophetiam vocari posse). For the things
we know by the natural light depend solely on knowledge of
God and of his eternal decrees.”6 (Emphasis added.)
What then, for Spinoza, is “natural knowledge”? How is
it distinct from the “certain knowledge” which prophets may
claim for themselves? And how does knowledge obtained by
the natural light differ from the certain knowledge revealed
by the prophetic light?
He begins to answer these questions in remarks that take
the form of an argument.7
1. “[N]atural knowledge is common to all human
beings—for it depends on foundations common to
all human beings.”
2. However, this kind of knowledge “is not well regarded by the vulgar [the multitudes], who are always panting after what is rare and alien to their
nature . . . ; when they speak of prophetic knowledge, they want this [natural] knowledge excluded.”
3. Nevertheless natural knowledge “can be called
divine (divina vocari potest), as can any other
knowledge, whatever it may be . . . . Yet in respect
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of the certainty that natural knowledge (cognitionem naturalem) involves and the source from
which it is derived (namely, God),” it is in no way
inferior to prophetic knowledge (cognitione
prophetica).
4. “Yet though natural science (scientia) is divine,
its propagators still cannot be called Prophets.” For
what the teachers of natural science impart to others can be grasped by them, not by faith alone, but
with a certainty and entitlement equal to that of the
teachers.
5. “[S]ince our mind . . . has the power to form
some notions explaining the nature of things and
teach the conduct of life, we can deservedly state
that the mind’s nature . . . is the first cause of divine
revelation.”
6. “[T]he idea and nature of God dictates everything we clearly and distinctly understand, not in
words but in a far more excellent mode, which best
agrees with the nature of the mind—as anyone
who has tasted the certainty of understanding has
without a doubt experienced within himself.”
These six steps lead to Spinoza’s powerful conclusion:
7. “For everything is done through God’s power.
Indeed, since Nature’s power is nothing but God’s
power itself, it is certain that we do not understand
God’s power to the extent that we are ignorant of
natural causes.”8
In this last statement, Spinoza reveals his deepest and
most comprehensive insight, namely, the fundamental unity
of God and Nature. Although the phrase “God or Nature” is
explicitly used in the preface to Part IV of Spinoza’s Ethics,
the application of this insight runs through the Treatise and
forms the constant backdrop for its unfolding argument.9
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It is often debated whether Spinoza’s use of the phrase
“God or Nature” is to be understood as a deification of Nature
or as a naturalization of God. In either case, the term “supernatural” is drained of its meaning. For Spinoza the understanding and explanation of the phenomena of the world must
be attained through the acquisition of natural knowledge
alone. It is from this perspective that Spinoza’s philosophic
position can be called Naturalism, in opposition to the theological point of view called Supernaturalism.10
Spinoza fully develops his naturalistic position in the
Ethics. Its central teaching is that Man is necessarily a part
of Nature, that striving (conatus)11 is the essence of Man, and
that our supreme good and highest happiness can be attained
by means of striving toward what he calls “the intellectual
love of God.” In the light of what will be discussed later,
Spinoza’s account of the active emotion (or affect) of intellectual love can be construed as among the “spiritual rewards” experienced by those who seek to understand the
mind of God through understanding the system of Nature.
In Chapter 3 of the Treatise Spinoza employs this “God
or Nature” point of view when he restates the idea of God’s
providence in terms of God’s direction, God’s external and
internal help, God’s choosing, and fortune. He writes:
By God’s direction, I understand the fixed and unchangeable order of nature, or the chaining together of natural
things. For . . . the universal laws of nature, in accordance
with which everything comes to be and is determined, are
nothing but God’s eternal decrees, which always involve
eternal truth and necessity. Accordingly, whether we say
that everything comes to be in accordance with the laws
of nature, or that everything is ordered on the basis of
God’s decree and direction, we are saying the same thing.12
Turning now to Spinoza’s analysis of miracles in Chapter
6, we see that the heart of the opposition between revealed
and natural knowledge comes to light in the questions con-
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cerning what miracles are and whether they are possible.13
He begins his discussion by stating “the opinions and
prejudices of the vulgar [i.e., the many] concerning nature
and miracles.” He notes that the vulgar call divine any knowledge that surpasses their understanding, especially works of
nature whose causes are unknown. These works of nature, of
whose causes they are ignorant, are also called works of God
or miracles. They believe that God’s existence, power, and
providence are most clearly established if they imagine that
God is the direct cause when something happens in nature
which is contrary to their opinion of how nature works. This
is because they assume that God and nature are two distinct
powers, and that if one of these powers is responsible for an
event, the power of the other must be excluded or suspended.
So that “partly out of devotion and partly out of a desire to
oppose those who cultivate natural science, they desire not
to know the causes of things, and they think that those who
seek to understand these so-called natural events deny God’s
existence, or at least God’s providence.”14 Thus, in the vulgar
view, a miracle is a providential act intended for human benefit to achieve a result that would be contrary to the ordinary
operations and power of nature.
Drawing on conclusions earlier established: (a) that the
power of nature is the same as the power of God; (b) that the
actions of God are eternal, necessary, and immutable; and (c)
that God’s will is identical with God’s intellect, Spinoza argues that miracles are not possible within nature.
Nor can miracles be understood as supernatural events
directly referred to God’s providential intervention in nature’s
established processes, for such an intervention by God would
contradict the principle that God acts from the necessity of
His own nature.
Moreover, since nature’s power is nothing but God’s
power, and God is understood to be infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, so also is nature’s power. Whatever may be the
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limits of nature’s power is the necessary consequence of its
own laws. On this account, there is no way to distinguish the
natural from the supernatural; there is no conceptual space
outside of Nature in which a supernatural Divine Agent, intending to produce a miraculous intervention, could act.
Spinoza’s argument can be summarized as follows. If
God is a supernatural agent distinct from nature, and has created and established the laws of nature, then a contradiction
would arise if God, acting from the necessity of His own nature, could act both according to and contrary to the laws of
nature. If God’s fixed and unchangeable order of nature is
suspended to accomplish a supernatural purpose, which is
what the vulgar call a miracle, then the processes of nature
are not fixed and unchangeable, and everything is subject to
doubt, including God’s fixed nature and existence.
Thus contrary to the vulgar view that miracles most
clearly affirm the existence and power of God, Spinoza argues that the incoherence of their view undermines the conclusion they wish to establish; it is rather this vulgar view
which leads to atheism.15 If, on the contrary, God is identical
with nature, then there are not two distinct and opposed principles; miracles, therefore, could not be supernatural events,
the cause of which is outside of and contrary to nature and
reason.
Further, if one nevertheless believes or supposes that
there is a transcendent supernatural God distinct from the system of nature, and that such a God is utterly mysterious, hidden and unknowable, the consequence of this supposition is
that human beings would not be able to distinguish the ordinary acts of nature from the so-called supernatural acts which
are the cause of miracles. Neither the principle of causality
nor any of the categories or aspects of human rationality
could be supposed to apply to such an utterly unknowable
Being.
Spinoza therefore understands and defines a miracle to
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be nothing else but an event whose natural cause cannot be
explained by the person who narrates it or who believes the
event to be supernatural and surpasses human understanding.
The designation of an event as a miracle is merely a way of
saying that we are ignorant of its cause, which, though
presently unknown, may not be unknowable.
Spinoza’s overall philosophical conclusions, the answer
to the questions posed in the Preface, are: (a) God’s existence
and providence cannot be known through miracles, but these
conclusions are far better established and understood from
the principle of the fixed and unchangeable order of nature;
and (b) the very idea of a miracle “whether contrary to nature
or above nature is a mere absurdity.”16
Hume17
In Section X of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding,
“Of Miracles,” Hume is not directly concerned with the metaphysical question, Do miracles exist or are they conceivable
within the order of Nature as a whole? Rather, he is concerned with the epistemological question, How can one know
or prove that a particular event is a genuine miracle, and not
merely the effect of excessive imagination, superstition, or
wishful thinking?
Necessarily involved in this epistemological question are
certain assumptions about the nature of belief and about what
it is reasonable for a person to believe. These assumptions
involve the meaning and use of such concepts as evidence,
proof, fact, probability and truth. In short, what is ultimately
at issue in any discussion about the possibility of miracles is
the concept of “rational belief.”
In pursuing the inquiry into miracles, Hume wastes no
time searching for a definition. It is already at hand. A miracle, he says “is a violation of the laws of Nature,” to which
he adds that “as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very
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nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined. . . . Nothing is esteemed a
miracle, if it ever happen in the common course of Nature. It
is no miracle that a man, seemingly in good health, should
die on a sudden. . . . But it is a miracle that a dead man should
come to life; because that has never been observed in any age
or country. There must therefore be a uniform experience
against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would
not merit that appellation. And as a uniform experience
amounts to a proof, there is here a direct and full proof, from
the nature of the fact, against the existence of any miracle;
nor can such a proof be destroyed, or the miracle rendered
credible, but by an opposite proof which is superior.”18
In a footnote to this paragraph, Hume refines and restates
his definition: “a miracle may be accurately defined, a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the
Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent.” How
does this condition, that the cause of the miracle be attributed
to “a particular volition of the Deity,” affect our ability to
know that the alleged miracle is genuine? The answer is provided in Part 2 of this Section where he states:
Though the Being to whom the miracle is ascribed, be in
this case, Almighty, it does not upon that account, become
a bit more probable; since it is impossible for us to know
the attributes or actions of such a Being, otherwise than
from the experience which we have of his productions in
the course of nature.19
Thus Hume’s “direct and full proof” against the possibility of miracles is based on the well founded assumption of,
and the belief in, the regularity and uniformity of nature and
of its laws. This belief, in turn, is grounded in his philosophical analysis of human experience: he believes that we generate ideas and, within limits, acquire knowledge of nature
by means of a sustained application of the methods of the experimental sciences.
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In this same Section, Hume then proceeds to undermine
any and all claims of reported miracles, even those whose
pedigree is historically recent and bears the testimony of a
large number of highly placed political and ecclesiastical figures. Having previously supposed that the testimony in favor
of a miracle “may possibly amount to an entire proof,” he
then retracts this supposition: “[I]t is easy to shew that we
have been a great deal too liberal in our concession and that
there never was a miraculous event established on so full an
evidence.”20
To support this conclusion he offers a range of evidence
based on experience and well established principles of human
nature. He mentions such phenomena as self-delusion, a desire to deceive others, and the tendency of people to accept
as fact what is “utterly absurd and miraculous.” The cause of
this, he says, is that “the passion of surprise and wonder, arising from miracles, being an agreeable emotion,” gives rise to
pleasurable affects. Hume is especially harsh in condemning
those cases in which “the spirit of religion joins itself to
the love of wonder.” In these circumstances, “human testimony . . . loses all pretensions to authority.” Citing various
examples of “the strong propensity of mankind to the extraordinary and marvelous,” he asks rhetorically whether it
is not such passions which “incline the generality of
mankind to believe and report, with the greatest vehemence
and assurance, all religious miracles.”21
Although Hume has labored to undermine all rational
belief in the possibility of miracles and in the veracity of
those who testify to them, what finally is the purpose of his
labors? He states that “the method of reasoning here delivered . . . may serve to confound those dangerous friends or
disguised enemies to the Christian religion, who have undertaken to defend it by the principles of human reason.”
He believes, it seems, that it is a deep disservice to the
Christian religion to defend it on those principles. To elim-
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inate the desire or the need to defend Christianity on rational
grounds, he then asserts: “Our most holy religion is founded
on Faith; and it is a sure method of exposing it to put it to
such a trial as it is, by no means, fitted to endure.”22
In what is surely one of the most striking passages in the
book, Hume ends his essay on miracles by commenting:
Upon the whole, we may conclude, that the Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even
at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person
without one. Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of
its veracity: and whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it,
is conscious of a continuous miracle in his own person,
which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and
gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary
to custom and experience.23
Given Hume’s disbelief in all claims of reported miracles,
we may wonder: How can this concluding statement be construed to serve the interests of the Christian religion, or to be
a defense of the Christian faith?
Part II: C. S. Lewis and Francis Collins
C. S. Lewis
The arguments of both Spinoza and Hume against the possibility of miracles assumed a certain perspective regarding the
knowledge of nature’s processes and the existence of its laws.
This perspective has often been called naturalism. This means
that explanations of all phenomena must be sought within the
scope of natural knowledge as grounded in reason and experience, without recourse or appeal to explanations in terms
of supernatural causes or agents. The knowledge thus obtained by adhering to the principles and methods of the sciences yields conclusions, in the form of provisional laws of
nature, which are open to being tested, confirmed or disconfirmed, and corrected.
The alternative to this naturalistic perspective can be
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called supernaturalism.
These are exactly the pair of terms used by C. S. Lewis
in his book Miracles: A Preliminary Study.24 Lewis’s aims
are to confront the reader with the choice between naturalism
and supernaturalism, to show the limitations of the former
and the superiority of the latter, and to lead the reader to adopt
the particular form of supernaturalism supplied by Christianity.
Regarding naturalism, he concedes that “if Naturalism
is true, then we do know in advance that miracles are impossible: nothing can come into Nature from the outside because there is nothing outside to come in, Nature being
everything.”25
Therefore, in order to provide an affirmative answer to
the question of whether miracles can occur—that is, in order
to show that miracles are indeed possible—Lewis says that
he must first settle what he calls “the philosophical question.”26 Since the philosophical question at issue here is
whether miracles can occur, and since miracles are not possible if naturalism is true, he must either show that naturalism
is not true or he must argue that the opposite perspective—
supernaturalism—is true.
However, according to Lewis, an argument attempting to
show the possibility of miracles cannot be based on experience or history or the examination of biblical texts. This is
so because the evidence obtained from each of these sources
“depends on the philosophical views which we have been
holding before we even began to look at the evidence. The
philosophical question must therefore come first.”27 Lewis’s
general argument seems to be directed, initially at least,
against those who reject the possibility of miracles because
“we know in advance what results they will find for they have
begun by begging the question.”28
Does Lewis himself think he can settle this “philosophical
question” without any begging of the question? To avoid this
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result, he would have to confront and overcome the position
of those who accept the principles of naturalism as broadly
interpreted and applied. In particular he would have to show
that it is impossible for naturalism to fulfill its claim to provide
the best and fullest explanation of the whole range of phenomena constituting human experience. Let us see whether he succeeds in this undertaking.
Although different chapters of this book present various
aspects of his position, his overall argument in behalf of the
truth of supernaturalism seems to depend on at least the following premises or assumptions:
1. Nature is not the whole of reality. Rather it is
merely a partial reality embedded within a higher supernatural reality which constitutes a total reality.
Lewis agrees that “all reality must be interrelated and
consistent.”29 To find the grounds of this interconnection between the partial and the total reality, one must
go back to their common origin, the Creator God.
With this supernatural assumption of a Creator God,
plus the premise that this God might wish to intervene
in or interrupt the order of Nature, miracles can
occur.30
2. The system of Nature can only be partial. What it
essentially lacks is the spiritual element contained in
the Christian and Jewish doctrines which “have always been statements about spiritual reality.”31 What
these doctrines mean is that “in addition to the physical or psychophysical universe known to the sciences,
there exists an uncreated and unconditional reality
which causes the universe to be, [and] this reality has
a positive structure or constitution.”32 To distinguish
the Christian from the Jewish understanding of the
meaning of spiritual reality, he adds that this reality is
described “though doubtless not completely, . . . in the
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doctrine of the Trinity; and that this reality, at a definite point in time, entered the universe we know by
becoming one of its own creatures.”33
3. In order to tell the story of Christianity, supernaturalism is necessary because it is the realm in which
miracles find their being. In the Christian religion,
“the Miracles, or at least some Miracles, are more
closely bound up with the fabric of belief than in any
other.”34 Further, miracles, after all, are “precisely
those chapters in the great story [of Christianity] on
which the plot turns. Death and resurrection are what
the story is about.”35
4. To tell the Christian story, Lewis must also tell the
story of mankind. But from what perspective should
this story be told? To tell the story of Man is to give
an account of Man’s nature. Nature and human nature
are complex things, and as Lewis himself points out,
“the kind of analysis which you make of any complex
thing depends on the purpose you have in view.”36
Since his purpose is to give an affirmative answer to
the question whether miracles are possible, the story
of mankind must be told from the supernatural perspective.
When we are considering Man as evidence for the fact that
this spatio-temporal Nature is not the only thing in existence, the important distinction is between that part of Man
which belongs to this spatio-temporal Nature and that which
does not. . . . These two parts of a man may rightly be called
natural and supernatural. . . . [T]his “Super-Natural” part is
itself a created being—a thing called into existence by the
Absolute Being and given by Him a certain character or
“nature.”37
Thus, in order to argue for the truth of his Christian supernaturalism, Lewis assumes the very perspective according
to which the concept of Nature is arbitrarily narrowed and
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excluded from any connection to the moral or rational development of human beings. He thereby renders the naturalist
perspective incapable of explaining the most basic features
of human nature. Indeed, in the chapter entitled “Nature and
Supernature,” he separates Reason from man’s nature and asserts that “rational thought is not part of the system of Nature.”38 He then adds that “human minds are not the only
supernatural entities that exist. They do not come from
nowhere. Each has come into Nature from Supernature: each
has its tap-root in an eternal, self-existent, rational Being,
whom we call God. Each is an offshoot, or spearhead, or incursion of that Supernatural reality into Nature.”39
In short, from the supernaturalist perspective, the existence of each human being having the capacity to reason is
itself a miracle.
Lewis himself has emphatically asserted the elementary
logical point that “a proof which sets out by assuming the thing
you have to prove is rubbish.”40 Does he think he has somehow
avoided an enormous begging of the question?
Francis Collins
One strongly affected reader of C. S. Lewis is Francis Collins,
who is currently the Director of the National Institutes of Health
and previously the head of the Human Genome Project.
In his book, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents
Evidence for Belief,41 Collins’s primary aim is to provide “the
possibility of a richly satisfying harmony between the scientific and spiritual world views.”42 That these world views are
often said to be in opposition is expressed by such phrases as
“the ‘battle’ between science and religion”43 and “the conflicts between science and faith.”44
Note that, in presenting their opposition in these terms,
Collins consistently and freely substitutes the words “religion” and “faith” for the word “spiritual,” thus treating these
three terms as equivalent when set in opposition to “science.”
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In the introduction to his book, Collins poses the question
whether “the scientific and spiritual world views are antithetical.” His own answer to this question is:
No. Not for me. Quite the contrary. For me, the experience
of sequencing the human genome, and uncovering this
most remarkable of all texts, was both a stunning scientific
achievement and an occasion of worship.45
From this answer we see that at least in his own heart and
mind the dichotomy of “science” on one side, and “religion,”
“faith” and “the spiritual world” on the other is only apparent.
But when he further says: “Science’s domain is to explore
nature, God’s domain is in the spiritual world, a world not
possible to explore with the tools and language of science,”46
the antithesis appears to harden. We now have on one side of
the dichotomy Science and Nature, and on the other side Religion, Faith, Spirit, and God. Since in his own terms each
side occupies a separate and distinct “domain,” it is not immediately evident how these two sides can come together.
On the religious or spiritual side, the book is the personal
story of Collins’s journey from atheism to wholehearted acceptance of the fundamental tenets of the Christian religion,
with its mysteries and its miracles, all centering on the person
of Jesus Christ: his Virgin Birth, his Divinity, his Death and
Resurrection.
On the side of science and nature, he discusses with elegance and insight, and with similarly wholehearted acceptance, the scientific view of the understanding of the natural
world. He writes:
Science is the only legitimate way to investigate the natural
world. Whether probing the structure of the atom, the nature of the cosmos, or the DNA sequence of the human
genome, the scientific method is the only reliable way to
seek out the truth of natural events. Yes, experiments can
fail spectacularly, interpretations of experiments can be
misguided, and science can make mistakes. But the nature
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of science is self-correcting. No major fallacy can long persist in the face of a progressive increase in knowledge.47
So the question continues: does Collins see and treat the
two world views as essentially separate, distinct and antithetical, or is their opposition only apparent and capable of being
harmonized?
Although Collins undoubtedly has a great love of science
and has attained a high level of achievement and satisfaction
through the understanding of natural phenomena, that way of
pursuing the truth is insufficient. For him “science is not the
only way of knowing. The spiritual world view provides another way of finding truth.”48 But Collins also thinks that
“each person must carry out his or her own search for spiritual truth.”49 What he desires for himself is a “way of seeking
fellowship with God,” of being able “to communicate with
Him.”50 What Collins also desires are answers to the questions that cannot be answered by science, the “eternal questions of human existence.” These are questions such as: Why
did the universe come into being? and What is the meaning
of human existence?51
But since these kinds of questions cannot be answered by
science, one must go beyond science, go beyond the natural
world and into the realm of supernaturalism and the transcendence of a creator God. Or as Collins puts it:
As seekers, we may well discover from science many interesting answers to the question “How does life work?” What
we cannot discover through science alone are the answers
to the questions “Why is there life anyway?” and “Why am
I here?”52
Collins finally finds the answer to such questions, including the question of the possibility of miracles, in the language
of the Christian Bible, in the texts of the four gospels, the
central figure of which is Jesus, the Christ. These texts revealed to him “the actual account of His life, . . . the eyewit-
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ness nature of the narratives, and the enormity of Christ’s
claims and their consequences.”53 He writes:
[I]f Christ really was the Son of God, as He explicitly
claimed, then surely . . . He could suspend the laws of nature
if He needed to do so to achieve a more important purpose.54
In attempting to understand God’s purpose, Collins wrestled with impenetrable theological conundrums, and again
found answers in the writings of C.S. Lewis. Through these
writings, Collins was persuaded of spiritual truths the logic
of which had previously seemed “like utter nonsense.”55 But
now that he has become “a believer in God,”56 this logic
seems to him compelling.
Although Collins’s Language of God is wonderfully clear
in explaining much of the reasoning and evidence supporting
the scientific conclusions of cosmology and biology (as in
Chapter 3, “The Origins of the Universe,” Chapter 4, “Life
on Earth: Of Microbes and Man,” and Chapter 5, “Deciphering God’s Instruction Book: The Lessons of the Human
Genome”), I find his language about “truth” to be at the least
fuzzy and puzzling.
On the one hand Collins speaks of faith as a “search for
absolute truth,”57 and says that “each person must carry out
his or her own search for spiritual truth.”58 Yet he praises the
truth-gathering methods of science as “the only reliable way
to seek out the truth of natural events” and asserts that “the
nature of science is self-correcting.”59 So at least some claims
regarding scientific truth, and the beliefs based on those
claims, are thereby discovered to have been false. But if each
person’s search for spiritual truth is a search for what most
satisfies his or her longing for fellowship with the Divine, by
what shared criteria can these private beliefs and spiritual
truths be judged to be either true or false? Is the search for
spiritual truth self-correcting in the same way and in the same
sense as the search for scientific truth?
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Perhaps what is called spiritual truth is a genuinely private matter, involving each person’s sense of the divine and
of what constitutes an adequate relationship to the divine. No
doubt such private thoughts and feelings are full of meaning
which can be shared with other like-minded persons. It is evident, however, that not everyone needs a belief in miracles
to achieve their sense of fellowship with the Divine. We have
already noted the example of Spinoza, and we would certainly have to include other philosophers or scientists or seekers after truth who find their spiritual satisfaction within the
horizons of a naturalistic world view without having to posit
another level of reality called “supernatural.”
Collins says that science and faith “fortify each other like
two unshakable pillars, holding up a building called Truth.”60
But there are good reasons to think that (1) the logical ground
on which each of these pillars stands is essentially different,
and (2) the paths toward scientific truth and spiritual truth,
as well as the human capacities required to pursue these, are
not the same.
Should we not conclude, therefore, that there is not one
but two very different buildings called Truth, the foundations
of which are laid in two separate realms in the landscape of
the human mind? If, as Collins himself describes, there are
two distinct world views, the scientific and the religious, and
if each relies on its own conception and criteria regarding the
truth, how is it possible, as he urges, to “seek to reclaim the
solid ground of an intellectually and spiritually satisfying
synthesis of all great truths?”61 (Emphasis in the original.)
Recalling for a moment the theological-political theme,
perhaps Collins’s desire for harmony can be understood in
light of his role as a preeminent scientist who heads a national
government agency. In this role one can understand that his
goal is to bridge the deep divisions in this country concerning
major biomedical issues such as stem cell research, cloning,
and the search for genetic cures to a wide spectrum of dis-
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eases, issues which often are polarized along both religious
and political lines. It is this goal which is reflected in his
“Final Word”:
It is time to call a truce in the escalating war between science
and spirit. The war was never really necessary. Like so many
earthly wars, this one has been initiated and intensified by
extremists on both sides, sounding alarms that predict imminent ruin unless the other side is vanquished. Science is
not threatened by God; it is enhanced. God is most certainly
not threatened by science; He made it all possible.62
In response to Collins’s “final word” on this problem, let
us pose instead two “final questions.” First, how is it possible
to harmonize the truth claims of religious believers and the
truth claims of the scientific community without equivocating
on the meaning of the term “truth”? And second, if a truth
claim, in general, is understood to require a correspondence
between what is said or thought and some assumed objective
reality—call this the requirement of corresponding to reality—then how is it possible to establish with certitude that
this requirement has been met?
NOTES
1. This question is a narrowly formulated aspect of the larger perennial
question of the relation of reason to faith. Three relatively recent books
which argue for the compatibility of this relationship are: C.F. Delaney,
ed., Rationality and Religious Belief (Notre Dame, Indiana: University
of Notre Dame Press, 1979); Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff,
eds., Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God (Notre Dame, Indiana: University Notre Dame Press, 1983); and Joshua L Golding, Rationality and Religious Theism (Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing,
2003).
2. Preface, Paragraph 1, Sentence 1. In the following notes, all references
to the Theological-Political Treatise (referred to as TTP from its Latin
title Tractatus Theologico-Politicus) will be to Spinoza’s Theologico-
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Political Treatise, trans. Martin Yaffe (Newburyport, Mass.: Focus Philosophical Library, 2004). Citations to the text will be in accordance with
Yaffe’s system of citations explained on p. viii of that edition. For example, in a subsequent footnote, TTP, 1.1.1-2 refers to Chapter 1, Paragraph 1, Sentences 1 and 2. “P” preceding Arabic numerals refers to the
Preface.
3. Partial summary of Spinoza, TTP, P.1.1 to P.5.l.
4. Spinoza, TTP, P.5.6.
5. Spinoza, TTP, 1.1.1-2.
6. Spinoza, TTP, 1.2.1-2.
7. The following statements numbered 1-6 summarize Spinoza’s sentences from TTP, 1.2.3 to 1.4.1. Statement number 7 quotes from TTP,
1.22.6.
8. In Chapter 2, Spinoza further distinguishes the certainty obtained
through the natural light versus the certainty obtained through the
prophetic light, finding the difference to be based on the prophets’ more
vivid power of imagining. He argues that “since simple imagination does
not of its own nature involve certainty, as every clear and distinct idea
does . . . it follows that by itself prophecy cannot involve certainty.” (TTP,
2.3.1). What is required to obtain the certainty of clear and distinct ideas
upon which natural knowledge is based is nothing other than the power
of reasoning itself.
9. Earlier in the Ethics (Part I, Proposition 29) Spinoza had introduced
the distinction between the active and passive expressions of Nature’s allcomprehensive dynamic system: natura naturans and natura naturata,
translated as Nature naturing and Nature natured.
10. As we will see below, these are the terms of the dichotomy proposed
by C. S. Lewis.
11. Conatus, translated as “striving” or “endeavor,” is Spinoza’s general
term, which includes as aspects “will,” “appetite,” and “desire.” See,
Ethics, Part III, Proposition 9, Scholium.
12. Spinoza, TTP, 3.3.1- 3.
13. Spinoza says that his treatment of this subject is explicitly philosophical; that is, his conclusions about miracles are drawn solely from the
principles of nature and reason. This procedure contrasts with earlier
chapters that treat of prophecy and prophets, which are theological matters, where he drew his conclusions from the text of Scripture alone.
14. Spinoza, TTP, 6.1.90-91.
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15. Ibid., 6.1.34.
16. Ibid., 6.1.31, 35.
17. References will be to sections, parts and page numbers in David Hume,
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Anthony Flew
(Chicago: Open Court, 1988). It is noteworthy that both Spinoza and
Hume—proponents of the philosophic point of view called Naturalism—
also share a common ground of political principle. Each quotes and adopts
the political ideal stated by Tacitus: “to be able to think what we please
and say what we think” (Histories, I.1). For Spinoza, see TTP, P 5.18, and
the content and title of Chapter 20: “It is shown that in a Free Republic
each is permitted both to think what he wants and to say what he thinks.”
For Hume, see A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an attempt to introduce
the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Maral Subjects, in which the
quotation from Tacitus serves as the epigraph both for Book I, “Of the Understanding,” and for Book II, “Of the Passions.”
18. Hume, Enquiry, X.l, p.148.
19. Ibid., X.2, p.164.
20. Ibid., X.2, p.150.
21. Ibid., X.2, pp. 151-52.
22. Ibid., X.2, p. 165.
23. Ibid., X.2, p. 166.
24. C. S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study (New York: HarperCollins, 2001). Lewis is also the author of many popular works of fiction
such as The Screwtape Letters (1942), The Lion, the Witch, and the
Wardrobe (1950), and The Chronicles of Narnia (seven volumes between
1950 and 1956). The greatest influence on Lewis’s fiction seems to have
been the Scottish author George MacDonald, a preacher and Christian
apologist, who was a prolific writer of novels, short stories, and fairy
tales. When Lewis was sixteen, he chanced upon MacDonald’s most famous novel Phantastes and was enchanted by his prodigious imagination.
The book was Lewis’s favorite, and he returned to it often throughout his
life. See Michael White, C. S. Lewis: A Life (New York: Carroll and Graf,
2004), 103-104.
25. Lewis, Miracles, 14-15.
26. Ibid., 2.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid., 4.
29. Ibid., 96.
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30. Ibid., 96-98.
31. Ibid., 124.
32. Ibid., 125.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid., 108.
35. Ibid., 157.
36. Ibid., 275.
37. Ibid., 276.
38. Ibid., 41.
39. Ibid., 43.
40. Ibid., 18.
41. Francis S. Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (New York: Free Press, 2006). Francis Collins is connected to St. John's College by virtue of being the godson of Robert Bart,
a long time tutor both in Annapolis and Santa Fe and also Dean of the College in Santa Fe. Collins was one of the speakers at the memorial service
for Robert Bart held in McDowell Hall in Annapolis, February 3, 2001.
In a personal communication, Collins wrote: “As I recall, I spoke about
the remarkable role he played in my own education. He was my godfather,
and no godfather ever took that role more seriously—he gave me many
precious gifts as I was growing up, all of which had artistic, religious, or
intellectual significance and led to deep conversations. . . . I also remember
him assisting me with a particularly thorny calculus problem, and marveling that this sophisticated professor of humanities was also awfully
good at integrating by parts. Such was the St. John’s way!"
42. Collins, The Language of God, 6.
43. Ibid., 4. See also 272: “The current battles between the scientific and
spiritual worldviews need to be resolved.”
44. Ibid., 84.
45. Ibid., 3.
46. Ibid., 6.
47. Ibid., 228.
48. Ibid., 229.
49. Ibid., 225.
50. Ibid., 220.
51. Ibid., 6.
52. Ibid., 88.
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53. Ibid., 221.
54. Ibid.
55. Ibid., 223.
56. Ibid., 118.
57. Ibid., 227. See also 271: “Given the uncertain ethical grounding of
the postmodernist era, which discounts the existence of absolute truth,
ethics grounded on specific principles of faith can provide a certain foundational strength that may otherwise be lacking.”
58. Ibid., 221.
59. Ibid., 228.
60. Ibid., 210.
61. Ibid., 234.
62. Ibid., 233. For readers wanting to pursue a comprehensive critique of
Collins’s book, see George Cunningham, Decoding the Language of God:
Can a Scientist Really be a Believer? A Geneticist Responds to Francis
Collins (Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2010). For readers
wanting to pursue further the topic of Truth, see the recent collections of
essays in Simon Blackburn and Keith Simmonds, eds. Truth, Oxford
Readings in Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), and
Kurt Pritzl, ed., Truth: Studies of a Robust Presence, Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010).
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The Question of Questions
Michael W. Grenke
What is involved in really asking a question? What is the
most important question a human being can ask? Tonight I
want to try to consider, along with you, these two questions
in the challenging and connected manner in which Martin
Heidegger presents them, especially in his Introduction to
Metaphysics.
If we try to rise to Heidegger’s challenge of really asking
these questions, then we face serious obstacles in our ordinary modes of living, thinking, and talking to one another.
Heidegger characterizes us “modern” human beings as people “who scarcely respond, and then for the most part emptily,
to the simplicity of the essential” (IM, 98).* But is not the essential that which is sought in all real questioning? And can
a minimal and mostly empty response be what is appropriate
to the object of real questioning? Later in his argument, when
considering the standards of discourse exemplified in contemporary books and newspapers, Heidegger laments “the
paralysis of all passion for questioning that has long been
with us. The consequence of this paralysis is that all standards
and perspectives have been confused and that most men have
ceased to know where and between what the crucial decisions
must be made” (IM, 143).
Lest we too readily exempt ourselves and our community
*Key to citations: IM = Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Ralph Manheim (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959). BT = Being and Time,
trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: HarperCollins,
2008). Page numbers for Being and Time are keyed to the seventh German
edition, noted marginally in the English translation. In some instances
translations have been altered slightly for the sake of accuracy.
Michael Grenke is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis. This lecture was originally delivered on 7 November 2008.
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from these criticisms as though they are leveled only at “modern” men, not those who study great books, and only at the
discourse found in books and periodicals that we do not allow
ourselves to read here, we should consider what Heidegger
calls “idle talk” in Being and Time. “Idle talk” is discourse
that seeks to tone down the stakes of conversation and to keep
the responses of the interlocutors within well-prescribed and
familiar bounds. Instead of containing and conveying a “primary relationship-of-Being towards the being talked about”
(BT, 168)—a relationship of the kind that might deeply excite
or disturb the speaker and the listener, a relationship that
might move a human being as much as the thing in question
can move a human being—idle talk just passes words around
in the fashion of gossip. The worst part is that it pretends to
be real discourse, and in this pretending it hinders attempts
at real discourse. Surrounded by such discourse that says very
little while pretending to say all there is to say, the average
understanding “will never be able to decide what has been
drawn from primordial sources with a struggle and how much
is just gossip” (BT, 169). Heidegger finds this idle talk that
belongs to everyday average human life to be almost everywhere and to dominate almost everything about human discourse, both spoken and written. We should not pat ourselves
too readily or casually on the back and blindly assume that
this idle discourse goes on only outside our community or
only on the weekends and never in our classrooms. Idle talk
“discourages any new questioning and any confrontation”
(BT, 169). But might not all real questioning be, in a way,
new and confrontational?
In order to try to get free from the realm of idle talk and
really to ask questions, to question questions—die Fragen
fragen, as the Germans say—we must try to situate ourselves
in a realm of thinking and discourse that is not saturated with
the sense, the assurance, that whatever is to come next will
be comfortably like that which has already come before. Per-
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haps we can start to get a feeling for this in a slight observation of a feature of the text of the Introduction to Metaphysics
that might tend to frustrate us with Heidegger, or even make
us distrust him. The book asks a question in its very first paragraph, and it makes explicit the difficulty of really asking that
question. A large portion of the discussion on the pages that
follow is devoted to a discussion of that question and its asking. Nine pages in, Heidegger proclaims, “We have not even
begun to ask the question itself” (IM, 9). If the reader’s patience has not worn thin after nine pages, it may be getting
frayed at twenty-nine pages in, where Heidegger says, “We
still know far too little about the process of questioning, and
what we do know is far too crude” (IM, 29). In a way, the
saga of really asking a question goes on throughout the entire
book, all the way to the very end, where Heidegger suggests
that real questioning may be a matter that takes a whole lifetime.
I am not calling attention to these matters to complain
about the way Heidegger seems to avoid or defer satisfaction
of the desires he has aroused in his readers. The more generous and fruitful way to look at this, regardless of its accuracy,
is to think that Heidegger is really making a high demand
upon himself and upon his intended readers. He is not settling
back into the easy and comforting conviction that he already
knows how really to ask questions and that he already is asking real questions.
What would it take for us to follow Heidegger’s example?
In thinking about Heidegger’s challenge, I have been trying
to ask myself whether I have ever been involved in real questioning myself, and I have been continually struck by how
hard it is to make that a real question. Can you ask yourself
in a real way, in way that does not presuppose an answer, in
a way that does not let you shrug off, turn away from, or deny
the question, whether in our classes—and especially in those
most avowedly devoted to questions, our seminars—whether
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any real questioning has been going on? I do not ask this
question to satisfy any savage and lingering resentment you
might have over a seminar gone wrong; rather I mean it to
stir concern in you about your own questioning.
The Question of Questions
Now that you are stirred up, let us turn to a more detailed
look at what Heidegger has to say about questions. A brief
glimpse at Being and Time might help lay some groundwork.
In the second section of the book, Heidegger begins the task
of trying to “formulate”—or rather reformulate—the question
of Being, the question that is the leading question of the
whole work, and the question that Heidegger presents as the
question that is first in rank. The reformulation of the question is undertaken explicitly to “revive” the question, to make
it a matter of living concern again. In order to reformulate
this question, Heidegger tries to “explain briefly what belongs to any question whatsoever” (BT, 5). The following
scheme of three elements emerges: “Any question, as a question about something, has that which is asked about. But
every question about something is somehow a questioning of
something. So in addition to what is asked about, a question
has that which is interrogated. . . . Furthermore, in what is
asked about there lies also that which is to be found out by
the asking; this is what is really intended: with this the question reaches its goal” (BT, 5).
In fitting his leading question into the scheme that belongs to any questioning, Heidegger announces that Being is
what is asked about, even though Being is not a being, which
is to say Being is not a thing like other things. He then announces that the meaning of Being is what is to be found out
by the asking. And then he turns to the middle element of his
scheme—“that which is interrogated.” Since Being is the
Being of beings, the interrogation is to be directed at beings
themselves. Perhaps because many beings would seem to be
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119
rather unresponsive to interrogation, Heidegger notes, “When
we come to what is to be interrogated, the question of Being
requires that the right way of access to beings shall have been
obtained and secured in advance” (BT, 6). Method matters,
even if the motto of Heidegger’s phenomenal approach is “To
the beings themselves!” “Thus to work out the question of
Being adequately, we must make one being—the questioning
one—transparent in its own Being. The very asking of this
question is one being’s mode of Being; and as such it gets its
essential character from what is inquired about—namely,
Being. This being which each of us himself is and which includes questioning as one of the possibilities of its Being, we
shall denote by the term ‘Dasein’” (BT, 7). Dasein, “Being
there,” is Heidegger’s technical term for the kind of being
that is human being. Because human beings have a special
relationship to Being, because they are beings that ask the
question of Being, the rest of Heidegger’s Being and Time
occupies itself with an analysis of the structure of human
being.
In the Author’s Preface to the seventh edition, Heidegger
admits to the unfinished character of Being and Time. He admits that a promised second “half” of the book has not been
delivered, and he says that the first half, which is the book as
he has left it to us, would have to be newly presented if the
question were to be carried further. Heidegger then suggests
that in order to shed some light on this the reader should look
at his Introduction to Metaphysics, published in the same year
as the seventh edition of Being and Time.
The beginning of Introduction to Metaphysics focuses attention on the fundamental question of metaphysics and on
the difficulty of asking it.
Individuals and peoples ask a good many questions in the
course of their historical passage through time. They examine, explore, and test a good many things before they
run into the question “Why are there beings rather than
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nothing?” Many men never encounter this question, if by
encounter we mean not merely to hear and read about it
as an interrogative formulation but to ask the question,
that it, to bring it about, to raise it, to feel oneself in the
state of being compelled to this question (IM, 1).
Although this is a somewhat different question than the
leading question of Being and Time (IM,18-19), both are put
forth as the fundamental question and as the question that is
first in rank. Also because Heidegger asserts that the second
clause of the question, “rather than nothing,” is not superfluous, and because it reveals that the scope of the question aims
at the ground of beings (IM, 24), it is very close to being the
question of being. Does what Heidegger says here at the beginning of Introduction to Metaphysics serve, then, to help
us understand what he means in Being and Time when he
calls human being the being that asks the question of Being?
Also, what does this initial statement tell us about really
asking this (or any) question? What does it mean to “encounter” a question if it does not mean to hear it or to read
it? Heidegger’s gloss here on asking the question is that it involves bringing a question about, placing or “putting” the
question, and finding oneself in the state of feeling the necessity for the question. This suggests that the asking of a
question is very different from becoming aware of a question
or from “finding” a question. The relationship of the questioner to the question is more intimate and more essential than
the relationship of an uninterested, passive observer to an observed object. With respect to the fundamental question, Heidegger goes so far as to say “if this question is asked and if
the act of questioning is really carried out, the content and
the object of the question react inevitably on the act of questioning” (IM, 5). What is this reacting? Is it similar to what
Heidegger means when he says in Being and Time that the
being that asks the question of Being “gets its essential character from what is inquired about—namely Being”? Heideg-
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ger extends this thought here in Introduction to Metaphysics
in the context of its fundamental question—“this question
‘why,’ this question as to the being as such in its entirety, goes
beyond mere playing with words, provided we possess sufficient intellectual energy to make the question actually recoil
into its ‘why,’ for it will not do so of its own accord” (IM, 5).
Really asking this question means making the question
recoil into its why. This questioning of the question searches
for the grounds of the questioning itself. It asks “Why the
why?” And in so doing, it turns its attention toward the being
that questions. This “privileged question ‘why’ has its ground
in a leap through which man thrusts away all the previous security, whether real or imagined, of his life. The question is
asked only in this leap; it is the leap; without it there is no
asking” (IM, 6).
If this leap, without which there is no asking, involves
thrusting away all the previous security of life, it may be objectively impossible to determine when such a leap has been
made. “Let us be clear about this from the start: it can never
be objectively determined whether anyone, whether we, really ask this question, that is, whether we make the leap, or
never get beyond a verbal formula” (IM, 6). This might seem
to mean we can never know whether a question has really
been asked. But the sentence that follows this statement
seems to point to history as the obstacle to our objective determination. “In a historical setting that does not recognize
questioning as a fundamental human force, the question immediately loses its rank” (IM, 6).
The paragraph that immediately follows would seem to
be an example of such a historical setting. In that paragraph,
Heidegger considers those who hold the Bible to be divine
revelation and truth. For those believers, there would seem
to be a clear and immediate answer to the question “Why are
there beings rather than nothing?” They have this answer before the question is even asked. Heidegger says that such be-
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lievers cannot really ask the question. “One who holds to
such faith can in a way participate in the asking of our question, but he cannot really question without ceasing to be a believer and taking all the consequences of such a step. He will
only be able to act ‘as if’” (IM, 7). Thus Heidegger seems to
point to a situation in which he feels confident that the question is not really being asked. This is because he thinks he
can recognize a “historical setting” where questioning is not
recognized “as a fundamental human force”; rather, “[f]rom
the standpoint of faith our question is ‘foolishness’” (IM, 7).
Heidegger goes on to identify philosophy with this foolishness. He then says “Really to ask the question signifies a
daring attempt to fathom this unfathomable question by disclosing what it summons us to ask, to push our questioning
to the very end. Where such an attempt occurs there is philosophy” (IM, 8). Is Heidegger going so far as to suggest that
where there is no philosophy there is no real questioning?
Would that in turn lead so far as to suggest that where there
is faith there is no real questioning of anything? Does the
need for philosophy constitute some part of the obstacle to
the objective determination of whether a leap into real questioning has been made? For the historical is not the objective,
the historical is subject to “its own law,” not the universal
law. And Heidegger conceives of philosophy as historical, so
that “there is no way of determining once and for all what the
task of philosophy is” (IM, 8).
What I have presented so far has followed, with some
principle of selection, what Heidegger has to say about really
asking questions in the beginning pages of Introduction to
Metaphysics, up to page nine. You will recall that on page
nine Heidegger announces that, “We have not even begun to
ask the question itself.” What still stands in the way of our
really asking a question (or the question)? What needs to be
seen, done, or suffered?
The question of questions dies down in the text for about
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ten pages. Then it is resumed explicitly with a series of statements that might seem unnecessary. First Heidegger tells us
that “questions and particularly fundamental questions do not
just occur like stones and water. Questions are not found
ready-made like shoes and clothes and books. Questions are,
and are only as they are actually asked” (IM, 19). Heidegger
seems to fear that we might not yet be thinking properly about
questions. He feels the need to tell us questions are, that is
they have some kind of being. And he feels the need to point
out that questions do not have the kind of being that we might
tend to ascribe either to natural beings (stones, water) or to
artificial beings (shoes, clothes, books). This difference is
amplified when Heidegger claims, “A leading into the asking
of the fundamental questions is consequently not a going to
something that lies and stands somewhere; no, this leading
must first awaken and create the questioning” (IM, 19).
What kind of being, then, should we think that questions
have? Heidegger seems to think we might be tempted to think
that questions have the kind of being belonging to a particular
kind of sentence—the kind that ends with a question mark.
So next he tells the reader, “To state the interrogative sentence, even in a tone of questioning, is not yet to question.
To repeat the interrogative sentence several times in succession does not necessarily breathe life into the questioning”
(IM, 20). Is the task, then, to breathe life into our interrogative
statements? What can that mean? Heidegger makes it clear
that this is not a rhetorical move that can be accomplished
through repetition or through variation in tone.
Heidegger next considers the experience of listening to a
question. He points to a way in which one could mistake a
question to be a mere assertion about the questioning state of
the speaker. But if that is how you hear my question, then
“you do not join me in questioning, nor do you question yourself. No sign of a questioning attitude or state of mind is
awakened.” This consideration of what is involved in hearing
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a question as a question seems to reveal for Heidegger the
questioning state of mind. “Such a state of mind consists in
willing to know. Willing—that is no mere wishing or striving.
Those who wish to know also seem to question, but they do
not go beyond the stating of questions; they stop precisely
where the question begins. To question is to will to know. He
who wills, he who puts his whole existence into a will, is resolved. Resolve does not shift about; it does not shirk, but
acts from out of the moment and never stops” (IM, 20-21).
So a question is not a sentence uttered in the right tone,
but a sentence uttered with the right (rather extreme) attitude
or state of mind? It turns out that Heidegger also cuts off this
notion that a question is a certain kind of sentence uttered
with a certain kind of attitude. “So much the less will the interrogative sentence, even if it is uttered in an authentically
questioning tone and even if the listener joins in the questioning, exhaustively reproduce the question. The questioning,
which is still enclosed, wrapped up in words, remains to be
unwrapped. The questioning attitude must clarify and secure
itself in the process, it must be consolidated by training” (IM,
22).
In the case just described, the questioning done by the
speaker and shared in by the listener is not to be found wholly
in the sentence uttered or in the tone in which it is uttered.
The questioning would seem separable from the words; perhaps the questioning could be carried out with other words,
or even without words. The questioning attitude seems not to
be a thing of the moment, nor something finished and static.
This attitude needs clarifying, securing, and consolidating.
By what process or training might a questioning attitude be
properly developed? That attitude is characterized by a resolved will to know. What that will aims to know is the truth.
Under Heidegger’s analysis of the meaning of the word truth,
truth is “unconcealment.” This is to be distinguished from
thinking of truth as correspondence. And late in Introduction
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to Metaphysics, Heidegger asserts, “Unconcealment occurs
only when it is achieved by work” (IM, 191). Heidegger gives
many examples of intellectual work on the intervening
pages—especially in his laborious excursions into the primordial etymologies of important terms in Western thought—
and one might profitably attempt to consider much of what
he does in Introduction to Metaphysics as an attempt to begin
training a questioning attitude.
The Question of Questions
Let us turn now to look at Heidegger’s claims as to which
question is the most important question a human being can
ask. “Important” is my term. Sometimes Heidegger says
“fundamental,” or “first,” or “first in rank,” or “worthiest.”
We can try to discipline our conception of the most important
question by keeping in mind our observations regarding really asking a question—that questioning extends beyond specific verbal formulae and that a questioning attitude requires
work and training,. The most important question is not an object sitting somewhere. I cannot sell you a map with which
you can locate it in order to wonder at it. The most important
question is not a sentence written on a page in some rare
book, available to be read by anyone who can afford to purchase the book. I give you the most important question now
as Heidegger expresses it as a sentence. But to hear it properly, we must not get too caught up in its wrappings.
“The question ‘Why are there beings rather than nothing?’ is first in rank for us first because it is the most farreaching, second because it is the deepest, and finally because
it is the most fundamental of all questions” (IM, 2). Heidegger explains that this question is the most far reaching, the
widest, because it “confines itself to no particular being” and
thus “takes in everything” (IM, 2). The question is the deepest
because it “aims at the ground of what is insofar as it is” (IM,
3). It “penetrates to the ‘underlying’ realms and indeed to the
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very last of them, to the limit” (IM, 3). This question is the
most fundamental question because “it breaks open the
ground for all authentic questions and thus is at the origin of
all of them” (IM, 6).
From the standpoint of really asking questions, the asking
of this question stands out as special. “For through this questioning the being as a whole is for the first time opened up as
such with a view to its possible ground, and in the act of questioning it is kept open” (IM, 4). This statement about the fundamentality of this question—that it opens up a ground of
possibility and keeps that possibility open—might also be
taken as a statement about what it means really to ask this
question. Does really asking a question always involve asking
fundamental questions? This might explain Heidegger’s big
claim that “Our question is the question of all authentic questions, i.e., of all self-questioning questions, and whether consciously or not it is necessarily implicit in every question. No
questioning and accordingly no single scientific ‘problem’
can be fully intelligible if it does not include, i.e., ask, the
question of all questions” (IM, 6).
Pretty quickly, however, Heidegger finds an obstacle to
his pursuit of this question of questions and to his claims
about its importance. Heidegger finds he must confront a long
intellectual tradition that has found Being “unfindable, almost
like nothing” (IM, 35). Heidegger cites Nietzsche’s claim that
the highest concepts, “like Being,” are the “last cloudy smoke
of evaporating reality” (IM, 35). as both the final expression
and the culmination of this tradition, which holds being to be
an error, a mere word, empty of meaning. Heidegger feels the
need to confront Nietzsche, and through him the tradition,
because if Nietzsche is right, “the only possible consequence
would be to abandon the question” (IM, 35).
In order to respond to Nietzsche’s claim, Heidegger sets
out to show that the word being does have meaning. Heidegger gives a series of examples of ways we mean being when
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we use the word “is.”
We say “God is.” “The earth is.” “The lecture is in the
auditorium.” This man is from Swabia.” “The cup is of
silver.” “The peasant is to the fields.” “The book is
mine.” “He is of death.” “Red is the port side.” “There is
famine in Russia.” “The enemy is in retreat.” “The plant
louse is in the vineyard.” “The dog is in the garden.”
“Over all the summits, there is rest” (IM, 89).
Heidegger observes that in each of these cases the word “is”
is meant differently.
“God is”; i.e., he is really present. “The earth is”; i.e., we
experience and believe it to be permanently there. “The
lecture is in the auditorium”; i.e., it takes place. “The
man is from Swabia”; i.e., he comes from there. “The cup
is of silver”; i.e., it is made of . . . . “The peasant is to the
fields”; he has gone to the fields and is staying there.
“The book is mine”; i.e., it belongs to me. “He is of
death”; i.e., he succumbed to death. “Red is the port
side”; i.e., it stands for port. “The dog is in the garden”;
i.e., he is running around in the garden. “Over all the
summits, there is rest”; that is to say??? (IM, 90).
(There is no account given of the famine, the retreat, or
the infestation.) Heidegger gets a bit confused by the last example and tries out a number of meanings, without being satisfied by any of his own suggestions. This occurs perhaps,
Heidegger suggests, because the last example is a bit of poetry written by Goethe in pencil on a window frame. Be that
as it may, what Heidegger claims to have shown with these
examples is that “the ‘is’ in our discourse manifests a rich diversity of meanings” (IM, 91). This rich diversity is possible
because the word “being” is empty in the sense of being indeterminate enough to encompass all the various meanings
Heidegger presents in all his examples. But the word “being”
is not empty in the sense that what is meant in each particular
example is quite determinate and distinct (except perhaps for
the case of the quotation from Goethe). So Heidegger claims
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this evidence proves that being is not an empty word. “If
being thus represents what is most unique and determinate,
the word “being” cannot be empty . . . . There is no such thing
as an empty word; at most a word is worn out, though still
filled with meaning” (IM, 79).
In replying to Nietzsche, Heidegger has been moved to
consider the kind of understanding of being to which human
beings already and always lay claim whenever they use the
word “is,” or any of its other inflectional forms. Heidegger
finds in this usage a word that is at once unique and determinate and indeterminate. Might this revelation about the ways
in which the word “being” is meant not suggest that being is
a realm uniquely suited to a questioning unwrapped from
words and a questioning attitude in need of development?
Questioning is the authentic and proper and only way of
appreciating that which, by its supreme rank, holds our
existence in its power. Hence no question is more worthy
of being asked than the question of our understanding of
being, unless it be the question of being itself. The more
authentic our questioning, the more immediately and
steadfastly we dwell on the most questionable of all questions—namely, the circumstance that we understand
being quite indefinitely and yet with supreme definiteness (IM, 83).
Is there a kind of fit between the mode of being that belongs
to human beings, the questioning beings, and the determinate
indeterminacy with which being manifests itself? Is the
human relation to being more than the merely “happy” accident that we happen to ask the question of being? As the questioning being, is human being a fit mirror for being itself? I
find it suggestive that Heidegger notes in passing in Being
and Time that “the idea of Being in general is just as far from
being ‘simple’ as is the Being of Dasein” (BT, 196).
Human Being and Questioning
I feel like I have been holding my usual critical judgment in
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abeyance in much of what I have said so far. I have done this
in order to try to think Heidegger’s thought as genuinely as I
can on its own terms. That entails the abandonment of much
of our traditional sense of evidentiary criteria. For Heidegger
claims to be thinking about and writing about matters that are
more fundamental than our traditional notions of truth as correspondence, and more fundamental than our idea of argument as a progression of inferences that follow one another
according to the rules of logic. As Heidegger suggests, “Perhaps the whole body of logic . . . is grounded in a very definite answer to the question about the being” (IM, 25).
But still, isn’t Heidegger wrong about Nietzsche? Isn’t
he misstating the main point of Nietzsche’s claim? When Heidegger cites Nietzsche as saying that the highest concepts,
including Being, are “last cloudy smoke of evaporating reality,” Heidegger is referring to a passage in section 4 of Twilight of the Idols, called “Reason in Philosophy.” Being is not
mentioned in section 4, but is discussed in the following section as a concept that is derived by means of abstraction from
the concept of the I involved in willing. In section 4, the highest concepts are not said to be empty, rather they are said to
be emptiest. Therefore Heidegger’s overcoming of Nietzsche
by means of proving that being is not an empty word is no
real overcoming at all. Moreover, Heidegger’s treatment of
this passage seems to be silent about Nietzsche’s main point,
which is that the so-called highest concepts are actually the
last concepts, not the first; they are derivative concepts, not
first things. To address Nietzsche’s real point, Heidegger
would have to try to show that Being is available to human
beings in some primary—I am tempted to say “direct”—experience and that this primary experience contains the kind
of rich diversity that, as Heidegger demonstrates, belongs to
our use of the word “being.” I do not think Heidegger tries
to show this by means of argument, although at times he
seems to claim that it is the case; it may be, in fact, that Hei-
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degger would claim that such a primary experience of being
could never be shown in argument.
How would Heidegger respond, then, to the claim that he
got Nietzsche wrong? One possible type of response might
be found in a passage where Heidegger raises the complaint
on the reader’s behalf that Heidegger himself is misreading
Parmenides. Heidegger admits that “our interpretation of the
fragment must appear to be an arbitrary distortion. We are accused of reading into it things that an ‘exact interpretation’
can never determine. This is true” (IM, 176). Heidegger does
not leave the matter at a rather matter-of-fact “Very well, you
caught me.” Instead, he turns the complaint about his own
inaccuracy, his own making things up, into an opportunity to
transform the criteria of truth. He asks, “Which interpretation
is the true one, the one which simply takes over a perspective
into which it has fallen, because this perspective, this line of
sight, presents itself as familiar and self-evident; or the interpretation which questions the customary perspective from top
to bottom, because conceivably—and indeed actually—this
line of sight does not lead to what is in need of being seen”
(IM, 176).
Whether we should find this a slippery and discreditable
evasion of intellectual integrity, or an example of a very serious way to maintain intellectual integrity, or something in
between, I shall leave for you to ponder. Rather than trying
to resolve the matter, I will instead point out the way in which
Heidegger’s response to the question of the intrusion of his
own creativity into his interpretations of the texts connects
to the way in which he thinks about really asking questions.
Immediately after suggesting that his creative interpretation
has a right to be considered “true” interpretation, Heidegger
directly connects true interpretation to questioning—“to give
up the familiar and go back to an interpretation that is also a
questioning is a leap. In order to leap one has to take a proper
run. It is the run that decides everything; for it implies that
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we ourselves really ask the questions and in these questions
first create perspectives” (IM, 176).
But how does really asking questions “create” and how
are “we ourselves” really involved? In Being and Time, Heidegger presents the kind of being of human beings that he
calls Dasein as always having its own “there.” One might say
crudely that a human being is its own “there” and makes its
own “there” but also makes a “there” for other kinds of beings. Heidegger suggests in one early passage of Introduction
to Metaphysics that the way a human being both is itself and
is a “there” is transformed by real questioning. “In this questioning we seem to belong entirely to ourselves. Yet it is this
questioning that moves us into the open, provided that in
questioning it transform itself (which all true questioning
does), and cast a new space over everything and into everything” (IM, 29-30). The human “there” is not some kind of
cloud of spatiality and temporality that follows each of us
around as we go about our day, like the personal clouds of
gloom one sometimes sees in comic strips. Rather, Heidegger
presents the human “there” as the projection of a human
being’s own self onto the given possibilities of a particular
historical circumstance. Usually this projection of self is not
a human being’s genuine self, but the projection of a universal, non-individuated self that belongs to the kind of average
way of being human that gives rise to “idle talk.” But it looks
like Heidegger wants to suggest that when questions are really asked, the questioner projects a self that is really his own.
The projection of one’s own self involves a more intense
set of possibilities of relating to beings than the projection of
just “someone.” Heidegger locates the most intense human
relations to beings in what he calls the primordial. In a way,
Heidegger seems to use the intensity of human affective relations to beings as the measuring stick of the primordiality
of those relations. Intensity seems to become the measure of
the truth. This would seem to lead philosophers to seek the
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intensity found in the primordial. Thus Heidegger claims,
“The ultimate business of philosophy is to preserve the force
of the most elemental words in which Dasein expresses itself” (BT, 220). Note here that Heidegger does not say
philosophers try to “find” the force of the most elemental
words, rather they try to “preserve” that force.
Why is philosophy, which, as we saw earlier, is associated
with really asking questions, also burdened with the task of
preserving the force of primordial modes of expression? For
Heidegger, it is because every human experience, however
seemingly inactive, is some kind of human doing, that is, a
projection onto a possibility. It is possibilities that emerge
into the truth as unconcealment; but whatever force or power
is available in such possibilities is only available in the form
of some human action, and this very action depletes the possibility’s original intensity. “A beginning can never directly
preserve its full momentum; the only possible way to preserve its force is to repeat, to draw once again more deeply
than ever from its source. And it is only by thoughtful repetition that we can deal appropriately with the beginning and
the breakdown of truth” (IM, 191). The repetition of a possibility is always an act, and in order to access again the original affective intensity of that possibility, the “repetition”
cannot be exactly the same act. Remember, real questioning
is not to be achieved through the repetition of an interrogative
sentence.
This idea about the nature of the repetition of possibilities, then, is the defense of Heidegger’s creative, “inexact”
interpretations. This idea also seems to guide his sense of
what is involved in really asking questions. “Men can retain
basic truths of such magnitude only by raising them constantly to a still more original unfolding; not merely by applying them and invoking their authority” (IM, 145). It is
perhaps a corollary of this idea that “in principle, philosoph-
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ical questions are never dealt with as though we might someday cast them aside” (IM, 42).
These considerations may also help us to understand the
rather cryptic statement that very nearly ends Introduction to
Metaphysics: “To know how to question means to know how
to wait, even a whole lifetime” (IM, 206). Waiting is not just
sitting there. Waiting has to be a dynamic passivity. Waiting
must mean a creative holding-open of the humanly affective
and ontologically revelatory potential in possibilities. Questioning, then, becomes repeating those possibilities again and
again, each time differently.
*****
Whatever we might now think of Heidegger as I have presented him—whether we think he is an untrustworthy interpreter, whether we think he fails to give us sufficient
argumentative proof, whether we think he lacks sobriety and
has a dangerous proclivity toward the extreme, whether we
think what we know about his biography says all that need
be said—must we not agree that his thinking about questions
helps us to think about questions? If we can agree on that
much, then I want to pose one last question: Does what Heidegger shows us make us want really to ask questions?
We do not have to ask the fundamental question. We do
not have to ask any question in a real manner. Nothing urgent
or practical pushes us to it. “To be sure, the things in the
world, the beings, are in no way affected by our asking of the
question ‘Why are there beings rather than nothing?’ Whether
we ask it or not, the planets move in their orbits, the sap of
life flows through plant and animal” (IM, 5). But if the other
things that we always find alongside us in the world do not
make us want really to ask questions, what does? Has Heidegger managed somehow to convey to us a questioning attitude? And if we do find ourselves wanting really to ask
questions, can we ask ourselves why we want to do so?
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135
The Rehabilitation of
Spiritedness
Gary Borjesson, Willing Dogs and Reluctant Masters: On Friendship and Dogs. Philadelphia: Paul
Dry Books, 2012, x + 251 pages. $14.95.
Book Review by Eva Brann
This book is a delight to read and a profit to ponder. It is a dog
story, a human story, a lesson book (for dog owners), and a philosophical meditation (for anyone). It is learned, but lightly so, and
it has a powerful thesis gently imparted.
I loved it, but my credentials for reviewing it are even better
than that: I don't like dogs. They slobber, shed and speak not a word
of English—none of which facts is denied in this account of friendship between dogs and humans. (In my defense: among the alogoi,
the wordless, I do feel friendly toward dolphins, who luckily live
in another element, and toward babies, who are both incarnations
of potential rationality and cute—for which the animal ethologist’s
term is “care-soliciting.”) Moreover, I have no idea whether Gary
Borjesson’s fundamental claim is true: that real—not in-a-mannerof-speaking—friendship between dog and human is possible. My
old friend Ray Coppinger, a dog evolutionist and breeder (he found
the Jack Russell terrier that inhabits the Assistant Dean’s office at
St. John’s College in Annapolis), whose expertise figures in this
book, thinks otherwise. He once said to me that attributing friendly
feelings rather than self-serving instincts to dogs is pure “anthropomorphizing.” So I’m starting out severely objective in several
respects.
Yet I’m captivated by the author’s account of his life with the
two dogs who are the principals in this story, Kestra and Aktis. His
claims rest on acutely attuned and prolonged observation of his
own dogs, and, peripherally, other people’s dogs. This affectionate
attention is at once trust- and doubt-inspiring. It makes an enchant-
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ing story, but it might also be self-confirming, producing the illusions of mutual love. For example, his dogs often smile at him,
though I’ve read that animals with fangs don’t smile, that the evolutionary origin of the human smile is the wolfish snarl. So I’m
one of the author’s acknowledged dog-skeptics—or rather, one half
of me is. With the other half, I’m totally persuaded that the friendship view is the better hypothesis for dog, man, and world.
For not only is it a more coherent and a more friendly universe
if the friendship hypothesis proves out, but it is also a more interesting world, since this position rests on postulates that modulate
some current reductionist dogmas concerning beast and man, both
in themselves and together. There are thought-provoking lessons
here both for intra-species and inter-species relations.
Gary Borjesson’s philosophical reading continually underwrites and illuminates his meditations. Sometimes it’s almost as if
this dog-and-man tale came into its own as a corroboration of Aristotle’s, Plato’s, and Hegel’s insights into animate nature—especially Aristotle’s. Thus the epigraph to the second chapter, on the
spirit of friendship, is part of a passage taken from Aristotle’s Politics. Let me quote the whole, which I’ve always found puzzling,
but which becomes very satisfactorily clear in this book:
Spirit (thumos) is what makes friendliness. For it is the very
power of the soul by which we feel friendship. And here’s the
sign: Spirit, when it feels slighted, is roused more against intimates and friends than strangers (Politics, 1327b40-41).
And Aristotle mentions the Guardians, Plato’s warriors in the
Republic, who are friendly to those they know and savage to those
they don’t know, and whose nature Socrates compares—here’s
serendipity!—to that of a noble young dog (Republic, 375a-376b).
Spirit, spiritedness, passionate temperament, as a middle and
mediating aspect of the human soul, is a Socratic discovery. Sometimes it is obedient to reason, sometimes it in turn masters lust;
these latter are respectively the highest and lowest parts of our soul.
Why should spirit be the enabler of friendship? It is a working
postulate of Borjesson’s book that Aristotle is simply right: spiritedness is the condition of friendship. The argumentation is of the
�REVIEW | BRANN
137
best sort, the sort that starts in a variety of quarters, but from which
all roads lead to Athens: The high road, however, connecting spiritedness to friendship, is the desire to be recognized, attended to,
praised, and the corresponding recoil is the shame of being misconstrued, ignored, or disrespected.
By the intra-species hypothesis, dogs have spirit; it might even
count as an oblique proof that some dogs have a lot and others but
little, and even the latter have a sense of injury. One of the pleasures of this book is the interweaving of dog anecdotes and human
reflection, and the principal subjects of the often poignant stories—
never shaggy—are Gary Borjesson’s own two dogs. Kestra is
sweet-tempered, a little passive, and, for all her lovableness, a little
unkeen, but even she has an acute sense of her trust in her master
being betrayed.
If, then, people and dogs have common ground of a higher
order than animal needs, it must be in the territory of the spirit. For
the author is far from committing the philosophical solecism of attributing reason to dogs. Spirit, however, is, just as Aristotle says,
where friendship is at home. Now among us humans, this capability of the spirit is both an accomplishment and a work in progress,
and so it is if one of the friends is a dog.
This book is full of observations about friendship—discerningly borrowed and observantly original; it is a credible descendant
of those wonders of human perspicacity, Aristotle’s books on
friendship (Nicomachean Ethics, Books 8-9). One of those borrowed observations is that “the point of being friends is to charm
each other”; I love that, because I once long ago phrased it similarly to myself, sailing the Aegean with a friend: “The motor of
friendship is mutual delight.” It doesn’t have Aristotle’s gravity,
but he would not repudiate it. Applied to dogs, it does, however,
imply that what Aristotle considers the highest kind of friendship—
that of beings of intellect in increasingly deep, mutually satisfying
conversation—is not a necessary option (and indeed not available)
to a dog/man pair of friends.
And that indefeasible fact means that friendship as a work in
progress takes on a very different shape for this inter-species pair.
Here the work of friendship is obedience training, where man is
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
master, dog subject! As the title of the book declares, dogs, the
good ones, are willing. Not that they are called good because they
like to obey, but they obey because they are good. They have in
them that which can listen—“obey,” from Latin ob-audire, means
“to listen and really to hear.” That is just what Socrates thinks of
spiritedness: It is pride able to listen to reason. They are, one might
say, a-rationally rational. They understand, and so they accept the
superiority of their masters.
Here is where Gary Borjesson’s book becomes topical and
controversial. The second part of his title is “Reluctant Masters.”
He analyzes out this component of our modernity: the reluctance
to act with authority, to accept the charge of mastery, be it in childrearing or dog-training. The result of this abashment—often moralizing—in the face of asserting the control of superior reason is
spoilage: spoiled children, ruined dogs. The book is full of funny
and sad examples; some are reports of outrage expressed by spectators watching the book’s author at work being a master.
One result of the failure of rational mastery is loss of dignity
on both sides, and with it, of equality. For, at its best, friendship is
mutual and so a relation of peers. Some of the most poignant passages of the book are about mutuality, the balanced equality of dog
and human in the territory of spiritedness. Indeed, in the controlled
competition that characterizes the play between these two spirited
animals from different species, the dog often wins—to the man’s
delight. The result of mastery accepted is an equality at once properly delimited and invaluable.
Aristotle, one last time, says that happiness is the soul fulfillingly at work in accordance with its own goodness (Nichomachean
Ethics, 1098a13-16). The willing master of this book really means
to train his dog to happiness. He (or she—the author’s favorite dog
trainer is Vicki Hearne) teaches the young dog to obey, first as parents habituate a child, by gentle and consistent compulsion, even
fear. That training produces the inner control that in us is called
self-determination, freedom. Within these bounds the dog has
scope to fulfill his dog-nature as a competitive pursuer and predator
of minor wild life and as a cooperative playfellow of humans and
�REVIEW | BRANN
139
dogs. The descriptions of these play-episodes induce sympathetic
joy.
I’ll now take it on faith, the writer’s faith, that dogs, domesticated wolves, may be happy under—no, may be made happy by—
human mastery. But that humans, uncircumventably the masters
of domesticated nature, can be exhilaratingly happy, and also better, more thoughtful, and more just in their friendly companionship
with dogs—that’s proven beyond doubt by this lovely book.
�
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The St. John’s Review
Volume 55.1 (Fall 2013)
Editor
William Pastille
Editorial Board
Eva T. H. Brann
Frank Hunt
Joe Sachs
John Van Doren
Robert B. Williamson
Elliott Zuckerman
Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant
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��Contents
Essays & Lectures
Tocqueville’s Worst Fears Realized? The Political Implications
of Ralph Waldo Emerson’sTranscendental Spiritualism .............1
Bryan-Paul Frost
“At the Very Center of the Plenitude”: Goethe’s Grand Attempt
to Overcome the 18th Century; or, How Freshman Laboratory
Saved Goethe From the General Sickness of his Age ..................40
David Levine
Special Section: Justice
Editor’s Note .....................................................................................70
The Actual Intention of Plato’s Dialogues on
on Justice and Statesmanship .......................................................71
Eva Brann
Reflections on Justice in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s
The Brothers Karamazov..............................................................80
Chester Burke
Peaceniks and Warmongers: The Disunity of Virtue
in Plato’s Statesman......................................................................89
Peter Kalkavage
Raskolnikov’s Redemption ...............................................................99
Nicholas Maistrellis
Justice in Plato’s Statesman ............................................................110
Eric Salem
Reviews
Getting to Know Kierkegaard Better
Book Review of Richard McCombs’s
The Paradoxical Rationality of Søren Kierkegaard. ..............119
James Carey
Plato’s Political Polyphony
Book Review of Plato: Statesman,translated by
Eva Brann, Peter Kalkavage, and Eric Salem. .........................134
Gregory Recco
�THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
�Tocqueville’s Worst Fears Realized?
The Political Implications of
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s
Transcendental Spiritualism
Bryan-Paul Frost
It’s fitting that James Cameron’s “Avatar” arrived in theaters
at Christmastime. Like the holiday season itself, the science
fiction epic is a crass embodiment of capitalistic excess
wrapped around a deeply felt religious message. It’s at once
the blockbuster to end all blockbusters, and the Gospel According to James.
But not the Christian Gospel. Instead, “Avatar” is
Cameron’s long apologia for pantheism—a faith that
equates God with Nature, and calls humanity into religious
communion with the natural world. . . .
If this narrative sounds familiar, that’s because pantheism
has been Hollywood’s religion of choice for a generation
now. It’s the truth that Kevin Costner discovered when he
went dancing with wolves. It’s the metaphysic woven
through Disney cartoons like “The Lion King” and “Pocahontas.” And it’s the dogma of George Lucas’s Jedi, whose
mystical Force “surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the
galaxy together.”
Hollywood keeps returning to these themes because millions of Americans respond favorably to them. . . . A recent
Pew Forum report on how Americans mix and match theology found that many self-professed Christians hold beliefs
about the “spiritual energy” of trees and mountains that
would fit right in among the indigo-tinged Na’Vi.
As usual, Alexis de Tocqueville saw it coming.
—Ross Douthat, “Heaven and Nature,”
New York Times, December 2009
In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville delivered a blunt
verdict on the increasing popularity, in democratic countries, of pantheism: “Among the different systems with whose aid philosophy
Bryan-Paul Frost is the Elias “Bo” Ackal, Jr./BORSF Endowed Professor of
Political Science and adjunct professor of Philosophy at the University of
Louisiana at Lafayette.
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
seeks to explain the universe, pantheism appears to me one of the
most appropriate to seduce the human mind in democratic centuries;
all who remain enamored of the genuine greatness of man should
unite and do combat against it.” For a writer whose moderation and
nonpartisanship are well known, these remarks are a heavy indictment indeed. Why did Tocqueville believe that pantheism is both
so alluring and so debilitating to democratic peoples? And whom
precisely did he blame for the seduction? The second of these questions is easier to answer. Tocqueville singles out the Germans and
the French for introducing pantheism into philosophy and literature, respectively. The editors of one of the most recent translations
of Democracy in America indicate that Tocqueville probably has
in mind philosophers such as Leibnitz, Fichte, and Hegel, on the
one side, and writers such as Alphonse de Lamartine and Edgar
Quinet, on the other side.1
Since Tocqueville found the democratic urge to be particularly
strong in the United States, one is naturally led to wonder whether
there might not be some American authors whose writings exhibit
the same worrisome tendencies. This paper will enlarge on Tocqueville’s critique by studying an American essayist who, probably
unwittingly, revealed in more concrete detail the full extent of Tocqueville’s fears about pantheism: Ralph Waldo Emerson.
At first glance, Emerson seems an unlikely mark for such a
charge. After all, in such inspirational essays as “Self-Reliance,”
he seems to champion “human individuality” and greatness, and
is a severe critic of majority tyranny, intellectual apathy, and the
slavish pursuit of wealth and reputation—all of which Tocqueville
too denounced as unhealthy extremes to which democracy is prone.
On the other hand, Emerson was also a founding member of, and
chief spokesperson for, the American Transcendentalist movement,
and his religious convictions had strong strains of Neoplatonic and
pantheistic spiritualism. Emerson’s transcendentalism had no little
impact on his political and ethical writings: indeed, his unique
brand of spontaneity, intuition, and creativity was based upon an
individual hearkening to the voice of God within him, a God that
permeated all nature and with the aid of whom one sought to act
in conformity with one’s unique calling. Emerson’s thought, it
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST
3
turns out, despite its apparent support for individual greatness, rests
on spiritual principles that eventually corrode, and ultimately undermine, both genuine human nobility and healthy democratic
ethics. In what follows, we will attempt to uncover the political
implications and effects of Emerson’s spiritualism—a spiritualism
whose basic tenets, as the preceding epigraph makes clear, are still
very influential today.
Easy Answers, Unmoored Souls:
The Debilitating Effects of Pantheism and Fatalism
Tocqueville’s brief treatment of pantheism (DA 2.1.7, 425–26) occurs as part of his discussion of the “Influence of Democracy on
Intellectual Movement in the United States.” The purpose of this
section is to articulate how the mind of a democratic people is influenced and shaped by democracy itself. This is an especially important topic in relation to democracy; for, as Tocqueville points
out earlier in the book, democrats rely only on their own reason
when judging or evaluating, and not on such factors as age, experience, tradition, class, and so on—precisely because, as egalitarians, they bow to no superior authority (DA 2.1.1, 403–4). One
might say this about the philosophic method of Americans, who
closely follow Cartesian precepts, Tocqueville says, without ever
having read Descartes themselves: in America, Je pense, donc je
suis means “I am the only one who can be relied upon to judge
things which are of concern to me.”
Of course, Tocqueville knows that democrats are not all
equally capable of making wise and informed decisions on their
own, and they will thus turn to sources of authority and intellectual
devices that will not offend their pride or undermine their fundamental belief in equality. In fact, Tocqueville argues, democrats
turn to an anonymous but omnipresent public opinion to supply
convenient answers and ready-made beliefs. He identifies the
source of this behavior in what he calls “the theory of equality applied to intellects”: “The moral empire of the majority is founded
in part on the idea that there is more enlightenment and wisdom in
many men united than in one alone” (DA 1.2.7, 236). Indeed, democrats are particularly susceptible to rely on and trust public opin-
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
ion inasmuch as egalitarianism isolates and atomizes individuals
from one another; consequently, to go against public opinion leaves
one feeling small, feeble, and helpless (DA 2.1.2, 408–9). Moreover, Tocqueville explains why democrats have a tendency for general ideas and over-simplifications: these tools make thinking and
judging easier, even if they inevitably compromise accuracy. This
ease in thinking passes for skill, and so, overlooking the sloppiness
introduced by generalities, democratic peoples become prouder of
their intelligence even as they become lazier in their thinking (DA
2.1.3 and 4, 411–16).
Tocqueville notes, however, that there is at least one area in
which dogmatic or fixed opinions and general ideas are salutary
for democratic peoples, namely, in matters of religion. Religion
provides the necessary counterweight to the ill effects of individual
isolation or atomization and love of material pleasure—the twin
dangers to which democrats are most prone. By raising one’s mind
to the heavens, and by inculcating duties to one’s fellows, religion
imposes obligations and responsibilities that are contrary to the desires democrats would likely pursue if left to themselves (DA 2.1.5,
417–19). It is in this context that Tocqueville turns to pantheism,
and in this context it appears to be the culmination of his critique
of democratic thought.
Democrats are attracted to pantheism for two principal reasons.
In the first place, pantheism feeds the democratic prejudice to reject
all traditional sources of authority and rely exclusively on one’s
own reason. As everyone is part of the same, undifferentiated
whole (God included!), no claim to superiority or authority can
hold: human particularity or individuality is obliterated in universal
homogeneity. But it is precisely the elimination of particularity or
individuality that, while being so attractive to democrats, is also
so dangerous. Democrats are further atomized and enfeebled as
everyone is swallowed up in the whole, which encompasses all
Being. As Tocqueville explains: “As conditions become more
equal and each man in particular becomes more like all the others,
weaker and smaller, one gets used to no longer viewing citizens so
as to consider only the people; one forgets individuals so as to think
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST
5
only of the species” (DA 2.1.7, 426). We are, quite literally, withdrawn into our own little world, and this leaves democrats all the
more susceptible to the crushing and deadening weight of public
opinion: indeed, public opinion might become ever more despotic
as pantheism takes hold, for there is nothing—not even God Himself—that can stand as a bulwark against its dictates and demands.
To use language Tocqueville will use later in part 2 of the same
Volume (DA 2.2.2, 482: “On Individualism in Democratic Countries”): while democracy fosters the creation of atomized and isolated individuals, pantheism then eliminates the particularity of the
individuals thus created.
In the second place, pantheism appeals to the desire for unity,
general ideas, and single-minded explanations—indeed, it satisfies
this desire as no other religious or philosophic doctrine can. By reducing all Being—God and man, visible and invisible, change and
continuity—into a single whole, which alone is eternal and true
and real, democrats generate remarkably crisp, easy, and pleasing
answers when it comes to those first questions about human existence which trouble the soul (cf. DA 2.1.5, 418). By the same
token, however, this easy solution has deleterious effects on the
(already limited) intellectual capacity of democratic peoples: pantheism “nourishes the haughtiness and flatters the laziness of their
minds” (DA 2.1.7, 426) in the same way as all general ideas do.
But pantheism is more problematic than this. By collapsing the
material and immaterial world into a single whole, pantheism inadvertently collapses, or even eliminates, the tension between the
duties and obligations we owe to others and to heaven, on the one
hand, and the earthly desire for material well-being and pleasure,
on the other hand. Tocqueville is hardly so sanguine as to believe
that this tension could ever be overcome. He cautions religions that
they should neither try to uproot the desire for well-being (the implication is that this desire is generally stronger than the desires
proper to religion) nor try to provoke unnecessary conflicts with
generally accepted public opinions. Nevertheless, by keeping this
tension alive and well, democratic society is able to enjoy the salutary effects of religion and avoid the spiritual degradation to which
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
democracy is prone. In sum, pantheism both exacerbates the worst
effects of what Tocqueville describes as “individualism” and undermines the salutary effects of religion on a democratic people.
One peculiar aspect of Tocqueville’s discussion is that it is not
quite clear whether pantheism is a philosophic doctrine or a religious system, or both, or neither. Tocqueville describes pantheism
as both a “doctrine” and a “system,” and in the latter case, he once
indirectly implies that it is a “philosophic system.” He never states,
however, that it is a “religious” doctrine or system. Nonetheless,
Tocqueville also seems to oppose pantheism to philosophy per se,
as when he says that the “Germans introduce [pantheism] into philosophy,” and that “[a]mong the different systems with whose aid
philosophy seeks to explain the universe, pantheism appears to me
one of the most appropriate to seduce the human mind in democratic centuries” (DA 2.1.7, 425–26). Could it be that pantheism is
a sort of secular religion, a sort of middle ground between Christianity and atheism? And if this is true, then would not the growing
strength of pantheism be one indication that a people are moving
away from religion properly speaking? In this respect, it is important to note that Tocqueville concludes the chapter preceding his
discussion of pantheism, “On the Progress of Catholicism in the
United States,” with this prediction:
It is one of the most familiar weaknesses of the human
intellect to want to reconcile contrary principles and to
buy peace at the expense of logic. Therefore there always have been and always will be men who, after having submitted some of their religious beliefs to an
authority, want to spare several others and let their
minds float at random between obedience and freedom.
But I am brought to believe that the number of these
will be smaller in democratic than in other centuries
and that our descendants will tend more and more to
be divided into only two parts, those leaving Christianity entirely and others entering into the bosom of the
Roman Church (DA 2.1.6, 425).
To the extent that pantheism is not a religion—to the extent that pantheism signifies the near absence of true religious conviction—then
a people embracing pantheism will be prone to moral and political
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST
7
servitude, as Tocqueville tried to show a bit earlier in the text.
When religion is destroyed in a people, doubt takes
hold of the highest portions of the intellect and half paralyzes all the others. Each becomes accustomed to having only confused and changing notions about matters
that most interest those like him and himself; one defends one’s opinions badly or abandons them, and as
one despairs of being able to resolve by oneself the
greatest problems that human destiny presents, one is
reduced, like a coward, to not thinking about them at
all.
Such a state cannot fail to enervate souls; it slackens
the springs of the will and prepares citizens for servitude.
Not only does it then happen that they allow their
freedom to be taken away, but often they give it over.
When authority in the matter of religion no longer
exists, nor in the matter of politics, men are soon frightened at the aspect of this limitless independence. This
perpetual agitation of all things makes them restive and
fatigues them. As everything is moving in the world of
the intellect, they want at least that all be firm and stable in the material order; and as they are no longer able
to recapture their former beliefs, they give themselves
a master (DA 2.1.5, 418).
Since pantheism appears to loosen religious sentiment, the widespread acceptance of this “doctrine” among a democratic people
might well indicate that they are becoming enervated and susceptible to bondage in the form of political salvation. Thus, although
Tocqueville claims that new religions cannot be easily established
in democratic times (for no one is willing to submit to an “intellectual authority” which is “outside of and above humanity” [DA
2.1.2, 408]), pantheism can be established, precisely because the
source of its belief is not outside of humanity, but within it, and
because it is not really a religion as Tocqueville understands the
term.
We can round off our consideration of Tocqueville’s ideas
about the effects of democracy on the thought of its citizens by
looking briefly at his discussion of the tendencies of democratic
�8
THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
historians, a topic he said he would discuss at the beginning of the
chapter on pantheism. Democratic historians, he says, are prone to
underestimate or ignore the role of particular causes—that is “great
men”—in the course of history. He finds the root of this tendency
in democracy itself.
When . . . all citizens are independent of one another,
and each of them is weak, one finds none who exert a
very great or above all a very lasting power over the
mass. At first sight, individuals seem absolutely powerless over it, and one would say that society advances
all by itself—by the free and spontaneous concourse of
all the men who compose it (DA 2.1.20, 470).
Historians who adopt this attitude tend to think that history has a
sort of inevitable motion that cannot be regulated by human
agency.
When any trace of the action of individuals on nations
is lost, it often happens that one sees the world moving
without discovering its motor. As it becomes very difficult to perceive and analyze the reasons that, acting
separately on the will of each citizen, in the end produce the movement of the people, one is tempted to believe that this movement is not voluntary and that,
without knowing it, societies obey a superior, dominating force (DA 2.1.20, 471).
Such a force seems nearly impossible to resist, and belief in it leads
first to the conclusion that human freedom is illusory, and then to the
deduction that individuals are not responsible even for their own actions, let alone for the actions of their nation.
Even if one should discover on earth the general fact
that directs the particular wills of all individuals, that
does not save human freedom. A cause vast enough to
be applied to millions of men at once and strong enough
to incline all together in the same direction easily seems
irresistible; after having seen that one yields to it, one is
quite close to believing that one cannot resist it (DA
2.1.20, 471).
If the notion of such an irresistible force were to gain widespread
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST
9
currency in the thought of a democratic people, society would simply grind to a halt due to the general belief that no one is strong
enough to take any action that matters, any action that can push
back against the tide of history. The very possibility of human
greatness would fade out, because the freedom that nourishes that
possibility would no longer present itself to the mind.
Historians who live in democratic times, therefore, not
only deny to a few citizens the power to act on the destiny of a people, they also take away from peoples themselves the ability to modify their own fate, and they
subject them either to an inflexible providence or to a
sort of blind fatality. . . .
If this doctrine of fatality, which has so many attractions for those who write history in democratic times,
passed from writers to their readers, thus penetrating the
entire mass of citizens and taking hold of the public
mind, one can foresee that it would soon paralyze the
movement of the new societies (DA 2.1.20, 471–72).
In summary: Tocqueville understood that living in democratic
times could lead to modes of thought that would be highly detrimental, both for the freedom of the individual and for the freedom
of the whole people. In particular, the doctrines of pantheism and
fatalism dispose people to subservience: the first because it enhances individualism and weakens the moral force of religion; the
second because it eliminates the feeling that the individual has any
agency in, or responsibility for, the course taken by events. If Tocqueville is right, then anything that assists the spread of pantheism
and fatalism will present a danger to democratic societies.
Emerson’s Transcendental Spiritualism
In order to understand the political implications of Emerson’s spiritualism, and to see if that understanding leads to precisely the
consequences that Tocqueville feared, it is first necessary to lay
out Emerson’s views on transcendentalism, in particular, and on
Christianity, in general. Our effort here will be focused on showing
that Emerson’s spiritualism is remarkably similar to Tocqueville’s
pantheism.
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Although Emerson is often referred to as one of the principal innovators of American Transcendentalism, in his essay “The Transcendentalist” (1843), he denies that transcendentalism is a new or
original school of thought. In fact, he says, the roots of transcendentalism—which he also calls idealism—are as old as thinking
itself, and it is one of only two modes of thinking.
As thinkers, mankind have ever divided into two sects,
Materialists and Idealists; the first class founding on
experience, the second on consciousness; the first class
beginning to think from the data of the senses, the second class perceive that the senses are not final, and say,
The senses give us representations of things, but what
are the things themselves, they cannot tell. The materialist insists on facts, on history, on the force of circumstances and the animal wants of man; the idealist
on the power of Thought and of Will, on inspiration,
on miracle, on individual culture. These two modes of
thinking are both natural, but the idealist contends that
his way of thinking is in higher nature. He concedes all
that the other affirms, admits the impressions of sense,
admits their coherency, their use and beauty, and then
asks the materialist for his grounds of assurance that
things are as his senses represent them. But I, he says,
affirm facts not affected by the illusions of sense, facts
which are of the same nature as the faculty which reports them, and not liable to doubt; facts which in their
first appearance to us assume a native superiority to
material facts, degrading these into a language by
which the first are to be spoken; facts which it only
needs a retirement from the senses to discern. Every
materialist will be an idealist; but an idealist can never
go backward to be a materialist (RE 81).2
Whereas a materialist (e.g., John Locke) acknowledges the independent existence of an external world accessible through sense
impression and confirmed through experience, a transcendentalist
or idealist (e.g., Immanuel Kant) privileges his own consciousness
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and intuition, arguing that the “external world” is mental or spiritual, and is only apprehended or revealed through an individual,
self-conscious mind. The transcendentalist does not dispute that
objects are perceived by the senses; rather, he questions whether
sense perception is an accurate, complete, and final representation
of the object in itself.
After arguing that the materialist’s confidence in the solidity
of facts and figures is ill founded, Emerson makes the following
comparison:
In the order of thought, the materialist takes his departure from the external world, and esteems a man as one
product of that. The idealist takes his departure from his
consciousness, and reckons the world an appearance.
The materialist respects sensible masses, Society, Government, social art and luxury, every establishment,
every mass, whether majority of numbers, or extent of
space, or amount of objects, every social action. The
idealist has another measure, which is metaphysical,
namely the rank which things themselves take in his
consciousness; not at all the size or appearance. Mind
is the only reality, of which men and all other natures
are better or worse reflectors. Nature, literature, history,
are only subjective phenomena. . . . His thought—that
is the Universe. His experience inclines him to behold
the procession of facts you call the world, as flowing
perpetually outward from an invisible, unsounded centre in himself, centre alike of him and of them, and necessitating him to regard all things as having a
subjective or relative existence, relative to that aforesaid
Unknown Centre of him (RE 82–83).
While Emerson’s transcendentalist appears at first glance to be
wholly sovereign and self-determined, he is also open to influences
or forces from without—albeit influences of a certain sort:
The Transcendentalist adopts the whole connection of
spiritual doctrine. He believes in miracle, in the perpetual openness of the human mind to new influx of light
and power; he believes in inspiration, and in ecstasy. He
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wishes that the spiritual principle should be suffered to
demonstrate itself to the end, in all possible applications
to the state of man, without the admission of anything
unspiritual; that is, anything positive, dogmatic, personal. Thus the spiritual measure of inspiration is the
depth of the thought, and never, who said it? And so he
resists all attempts to palm other rules and measures
onthe spirit than its own (RE 84).
In order to develop a more detailed image of the transcendentalist, we must attempt to concretize Emerson’s elliptical remarks
about “spirituality.” What—or who—is this “Universe” which
“beckons and calls” the transcendentalist from inactivity “to
work,” which issues him the “highest command,” and with which
he seeks some sort of “union” (RE 91 and 95)? Emerson refers to
this deity or highest principle in a variety of ways with no discernable difference in meaning: in the essay “The Over-Soul” (1841)
alone, he uses the terms “Unity,” “Over-Soul,” “the eternal ONE,”
“Highest Law,” “Supreme Mind,” “Maker,” “Divine mind,” “Omniscience,” and “God” quite interchangeably. All of these terms
seem to refer to a transcendent spiritual force that permeates and
animates all existence—both human and non-human nature, organic and inorganic—and that binds and unites everything together
in a pure and sublime oneness or wholeness.
We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles.
Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise
silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and
particle is equally related; the eternal ONE. And this
deep power in which we exist and whose beatitude is
all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing
seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one (RE 237).
Every individual is contained within this whole, and although the
ultimate source of both our being and the whole is unknown or hidden, before its power our soul is laid bare and we are revealed for
who we are.
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The Supreme Critic on the errors of the past and the
present, and the only prophet of that which must be, is
that great nature in which we rest as the earth lies in the
soft arms of the atmosphere; that Unity, that Over-Soul,
within which every man’s particular being is contained
and made one with all other; that common heart of
which all sincere conversation is the worship, to which
all right action is submission; that overpowering reality
which confutes our tricks and talents, and constrains
every one to pass for what he is, and to speak from his
character and not from his tongue (RE 237).
13
Our communion with and access to this deity is through our own
soul, which Emerson states is neither an “organ,” nor a “function,”
nor a “faculty”: the soul is the unpossessed and unpossessable
“background of our being” which transcends time and space. If a
man is the “facade of a temple wherein all wisdom and all good
abide,” the soul would be a light shining from within or behind this
facade, illuminating all and giving direction to our will and intellect; and when we allow the soul to “have its way through us,” intellect becomes genius, will virtue, and affection becomes love (RE
238–39).
The perception and disclosure of truth in and through the
soul—“an influx of the Divine mind into our mind”—is what
Emerson calls “revelation.” Although revelation varies in both its
intensity and character—from the transfiguring to the tepid, from
the prophetic to the prosaic—all persons have the capacity to be
so moved, and all persons who are so moved belong to the same
general class of individuals, whether they be a Socrates or a St.
Paul. One reason for this vast resemblance among “prophets” is
that the “nature of these revelations is the same; they are perceptions of the absolute law” (RE 243–44). Unfortunately, the precise
content of this law is not articulated—indeed, it cannot and should
not be articulated. Revelation does not occur through words, nor
does it respond to our questions.
Revelation is the disclosure of the soul. The popular notion of a revelation is that it is a telling of fortunes. In
past oracles of the soul the understanding seeks to find
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answers to sensual questions, and undertakes to tell from
God how long men shall exist, what their hands shall do
and who shall be their company, adding names and dates
and places. But we must pick no locks. We must check
this low curiosity. An answer in words is delusive; it is
really no answer to the questions you ask. . . . Men ask
concerning the immortality of the soul, the employments
of heaven, the state of the sinner, and so forth. They even
dream that Jesus has left replies to precisely these interrogatories. Never a moment did that sublime spirit speak
in their patois. To truth, justice, love, the attributes of the
soul, the idea of immutableness is essentially associated.
Jesus, living in these moral sentiments, heedless of sensual fortunes, heeding only the manifestations of these,
never made the separation of the idea of duration from
the essence of these attributes, nor uttered a syllable concerning the duration of the soul. It was left to his disciples to sever duration from the moral elements, and to
teach the immortality of the soul as a doctrine, and maintain it by evidences. The moment the doctrine of the immortality is separately taught, man is already fallen. . . .
These questions which we lust to ask about the future
are a confession of sin. God has no answer for them.
No answer in words can reply to a question of things
(RE 244–45).
We must apparently rest content with Emerson’s assurances that,
if we “forego all low curiosity” and live in the infinite present of
today, these questions will somehow be answered or resolved
through the silent workings of the soul. The key to existence is an
almost child-like innocence, simplicity, and authenticity, complete
honesty with oneself and with others, utter openness to the OverSoul and consequently all creation through it; being insincere, sophistic, or double in any way indicates disharmony in the soul and
distance from God.
These remarks naturally raise the question as to whether
Emerson’s deity is a caring or providential being. To begin with,
in what sense would one pray to this entity? Certainly, Emerson
does not understand prayer in any ordinary or traditional sense.
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He describes his notion of prayer in “Self-Reliance”:
In what prayers do men allow themselves! That which
they call a holy office is not so much as brave and
manly. Prayer looks abroad and asks for some foreign
addition to come through some foreign virtue, and loses
itself in endless mazes of natural and supernatural, and
mediatorial and miraculous. Prayer that craves a particular commodity, anything less than all good, is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life
from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a
beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to effect a private end is meanness and theft. It supposes
dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness. As
soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg. He
will then see prayer in all action. The prayer of the
farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer of the
rower kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true
prayers heard throughout nature, though for cheap ends
(RE 147–48).
Those who pray or beg to attain some selfish end (material goods
or worldly success) falsely assume a separation between themselves and the divine; those who express regret or recite creeds display an “infirmity” of the will or intellect (RE 148). Properly
speaking, prayer is the act of a healthy, self-reliant individual contemplating or celebrating the existence of God within his soul, and
it can be manifested in the simplest actions.
Nonetheless, Emerson’s deity is more than a transcendent spirit
animating existence, for he also affirms that God the “Maker of all
things and all persons stands behind us and casts his dread omniscience through us over things” (RE 242–43). This supreme creator,
however, is not the God of the Old Testament, but the divine mind
or soul of Plotinus and the Neoplatonists: the world is an emanation
or overflow from the divine mind; all creation is contained within
this whole, and all the variety in nature is encompassed within this
unity (RE 18ff., 118–19, 252ff., 293). Although the divine maker
can apparently choose to inspire specific individuals, and although
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he sent Jesus into the world (albeit not in the sense of his being the
son of God), God does not perform miracles in any ordinary or traditional sense of the word. Christianity’s moral doctrines and not
its miracles are what move Emerson to belief, and the attempt to
convert others through miracles is a spiritual abomination: genuine
conversion comes through genuine instruction, and this is strictly
a matter of free internal acceptance, without any external compulsion whatsoever (RE 67–69, 106–8, 237). The greatest miracle of
all would seem to be the shattering and transfiguring beauty of the
universe as well as the immutable natural laws that govern its operation. At all events, whatever the precise character of this personal and mystic union with the Over-Soul, it seems ecstatic,
ineffable, and utterly compelling; it is much more a matter of the
heart than the intellect; and it does not rely on traditions, institutions, and rituals.
Ineffable is the union of man and God in every act of the
soul. The simplest person who in his integrity worships
God, becomes God; yet for ever and ever the influx of
this better and universal self is new and unsearchable. It
inspires awe and astonishment. How dear, how soothing
to man, arises the idea of God, peopling the lonely place,
effacing the scars of our mistakes and disappointments!
When we have broken our god of tradition and ceased
from our god of rhetoric, then may God fire the heart
with his presence. . . .
Let man then learn the revelation of all nature and all
thought to his heart; this, namely, that the Highest dwells
with him; that the sources of nature are in his own mind,
if the sentiment of duty is there. But if he would know
what the great God speaketh, he must ‘go into his closet
and shut the door,’ as Jesus said. God will not make himself manifest to cowards. He must greatly listen to himself, withdrawing himself from all the accents of other
men’s devotion. Even their prayers are hurtful to him,
until he have made his own (RE 248–49).
Although much more could certainly be said about Emerson’s transcendentalism, it seems clear from this overview that, at least from
Tocqueville’s perspective, Emerson’s “religious” system or doc-
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trine exhibits precisely those characteristics Tocqueville had described about pantheism: the material and immaterial world is encompassed in an undifferentiated unity or whole to which we are
inextricably and inexplicably linked.
Having briefly discussed Emerson’s transcendentalism, let us
now turn to the question of whether it exhibits some of the dangerous characteristics that Tocqueville feared. Does Emerson’s
spiritualism, for example, nourish “the haughtiness” and flatter
“the laziness” of our minds in the same way that all general ideas
do? A strong indication is Emerson’s doubt, in “The Over-Soul,”
about whether everyday language can capture the deity’s essence:
Every man’s words who speaks from that life must
sound vain to those who do not dwell in the same
thought on their own part. I dare not speak for it. My
words do not carry its august sense; they fall short and
cold. Only itself can inspire whom it will, and behold!
their speech shall be lyrical, and sweet, and universal
as the rising of the wind. Yet I desire, even by profane
words, if I may not use sacred, to indicate the heaven
of this deity, and to report what hints I have collected
of the transcendent simplicity and energy of the Highest Law (RE 237–38).
Clearly, Emerson thinks that language, unaided by divine inspiration, cannot convey divine insights. In fact, he suggests in the Harvard Divinity School Address of 1838 that the very attempt to
communicate religion has an inherently corrupting effect. Historical Christianity, for example, has fallen away, he says, from the
true message of Jesus.
Historical Christianity has fallen into the error that corrupts all attempts to communicate religion. As it appears to us, and as it has appeared for ages, it is not the
doctrine of the soul, but an exaggeration of the personal, the positive, the ritual. It has dwelt, it dwells,
with noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus.
The soul knows no persons. It invites every man to expand to the full circle of the universe, and will have no
preferences but those of spontaneous love (RE 68).
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Similarly, in “Self-Reliance” (1841) he also faults “all philosophy”
in its attempt to inquire into the divine source of such entities as
life, being, justice, and the soul.
We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes
us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When
we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we
ask whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul
that causes, all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its
absence is all we can affirm. Every man discriminates
between the voluntary acts of his mind, and his involuntary perceptions, and knows that to his involuntary
perceptions a perfect faith is due. He may err in the expression of them, but he knows that these things are so,
like day and night, not to be disputed (RE 141–42).
It would seem that certain subjects are off-limits to philosophical
speculation because to communicate one’s findings profanes the
subject matter and is thus a sacrilege. Ultimately, Emerson’s religious understanding might be ineffable or untranslatable because
it rests on an entirely individual, and therefore inherently subjective, communion or experience. Emerson’s religious system or
doctrine is sweepingly comprehensive, but he relieves us from having to think about its specifics by cutting off all philosophic discussion. Thus Emerson forces his spiritual ideas to be extremely
simple and general.
But it is precisely this generality which, while appealing to
lazy minds, also leaves people without any real answers to those
fundamental questions of human existence that Tocqueville sees
as critical in religious dogma. Without answers to those questions,
democratic intellects expose themselves to all sorts of dangers. Although Emerson claims that questions concerning the immortality
of the soul, providence, and the afterlife are not properly asked of,
or answered by, his deity, Tocqueville has warned us that the democratic soul will become enervated or even paralyzed over time by
seeking answers to all these deep questions, and then become ripe
for political and moral enslavement.
Indeed, one wonders whether Tocqueville would even consider
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Emerson’s spirituality to be a religion at all inasmuch as it refuses
to provide answers about primary questions. At the very least, by
collapsing the tension between the material and immaterial world,
Emerson seems to have undermined what Tocqueville sees as the
salutary effect of religion on a democratic ethos, namely, promoting duties to others and limiting the unbridled pursuit of wealth.
Of course, there is nothing in Emerson’s spiritualism that encourages the opposite tendencies, and Emerson says on more than one
occasion that the mere pursuit of wealth is slavish. Nevertheless,
absent any sort of “divine sanction” or “divine punishment” to
deter those who might be tempted to forego their obligations to
others, one wonders how Emerson’s transcendentalism, over the
long run, could fully support a healthy democratic ethos when
democratic passions run so clearly in the opposite direction.
Unitarian Christianity
This assessment of Emerson’s spiritualism needs some amplification. After all, Emerson was (however briefly) a Unitarian minister,
and therefore his rather “unorthodox” transcendentalism must be
understood in the context of his more “orthodox” Christianity. Certainly any complete account of Emerson’s religiosity must give
due weight to his understanding of Christ and Christianity; but, as
we shall see, even when this is taken into account, it is difficult to
reach conclusions that differ much from our previous assessment.
Let us begin with Emerson’s sermon called “The Lord’s Supper,” delivered on Sunday 9 September 1832, in which Emerson
argues that a close reading of the New Testament indicates Jesus
never intended the Eucharist to become a permanent institutional
ritual of the Church; and even if he did intend it, the ritual is actually harmful to the genuine religious sentiment Jesus intended to
instill (RE 99–109).3 But even aside from these claims, Emerson
finds the most persuasive case against the Eucharist in the aversion
which he has to the symbolism of the bread and the wine, which
he refers to as “the elements”:
Passing other objections, I come to this, that the use of
the elements, however suitable to the people and the
modes of thought in the East, where it originated, is
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foreign and unsuited to affect us. Whatever long usage
and strong association may have done in some individuals to deaden this repulsion, I apprehend that their use
is rather tolerated than loved by any of us. We are not
accustomed to express our thoughts or emotions by
symbolical actions. Most men find the bread and wine
no aid to devotion, and to some it is a painful impediment. To eat bread is one thing; to love the precepts of
Christ and resolve to obey them is quite another.
The statement of this objection leads me to say that
I think this difficulty, wherever it is felt, to be entitled
to the greatest weight. It is alone a sufficient objection
to the ordinance. It is my own objection. This mode of
commemorating Christ is not suitable to me. That is
reason enough why I should abandon it. If I believed
that it was enjoined by Jesus on his disciples, and that
he even contemplated making permanent this mode of
commemoration, every way agreeable to an Eastern
mind, and yet on trial it was disagreeable to my own
feelings, I should not adopt it. I should choose other
ways which, as more effectual upon me, he would approve more. For I choose that my remembrances of him
should be pleasing, affecting, religious. I will love him
as a glorified friend, after the free way of friendship,
and not pay him a stiff sign of respect, as men do those
whom they fear. A passage read from his discourses, a
moving provocation to works like his, any act or meeting which tends to awaken a pure thought, a flow of
love, an original design of virtue, I call a worthy, a true
commemoration (RE 106–7).
Because every religious ritual has the potential to impinge upon
the autonomy and independence of the soul—upon its freedom to
choose the manner and method of worship—no ritual or form can
ever be declared inviolate and sacrosanct.
Freedom is the essence of this faith [i.e., Christianity].
It has for its object simply to make men good and wise.
Its institutions then should be as flexible as the wants
of men. That form out of which the life and suitable-
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ness have departed should be as worthless in its eyes
as the dead leaves that are falling around us (RE 108).
To hold onto outmoded rituals is to betray the very purpose of
Christ’s crucifixion, for Jesus was sent to deliver mankind from
religions in which ritual forms are more important than personal
transformation.
That for which Paul lived and died so gloriously; that
for which Jesus gave himself to be crucified; the end
that animated the thousand martyrs and heroes who
have followed his steps, was to redeem us from a formal
religion, and teach us to seek our well-being in the formation of the soul. The whole world was full of idols
and ordinances. The Jewish was a religion of forms; it
was all body, it had no life, and the Almighty God was
pleased to qualify and send forth a man to teach men
that they must serve him with the heart; that only that
life was religious which was thoroughly good; that sacrifice was smoke, and forms were shadows (RE 108).
In the end, Emerson himself will judge the worthiness of all traditional ceremonies, conventions, and customs—even those that
Jesus might have specifically ordained.
Emerson’s departure from the traditional institutions and doctrines of Christianity is even more pronounced in his Harvard Divinity School Address, in which he identifies two fundamental
errors in the administration of the Christian church. He describes
the first in this way:
It [historical Christianity] has dwelt, it dwells, with
noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus. The
soul knows no persons. It invites every man to expand
to the full circle of the universe, and will have no preferences but those of spontaneous love. But by this eastern monarchy of a Christianity, which indolence and
fear have built, the friend of man is made the injurer of
man. The manner in which his name is surrounded with
expressions which were once sallies of admiration and
love, but are now petrified into official titles, kills all
generous sympathy and liking (RE 68).
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The Church’s obsession with the personality of Jesus distorts and
vulgarizes his teaching by claiming that he was the son of God.
Jesus Christ belonged to the true race of prophets. He
saw with open eye the mystery of the soul. Drawn by
its severe harmony, ravished with its beauty, he lived
in it, and had his being there. Alone in all history he estimated the greatness of man. One man was true to
what is in you and me. He saw that God incarnates
himself in man, and evermore goes forth anew to take
possession of his World. He said, in this jubilee of sublime emotion, ‘I am divine. Through me, God acts;
through me, speaks. Would you see God, see me; or see
thee, when thou also thinkest as I now think.’ But what
a distortion did his doctrine and memory suffer in the
same, in the next, and the following ages! There is no
doctrine of the Reason which will bear to be taught by
the Understanding. The understanding caught this high
chant from the poet’s lips, and said, in the next age,
‘This was Jehovah come down out of heaven. I will kill
you, if you say he was a man.’ The idioms of his language and the figures of his rhetoric have usurped the
place of his truth; and churches are not built on his principles, but on his tropes (RE 67–68).
The Church fails to understand that Jesus was a prophet not because he was divine, but because he alone saw the divinity of all
men. 4
The second great error of the Church is a consequence of the
first: by regarding Jesus and his message as an historical figure
who established the religion in the far distant past, the living spirit
is extinguished from present worship. By failing to make the soul
in all its glory the foundation of religious instruction, contemporary
preachers (unintentionally, to be sure) smother the joyous temperament in their congregations that characterizes genuine piety. This,
in turn, corrodes the faith of the nation as a whole. Rehearsed rather
than inspired, doctrinaire rather than personal, formal rather than
uplifting, monotone rather than celebratory, “historical Christianity
destroys the power of preaching, by withdrawing it from the ex-
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ploration of the moral nature of man” (RE 73). Emerson offers his
auditors a vivid sampler of the sorts of “moral” subjects whose absence in American churches causes people to think twice about
participating in public worship:
In how many churches, by how many prophets, tell me,
is man made sensible that he is an infinite Soul; that
the earth and heavens are passing into his mind; that he
is drinking forever the soul of God? Where now sounds
the persuasion, that by its very melody imparadises my
heart, and so affirms its own origin in heaven? Where
shall I hear words such as in elder ages drew men to
leave all and follow—father and mother, house and
land, wife and child? Where shall I hear these August
laws of moral being so pronounced as to fill my ear,
and I feel ennobled by the offer of my uttermost action
and passion? The test of the true faith, certainly, should
be its power to charm and command the soul, as the
laws of nature control the activity of the hands—so
commanding that we find pleasure and honor in obeying. The faith should blend with the light of rising and
of setting suns, with the flying cloud, the singing bird,
and the breath of flowers. But now the priest’s Sabbath
has lost the splendor of nature; it is unlovely; we are
glad when it is done (RE 71).
The power and the beauty that Emerson demands from vital religion are missing from most modern Christianity.
What does Emerson recommend to repair this situation?
I confess, all attempts to project and establish a Cultus
with new rites and forms, seem to me vain. Faith
makes us, and not we it, and faith makes its own
forms. All attempts to contrive a system are as cold
as the new worship introduced by the French to the
goddess of Reason—to-day, pasteboard and filigree,
and ending to-morrow in madness and murder. Rather
let the breath of new life be breathed by you through
the forms already existing. For if once you are alive,
you shall find they shall become plastic and new. The
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remedy to their deformity is first, soul, and second,
soul, and evermore, soul (RE 77–78).
Emerson thus does not advocate the creation of “new rites and
forms” but the spiritual reinvigoration of those forms already at
hand. As for the current generation of preachers, they must stride
forward in a spirit of fierce independence from all traditional authority, maintain the most rigid personal integrity and virtue, and
be open to the sublime wonder and limitless potential in man—
which is the true gospel of Christ, and is as alive today as ever (RE
75–78). Emerson’s views were so unorthodox that many of the faculty members at Harvard publicly denounced the speech. He was
not invited back to speak at his alma mater for some thirty years.
Two features of Emerson’s heterodox Unitarianism are particularly significant in the context of the questions we are pursuing.
First, his absolute reliance on his own judgment exemplifies the
practice he recommends to everyone: the individual alone is the
sole judge in matters of religious doctrine and form. What the individual determines to be satisfactory is necessarily so, and that
judgment is sufficient in itself. Second, Jesus’s fundamental message, according to Emerson, fully supports transcendentalism (and,
we maintain, pantheism): we are to find and worship the god within
all of us.
What sort of religious reform could proceed from Emerson’s
appeals? He may have wanted spiritual revival within the Church,
but achieving that revival on his terms would require the rejection
of so many aspects of traditional, orthodox Christianity that one
wonders just what sort of “church” would remain. All things considered, Emerson’s iconoclastic Unitarian Christianity imparts a
unique flavor to his pantheistic spiritualism, but since it remains
pantheism at bottom, it still promotes the dangerous effects that
Tocqueville feared.
The Individual as Supreme Lawgiver
The foregoing discussion has concentrated on the first aspect of
the Tocquevillian critique of Emerson’s spiritualism—how its generality and simplicity flatters the democratic intellect. We must
now ask about the second aspect: What effect does Emerson’s spir-
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itualism have on individuality and the capacity of individuals to
remain free? We approach this question by examining Emerson’s
teaching about the source of individual actions and judgments—
especially moral and ethical judgments.
Throughout his writings, Emerson insists that the transcendentalist is a self-legislating individual: there is no law or commandment that is unconditionally binding upon him. And there is no
institution—no government, no church, no society—that is worthy
of his respect and allegiance unless, as is said in “The Transcendentalist,” it “reiterates the law of his mind” (RE 83). The transcendentalist’s conduct is not governed by deliberation or experience,
but by intuition, spontaneity, and trusting one’s instincts—even, it
seems, when one can give no rational account of them. Only spontaneous action—which is receptive to and motivated by the
prompting of the divine voice within—is genuinely obedient to
God. By becoming the channel through which the divine makes itself manifest, we shed all gross vanity and pretension while simultaneously solidifying and strengthening our own character.
A little consideration of what takes place around us
every day would show us that a higher law than that of
our will regulates events; that our painful labors are unnecessary and fruitless; that only in our easy, simple,
spontaneous action are we strong, and by contenting
ourselves with obedience we become divine. Belief and
love—a believing love will relieve us of a vast load of
care. O my brothers, God exists. There is a soul at the
centre of nature and over the will of every man, so that
none of us can wrong the universe. It has so infused its
strong enchantment into nature that we prosper when
we accept its advice, and when we struggle to wound
its creatures our hands are glued to our sides, or they
beat our own breasts. The whole course of things goes
to teach us faith. We need only obey. There is guidance
for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the
right word. Why need you choose so painfully your
place and occupation and associates and modes of action and of entertainment? Certainly there is a possible
right for you that precludes the need of balance and
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wilful election. For you there is a reality, a fit place and
congenial duties. Place yourself in the middle of the
stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom
it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth,
to right and a perfect contentment. Then you put all
gainsayers in the wrong. Then you are the world, the
measure of right, of truth, of beauty (RE 176).
By keeping our soul open to the ebb and flow of the Over-Soul,
we will be made privy to the truth; we will become genuinely
moral by attentively listening to the poetry of our own heart, which
is itself a reflection of the poetry of the universe and its animating
spirit. Emerson replaces the ancient injunction “know thyself” with
“trust thyself,” because the latter contains or is the means to the
former (RE 133).
Emerson’s celebration of individual intuition, integrity, and
spontaneity is stated perhaps nowhere more succinctly and powerfully than in his most famous and inspirational essay, “Self-Reliance” (1841). Like Moses, Plato, and Milton, we must learn to
heed the flash of genius when it ignites within us, trusting, almost
child-like, that God has a purpose in our work and that divinity
does not traffic in counterfeit forms. But if God urges us to listen
to our heart, society does not, and the more we become accustomed
to the ways of the world, the more our native light of genius grows
dim (RE 132–34). Two problems arise from this tension between
God and society: conformity and consistency. Regarding conformity, he considers it nearly impossible to resist:
[T]he discontent of the multitude [is] more formidable
than that of the senate and the college. It is easy enough
for a firm man who knows the world to brook the rage
of the cultivated classes. Their rage is decorous and prudent, for they are timid, as being very vulnerable themselves. But when to their feminine rage the indignation
of the people is added, when the ignorant and the poor
are aroused, when the unintelligent brute force that lies
at the bottom of society is made to growl and mow, it
needs the habit of magnanimity and religion to treat it
godlike as a trifle of no concernment (RE 137–38).
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Regarding consistency, Emerson downplays its importance, and
argues that sincerity, over the long run, will exhibit its own logic
and integrity: “Your genuine action will explain itself and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing” (RE 139).
Emerson highlights these two problems because they, more
than anything else, undermine the self-trust necessary to act spontaneously or instinctively. Self-trust is the source of all spontaneous
and ingenious action.
The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained when we inquire the reason of self-trust. Who
is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self, on which a
universal reliance may be grounded? . . . The inquiry
leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of
virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct.
We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all
later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last
fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things find
their common origin. For the sense of being which in
calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not
diverse from things, from space, from light, from time,
from man, but one with them and proceeds obviously
from the same source whence their life and being also
proceed. We first share the life by which things exist
and afterwards see them as appearances in nature and
forget that we have shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action and of thought. Here are the lungs of that
inspiration which giveth man wisdom and which cannot
be denied without impiety and atheism (RE 141–42).
To those who might argue that overstressing individual self-reliance
in this way could well have injurious effects on society’s necessarily
collaborative structures—such as government and the family—and
could delude a person into committing atrocities in the name of “intuition” and “spontaneity,” Emerson’s response in this essay is unaccommodating: So be it.
I remember an answer which when quite young I was
prompted to make to a valued adviser who was wont
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to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the
church. On my saying, “What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within?”
my friend suggested—“But these impulses may be
from below, not from above.” I replied, “They do not
seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil’s child, I
will live then from the Devil.” No law can be sacred to
me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names
very readily transferable to that or this; the only right
is what is after my constitution; the only wrong what
is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence
of all opposition as if every thing were titular and
ephemeral but he (RE 135).
Emerson holds that we must give expression to the unique incarnation of the divine within us. We must not continue to be the predictable herd animals that we are at present: conformity—not
self-reliance—is the real threat to a vibrant political and civic life.
Indeed, ignoring the divine voice within us, since it is the sacred
source of all life and wisdom, is true atheism and impiety. Self-reliance thus turns out to be God-reliance—if by “God” is meant the
divine voice within as you interpret it (RE 141–45).
It is here, with all probability, that Tocqueville would find the
most dangerous implications of Emerson’s spiritualism: he forthrightly rejects any moral guidance that comes from without and demands that individuals judge for themselves. Of course, it is
precisely this celebration of individual autonomy that causes many
to classify Emerson as a staunch “individualist”—not in Tocqueville’s derogatory sense as applied to someone withdrawn into
himself, but in the complimentary sense of someone who, opposing
mass opinion and fashionable trends, stakes out his own ground.
Emerson is certainly aware, as we have seen, of the force exerted
on the individual by majority opinion. But he does not believe, as
Tocqueville does, that individuals left to be their own moral legislators and lawgivers become atomized and isolated in society, leaving them more susceptible to the tyrannizing and homogenizing
effects of public opinion. To Emerson’s mind, individuals must rely
on themselves rather than on traditional sources of authority if they
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are going to be genuinely moral and have the strength to withstand
mass opinion.
Notwithstanding Emerson’s contagious optimism, one question persists throughout his discussion of the individual as judge
and executor of his own laws: How does one distinguish between
inspiration and madness? Even if we are all part of a greater whole,
what standard can be employed to determine whether someone has
correctly “received” and spontaneously acted upon the moral law?
Why could someone not simply claim that his subjective experience points to an entirely different philosophical system than
Emerson’s? How would Emerson refute such a claim?
In the first place, Emerson suggests that everyone knows the
truth of what he is saying in the depths of his own heart. If we
would be honest with ourselves, if we would return to our better
thoughts and listen intently to the sublime whisperings of the soul,
we would understand as he understands, and act authentically as
he acts authentically.
If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave
to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not
selfishly but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest,
and mine, and all men’s, however long we have dwelt
in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh to-day?
You will soon love what is dictated by your nature as
well as mine, and if we follow the truth it will bring us
out safe at last.—But so may you give these friends
pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power,
to save their sensibility. Besides, all persons have their
moments of reason, when they look out into the region
of absolute truth; then will they justify me and do the
same thing (RE 146).
In the second place, Emerson refers several times to a moral sense
or sentiment in all men which commands and forbids actions, and
which is rooted in or is coextensive with the Divine Mind. But while
Emerson acknowledges the existence of a conscience, it neither
seems to be in command, nor are its laws capable of articulation. For
Emerson, the moral universe is accessible by all of us subjectively,
but it cannot be formulated into any sort of objective ethical code:
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The sentiment of virtue is a reverence and delight in the
presence of certain divine laws. It perceives that this
homely game of life we play, covers, under what seem
foolish details, principles that astonish. The child amidst
his baubles is learning the action of light, motion, gravity, muscular force; and in the game of human life, love,
fear, justice, appetite, man, and God, interact. These
laws refuse to be adequately stated. They will not be
written out on paper, or spoken by the tongue. They
elude our persevering thought; yet we read them hourly
in each other’s faces, in each other’s actions, in our own
remorse. The moral traits which are all globed into
every virtuous act and thought—in speech we must
sever, and describe or suggest by painful enumeration
of many particulars (RE 64).
And finally, in the third place, Emerson claims that spontaneous
action is so compelling that its example almost compels imitation:
by being law unto oneself, one becomes a universal legislator.
A healthy soul stands united with the Just and the True,
as the magnet arranges itself with the pole, so that he
stands to all beholders like a transparent object betwixt
them and the sun, and whoso journeys towards the sun,
journeys towards that person. He is thus the medium
of the highest influence to all who are not on the same
level. Thus men of character are the conscience of the
society to which they belong (RE 331).
If this is true, however, it is hard to square with Emerson’s insistence on autonomy. How can individuals be true to themselves by
following someone else’s law? If the law were universal, then it
would make sense to follow the example of a virtuous person. But
this contradicts Emerson’s belief in the individual divine voice that
speaks to each person uniquely.
By having us be our own lawgivers, by asserting that “[o]ur
spontaneous action is always the best” (RE 264), is Emerson not
unwittingly advocating indulgence in our worst passions? In the
essay called “Circles,” he tries to defend himself against this
charge:
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And thus, O circular philosopher, I hear some reader
exclaim, you have arrived at a fine Pyrrhonism, at an
equivalence and indifferency of all actions, and would
fain teach us that if we are true, forsooth, our crimes
may be lively stones out of which we shall construct
the temple of the true God!
I am not careful to justify myself. . . . But lest I
should mislead any when I have my own head and
obey my whims, let me remind the reader that I am
only an experimenter. Do not set the least value on
what I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if
I pretended to settle any thing as true or false. I unsettle
all things. No facts are to me sacred; none are profane;
I simply experiment, an endless seeker with no Past at
my back (RE 260).
This very convenient disavowal of setting an example sidesteps
the effect of Emerson’s teaching on others; he does not want to
take responsibility for the behavior that might be unleashed or justified by his doctrine of self-legislation. Not everyone’s spontaneous impulses and private intuitions would lead to the sort of
fortunate and moderate choices that Emerson seems to make.
If we return now to Tocqueville’s democratic man seeking
moral guidance in an egalitarian society, we see that Emerson has
nothing to offer him. The evaporation of human individuality in
the Over-Soul, the directionless invocation to look to one’s own
inner divinity, and the refusal to take responsibility for one’s example in the world all leave democratic man in the lurch. It is no
wonder that he turns to public opinion for moral guidance.
The Ambiguity of Politics
One way to temper the debilitating effects of majority opinion, in
particular, and the spiritual trajectory of the principle of equality,
in general, is through political activity. Over and over again, Tocqueville shows us how civic engagement at the local level can help
to cure the ills to which democracy is prone. In respect to the particular issues of this essay, civic participation and institutions help
to prevent our slide into individualism. We are unable to withdraw
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into our own world of family and friends when we must take part
in various community activities. Civic engagement also tempers
our rage for general ideas: when we are practically engaged, we
see the necessary limitations of such ideas. Emerson, however, in
many ways discourages political activity—and perhaps necessarily
so. The rapturous inner life of the transcendentalist likely makes
all political activity seem paltry and pale.
In “The Transcendentalist,” Emerson observes that these individuals are both solitary and lonely. They are solitary because nothing that society can offer appeals to them: whether it is popular
entertainment or commercial competition, they see most of what
excites society as little more than drudgery and thoroughly degrading in comparison to their talents. They are lonely because the
human fellowship they seek is so acute and fervent that few persons could satisfy or endure the demands of such a relationship:
tolerating neither frivolity nor hypocrisy, they are seen by most
persons as rude, shallow, or simply ridiculous (RE 87–90). But if
Emerson’s transcendentalist is indifferent toward such things as
the accumulation of riches and wealth, so too is he indifferent toward politics in almost all its manifestations. From the great political debates of the day to the building of empires to the prospect
of rule, the transcendentalist finds little in this petty arena to tempt
him from his solitude.
But their solitary and fastidious manners not only withdraw them from the conversation, but from the labors
of the world; they are not good citizens, not good members of society; unwillingly they bear their part of the
public and private burdens; they do not willingly share
in the public charities, in the public religious rites, in
the enterprises of education, of missions foreign and domestic, in the abolition of the slave-trade, or in the temperance society. They do not even like to vote. . . .
What you call your fundamental institutions, your
great and holy causes, seem to them great abuses, and,
when nearly seen, paltry matters (RE 90).
Emerson does not deny that there are great and holy causes—albeit
far fewer than most imagine—but by the time a potentially worth-
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while cause reaches the political arena, it has been prepackaged and
predigested for public consumption. Since the transcendentalist attitude is a blanket critique of political life, Emerson rightly concludes
that this outlook will strike society as threatening. The disdainful
aloofness from the world of those who hold such beliefs, together
with their willingness to abjure the public burdens that make community possible, seem like a direct accusation of society; and society
will not remain indifferent, but will retaliate against this challenge to
what it holds dear. But despite the fact that society treats these individuals as outcasts, and despite the fact they seem to perform no useful occupation, Emerson insists that they are the moral touchstones
by which to judge whether “the points of our spiritual compass” are
true. Society therefore has an interest in them and a duty to “behold
them with what charity it can” (RE 95).
To the extent that Emerson hopes to improve American society,
he directs his appeals for moral reform at the individual and not the
group: there is little or no salvation through political activity unless
the individual himself has first been spiritually transformed. In the
essay “New England Reformers” (1844), he points out two problems
in attempting the former before or without the latter. First, all political reforms tend to be partial:
I conceive this gradual casting off of material aids, and
the indication of growing trust in the private self-supplied powers of the individual, to be the affirmative
principle of the recent philosophy, and that it is feeling
its own profound truth and is reaching forward at this
very hour to the happiest conclusions. I readily concede
that in this, as in every period of intellectual activity,
there has been a noise of denial and protest; much was
to be resisted, much was to be got rid of by those who
were reared in the old, before they could begin to affirm and to construct. Many a reformer perishes in his
removal of rubbish; and that makes the offensiveness
of the class. They are partial; they are not equal to the
work they pretend. They lose their way; in the assault
on the kingdom of darkness they expend all their energy on some accidental evil, and lose their sanity and
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power of benefit. It is of little moment that one or two
or twenty errors of our social system be corrected, but
of much that the man be in his senses (RE 406–7).
In another way the right will be vindicated. In the midst
of abuses, in the heart of cities, in the aisles of false
churches, alike in one place and in another—wherever,
namely, a just and heroic soul finds itself, there it will
do what is next at hand, and by the new quality of character it shall put forth it shall abrogate that old condition, law, or school in which it stands, before the law
of its own mind (RE 408).
Emerson here disparages piecemeal efforts at social change as futile or misguided given the enormity of the task. By contrast, “a
just and heroic soul” will be able to abolish the old condition
through the force of his character and actions in the here and now.
Second, reformers overestimate the power of associations or
numbers. Groups are no better or worse than the individuals who
make them up, and unhealthy individuals make unhealthy groups:
indeed, the more united and efficacious a group is politically, the
more it will require its members to compromise their unique individuality, forcing out those of superior talent (RE 407–10).
These new associations are composed of men and
women of superior talents and sentiments; yet it may
easily be questioned whether such a community will
draw, except in its beginnings, the able and the good;
whether those who have energy will not prefer their
chance of superiority and power in the world, to the
humble certainties of the association; whether such a
retreat does not promise to become an asylum to those
who have tried and failed, rather than a field to the
strong; and whether the members will not necessarily
be fractions of men, because each finds that he cannot
enter it without some compromise. Friendship and association are very fine things, and a grand phalanx of
the best of the human race, banded for some catholic
object; yes, excellent; but remember that no society can
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ever be so large as one man. He, in his friendship, in
his natural and momentary associations, doubles or
multiplies himself; but in the hour in which he mortgages himself to two or ten or twenty, he dwarfs himself below the stature of one (RE 408–9).
Thus, Emerson’s aim is not political but private, an attempt to
unify our presently disharmonious souls. “The problem of restoring
to the world original and eternal beauty is solved by the redemption
of the soul” (RE 38). “This revolution is to be wrought by the gradual domestication of the idea of Culture. The main enterprise of
the world for splendor, for extent, is the upbuilding of a man” (RE
55–56). How this domestication will occur without radical political
changes (e.g., in the education system [cf. RE 410–11]) is not clear.
In sum, it would seem that Emerson’s rapturous spiritualism casts
a long shadow over politics and political activity: civic engagement
is neither an Aristotelian fulfillment of our nature nor a Tocquevillean means to maintain its health.
A Corrective to Democratic Historians
In conclusion, it is necessary to point out that there is at least one
area where Emerson’s philosophy is in harmony with Tocqueville’s,
namely, in his deep appreciation for the power of great individuals
and individual action. In his essay on Abraham Lincoln and the
Emancipation Proclamation, or in his address commemorating the
anniversary of the end of slavery in the British West Indies, one
does not read about immutable and unseen forces propelling men
ahead on the unstoppable current of history. In this respect, at least,
Emerson’s celebration of the individual is the same as Tocqueville’s.
Nonetheless, this celebration of individual initiative and independence is coupled with yet another potentially worrisome aspect
of Emerson’s writings. Just as he conceives the individual as the
standard in judging the rectitude of an action and the worth of an
institution, so too he conceives of the new American nation as a
standard in judging its own needs. America must emancipate itself
from the tyrannizing effects of a slavish veneration of the “mind
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of the Past” (RE 46)—especially Europe’s aristocratic past—in all
its incarnations: history, philosophy, art, architecture, and literature.
Although this call for originality can already be seen in the opening
paragraph of Emerson’s first book Nature (1836), perhaps the most
stirring expression of this sentiment is his Harvard Phi Beta Kappa
address, “The American Scholar” (1837), which Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes called “our intellectual Declaration of Independence”
(RE 3, 846). The moment some form of the past is declared perfect
or inviolate, then the present generation will atrophy and cease
thinking and creating—it will become a satellite of the past rather
than its own solar system. The genius of an age is lost when it passively accepts the dogmas of the past and does not actively seize
upon and articulate its own creative principles: “The English dramatic poets have Shakspearized [sic] now for two hundred years”
(RE 47). Indeed, we must not subordinate our own thinking to the
thinking found in books:
Undoubtedly there is a right way of reading, so it be
sternly subordinated. Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Books are for the scholar’s
idle times. When he can read God directly, the hour is
too precious to be wasted in other men’s transcripts of
their readings. But when the intervals of darkness
come, as come they must—when the sun is hid and the
stars withdraw their shining—we repair to the lamps
which were kindled by their ray, to guide our steps to
the East again, where the dawn is. We hear, that we
may speak (RE 48).
Books should be used to guide the scholar back to the light of his
own inspirations.
Emerson is not rejecting the past outright. His frequent praise
of past philosophers and authors and poets demonstrates this. Instead, he wants to challenge what he calls the backward—that is,
conservative—tendency of all institutions to defend some ancient
authority and to use this as an excuse for not moving forward.
The soul active sees absolute truth and utters truth, or
creates. In this action it is genius; not the privilege of
here and there a favorite, but the sound estate of every
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man. In its essence it is progressive. The book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop
with some past utterance of genius. This is good, say
they—let us hold by this. They pin me down. They
look backward and not forward. But genius looks forward: the eyes of man are set in his forehead, not in his
hindhead: man hopes: genius creates (RE 47).
37
The past must come alive for the present and speak to its concerns
and circumstances. If it fails to do this, then it need not be studied
and must not be revered. Discard the relics of the past or reanimate
them—if Greece or Rome or Constantinople or Paris or London
do not speak to us, we need not worry: someone or something else
will (RE 115–17, 120, 130–31, 140, 150–51, 272–73).
Emerson sees some encouraging signs of intellectual liberation
in the growing prevalence of “the near, the low, the common” as a
new subject of literature (RE 57). He saw that contemporary writers and artists were beginning to expand the range of their interest
beyond traditional high subjects to include the more mundane:
The literature of the poor, the feelings of the child, the
philosophy of the street, the meaning of household life,
are the topics of the time. It is a great stride. It is a
sign—is it not?—of new vigor when the extremities are
made active, when currents of warm life run into the
hands and the feet. I ask not for the great, the remote,
the romantic; what is doing in Italy or Arabia; what is
Greek art, or Provencal minstrelsy; I embrace the common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the
low. Give me insight into to-day, and you may have the
antique and future worlds. What would we really know
the meaning of? The meal in the firkin; the milk in the
pan; the ballad in the street; the news of the boat; the
glance of the eye; the form and the gait of the body;
show me the ultimate reason of these matters; show me
the sublime presence of the highest spiritual cause lurking, as always it does lurk, in these suburbs and extremities of nature; let me see every trifle bristling with the
polarity that ranges it instantly on an eternal law; and
the shop, the plough, and the ledger referred to the like
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cause by which light undulates and poets sing; and the
world lies no longer a dull miscellany and lumberroom, but has form and order; there is no trifle, there
is no puzzle, but one design unites and animates the
farthest pinnacle and the lowest trench (RE 57–58).
Because the lowest objects are bursting with the same sublime soul
as the highest, they can be made the focal point of a literary and
spiritual renaissance appropriate for this new era and new nation.
At the end of the day, Emerson applauds the fact that the same
egalitarian political movements, which both raised the “lowest
class in the state” and gave new dignity and respect to the “individual,” are now fostering an appropriate egalitarian literature (RE
43, 57–58). Emerson here reveals what Matthew Arnold calls his
remarkable “persistent optimism” (RE 846) in the potential of each
and every individual to become a fully realized human being: he
repeatedly affirms that all men have “sublime thoughts” (RE 76);
that all possess a “native nobleness” (RE 242); that all are wise;
that all are latent prophets; that all have the potential greatness of
George Washington and Julius Caesar; that all carry within a
“miniature paraphrase of the hundred volumes of the Universal
History” (RE 267). Even genius is less a matter of innate ability
and more a matter of art and arrangement, and of giving free reign
to the divine, which is in all of us (RE 411ff.). As Henry David
Thoreau rightly said in his journals about his friend: “In his world
every man would be a poet, Love would reign, Beauty would take
place, Man and Nature would harmonize” (RE 847). We are left to
wonder, however, whether Emerson’s suspicions of the past, coupled with his new emphasis on “the near, the low, the common” in
literature will, over time, help to sustain his celebration of genuine
human greatness, or eventually undermine and distort it in a predictable but unhealthy democratic fashion.
NOTES
1. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. and trans. Harvey
C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2000), 425–26, hereafter cited in the text as DA, followed by volume,
part, chapter, and page number. In general, I have used this translation
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | FROST
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throughout, although I have checked it against the French original for accuracy. See also the four-volume, bilingual, historical-critical edition of
the same, ed. Eduardo Nolla, trans. James T. Schleifer (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2010).
2. References to Emerson’s works are from The Essential Writings of
Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Brooks Atkinson (New York: Modern Library,
2000), hereafter cited parenthetically in the text as RE. All emphasized
words in quotes are contained in the original. For details on his life and
times, readers may consult with profit Gay Wilson Allen, Waldo Emerson:
A Biography (New York: Viking Press, 1981).
3. Emerson was ordained as the Unitarian pastor of the Second Church
of Boston in 1829. In June 1832, his grave reservations concerning the
sacrament of communion reached a crescendo, and he asked the Church
if he might stop administering it in its present form. After considering his
petition, the members of the Church were unable to grant it. Because
Emerson would “do nothing which I cannot do with my whole heart” (RE
109), he judged it best to resign as pastor, and he stated his reasons for
doing so to the congregation in the sermon we are about to discuss. Although Emerson continued to give sermons to various churches throughout his life, his service at the Second Church was his first and last
appointment as a permanent pastor.
4. Emerson also suggests the likely cause of this error. It was only natural
that a soul as “great and rich” as Jesus’s, falling among a “simple” people,
was bound to overwhelm them. They were thus not able to see that Jesus’s
true message was that they needed to discover and make manifest the gift
of God in their own soul and not that Jesus was the son of God Himself
(RE 69). Given the simplicity of the “primitive Church,” Emerson is very
hesitant to adopt any of its doctrines or practices. The early Christians
not only refused to shed their “Jewish prejudices” but they were rarely
enlightened by the example of Christ himself. Emerson thus concludes
that “[o]n every other subject succeeding times have learned to form a
judgment more in accordance with the spirit of Christianity than was the
practice of the early ages” (RE 105).
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“At the Very Center of the Plenitude”:1
Goethe’s Grand Attempt to Overcome the 18th Century;2
Or,
How Freshman Laboratory Saved Goethe
From the General Sickness of his Age
We have failed to restore to the human spirit
its ancient right to come face to face with nature.
—Goethe3
Nature has become the fundamental word
that designates essential relations . . . to beings.
—Heidegger4
Goethe teaches courage . . . that the disadvantages
of any epoch exist only to the fainthearted.
—Emerson5
1. Incidental Thoughts, Fruitful Life
To everyone: Welcome! To our freshman in particular: a special
Welcome!
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: We know him first as a poet and
playwright—seniors will read his Faust next week. Yet there is another Goethe that is less well known but who, from his own point
of view, is of equal, if not greater consequence,6 the Goethe who
spent his life studying nature—botany, zoology, geology, meteorology, theory of color—and is known, in this regard, for his work
in morphology. I would like to speak about this lesser known
Goethe tonight.
There are two subtitles to this evening’s lecture “At the Very
Center of the Plenitude.” The first is given to it by Friedrich Nietzsche, the second, my own curious invention. The first is “Goethe’s
Grand Attempt to Overcome the 18th Century.” As we will see,
from Nietzsche’s perspective Goethe was a philosophical thinker
of the highest order who inherited, as we all do, ideas from previDavid Lawrence Levine is a tutor and former Dean at St. John’s College in Santa
Fe, New Mexico. This lecture was originally presented as the annual Dean’s
Lecture to open the thirty-seventh academic year at the Santa Fe campus.
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ous generations and thinkers, ideas that he thought were ill conceived and needed to be rethought. Thanks to these ideas, we had
become, according to Goethe, “blind with seeing eyes.”7
Similarly the second subtitle, “How Freshman Laboratory
Saved Goethe from the General Sickness of his Age.” This clearly
reflects our unique studies here at St. John’s. Here too we see
something of greater moment than we might first have seen. Here
we will have a chance to see that his life’s work studying nature—
as seen in the paper that we read in freshman laboratory—has a far
greater significance than just “science,” great though this is in its
own right.8 For Goethe the study of nature was the necessary antidote to a growing tendency—“sickness” he called it—that needed
to be countered for the sake of our lives and health.
Goethe’s thinking, though philosophical, is not systematic, and
that means there’s no one place where his deepest thinking is to be
found. Just the opposite, his profoundest thought is to be discovered throughout his works, and not just in his major works, but
minor ones too, often just jottings here and there, on slips of paper,
in the margins of books, the corners of newspapers, in brief letters,
in short wherever occasion found a suitable surface for pen and
ink to secure for a time his emergent thoughts. These were often
then collected into “maxims and reflections,” sometimes inserted
as the thinking of one of the characters of his novels, sometimes
collected under his own name.
These occasional thoughts will provide much of the material
for tonight’s talk. But incidental thoughts are not necessarily insignificant thoughts.9 Not unlike flotsam and jetsam, thoughts appear throughout our day. Are these daily musings ‘distractions of
the moment’ or ‘disclosures of moment’? Such irrepressible
thoughtfulness and imagination gives added dimension to the thin
linearity of time. A day punctuated by the wondrous, sparked by
light, is not just another day. Daily discovery is meat not spice,
nourishment, not just flavoring. And its joy is invigorating. The
mundane is thereby transformed. Thinking happens.
One such collection of thoughts is a book of selected conversations by his secretary Johann Peter Eckermann, a man of no
small talent, who took it upon himself to record for posterity per-
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sonal conversations he had with his world famous employer during
the last nine years of his life. These are intermittently and imperfectly recorded, often self-conscious, sometimes seem contrived,
and are frequently without a definite outcome. There we find observations about passing acquaintances, deliberations about the
wine list for the evening dinner, plans for journeys to be taken, personal estimates about famous and not so famous authors and statesmen, latter-year reflections and regrets about his youthful writings,
plans for the reconstruction of the local theater that had burned
down, conversations with his patron the Grand Duke of Weimar,
observations about his wife and children, expressions of hope and
disappointment about friends, frustrations about works of his that
had been overlooked or were under appreciated. But throughout
the rich array, there emerge as well recurrent themes and persistent
questions of consequence.
The same author mentioned above, Nietzsche, says the following: “Apart from Goethe’s [own] writings, and in particular
Goethe’s conversations with Eckermann, the best German book
there is, what is there really of German prose literature that it would
be worthwhile to read over and over again?”10 “The best German
book there is,” worth “reading over and over again”? Hardly on
the face of it.
Though perhaps prone to hyperbole and “philosophizing with
a hammer,” Nietzsche was not prone to misrepresentation. What
could he mean by such exaggerated praise? Perhaps what is remarkable is not the book per se, but what is portrayed therein? Perhaps what is notable is not its ultimate literary value—the book is
not on our program—but the attempt to record a life that is in no
way ordinary? Indeed, even through Eckermann’s eyes we glimpse
new possibilities for a human life that aspires to what is extraordinary, a fullness of possibility rarely seen. We glimpse a paradigm
of a fully engaged, ever creative, wholesome fecundity. In short,
we see philosophy as a way of being in the world, not as a book
bound between leather covers.
2. “Everything Nowadays is Ultra”
In 1825, late in life, Goethe wrote a letter to his friend, the composer Zelter, in which he reflected on the character of life as it had
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come to be lived in their lifetime:
Everything nowadays is ultra, [he writes] everything is
being transcended continually in thought as well as in action. No one knows himself any longer; no one can grasp
the element in which he lives and works or the materials
that he handles. Pure simplicity is out of the question; of
simplifiers we have enough. Young people are stirred up
much too early in life and then carried away in the whirl
of the times. Wealth and rapidity are what the world admires. . . . Railways, quick mails, steamships, and every
possible kind of rapid communication are what the educated world seeks but it only over-educates itself and
thereby persists in its mediocrity. It is, moreover, the result of universalization that a mediocre culture [then] becomes [the] common [culture].
He then adds ruefully: “We and perhaps a few others will be the
last of an epoch that will not soon return.”11
According to Goethe, a radical transformation of our way of
being has taken place: 1) a change in the character of human thought
and action, 2) a change in our knowledge of ourselves, 3) a change
in our sense of place, and finally, 4) a change in the character and
efficacy of education.
“Everything nowadays is ultra”: As early as the beginning of
the nineteenth century, what was coming to characterize human
life—and thereby change the face and depth of human experience—was the speed (die Voloziferishe) at which life was lived, a
hitherto unheard of, dizzying and disorienting pace such that young
people—but not only—could only be caught up in “the whirl of
the times.” “Being caught up” means living some other life than
one’s own, being inauthentic.
“Railways, quick mails, steamships”: Ever faster communication changes the lived dimensions of life: time quickens, distance
collapses. There is no delay between an event and its hearing. “It’s
as if we were right there.” A leisurely walk is replaced by a carriage
ride, thereafter by a train ride, then a jet plane, and now by . . . a
transporter (or at least in our imaginations). The wait for “news”
from the pony express, a telegram, a phone call, a pager continues
to shrink. Our e-mail pings or our blackberry vibrates: we hear about
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an event “as it happens” no matter the distance. Life, in short, is lived
in fast forward. Goethe asks “Who can possibly keep up with the
demands of an exorbitant present and that at maximum speed?”12
This matter of life’s ever accelerating pace in not a philosophically indifferent one for Goethe. “The greatest misfortune [Unheil]
of our time,” he says elsewhere, “which let’s no thing come to
fruition, is that one moment consumes the next.”13 While the speeding up of things may assist us in “keeping informed” and “staying
in touch,” it also subtracts from other essential dimensions once
thought definitive of human life. It makes certain things more difficult, if not impossible, specifically those things that take time, for
example, those that require slow assimilation and acclimation,
above all human learning and experience. It takes time away from
thoughtful reflection and other possibilities of human carefulness.
For time and leisure (skolē) are the proper gestational home of reflection, philosophy and human care.
We hear too that our thought processes are affected: “everything is transcended in thought [as well as in action].” We have
somehow been made to think differently. We live at a new level of
abstraction, beyond the immediate, simple, obvious, primary
world, such that we no longer even understand “the element in
which we live.” What could this mean?
And most curious of all, Goethe says “No one knows himself
any longer.” How is this even possible? Elsewhere he says: “Learning fails to bring advancement now that the world is caught up in
such a rapid turnover; by the time you have managed to take due
note of everything, you have lost your self.”14 Are we not always
the same no matter our circumstances?
Education too is thereby affected. It is suggested that we might
even become “over-educated,” mis-educated, that education itself
has become, somehow, distorted. He reflects: “For almost a century
now the humanities have no longer influenced the minds of men
engaged in them.”15 Rather than distinction, we have mediocrity;
rather than a high culture, we have an ordinary one. What then of
the rewards of “perspective,” “balance” and “excellence” once
thought the outcome of an ennobling education?
The “whirl of the times” has only accelerated many, many fold
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since 1825. The author could not possibly have envisioned the pace
at which we live our lives today. To be sure, on first hearing, one
might be inclined to take the above observations as the grumbling
of a man seeing the world pass him by (empty biographism). We
might, however, also take this as notice to think better about the
character of our lives in our ultra-ultra world.
3. “The General Sickness of the Age”
Life is our lot rather than reflection.
—Goethe16
Goethe’s exclamation that “nowadays . . . no one knows himself
any longer” clearly needs further consideration. How could this
be? Don’t we know ourselves?
Throughout the modern disciplines—the physical sciences,
history, even poetry and literature—was a growing trend, evident
to Goethe, to what he called “subjectivity.” Juniors and seniors will
remember, in the Discourse on Method, Descartes’s identification
of the “ego” as the primordial truth about which we alone can be
immediately “certain.” The immediate evidence of this self-intuition then provides the standard of truth for all else, now thought
true only if “clearly and distinctly” conceivable to us. Odd though
this may sound, this new self-certainty leads to our world being
reconceived as “the external world,” about which we can now have
only a small measure of certainty and that of its radically stripped
down mathematical qualities. To be sure, this made a “modern science” of such a world possible, yet it gave us a new definition and
sense of self that was problematic.17 This excessively polarized and
reduced view of the ego as “subject”—understood as standing
“over against”18 some bare objective world—is what Goethe meant
by “subjectivity:” polarized, withdrawn, exiled to its own interior
world, and thereby alienated from any sense of world in which it
could feel itself integrated or at home.19
For Goethe the consequences of this influential (nay, fateful)
redefinition of self are nowhere better seen than in his own vocation, poetry. We have all heard the caricature of the modern “romantic” poet: a suffering recluse, retreating to his Paris garret,
whose only truth is his inner pain. But for Goethe there is, unfor-
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tunately, an element of truth to be found therein: He observes: “All
the poets [today] write as if they were ill and the whole world were
a lazaretto [leper colony]. They all speak of the woe and misery of
this earth and the joy of a hereafter: all are discontented. . . . This,”
he adds, “is a real abuse of poetry.”20 “I attach no value to [such]
poems.”21
From Goethe’s perspective, “whoever descends deep down
into himself will always realize he is only half a being,”22 and being
half will discover there limited resources for creativity. “A subjective nature has soon talked out his little internal material and is at
last ruined by mannerism [that is, excessive affectation],”23 he
notes regretfully. “Such people look at once within; they are so occupied by what is revolving in themselves, [that] they are like a
man in passion, who passes his dearest friends on the street without
seeing them.”24 With reduced openness to the world around them,
they have become “blind with seeing eyes.” This excessive onesidedness, and consequent risk of self-absorption, Goethe named
“the general sickness of the present age [heutigen Zeit],”25 and led
Doctor von Goethe to his famous diagnosis: “What is Classical is
healthy; what is Romantic is sick.”26 Sick? Unhealthy, unproductive, foundationless, and ultimately untruthful. We lose our fullest
selves.
Goethe thus found himself standing at the point of the divide
where, for all our efforts to think about each separately, subject
and object were being ever more pulled apart. This experiential
breach was of fundamental concern because, when either is overpolarized—when the soul is diminished as an isolated, worldless
ego (psyche), res cogitans or when the world is diminished as external, even foreign, barren res extensa—both subject and object
are diminished for want of their natural correlate. If I may indulge
in a somewhat dramatic image: like a man standing between two
horses pulling him apart, Goethe found that—for the sake of
health27—he had everything he could handle to keep himself and
the world whole.28
Goethe himself thus resisted being “caught up in his time;”
he was not a “romantic.” As he said, “my tendencies were opposed
to those of my time, which were wholly subjective; while in my
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objective efforts, I stood alone to my disadvantage.”29 His “objective efforts”? How could he resist the subjective tendency?
4. “The Element in which we Live”
In all natural things there is something wonderful. . . .
So we should approach the inquiry . . . without aversion,
knowing that in all of them there is something
natural and beautiful.
—Aristotle30
Surprising though it may seem to some, the answer is nature. Thus
it is apt that the Goethe we first meet is not the poet but the Goethe
who spent his whole life researching “the element in which we
live,” that is researching into nature. It is this “objective” involvement that saved him from the excesses of his—and our—time, not
to mention giving him “the most wonderful moments of his life.”31
So, what is nature?—OK, a simpler question.—What is a
plant? Which grammatical form best names its being, a noun or a
verb (or a gerund, a verbal noun)? By plant do we intend a static
state or an activity alive with change, something that has grown or
some process of growth?32 Clearly we need to name both—form
that is also in the process of self-formation. “Growth is the point
of life.”33
For us here in the Southwest, sumac, oak, aspen, pinõn, mallow and mullen are different kinds of plants. The principle at work
is the same throughout the stages of the life cycle of a mallow, for
instance, from seedling to flowering, fructifying plant. Hence we
name it one thing—a mallow—despite all these various stages and
differing formal manifestations.34
But it is not only this individual plant that is before us, so is
the species “mallow,” and even further so is the kingdom “plant,”
and these, as Goethe will insist, not as abstract concepts in the mind
but somehow in the living instance itself. Thus Goethe sought to
account for plant life as such, despite the dizzying fact that they
take infinitely many and wondrously different shapes. Sumac,
aspen, mallow are in “inner essence” still “plants.”35 What is
needed in this view is to identify the unifying principle at work
(not “underlying”) in each and every form at whatever stage of
growth and complexity they might be. But how to do so? And how
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to find a language that captures this universally active principle of
forms forming themselves?
To do so Goethe had to depart radically from his contemporaries and from their analytical approach. But in so doing this departure brings him closer to us. We can see this at the outset of the
Metamorphosis of Plants that we read in freshman laboratory,
where he appeals, not to results of the latest scientific journals, but
to our own untutored experience. He begins: “Anyone who has paid
a little attention to plant growth. . . .”36 This means that we, ordinary human beings, still have access to a realm of primary significance, one not to be diminished as “pre-scientific,” if what is
meant thereby is “pre-insightful.” Rather we, you and me, have
deep access into what is before us.37
Indeed he is critical that, with all our education and learning,
we may on the contrary be closing ourselves off from this primary
level of our experience. He often referred to a passage in one of
his early plays to illustrate this eclipse of experience by theory:
[A]s it is said in my Goetz von Berlichingen, that the
son, from pure learning, does not know the father, so
in science do we find people who can neither see nor
hear, through sheer learning and hypothesis. Such people look at once within; they are so [pre-] occupied by
what is revolving in themselves, that they are like a
man in passion, who passes his dearest friends in the
street without seeing them. [Rather] the observation of
nature requires a certain purity of mind that cannot be
disturbed or preoccupied by anything. . . . It is just because we carry about with us a great apparatus of philosophy and hypothesis, that we spoil all.38
“Like a man in passion”: Ideas, no less than passions, can take hold
of our minds, preventing us from seeing what might otherwise be
evident and thereby preventing us from attending to our primary
experience.39 So overwhelming are our present-day theoretical preoccupations that—in one of his most shocking statements of all—
Goethe claims that we no longer even concern ourselves with
nature. “That nature, which is our [modern] concern, isn’t nature
any longer,” he says.40 Extraordinary!
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What has been lost, in Goethe’s view, is a sense of the wholeness of wholes and the interrelatedness and integration of all things,
in short, Nature (capital N). This loss is the necessary consequence
of any approach wherein wholes are but “by-products”41 of uncoordinated, underlying, isolated forces and elements (“matter in the
void”). Looking at things in terms of their parts—elements, simples, particles, atoms—analytical ways of thinking stumble in the
face of the Humpty Dumpty problem: how to put the whole back
together again.42 If we begin with parts, we end up with reconstituted conglomerates, aggregates, bunches, but the wholeness of
things, the integral reality, remains a secondary phenomenon, a
mystery, if not an accident.43 Here too we’ve become “blind with
seeing eyes.”
Juniors are soon to read and seniors will remember Descartes’s
famous experiment with the wax at the end of Meditations II. There
Descartes places a piece of fresh bees wax near a burning candle,
whereupon it melts and loses its original color and smell, texture
and shape (i.e. primary as well as secondary qualities), that is loses
all its original properties but res extensa, mere extension (though
this changes too). This experimental method is designed to bring
us to see what is “elemental” (if not fundamental). Descartes then
proceeds to claim that by “an act of intuition of reason” he—and
we—would know this transmogrified, charred lump in front of us
to be the same thing as before his infernal experiment. He asks,
who would not so conclude thus? (Aristotle, for one) Well . . . if
that were a plant, and not an amorphous hunk of bees wax, who
would concur with Descartes that what remains is the same as what
was put to the flame?44
The analytical flame dissociates or separates what originally
was together. It “kills.” So this method.45 The disfigured, deracinated, blackened carcass of the plant is anything but, the living
whole, nowhere to be found. The mass of matter lying before
Descartes is “the same” only if life and death are not different, and
if form is not an active principle but a derivative by-product. With
this “lethal generality”46 we lose—and lose sight of—“the spirit of
the whole,” as Goethe would say. For this reason, he claimed as
well that the modern approach—subjectively predisposed to take
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the objects of our experience in such a reduced way—loses its
claim to “objectivity.”47
The question for Goethe—and for us—is whether and how we
can recover the whole. Is it still possible to begin elsewhere, think
differently such that the whole is retained along with its manifold
parts? Can we yet begin where we naturally begin, with what is
“first for us” (Aristotle), with integral wholes?
5. Our Ancient Right
The spirit of the actual is the true ideal.
No one who is observant will ever
find nature dead or silent.
—Goethe48
Goethe thus sought “another way,” in order, as he said, “to restore
to the human spirit, its ancient right to come face to face with nature.” 49
He asks: “What does all our communion with nature amount
to . . . if we busy ourselves with analyzing only single portions,
and do not feel the breath of the spirit that dictates the role of
every part and restrains or sanctions all excess through an immanent law?”50 Thus “phenomena once and for all must be removed
from the gloomy empirical-mechanical-dogmatic [torture] chamber [Marterkammer],” he said, “and [be] submitted [rather] to the
jury of [common human understanding].”51 But how are we to do
this, to return to “common human understanding”?
Since apparently we can live in more than one world, Goethe
makes his bid—“naively” yet knowingly52—to reclaim nature as
our home-world. “If we are to rescue ourselves from the boundless multiplicity, atomization and complexity of the modern natural sciences,” he says, “and get back to the realm of simplicity,
we must always consider [this] question: how would Plato [or
any non-modern] have reacted to nature, fundamentally one
unity as it still is, how would he have viewed what may now appear to us as its greater complexity?”53 We need to remove what
“now” stands in the way.54 We need somehow to shuck off our
modern predisposition to see all things as artificially reconstituted55 and see our world, rather, as one might whose vision was
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not so refracted. But how?
Mindful that “the first stages of a discovery leave their mark
on the course of knowledge,”56 Goethe first seeks to reorient us.
To begin with, “anyone who has paid a little attention” has to acknowledge that our primary and original experience of things is
otherwise than we’ve been brought to conceive. “In nature,” he
said, “we never see anything isolated: everything is in connection
with something.”57 Any account, then, of our experience must
begin here with the unity and interrelatedness of all things.
Herein lays Goethe’s unified field theory: “I abide by what is
simple and comprehensive,” he says.58 (This he also calls his
“stubborn realism.”59)
As we heard, a certain kind of undisturbed purity of mind—
clarity, breadth of survey, attention to manifest differences—is
the pre-requisite to any genuine openness. In the garden, along a
path, in the laboratory, we need first to see the things themselves,
to recognize the ways and means that the plant [or whatever our
object] uses,”60 “to follow it carefully through all its transitions,”61 in short, “to follow as carefully as possible in the footsteps of nature.”62 “In the process,” he says, “we become familiar
with certain requisite conditions for what is manifesting itself.
From this point of view everything gradually falls into place
under higher principles and laws revealed not to reason through
words and hypotheses, but to our intuitive perception [Anschauung] through phenomena.63” In this way, our relationship to
things is not at first “speculative,” but what Goethe calls “practical,” that is grounded in the concrete experience of individuals
and the real.64 (Here have we a model of openness and extreme
care that will serve us well, not only in the laboratory, but
throughout our work at the college.)
Given this, given observation that is undertaken with a “truly
sympathetic interest,”65 a remarkable transformation can then
begin. We can be moved to insight. In an often quoted passage
from the Introduction to his Outline of a Theory of Color, Goethe
addresses this process of natural ideation. He writes:
An extremely odd demand is often set forth but never
met . . . that [bare] empirical data should be presented
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without any theoretical context. . . . This demand is
odd because it is useless to simply look at something.
Every act of looking [naturally] turns into observation, every act of observation into reflection, every act
of reflection into the making of associations: thus it is
that we theorize every time we look carefully at the
world. The ability to do this with clarity of mind, with
self-knowledge, in a free way, and (if I may venture
to put it so [he adds]) with irony, is a skill we need in
order to avoid the pitfalls of [modern scientific] abstraction.66
Nature converses with us. Like any organic transition, thought is
the natural and continuous outgrowth of its prior condition, the
fruit of concrete experience. As such we are naturally led to a
higher integration through “the practical and self-distilling
processes of common human understanding.”67 “We theorize every
time we look carefully at the world.”
When we are able to survey an object in every detail,
grasp it carefully and reproduce it in our mind’s eye [he
reflects, then] we can say we have an intuitive perception [Anschauung] of it in the truest and highest sense.
We can [rightfully] say it belongs to us.... And thus the
particular leads to the general [as well as] the general
to the particular. The two combine their effect in every
observation, in every discourse.68
As much as we take the lead in inquiry, then so too are we led
by what we are inquiring into. Experience is bi-directional. Subject-object; object-subject. True sympathetic observation results
in the recapitulation in our summary imagination of the originating principle. The object becomes for us as it is in itself. In this
way the object “belongs” to us as much as we, in communion, belong with it. Our natural correlation is thereby reestablished, the
Cartesian subjective reduction of experience is offset, if not reversed, and a kind of renewed originality is returned to human experience, widening and opening our purview69, whereby we might
be thought once again to come “face to face” with nature. Our ancient right is thereby restored.
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6. The Original World
. . . the sublime tranquility which surrounds us
when we stand in the solitude and silence of nature,
vast and eloquent.
—Goethe70
A living thing cannot be measured
by something external to itself.
—Goethe71
This reunion of observer and world—we should say union—is possible because of a unique human faculty—one out-rightly denied72
or at least overlooked by other modern thinkers—but to which
Goethe again and again returns our attention. As we read: “When
we are able to survey an object in every detail, grasp it carefully
and reproduce it in the mind’s eye, we can say we have an intuitive
perception of it in the truest and highest sense.” This capacity for
concrete, summary “intuition,” intuitive perception, Anschauung,
is our faculty for experiential wholes wherein the actively unifying
principles at work in the world manifest themselves. Deny it and
we have no wholes. They are not deduced, inferred, or synthesized.
We do not have to go beyond or behind73 the phenomena to see
these at work. These are made known to us at the level of our primary experience. We “see” them.
There’s a famous story: At a meeting of the Society for Scientific Research in Jena there was a “fortunate encounter” between
Goethe and the poet Friedrich Schiller—whose poetry at the time
Goethe thought too romantic, too subjective. Goethe sought to explain to him his own attempt to articulate such a principle whereby
the natural plenitude of plant life might be accounted for. His
“idea” was, he admits, “the strangest creature in the world,”74
wherein the whole range of plant formation might be seen as
“stemming” or “derived” from an aboriginal form that was in this
regard the formal progenitor of the whole kingdom. Goethe named
this the Urpflanze,75 the original or originary plant.76
Schiller’s first response to this suggestion reflected his philosophical background, in particular his indebtedness to Kant. “This
is not an observation from experience,” he said, “This is an idea.”77
Schiller could not see what Goethe claimed he saw. He was disin-
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clined—as we may be—to grant that this was anything but a “regulative idea” constructed by reason to help it organize its experience, not a principle at work in the world organizing the
phenomenal array of plant forms. It was merely an idea, merely
“subjective.” For him and for Kant, it couldn’t be anything more,
as in their view phenomena are themselves constituted by consciousness and are thus not things in themselves.
Convinced, rather, that he had identified the objective generative source of all plant forms, Goethe replied: “Then I may rejoice
that I have ideas without knowing it, and can even see them with
my own eyes!” For Goethe, perception and reason, as moments of
a natural process, are not disparate faculties, but continuous. Thus
this, and all other Ur-phenomena, immanent and at work throughout our experience, are real and hence must be available to us on
the primary level of common human understanding.78 He wonders:
“Why should it not also hold true in the intellectual area that
through an intuitive perception of eternally creative nature we may
become worthy of participating spiritually in its creative process?”
He thus insisted that he could see with his eyes something to which
others seem to have become blind.79 (Despite this fundamental difference, the two became close friends.)
But more needs to be said about this “strangest” of all creatures
that holds, in Goethe’s words, “the secret of the creation and organization of plants” (or any family of phenomena). As we mentioned earlier, Goethe’s interests were vast and not restricted to
botany; he also did research in osteology or bone formation. Indeed
it was Goethe who discovered the role of the intermaxillary bone,
the missing link that allowed zoologists to connect man and ape
anatomically. In a passage from his work On Morphology, we see
most clearly the point of origination of his thinking concerning Urphenomena:
The distinction between man and animal long eluded
discovery. Ultimately it was believed that the definitive
difference between ape and man lay in the placement
of the ape’s four incisors in a bone clearly and physically separate from other bones. [Goethe provides the
link.] . . . Meanwhile I had devoted my full energies to
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the study of osteology, for in the skeleton the unmistakable character of every form is preserved conclusively and for all time. 80
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The developmental history of an organism is not past; rather the
history of successive generational transformations is preserved
and encapsulated in the fullness of any present form. Just as osteogeny can now be seen to recapitulate phylogeny, so more generally can any such morphological account. This “pregnancy”81
of the present form allows of a new kind of thinking to uncover
the Ur-principle at work, a reverse thinking that “traces the phenomena [back] to their [empirical] origins.”82 (This is the first
methodological principle of the new science of morphology83).
In another context he reflects on this Ur-principle, now also
called an “archetype”: “an anatomical archetype will be suggested here, a general picture containing the forms of all animals
as potential, one which will guide us to an orderly description
of each animal.”84 The Ur-principle is thus a kind of omni-potential in conversation with its environment and out of which the
whole polymorphic metamorphosis issues. “All is leaf.” As such
these are not ideas in the usual sense of Plato or Kant, neither
separate nor abstract. Rather they are like ideas in enabling us to
give an account of the unifying principles at the origin of the
plenitude. They are like ideas, as well, in that they might serve
as a kind of “formula” providing a way to generate new forms—
if only in imagination.85 The “derivation”86 is not of hypothetical
but real possibilities. Though they are more like the eidos in Aristotle, an active principle embodying the manifold fruitfulness
of nature, here however “the secret of the creation and organization” of the family of forms. (He sometimes called it entelechy.87)
Thus whatever the family of phenomena—botany, osteology, geology, meteorology, color—Ur-phenomena emerge. We
come to see the unifying principle, the spirit “that dictates the
role of every part and restrains or sanctions all excess through
immanent law.” From this “empirical summit,88” all things can
be seen as unified. Thus we have order out of chaos,89 integration where we might otherwise have discontinuity. The plenitude is comprehended.
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Therefore when you pick up Goethe’s Metamorphosis of
Plants to read, or any of his other writings on nature, do not close
yourselves off when hearing its foreign language, rather attempt
to hear its new voice and direction for the understanding of nature, “the element in which we live.” Whether, indeed, Goethe
has bequeathed us a fruitful path by means of which our ancient
right might be restored or whether it is but a false portal, is for
each of us to determine for ourselves.
7. Against Self-knowledge
Everything that liberates our mind
without at the same time imparting
self-control is pernicious.
—Goethe90
Where are we, then, in the midst of all this? Is there a lesson to be
learned about ourselves from this “other way of studying nature”?
As we’ve seen there are two unities that are reestablished by
Goethe’s way of thinking: there’s the unity of wholes that had been
fragmented, and the unity of observer and world that had been
alienated. Let us think more about the latter.
This unity of observer and world means that, like any organism, man cannot be known, nor know himself, apart from his
world—his environment— which sustains him and of which he is
an integral part. Given the polarized, inauthentic, and diminished
sense of self that is the consequence of the divorce of the “ego”
from its world in modern thought, it is understandable, then, that
to Goethe “no one knows himself any longer.” This led him to his
famous—if at first shocking—remark concerning the Delphic oracle: “I must admit,” he said, “that I have long been suspicious of
the great and important sounding task: ‘know-thyself.’ This has always seemed to me a deception practiced by a secret order of
priests who wished to confuse humanity with impossible demands,
to divert attention from activity in the outer world to some false
inner speculation.”91 Self-knowledge—or what we take to be
such—can be misleading, indeed disabling.
But how can we make it truthful . . . and enabling? As we
would expect, for Goethe the success of our efforts to know ourselves depends on the degree to which we are willing to extend
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ourselves beyond ourselves. “Man is by all his senses and efforts
directed to externals—to the world around him ,92” he stresses, and
thus “the human being knows himself only insofar as he knows the
world; he perceives the world only in himself and himself only in
the world.”93 This brings to mind his earlier observation: “Whoever
descends deep down into himself will always realize he is only half
a being;” this thought was then completed with “let him find . . . a
world . . . and he will become whole.”94 In short, that we might be
drawn out of our overly self-polarized existence, we need to
reestablish ourselves once again as worldly beings, fully engaged
with and in our natural correlate “the outer world.”
Thus he answers the question “How can we learn self-knowledge?” in this way: “Never by taking thought but rather by action.”95
This reply should not surprise us, for it was our history that our very
attempts to think about ourselves and the world brought us to this
unnatural polarization. Thus it is “activity in the outer world” alone
that is necessary to restore a balanced polarity and healthy equilibrium. We see this in Goethe’s own “objective activity”:
Without my attempts in natural science, I should never
have learned to know mankind [including himself] as
it is. In nothing else can we so closely approach pure
contemplation and thought, so closely observe errors
of the sense and of the understanding, the weak and
strong points of character. All is more or less pliant
and wavering . . . but nature understands no jesting; she
is always true, always serious; always severe . . . the
errors and faults are always those of man. The man incapable of appreciating her, she despises; and only to
the apt, the pure and the true, does she resign herself
and reveal her secrets.96
Here we see Goethe learning lessons from nature that once were
thought the fruit of introspection and the study of the human sciences. The book of nature, as other texts, can serve as an occasion
for self-reflection. “The apt, the pure, and the true” learn about
themselves and other human beings as they self-critically open
themselves up to new fields and methods. The earlier passage, “For
almost a century now the humanities have no longer influenced the
minds of men engaged in them;” comes to mind. It is followed by:
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“it is a real piece of good fortune that nature intervened, drew the
essence of the humanities to itself and opened to us the way to a
true humanitarianism from its side.”97 The study of nature can thus
be a liberating study, freeing us from the burden of blinding conceptions and enabling us to return to our original worldliness
wherein we, once again, can open ourselves to our fullest possibilities. In this way, the study of nature is properly a liberal art.
8. The Grand Attempt
Where do we meet an original nature?
Where is the man with strength to be true,
and to show himself as he is?
—Goethe98
Finally, certain questions emerged earlier about our modern way
of life. How are we, given the “demands of an exorbitant present,”
not to get “caught up” in the whirl of our times and to reclaim a
sense of productive leisure? For Goethe the answer is . . . nature,
whose rhythms, it was once thought, could not be accelerated, and
through our study of which intimations of timeless self-sameness
might prove a refuge and shape our own being in the world. How
are we to regain a footing “where everything is in flux of continual
change”? Here too, the answer for Goethe is nature, our home
world, whose inherent lawfulness, as evidenced in the unities of
life forms, can thus provide a secure base upon which to take our
next steps. How are we to know ourselves more completely? Nature is especially needed here to offset our tendency to over selfinvolvement and to return us to our original fullness of being. And
how are we to educate ourselves more truthfully? Since modern
education only brought us, in Goethe’s view, to become “blind with
seeing eyes,” he sought in nature a complement—not to mention
an antidote—whose truthfulness would bring us “to see with seeing eyes” that fullness of view, perspective and measure that is the
proper fruit of serious study. Our question: can our own sustained
reflection on these questions, beginning with freshman laboratory,
lead to lessons such as these as well?
By way of conclusion I would like to quote Nietzsche one last
time. Toward the end of his life (1889), he himself tried to capture
in one of his aphorisms “the European event” that was Goethe.
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This distillation lives up to his well-known boast that he “wrote
whole books in one sentence,”99 though in this case he is somewhat
more loquacious, for it took him a whole paragraph to epitomize
this extraordinary life:
Goethe—not a German event but a European one: a
grand attempt to overcome the eighteenth century
through a return to nature, through a going-up to the
naturalness of the Renaissance, a kind of self-overcoming on the part of that century.—He bore within him its
strongest instincts: sentimentality, nature-idolatry, the
anti-historical, the idealistic, the unreal and revolutionary. . . . He called to his aid history, the natural sciences,
antiquity, likewise Spinoza, above all practical activity;
he surrounded himself with nothing but closed horizons; he did not sever himself from life, [rather] he
placed himself within it [that is, “at the very center of
the plenitude”]; nothing could discourage him and he
took as much as possible upon himself, above himself,
within himself. What he aspired to was totality; he
strove against separation of reason, sensuality, feeling,
will (—preached in the most horrible scholasticism by
Kant, the antipode of Goethe); he disciplined himself
to the whole, he created himself. . . . Goethe was, in an
epoch disposed to the unreal, a convinced realist; . . .
Goethe conceived of a strong, highly cultured human
being, skilled in all physical accomplishments, who,
keeping himself in check and having reverence for
himself, dares to allow himself the whole compass and
wealth of naturalness, [one] who is strong enough for
this freedom. . . . A spirit thus emancipated stands in
the midst of the universe with a joyful and trusting fatalism, in the faith that only what is separate and individual may be rejected, that in the totality everything
is redeemed and affirmed—he no longer denies. . . .
But such a faith is the highest of all possible faiths: I
have baptized it with the name . . . Dionysus.—100
Those who’ve read more widely in Nietzsche will recognize this
last act of baptism as extraordinary: there is no higher, nor deeper,
nor more original mode of being for Nietzsche than this aboriginal
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and creative life force that he identifies in the person of Goethe:
1) this rare independence from it’s times, 2) this extraordinary, if
circumspect, positivity, 3) this unlimited and deep interest in all
things, 4) this secure groundedness in practical, concrete reality,
5) this insistence on our original, primary experience, 6) this noble
distance from suffering, 7) this incomparable sense of measure,
and of course 8) this Olympian courage. If not Dionysus, then what
name or word would be appropriate?
Goethe and Nietzsche saw that we moderns have a hard choice
before us: between disaffection and engagement, between cynicism101 and wonder. Goethe somehow was able to affirm life, to
say YES!102
So we ask you tonight to consider this figure, how he might
move you to “discipline yourselves to the whole” and summon the
natural fecundity of your inherence.
And we ask you tonight “to place yourselves within life,” to
seek out what is primary and original and, daring to speak the language of discovery, to speak “poetically.103”
And we ask you tonight to “make time” for thoughtfulness,
that you transform the mundane with the joys of daily discovery,
that your life be rich and your days not ordinary ones.
One last comment: Eckermann observed that even until
Goethe’s last days (that is, into his eighty-third year), he was continually learning. May this be so for you as well.
Thank you.
NOTES
1. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maxims and Reflections, #337; also
#664 (hereafter MR). Given as the annual Friday night “Dean’s Lecture”
to open the thirty-seventh academic year at St. John’s College, Santa Fe.
See MR #864. This talk is a further development of work begun in 1986
(see Levine, “The Political Philosophy of Nature, A Preface to Goethe’s
Human Sciences,” (hereafter Political Philosophy) Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 11 [1986]: 163-178). It was Thomas McDonald who introduced me to the work of Eric Heller and Karl Löwith, and all three
who introduced me to the depth of Goethe’s thinking; my debt to them
continues. For the ambiguity and greatness of Goethe’s “grand attempt,”
see Johann Peter Eckermann, Conversations with Goethe, trans. John Ox-
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enford, (London: E. P. Dent, 1951 [1850]) (hereafter ECK), October 20,
1828.
2. Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, Or How to Philosophize with a Hammer, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Hammondworth: Penguin, 1968 [1889])
(hereafter TI), 102.
3. “Analysis and Synthesis” (hereafter AS), in Goethe, Scientific Studies,
(hereafter SS), ed. and trans. Douglas Miller, Vol. 12 of Goethe: The Collected Works (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 48. The publication of this collection of Goethe’s disparate scientific works has
provided a new occasion for further reflection about his “grand attempt.”
4. Martin Heidegger, “On the Essence and Concept of Phusis in Aristotle’s Physics B, 1,” in Pathmarks (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1998) (hereafter Phusis), 183.
5. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Goethe; or, the Writer,” in Representative Men
(New York: Marsilio, 1995 [1850]), 195.
6. ECK January 4, 1824, May 2, 1824, February 18 and 19, 1829.
7. ECK February 26, 1824.
8. ECK March 1, 1830.
9. Outline of a Theory of Color (hereafter OTC), in SS, #743; see also
note 21.
10. Nietzsche, “The Wanderer and His Shadow,” in Human all too
Human, A Book for Free Spirits, trans. R. J. Hollingdate (Cambridge:
University of Cambridge Press, 1986) Vol. II, Part II, #109, 336.
11. Letter to Zelter, June 7, 1825; in Löwith, Karl, “The Historical Background of European Nihilism,” “The Fate of Progress,” Nature, History,
and Existentialism, and Other Essays in the Philosophy of History
(Evanston, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1966) 4, 156-7; From Hegel
to Nietzsche, the Revolution in Nineteenth Century Thought, (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1964), 27-8, 177-181 (hereafter HN); also
MR #480.
12. MR #474.
13. MR #479.
14. MR #770.
15. HN, 226.
16. “The Enterprise Justified,” in On Morphology, SS, 61.
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17. The ego or modern self is doubtful of all but bare existence, where
even the externality, the worldness of the world, is in question.
18. For an interesting reflection on the problem of the subject-object polarity, see Heidegger, Phusis, 188.
19. A modern irony: man is least at home in a world of his own conception.
20. ECK September 24, 1827.
21. ECK September 18, 1823. By contrast, all of Goethe’s poetry was insistently “occasional,” that is objectively motivated: “The world is so
great and rich, and life so full of variety, that you can never want for occasions for poems. But they must be occasioned [poems] [Gelegenheitsgedichte]: that is to say, reality [Wirklichkeit] must give both impulse and
material. A particular event becomes universal and poetic by the very circumstance that it is treated by a poet. All my poems are occasioned
poems, suggested by real life, and having therein a firm foundation.” A
radically different orientation and tone is apparent here. See also January
29, 1826 and MR ##337, 393, 119.
22. MR #935.
23. ECK January 29, 1826: also MR #1119.
24. ECK May18.24.
25. ECK January 29, 1826.
26. MR #1031; ECK May 2.1829.
27 .A comparison with Nietzsche is appropriate here.
28. ECK March, 14, 1830; also December 21, 1831; and “Significant
Help Given by an Ingenious Turn of Phrase” (hereafter ITP), in SS, 39.
29. ECK April 14, 1824; also “The Content Prefaced,” (hereafter CP) in
On Morphology, SS, 67, and HN, 6-7.
30. On the Parts of Animals, I.v. 645a16, 19-27.
31. Fortunate Encounter (hereafter FE), SS, 18.
32. “The Germans,” Goethe notes, “have a word for the complex of existence present in the physical organism, Gestalt [or structured form] . . .
[whereby] an interrelated whole is identified, defined, and fixed in character. But if we look at all these Gestalten [all these forms], especially organic ones, we will discover that nothing in them is permanent, nothing is
at rest or defined—everything is in flux of continual motion. This is why
the Germans frequently and fittingly make use of [another] word Bildung
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[formation] to describe [both] the end product and what is in process of
production as well.” “The Purpose Set Forth,” in On Morphology, SS, 63.
33. ITP, 40.
34. CP,. 69; also Eric Heller, “Goethe and the Idea of Scientific Truth,” in
The Disinherited Mind (hereafter Heller) (New York: Meridian, 1959), 10.
35. Metamorphosis of Plants (hereafter MoP), in SS, 60, 67.
36. MoP, 76.
37. OTC #743.
38. ECK May 18, 1824; also January 17, 1830.
39. This is the “modern cave.” We may not be disposed at first to include
the philosophers among the “opinion makers” parading above and behind
the chained onlookers in Plato’s cave (Republic VII). But they are wordsmiths and as such we are indebted to them for our language and lenses
as well; see also Hegel, “Preface,” Phenomenology of Spirit, trans, A. V.
Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), #33, 19-20: “In modern
time the individual finds the abstract ready made . . . . Hence the task
nowadays consists . . . in freeing determinate thoughts from their fixity
so as to give actuality to the universal and impart to it spiritual life.”
40. MR #1364.
41. Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, II.
42. “These attempts at division also produce many adverse effects when
carried to an extreme. To be sure, what is alive can be dissected into its
component parts, but from these parts it will be impossible to restore it
and bring it back to life.” See “The Purpose Set Forth,” in SS, 63. The
natural plenitude is now compounded exponentially by the analytical dissolution or decomposition of wholes; cp. Heidegger’s characterization
that the original “atomic bomb” is to be found here in our modern analytical disassociation or explosion of all things into bits, parts and particles. See Martin Heidegger, “The Thing,” in Poety, Language, Thought,
trans. Albert Hofstader (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 168.
43. And thus the diminished reality of those who think that a home is
bricks and mortar, and humans their chemical makeup.
44. Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, II, AT, 19-34. How
someone could even think this is worth further thought.
45. A science that had given up trying to explain our experience was simply incomprehensible—not to mention infuriating—to one so firmly
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rooted in the actual (“at the very center of the plenitude”). “The Extent to
Which the Idea ‘Beauty Is Perfection in Combination with Freedom’ May
be Applied to Living Organisms,” in SS, 22; also ECK September 2, 1830;
see also Goethe’s longstanding debate with the Newtonian school and their
tendency to substitute secondary for primary phenomena; OTC ##176,
718.
46. “The Enterprise Justified,” in On Morphology, SS, 61.
47. In this regard one might want to compare Goethe’s and Nietzsche’s
respective attempts to “stave off the nihilistic consequences of modern
science” See David Lawrence Levine, “A World of Worldless Truths, An
Invitation to Philosophy” (hereafter Worldless Truths)in The Envisioned
Life: Essays in Honor of Eva Brann (Philadelphia: Paul Dry, 2008), 163.
48. OTC #158.
49. AS, 48.
50. ECK September 2, 1830; also Heller, 16.
51. MR #430: gemeine Menschen verstand (not “common sense”); cf.
“Empirical Observation and Science,” (hereafter EOS) SS, 25.
52. “Naively”: see Levine, Political Philosophy, 163-78.
53. MR #664; also ECK January 29, 1826: “People always talk of the
study of the ancients; but what does that mean, except that it says, turn
your attention to the real world.”; see also OTC #358. Yet as we shall see
Goethe is not an ancient but seeks to carve out a middle position between
ancient and modern science. While there is deep agreement with Aristotle
about our experience of nature in terms of wholes, there is disagreement
about what is eternal. In making form eternal, Aristotle, he said, was
prone to “precipitousness.” By contrast, for him it is the process, not the
form, which abides. “Everything is in flux of continual motion.”
54. “There is no worse mistake in physics or any science than to treat secondary things as basic and . . . to seek an explanation for the basic things
in secondary ones” (OTC #718). It’s as if we were “to enter a palace by
the side door” and thereafter base our description of the whole on our
first, one-sided impression. See “General Observation” (hereafter GO),
SS, 42 and OTC, 160); also, #177, 716 and its application to the “grievous” Newtonian error at #176.
55. See Heidegger, Phusis: “The act of self-unfolding emergence is inherently a going-back-into-itself. This kind of becoming present is phusis.
But it must not be thought of as a kind of built-in ‘motor’ that drives something, nor as an ‘organizer’ on hand somewhere, directing the thing.
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Nonetheless, we might be tempted to fall back on the notion that phuseidetermined being could be a kind that makes themselves. So easily and
spontaneously does this idea suggest itself that it has become normative
for the interpretation of living nature in particular, a living being has been
understood as an ‘organism.’ No doubt a good deal of time has yet to pass
before we learn to see that the idea of ‘organism’ and of the ‘organic’ is a
purely modern, mechanistic teleological concept, according to which
‘growing things’ are interpreted as artifacts that make themselves. Even
the word and concept ‘plant’ takes what grows as something ‘planted,’
something sown and cultivated” (195), and “But is not phusis then misunderstood as some sort of self-making artifact? Or is this not a misunderstanding at all but the only possible interpretation of phusis, namely,
as a kind of techne? This almost seems to be the case, because modern
metaphysics, in the impressive terms of . . . Kant, conceives of ‘nature’ as
a ‘technique’ such that this ‘technique’ that constitutes the essence of nature provides the metaphysical ground for the possibility, or even the necessity, of subjecting and mastering nature through machine technology”
(220).
56. GO, 42.
57. ECK May 12, 1825; also AS, 48.
58. ECK April 11, 1827.
59. FE p. 20.
60. “The Influence of Modern Philosophy,” (hereafter IMP) in SS, 28.
61. MoP #77.
62. MoP #84.
63. OTC #175.
64. EOS, 25.
65. OTC #665. There are times when Goethe seems to anticipate Husserl’s
phenomenological approach, in particular in “The Experiment as Mediator Between Object and Subject” [hereafter EMOS], in SS, 16, and IALO,
22, where the rigor and thoroughness of something like “eidetic variation”
seems to be proposed. The question is living form: “We cannot find
enough points of view nor develop ourselves enough organs of perception
to avoid killing it when we analyze it,” that is, multiple adumbrations
may give us a kind of whole but at the risk of rendering the outcome a
‘mental composition’ (as in Kant). It would be interesting to see how
Husserl and Heidegger treat life in its original vitality. See also OTC #166.
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66. “Preface,” OTC,. 159. We’ve taken the liberty to add the specification
“modern scientific” to abstraction. Throughout his OTC Goethe addresses the problems of scientific cognition and its tendency to excessive
abstraction (##310, 716, 754, and p. 162). For Goethe, as for Hegel, this
tendency is consequential and reckless. See note 52.
67. EOS, 25.
68. “Polarity,” in SS, 155; OTC #175; Letter to Herder, May 17, 1778 (in
Heller, 10).
69. OTC #732 (“expanded empiricism”).
70. “On Granite,” in SS, 132.
71. “A Study Based on Spinoza,” in SS, 8.
72. Despite Kant’s denial of such a human faculty in his Critique of Teleological Judgment, Goethe found a window of opportunity. He wrote that
Kant had “a roguishly ironic way of working: at times he seemed determined to put the narrowest limit on our ability to know things, and at
times, with a casual gesture, he pointed beyond the limits he himself had
set.” The passage in Kant that Goethe alludes to reads thus: “We can . . .
think [of a kind of] understanding which [unlike our discursive one
is] . . . intuitive, [and] proceeds from the synthetical-universal (the intuition of the whole as such) to the particular, i.e. from the whole to the
parts. . . . It is here not at all requisite to prove that such an intellectus archetypus is possible, but only that we are led to the idea of it—which too
contains no contradiction—in contrast to our discursive understanding,
which has need of images (intellectus ectypus) and to the contingency of
its constitution.” However, Goethe then drew the opposite conclusion:
“Why should it not also hold true in the intellectual area that through an
intuitive perception of eternally creative nature we may become worthy
of participating spiritually in its creative process?” he wonders. “Impelled
from the start by an inner need, I had striven unconsciously and incessantly toward primal image and prototype, and had even succeeded in
building up a method of representing it which conformed to nature. Thus
there was nothing further to prevent me from boldly embarking on this
‘adventure of reason’ (as the sage of Konigsberg himself called it).”
“Judgment through Intuitive Perception” (hereafter JIP), in SS, 31-2; also
EMOS, 11-17. Cf. Kant’s “aesthetic normal idea” in Critique of Aesthetic
Judgment, §17.
73. OTC #177; if we deny this faculty of intuitive perception we have no
real wholes.
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74. Letter to Herder, May 17, 1787: “I am very close to discovering the
secret of the creation and organization of plants. . . . The crucial point
from which everything else must needs spring. . . . The Urpflanze is to
be the strangest creature in the world. . . . After this model [visual formula] it will be possible to invent plants ad infinitum, which will all be
consistent...would possess an inner truth and necessity. And the same law
will be applicable to everything alive” (Heller, 10). Also OTC #175, “Polarity,” in SS, 155.
75. Urpflanze is often translated as “symbolic plant.” While this rendering
might be helpful if we keep a strictly Goethean notion of symbol in mind
(as in MR #314), this translation more often misdirects us if it suggests
to the reader either a mental abstraction or a literary device. Rather it
seeks to embody the manifold fruitfulness of nature “in potential” (“Outline for a General Introduction to Comparative Anatomy, Commencing
with Osteology” (hereafter GICA), in SS, 118).
76. “All is leaf.” MoP #119; OTC #120.
77. FE, 20; ECK November 14, 1823.
78. Letters to Schiller, February 10, 14, 1787 (in Heller, 20).
79. Hegel too—who otherwise was well disposed to Goethe’s project, indeed helped Goethe see how it fit into the larger scheme of the development of ideas—Hegel too nevertheless failed to see the Urpflanze as
anything but an abstracted archetype (See Hegel, The Letters, trans. Clark
Butler and Christiane Seiler [Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press,
1984], 681-711; HN, 11).
80. CP, 68-9. And we read in the Metamorphosis of Plants of the calyx
that it “betrays its composite origins in its more or less deep incisions or
divisions.”
81. ITP, 41.
82. OTC, 166. This may sound like ‘deconstruction,’ yet we would have
to consider whether it represents a true break with analytical thinking, as
Goethe seeks to do here.
83. CP, 69. Just as it led to his “discovering” the Ur-principle of the plant
kingdom, so Goethe is led in his other studies to “postulate” one for the
mammal family: “In the process I was soon obliged to postulate a prototype against which all mammals could be compared as to points of agreement and divergence. As I had earlier sought out the archetypal plant I
now aspired to find the archetypal animal; in essence the concept or idea
of the animal.”
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84. GICA, 118.
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85. Letter to Herder, May 17, 1787; OTC #175; “Polarity,” 155.
86. ITP, 41 (“ . . . my whole method relies on derivation”).
87. Aristotle’s eidos is not subject to metamorphosis. On the other side,
in Darwin the metamorphosis of form is not an unfolding of immanent
form but the haphazard “evolution of species” and creative adaptation on
the part of active wholes becomes “random selection.” See note 51. My
thanks to John Cornell for his helping me think this through.
88. OTC, #720.
89. OTC, #109.
90. MR #504.
91. ITP, 39. Also “If we take the significant dictum ‘know thyself’ and
consider it, we mustn’t interpret it from an ascetical standpoint. It does
not by any means signify the kind of self-knowledge advocated by our
modern hypochondriacs, humorists, and ‘Heautotimorumenoi’ [self-torturers], but quite simply means: pay some attention to yourself, watch
what you are doing so that you come to realize where you stand vis-à-vis
your fellows and the world in general. This needs no psychological selftorture; any capable person knows and appreciates this. It is good advice
and of the greatest practical advantage to everyone (MR, #657).” He objects only to those isolating tendencies of the subjective sciences and psychologies that are heir to the fateful alienation, if not divorce, of the ego
from the world.
92. ECK April 10, 1829.
93. ITP, 39.
94. MR #935; the whole passage reads “let him find a girl or a world, no
matter which, and he will become whole.” This is typical (see Eric Heller,
“Goethe in Marienbad,” in The Poet’s Self and The Poem, (London:
Athione Press, 1976).
95. MR #442 (“Try to do your duty and you’ll soon discover what you’re
like.”); also ##770, 935; ECK January 29, 1826.
96. ECK February 13, 1829.
97. HN, 226; also ECK October 18, 1827: In a conversation with Hegel
about the potential for modern sophistry of the “dialectic disease,”
Goethe says: “Let us only hope that these intellectual arts and dexterities
are not frequently misused, and employed to make the false true and
the true false. . . . The study of nature preserves me from such a disease.
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For here we have to deal with the infinitely and eternally true, which
throws off as incapable everyone who does not proceed purely and honestly with the treatment and observation of his subject. I am also certain
that many a dialectic disease would find a wholesome remedy in the
study of nature.”
98. ECK January 2, 1824; also March 12, 1828.
99. TI, #51.
100. Ibid., #49; cf. MR #864.
101. ECK January 2, 1824; letter to Zelter, June 18, 1831 (in HN, 27).
102. See also ECK January 24, 1825, October 12, 1825; February 1, 1827;
October 18, 1827; February 12, 1827; MR ##191 and 1121. See Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, passim. This affirmation is what Nietzsche found most admirable, indeed he was envious of this, for it was not
available to him. See “Afterword: Goethe and Nietzsche,” in Levine,
Worldless Truths, 163-65.
103. “A More Intense Chemical Activity in Primordial Matter,” SS, 137.
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Special Section:
Justice
Editor’s Note
In November of 2012, O. Carter Snead, Professor of Law at Notre
Dame Law School and Director of the Notre Dame Center for
Ethics and Culture, invited five tutors from St. John’s College in
Annapolis to speak at the Center’s thirteenth annual fall conference
entitled The Crowning Glory of the Virtures: Exploring the Many
Facets of Justice.
The following five papers were delivered on a panel session,
together with a sixth: “The Relevance of Lay Views on Punishment
to Criminal Justice” by Christopher Slobogin, Professor of Law
and Psychiatry at Vanderbilt Law School. A greatly expanded version of the paper was published the following month: Christopher
Slobogin and Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein, “Putting Desert in its
Place,” 65 Stanford Law Review 77 (January 2013). The article can
be accessed online at the following URL:
http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/sites/default/files/
Slobogin-65-Stan-L-Rev-77.pdf
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The Actual Intention of Plato’s
Dialogues on Justice and Statesmanship
Eva Brann
71
Cicero famously said of Socrates that he was the one who brought
philosophy down from heaven to earth. This must be some other
Socrates than the one of the Platonic dialogues, perhaps
Xenophon’s of the Memorabilia. After all, even the comic Socrates
of Aristophanes’s Clouds is a meteorologist, a watcher of the heavens, though he does it hoisted up in a basket, butt up. Of course,
he is a sky watcher, since that is where the vaporous and loquacious
Clouds—Aristophanes’s comic version of the Forms—are to be
found. Perhaps it would have been more accurate to say that
Socrates connected earthly matters, such as politics, to the invisible
heavens, the realm of the forms.
There are three Platonic dialogues overtly and extendedly concerned with politics. The first, the second longest of all the dialogues, is the Republic, in Greek Politeia. It bears the subtitle,
added in antiquity, “On the Just.” The second is the Statesman, in
Greek Politikos; its ancient subtitle was “On Kingship.” And the
third, the Laws, Nomoi in Greek, subtitled “On Legislation,” is by
far the longest.
In the Republic Socrates is both narrator and main interlocutor.
In the Statesman he is the originating occasion of the dialogue but
not a participant. He sits it out as an auditor, perhaps at times somewhat skeptical; the leading speaker is a visitor, or stranger, from
Elea, Parmenides’s hometown. Finally, the Laws don’t even take
place in Athens but in Crete, and Socrates doesn’t appear at all,
though there is an anonymous visitor, a stranger from Athens. Who
doubts that the Laws is a work of practical politics, in fact the
mother of constitutions? As the Athenian says: “Our logos . . . is
of cities, and frameworks and law-giving” (678a). Perhaps we
might even say that the farther Socrates is from a dialogue the more
it is merely earthly.
When I speak, in my title for this brief talk, about “The Actual
Intention” of the first two of these dialogues, I imply that in them
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all is not as it seems. Here is Rousseau’s opinion of the Republic,
taken from the first book of his Émile: “Those who judge books
merely by their titles take this for a treatise on politics, but it is the
finest treatise on education ever written.” And, indeed, the central
books of the ten that comprise the Republic are taken up with the
ontology, the philosophical framework, that must underlie education, and with the ensuing education itself. To be sure, the education discussed is that of the philosopher kings who will found and
maintain that best Politeia, the civic framework with which the Republic is concerned (473c).
And yet again, neither this civic framework for the best city,
which will be superintended by the philosopher kings, nor its justice is actually the intended topic of the Republic. For recall that
this city is devised as a model writ large of the soul (368d), a model
from which we can conveniently read off the nature of individual,
internal justice. The book we call the Republic rests on are two
tremendous assumptions: One is that political frameworks—not
only the best but even more strikingly the worst—are analogous
to, enlarged projections of, the soul. And the other, even prior one,
is that the soul ought to be our first topic of inquiry, and it is only
on the way to it that we discover political ideals: Psychology absolutely precedes Politics; Souls make States.
Thus it would be a fair argument to say that the particular political justice which is generally understood to be the peculiar contribution of the Republic is, in fact, a civic construction meant in
the first instance to incorporate a notion appropriate to internal,
psychic justice. For the three castes of the best city are delineated
in such a way that the famous definition of justice as “doing one’s
own business,” which falls out from the community’s constitution,
is applicable to the soul as Socrates conceives it. In other words,
the just city is built from the first to be an enlarged soul.
Let me outline how Socrates makes it work. These castes are
functionally defined, each by its own specific task within the city.
Moreover, they form a hierarchy of command and responsibility
such that any one caste’s transgression is in fact rebellion, factional
strife. Such internal dissension is, however, nearly the worst fate—
as any Greek knew or should have learned in the course of the
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Peloponnesian War (Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, 2.82)—
that could befall a political community, because it is the prelude to
tyranny. To reiterate: for Socrates, the maladjusted and dysfunctional soul is the antecedent cause of political evil.
It is to me an unresolved problem whether Socrates was in politics the anti-egalitarian he is sometimes accused of having been.
In his demeanor, and what matters more, his conversations, he
seems as populist as possible, not much impressed by smart young
aristocrats about to go to the bad, like Critias, Charmides and Alcibiades; moreover, in the Republic he says of a democracy that
it’s “handy for searching out a politeia” (577d)—which happens
to be what he himself is doing right then, down in the city’s most
democratic district, its harbor. The solution to the problem depends
on how we look at the kallipolis, the “fair city” that he’s found or
made: Is it and its justice a serious political proposal, on a par in
earnestness with Aristotle’s Politics in antiquity or Locke’s, Montesquieu’s, and Rousseau’s works at the beginning of modernity?
In view of the motive for the constitution of Socrates’s city, that is
a reasonable question.
To lend my exposition some specificity let me give you the
briefest reminder of the model city, both as best and as paradigmatic for the soul—and let me once more anticipate the result: The
human soul too will be a hierarchy of functional parts, and it too
will sport the virtues displayed by the city, now operating in individual human beings much as they did in the community.
At the bottom of the city’s castes, then, are the craftsmen and
tradesmen whose business it is to perform their particular work
well and profitably, and to attend just to those assignments and no
other. Beyond that, they are pretty free and prosperous, and thus
satisfied. They are without a specific caste virtue other than competence, for they are driven by appetite rather than character. But
they are the class for the particular operation of the most encompassing virtue, justice. Justice is the virtue of the part and the
whole, of each part doing its own thing and thereby preserving the
integrity of the whole. (Temperance is another non-specific virtue,
that of agreeableness in the sense that each caste is accepting of its
position in the hierarchy.)
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The middle caste consists of the warriors who guard the city,
and it is the training ground of kings. This caste is defined by their
spiritedness, and it is the locus of honor, the source of a soldier’s
satisfaction through danger. These warriors do have a particular
virtue, courage.
The ruling caste is comprised of the philosopher kings, whose
virtue is wisdom and in whom the intellectual part, thoughtfulness,
dominates. Their satisfaction is the highest; their happiness is subject to interruption by the duties of governing. This hardship is,
however, alleviated by their affection for the young they teach—
and by a more selfish fact: that the city is essentially set up to protect philosophizing, one of quite a few signs that all is not as it
seems in this Republic.
There are certainly some other odd, even bizarre, aspects to be
observed in this political device. Its strict hierarchy of command
is inverted in respect to prosperity; the lowest caste, the craftsmen
and merchants are the rich ones, the warriors are allowed no
wealth. At the end of the books on the construction and the deconstruction of this city, we’re told outright that it is “a model laid up
in heaven” for anyone to look at who “wishes to found himself;
he’ll practice its politics only and no other” (592b; italics mine).
In other words, we really have all along been participating in soulconstruction rather than city-construction. But oddest is the notion
that the governors of this “fair city,” the philosopher kings, don’t
want to rule it—indeed, this reluctance is a criterion of fitness.
In fact, the education is set up so as to cancel political ambition—indeed, to capture the love of future kings for another realm,
to alienate them from the earthly city. For they are to have a carefully graduated program of learning, elevating them beyond the
world of appearances into the world of forms, the world of pure
trans-earthly being. That’s why Cicero’s dictum that I began
with—about Socrates bringing philosophy down for the heavens
to the earth—sounds so, well, inept.
In particular, the study that is the capstone of the education,
that levers the learner into this world of being and drags him out
of the terrestrial slime, is dialectic (531 ff.), of which more in a
moment. Now for Socrates—to the astonishment and disgust of a
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practical statesman like Jefferson, who waded contemptuously
through the “whimsies” and “nonsense” of the Republic (to Adams,
July 15, 1814) – the study of supra-worldly forms, of beings, is the
proper foundation for government. This is especially the case insofar as statesmanship is concerned with the virtues of justice, temperance, courage, and wisdom. For obviously, to properly locate
these in the city, in the civic community, it is necessary to know
them. But to know them is not a matter of empirical research but
of dialectical (that is, ontological) inquiry, a matter of the study of
beings as beings, the study of Being itself. So the education does,
after all, have a political purpose—if we agree that ethics, the inculcation and preservation of virtue, is the end of the polis and its
politikoi, the civic community and its statesmen. I do not think any
contemporary citizen, attached to our Madisonian tradition, can
really agree—nor wholly disagree—and that is one of the many
reasons why the Republic is indispensable to political inquiry. For
it raises the question of justice in this original way: Is justice in the
sense of the Republic, as the proper adjustment of the faculties of
the soul—in particular the ready subordination of the lower parts
to reason—the condition for political unity and civic peace? From
this question falls out a whole slew of problems: Can we commit
ourselves to a psychology of faculties such as those involved in
the Socratic psychic constitution? And if so, is the adjustment of
the functions and their subordination to reason a persuasive analysis of psychological soundness? And if so, does it follow that the
adjustment is a political—or even a social—task? And if so, can a
democracy produce government wise enough to accomplish these
psychic adjustments, to induce virtue?
Before going on to the Statesman, I want to return to Rousseau:
Is the real business of the Republic indeed education, rather than
politics? Socrates never says so explicitly, nor can he, since the
program there presented is not just an education for leadership
loosely speaking, but very specifically the education of kings—
and, as Socrates makes very clear, of queens (540c). It is an education very specifically geared to the Republic’s polis—although
it will, amazingly, become the general model of higher, liberal education, lasting until the middle of the last century.
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Nevertheless, I think Rousseau is right. Indeed, some aspects
of this “fair city” have been politically and socially realized: the
equality of men and women and (to some extent) the community
of marriage partners and children. But by and large it has remained,
blessedly, “a pattern laid up in heaven,” for it has its repulsive aspects. Its educational program, on the other hand, has, as I said,
cast loose and become viable even in a democracy, because what
is nowadays called its elitism is not an intellectually integral part
of this kind of learning. In fact, the college where my two translation partners and I teach, St. John’s College, is a remarkably close
incarnation of it, and it revels in its intellectual egalitarianism. That
is one more element in an argument that political justice is not the
actually intended topic of the Republic.
So now to the dialogue called The Statesman, a conversation
to which Socrates only listens. Here, at one point, things become
startlingly explicit. Near the very middle of the conversation the
stranger makes an announcement under the form of a rhetorical
question asked in that throwaway tone that alerts the reader of dialogues to a crucial turn. It concerns the ostensible search for the
true statesman. “Has it been proposed,” he asks, “for the sake of
this man himself rather than for our becoming more dialectical
about all things” (285d)? And the answer is: plainly for learning
to think dialectically. We thought we were learning about governing well; it turns out we are involved in a logical training exercise
using a universally applicable technique—dialectic, the expertise
of dividing and collecting subjects by terms.
Socrates is, once more, not a participant in this conversation,
and this dialectic is not quite his dialectic. His dialectic was a way
by which apt students, through being questioned cleverly and answering carefully, had their opinions, their mere assumptions
about the way things are, demolished and then reconstituted, so
that they might be led up into a solid knowledge of the true
sources of these things. It was, in short, an ascending way of learning. The stranger’s dialectic is a method that works the other way
around. From a tacitly assumed overview of the whole, the accomplished dialectician makes divisions (diaireseis). When he has
arrived at what will in later time (when this method has turned
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into the technique of classification) be called the “lowest species,”
he goes back up, making a collection of terms. These add up to a
definition. Many of our students begin by thinking that that is
what Socrates does when he philosophizes—he makes definitions.
Of course a collection of terms is not what Socrates looks for
when he asks, say, the question, “What is justice?”—but it is a
preparation for an answer.
Is definition-making, however, what the Elean Stranger believes to be the profitable end product of the dialectic for which
the statesman is only an example? No, nothing so unsubtle, as I’ll
try to show in a minute.
Not that this more subtle use of division is likely to have satisfied the auditing Socrates. We three translators of the Statesman
express this sense of his skepticism by our assignment of the last
speech of the dialogue. Someone says: “Most beautifully . . .
you’ve completed for us the kingly man, stranger, and the statesman.” Now the stranger’s interlocutor in the Statesman is a young
man who is also called Socrates. There is some question among
scholars whether the older or the younger Socrates speaks this valedictory line. We thought our Socrates, the older one, couldn’t have
thought it, and so he didn’t say it.
Here is what the stranger does with the dialectical art of division. First, the whole dialogue is a composition of divisions. To
see its handsome design, that of a tapestry, it is helpful to work
through its dialectical episodes and the way they are sewn together,
like the pieces of a figured robe. The beauties of this dialogue are
not imaginatively visual but logically structural; this text is a texture. But this cloaklike characteristic is not just a stylistic formalism. It signals that this new dialectic is a craft that produces
practical results. Its physical exemplification, and the great
metaphor of the dialogue, is weaving, cloak-making in particular.
And making intertwined, protective, enveloping compositions
turns out to be the royal art, the discerning and composing craft of
the statesman. This is no transcendentally derived wisdom, but a
technical expertise. For the subject of the Statesman, as contrasted
with the Republic, is unambiguously political; it is concerned with
human herds. However, from the vantage point of the king of
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crowds, of herds, the internal relations disposing the soul of an individual human being, which are the concern of the Republic, recede; they lie below the royal oversight. And with that distance
diminishes the interest in justice, which was, after all, the right relation of the soul’s parts. So justice is indeed no big concern of the
statesman, be it of the man or of the dialogue named after him.
So the statesman, who is, thus, not a philosopher king but an
expert ruler, sees each soul from afar as displaying one permanent
characteristic. My colleague Peter Kalkavage will point out the exceedingly interesting consequences for statesmanship of what he
discerns and what, again as a consequence, true statesmanship must
be. It is, its royal denomination notwithstanding, an expertise much
closer, I think, to our idea of politics than the philosophical rule of
the Republic.
Then what happens to the stranger’s startling claim, with
which I began my remarks on the Statesman? How can the dialogue’s real purpose be an exercise in dialectic when it will be
shown to be so precise and practical a doctrine about managing
multitudes?
Well, the Statesman is neatly reflexive. It is, one might say, a
self-reentrant dialogue. For by relentless dialectical division the
stranger establishes the precise location of the statesman in the
whole economy of crafts and sciences, materials and products,
regimes and rulers, virtues and vices. And in the course of doing
that, he is indeed also giving a lesson in the method of division to
young Socrates. It may even be that his teaching actually has more
effect on a finer young man who is also present, a second silent
listener, one of old Socrates’s two favorite partners in inquiry,
namely Theaetetus (the other being Glaucon in the Republic).
Then here’s the denouement: The art of dialectic, the ability
to distinguish perspicaciously the parts of any subject, an art for
which weaving is a very precise figure, is the true statesman’s expertise. Statesmanship, then, is the craft of setting up a civic
framework, a loom upon which the citizens of various temperaments, here the warp and woof, are interwoven into a cloaklike
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texture, which represents at once the body politic and its protective cover, as if to say that a well-interlaced citizenry will wrap
itself in its own constitution for security.
On this conclusion old Socrates may, after all, have smiled.
For among the Greeks weaving is always a women’s art, and that
women might match men as rulers is a teaching of his Republic.
So ends the Statesman, a dialogue that sets forth a doctrine of governing which requires an expertise for which participation in the
dialogue is itself the training.
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Reflections on Justice in Fyodor
Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov
Chester Burke
The last book of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov is entitled
“A Judicial Error” because Dmitri Karamazov, the eldest Karamazov brother, is incorrectly found guilty of murdering his father Fyodor. Nearly all the spectators in the packed courtroom are stunned
by the verdict, despite the fact that most of them had assumed that
Dmitri had indeed committed the murder. Only his brother
Alyosha, his recently captivated love Grushenka, and his other
brother Ivan are certain of Dmitri’s evidence—Alyosha, because
of the innocence on Dmitri’s face when he said he hadn’t done the
deed; Grushenka, because “Dmitri isn’t the sort of man who would
lie” (683);* and Ivan, despite his loathing of Dmitri, because he
visits Fyodor’s illegitimate son Smerdyakov the night before the
trial and forces him to confess to the murder. Later that night,
Smerkdyakov commits suicide. Ivan’s testimony becomes worthless when, suffering from brain fever, he goes mad on the witness
stand, claiming that the only witness to this stunning revelation is
the Devil.
The first chapter of this final book is entitled “The Fatal Day.”
In the paragraph that concludes the previous chapter, Alyosha says
to himself, “Yes, with Smerdyakov dead, no one will believe Ivan’s
testimony; but he will go and testify . . . God will win!” (655) Having heard these three powerful words, “God will win,” the reader
is thrown into the human drama, that is, the trial. How can the truth
emerge from such a gigantic public spectacle, in which every one
of the participants has entered with his private opinions and passions? Dostoevsky characterizes the spectators, standing “in a
closely packed lump, shoulder to shoulder” (657), as having been
* Page references are to Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov,
trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Farrar, Strauss
& Giroux, 2002).
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enflamed by impatience. The women favor Dmitri’s acquittal and
the men, many of whom have been personally insulted by Dmitri,
wish to see him punished. The prosecutor, Ippolit Kirillovich, trembles at having to oppose a famous Petersburg defense attorney,
whom he feels has overshadowed him since their younger days in
Petersburg. He believes that everything is at stake in this trial, both
for himself and for Russia. Fetyukovich, the famous defense attorney, exudes an air of confidence. The reader may feel a little uneasy
when Dostoevsky describes his eyes as small and inexpressive:
“his physiognomy had something sharply birdlike about it, which
was striking” (660-61). The material evidence with which the
reader is so familiar, wrenched from its living context, is on display
in the middle of the courtroom.
The prosecutor, known for (and sometimes ridiculed for) his
passion for psychology, puts together an account that seems to
make sense of all the facts, even though the defense attorney, having digested the situation with astonishing rapidity, is able to discredit many of the witnesses. Readers take delight in this passage,
because they have previous knowledge of these witnesses and the
ugliness of their souls. The prosecutor tells the compelling story
of Dmitri finishing “a poem” (717) that culminates in the murder
of his father, the stealing of 3,000 rubles, and running off madly to
find his lover Grushenka, only to relinquish her to a man who
abused her as a young girl. The defense attorney then accuses the
prosecutor of writing his own novel, of being a psychological poet
whose psychology is two-pronged and therefore equally capable
of proving a given statement of fact and its opposite. He masterfully shows that only the totality of the facts— and not a single
one of them in isolation—speak against his client.
Though he claims to demonstrate the limitations of psychology, the defense attorney is in fact a far better psychologist than
the prosecutor. He argues persuasively that there was no money,
no robbery, and no murder—at least no murder committed by
Dmitri. Seeing far deeper into Smerdyakov’s soul than most, the
defense attorney gives good reasons why Smerdyakov could have
killed his natural father.
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Only the reader has the privilege of having witnessed Dmitri,
filled with loathing in front of his hateful father, pulling out a brass
pestle from his pocket—and then not using it. Why didn’t Dmitri
kill his father? “God was watching over me then,” Dmitri used to
say afterwards. This is another reference to a divine intervention
that seems to have no place in a court of justice. (Recall Alyosha’s
“God will win!”) Due to Fetyukovich’s skill in destroying each
part of the whole accusation, there is, however, a reasonable chance
that Dmitri will either be released or at worst given minimal punishment. But in the chapter entitled “A Sudden Catastrophe,”
Dmitri’s spurned lover Katya, ready to sacrifice her honor for his
brother Ivan, who has just been carried out of the court suffering
an attack of brain fever, comes forward with a letter from Dmitri
that she has been withholding. She presumably intends to use the
letter to save Dmitri, despite the fact that he has stolen 3,000 rubles
from her—the entirety of which she thinks he has spent in a single
drunken binge with her rival Grushenka that night before the murder. In this letter, written just two days before the murder, Dmitri
says that he will get hold of the money he has stolen from her, even
if he has to rob and kill his father to do so. The reader knows that
Katya asked Dmitri to send these 3,000 rubles to a relative in
Moscow, though she fully believed at the time that he would spend
the entire sum on Gurschenka. Two other facts must be remembered: 1) before the events of the novel, Dmitri lent Katya 5,000
rubles to cover up a financial indiscretion committed by her father;
2) Dmitri (who did not in fact steal the 3,000 rubles from his father)
spent only half of Katya’s 3,000 rubles during his wild night with
Grushenka. He retained the rest in a packet tied around his chest,
uncertain whether to return the unspent half to Katya (thus removing half of his disgrace), or to keep it for the opportunity of running
off with Grushenka.
It is only natural that the reader should be confused by the intricate adding and subtracting of monetary sums. Dostoevsky, always in need of money himself, deftly uses sums of money to show
how human beings struggle to regulate equality, honor, pride, and
justice among themselves.
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But back to the letter. This suddenly revealed document, an
apparent blueprint of the murder, gives “mathematical significance” (619) to the prosecutor’s case. And though the words
“mathematical significance” are a clear signal to readers of Dostoevsky that whatever is certain in this way is certainly not true, it
is equally certain that a jury will be very unlikely to yield a verdict
of not guilty in the face of such evidence.
Aware of the difficulty of achieving a verdict of not guilty, and
despite having just produced his own “demonstration” that there
was no money, robbery, or murder, Fetyukovich (whose name in
Russian suggests the words “jerk, drip, sourpuss”) addresses the
jury, changing his tone and his approach: “I have it in my heart to
speak out something more to you, for I also sense a great struggle
in your hearts and minds. . . Forgive my speaking of your hearts
and minds, gentlemen of the jury, but I want to be truthful and sincere to the end.” “I do not renounce one iota of what I have just
said, but suppose I did, suppose for a moment that I, too, agreed
with the prosecution that my unfortunate client stained his hands
with his father’s blood” (741).
This begins the second part of Fetyukovich’s summary to the
jury. Dostoevsky entitles the chapter “An Adulterer of Thought,”
without any comment on this astonishing title. Since the corpse of
a father is the only fact in the case that could speak against his
client, Fetyukovich tries to show that Fyodor was not at all a father.
He masterfully summarizes the most poignant scenes in the novel
in order to paint Fyodor in the worst possible light. He shows why
it would have been completely natural for Dmitri to have beaten
and killed his father (who is in truth not a father) with the fatal pestle (which the reader knows was not even the real murder weapon)
without intention or premeditation. “Such a murder is not a murder.
Such a murder is not a parricide, either. Such a murder can be considered parricide only out of prejudice” (747). The attorney then
invokes a passage from the gospel according to Matthew, and compares Dmitri’s plight to that of Christ. The most terrible punishment, but the only one by which Dmitri’s soul will be saved, would
be for the jury to overwhelm him with mercy. Only then would
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Dmitiri— horrified by his deed—which, according to the defense
attorney’s earlier argument, Dmitri had not done)—realize that he
was guilty before all people.
Fetyukovich “adulterates thought” by fabricating a dangerous
novel (“novel upon novel,” shouts the prosecutor [748]), a concoction that is all the more wicked because it is a false image of Father
Zosima’s teaching. And, more important, it is the opposite of what
Dostoevsky has spent his whole life attempting to articulate. Only
the prosecutor, “breathless, inarticulate, confused” and “shaking
with emotion” (748), has the courage to respond. Of course his response will receive no sympathy from the mass of spectators, especially the mothers and fathers, who have amazingly enough
become enraptured by the words of the adulterer. Though the prosecutor is vain and beaten down by a failed life, though his superficial psychology prevents him from understanding the motives
and actions of the human beings right in front of him, he knows
with certainty that one cannot kill and not kill at the same time,
that one cannot praise and immortalize a man who murders his father, and that a false image of Christ and religion have been fabricated by his talented competitor. The reader is easily irritated by
the just response of this pathetic man (the prosecutor will himself
die soon after the trial) to a powerful and dangerous speech that is
arguing for a new understanding of human justice, one that includes a notion of mercy which could only be found in God or in
the heart of an individual human being.
I have pointed out that Dmitri, the prosecutor, and the defense
attorney have all been accused of acting out novels. By his subtle
but powerful use of chapter titles, Dostoevsky himself takes the
harshest stance toward the defense attorney. The Russian word for
“adulterer” (or “fornicator”) is a variation of the word for “lover.”
Fetyukovich, who claims to be able to feel “invisible threads that
bind the defense attorney and the jury together,” whom everyone,
including himself, expects to pull off some kind of miracle by proving Dmitri innocent when he is guilty, ends up by “proving” Dmitri
guilty when in truth he is innocent. His call to regenerate not only
Dmitri but also Russia herself is met with rapture and enthusiastic
weeping among the spectators, and the reader too is likely to be
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sympathetic. When he pleads with the jury to show mercy to
Dmitri even if he did kill his father, he shows himself not to be a
seeker of truth but to be unjust—indeed, an adulterer of thought.
He is unjust because he portrays Christ as an enlightened and compassionate liberal rather than the Son of God, who died in order to
save human beings from the power of sin.
We can detest Fyodor Karamazov in the depths of our souls.
We can pity the children that he brought into the world. We can
wish that he were dead and wonder why such a man is alive. But
we cannot excuse the man who killed him. That man, Smerdyakov,
hangs himself from a nail on his wall with a brief note saying that
he alone is responsible for his own death. This extreme isolation
is what Dostoevsky sees as the dreadful future of a world that denies God. Instead of hanging an icon or image of God on the wall,
we will end up destroying ourselves. Dostoevsky the novelist, committed to real justice and truth, cannot allow the jury to be won
over by this adultery of thought, even though what results is a momentary injustice in a court of law. By entitling the next chapter
“Our Peasants Stood Up for Themselves,” he shows that he is
pleased that the peasants (who comprise half of the jury) are not
seduced by this highest and ultimately most dangerous form of seduction. Though their verdict was incorrect, the peasants understood a deeper truth and rightly stood up for it. Their hearts rejected
false novels.
But the real novel ends several months after Dmitri receives
his sentence. It ends with the burial of a ten-year old schoolboy,
Ilyusha. Dmitri had gravely insulted Ilyusha’s father, a retired and
drunken officer known as the Captain, by dragging him out of a
tavern and across town, pulling him by his wispy beard. Desperate
to provide for his family—his wife and older daughter are crippled
and ill—the Captain was employed by Fyodor, assisting him in
shady financial dealings. One of them was to buy up Dmitri’s
promissory notes so as to bring him to financial disgrace. Seeing
his father publicly humiliated, the young Ilyusha begged Dmitri to
forgive his father, “rushing up to everyone asking them to defend
him, but everyone laughed” (192). When Ilyusha’s schoolmates
heard about the incident they teased him mercilessly. The next day
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he angrily threw stones at them, but he himself received a great
blow to the chest. He came down with a fever, and died two days
after Dmitri was sentenced for the murder he did not commit.
Given Dostoevsky’s masterful juxtaposition of scenes and
events, it would be easy to connect Dmitri’s punishment with the
death of this young boy. As the proud and angry Katya says to
Alyosha, “Dmitri committed a rash and unjust act, a very ugly act”
(193). She commissions Alyosha to give a large sum of money to
the Captain in recompense for this act. The attempt at justice (in
truth Katya, herself recently injured by Dmitri, considers herself a
fellow sufferer) does not work at first. The Captain initially takes
the money, imagining a way out of abject poverty for himself and
his miserable family. But suddenly, shaking and tearful, flings
down the money at Alyosha’s feet. He will eventually take not only
this money, but much more from the generous, though proud,
Katya. But his son will nonetheless die and the doctors will not be
able to cure his family.
It was not unlikely that the previously consumptive Ilyushka’s
life would have been short. But that is not the point. All of us are
continually doing harm to our fellow human beings. While it does
not seem possible that any system of justice could regulate the
damages, we humans are always trafficking amongst one another,
exchanging goods and money in an attempt to achieve some kind
of fairness.
“Each of us is guilty in everything before everyone, and I most
of all” (289). This puzzling statement, lying powerfully in the
background of the novel, is said repeatedly by Father Zosima
throughout the novel. I have tried to show that Fetyukovich’s version is a dangerous adulteration of this claim. Dmitri, Ivan,
Smerdyakov, and even Alyosha can be held responsible for the
death of their father. Yet only one human being killed Fyodor and
it is the responsibility of the legal system to find and punish that
human being. Dmitri had previously thrown his father to the floor
and brutally kicked him, suspecting that Fyodor was hiding
Grushenka from him. Though drunk, he had written the damning
letter. Ivan had tacitly given Smerdyakov permission to kill Fyodor
by leaving town on the day of the murder; even worse, he had spent
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much of the night before his departure listening for sounds in the
house, unconsciously anticipating and desiring that someone would
come and kill his dreadful father. Alyosha, distracted by the death
of his hero Zosima, and overwhelmed with grief by the dishonor
of Zosima’s rotting corpse, had forgotten to keep in contact with
Dmitri. But Smerdyakov, having spent his entire life serving a family whose members he despised—except for Ivan, whose respect
he craved—understood the character of these Karamazovs, at least
in its baser aspects. He was able to set up a scenario in which it
would be possible for him to kill Fyodor, who trusted him, and
then steal the 3,000 rubles for which Dmitri had claimed he would
risk all. With this money, Smerdyakov imagined that he could start
a new life. And only Ivan could get Smerdyakov to confess—Ivan,
who, though he hated bitterly both his father Fyodor and his
brother Dmitri, had a conscience deeper than he himself knew.
During their conversation about the murder, Smerdyakov comes
to understand the emptiness and dishonesty of Ivan’s thoughts,
though he understands nothing of Ivan’s heart. And in that understanding about his former idol, he gives up on life, which had never
offered him anything but pain and misery. Smerdyakov—far cleverer and wiser than even the most observant reader could suspect—
sees that Ivan is more like his father than any of the brothers.
The chain of responsibility is endless. Grushenka says in
court, “It all happened because of me” (682)—claiming responsibility both for Fyodor’s and Dmitri’s falling in love with her.
Shortly thereafter, she says of Katerina, who had tried to charm
her out of loving Dmitri, “She is the cause of everything” (683).
And at the time of Dmitri’s arrest, Grushenka, hearing that Dmitri
had supposedly killed his father, had cried, “I am the guilty one,
first and foremost, I am the guilty one!” (457)
But everyone gets the problem of justice wrong, precisely because it is impossible to see clearly into the heart of another
human being. Father Zosima immediately understands the danger
looming before the Karamazov family in the first chapters of the
novel. That is why he bows before Dmitri and encourages Alyosha
to look after him. But Zosima cannot control the outcomes stemming from human nature. He can only preach “active love”—a
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difficult and profound concept derserving of another talk—and he
can pray.
While I do not claim that the following is a solution to the
problem of human justice, I’d like to end this talk with a quotation
from Father Zosima:
If it were not for Christ’s Church, indeed there would
be no restraint on the criminal in his evildoing and no
punishment for it later, real punishment, that is, not a
mechanical one . . . , which only chafes the heart in most
cases, but a real punishment, the only frightening and
appeasing punishment which lies in the acknowledgement of one’s own conscience (64).
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Peaceniks and Warmongers:
The Disunity of Virtue
in Plato’s Statesman
Peter Kalkavage
89
I want to begin by saying how my theme is related to justice. Plato
and Aristotle often connect justice with wholeness. And it is wholeness—the whole of virtue and the whole of a political community—that is very much at issue, and at risk, in Plato’s Statesman.
Perhaps at risk as well is the wholeness of logos or discourse.
Plato’s mysterious stranger from Elea delights in division. In
the Sophist he uses the method of dividing genera or kinds to pin
down the elusive professor of wisdom. In the Statesman he uses
this same method, with some modifications, to show the genuine
statesman and king “naked and alone by himself” (304a). But the
stranger isn’t all about logic. Like Socrates, he enjoys images of
all sorts and regularly avails himself of their curious power to illuminate. In the Statesman, soon after the great myth about reversed
becoming, the stranger announces the need for paradigms in inquiry.
He tells young Socrates that they would do well in their search if
they came up with a paradigm that would, in its small and humble
way, help to reveal the magisterial form, the eidos, of the true king
(277d).
This paradigm, as we soon hear, is weaving (279b). Politics is
the master-art that weaves together all the other arts in the city and
bends them to its high purpose. But it is not until late in the dialogue, almost at the end, that the precise meaning of the paradigm
is explained. The true statesman, we discover, knows how to interweave courageous and moderate types of souls. To use the language of the paradigm, he combines the warp or hard woollen
threads, which resemble courageous natures, with the woof or soft
threads, which resemble moderate natures. Properly combined,
these human threads produce “the web of statesmanly action”
(311B). This web is the wisely constituted polis—the beautiful end
of politics conceived as a productive art.
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But the path to this beautiful end requires an account that the
stranger calls “somewhat astonishing”—astonishing because it
proceeds from the view that virtue is not a happy unity, in which
different portions of virtue are “friendly” to one another, as the
many say and as Socrates suggests in other dialogues. On the contrary, virtue has within it, and seems even to be defined by, a war
between courage and moderation. The stranger is unsparing in his
formulation. The two virtues, he says, “have a deep-seated enmity
toward one another and maintain an oppositional faction in many
of the things that are” (306b). The stranger, we must note, does not
ask Socrates’ question: What is virtue? Instead, he posits an opposition between two forms of virtue. This opposition, more than anything else in the dialogue, defines the political art.
To illustrate his point, the stranger urges young Socrates to consider the two forms (eidē) that come to light when we praise things
for their beauty—various doings and makings, whether of bodies
or of souls (306c). We praise things that manifest “keenness and
swiftness.” These can be the things themselves or their images—
the swift movement of a runner, for example, or a vase painting
depicting such a runner. The name for what underlies such praise
is andreia, “courage” or “manliness.” This is the form we are admiring when we praise the keen and the swift.
But we also praise what the stranger calls “the gentle form of
generation.” We praise as beautiful those actions and thoughts that
are quiet, modulated, slow, and careful. The name for this form is
orderliness or composure, kosmiotēs (307b) It refers to moderation
as the virtue of keeping things measured and undisturbed. We think
of things like a smooth transition in a piece of music or a soothing
tone of voice. To sum up, we are thoroughly contradictory in our
praise of beauty. We praise as beautiful those things that have a
manly look, and we also praise the look that is opposed to manliness. Furthermore, we blame as ugly both what is opposed to manliness and what is opposed to the opposite of manliness, that is,
what is opposed to moderation. We do all this, we should note, not
because we are inept but because beauty itself is self-opposed.
Shifting now from things that display opposed virtues to the
very natures of courage and moderation, the stranger refers to these
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as “looks [ideas] destined . . . to be split apart in hostile faction.”
He then turns to the people who have these natures in their souls,
not by choice or upbringing but by nature (307b-c). Faction is here
described as a feud between warring families. Members of each
family judge the beautiful and the good solely in terms of their
family virtue, and hate members of the other family simply because
they are in the other family. This love of Same and hate of Other
blinds each family to the common, if problematic, eidos of virtue
that both families share. Each family, by virtue of its virtue, is blind
to the virtue and beauty of the other. As a consequence, members
of neither family really know their own virtue, since they do not
know why and in what manner their characteristic virtue is beautiful and good. Because of this blindness and the mutual hate it engenders, the two families, though they live in cities, may be said
to occupy, in Hobbes’s phrase, a pre-political “state of nature” with
respect to virtue.
As if this situation weren’t bad enough, the stranger goes on to
say that the family feud between noble types is child’s play compared with the disease that is “the most hateful of all for cities”
(307d). It is here that the stranger shows why the two forms of
virtue, and the two opposed types of soul, constitute the central
problem of politics. Indeed, he demonstrates the urgent need of the
political art in the Reign of Zeus, the era in which the world has
been abandoned by its divine shepherd and guide.
The stranger gives a devastating portrait of what happens to
cities that fall prey to the ethos of peace at any cost. He refers, paradoxically, to the eros for composure (307e)—the only appearance
of this word in the dialogue—as if to say: “Look at these people,
young Socrates. To themselves they seem all calm and reserved,
but in fact they have a disordered desire for order. Why, they are
as crazy as a man in love!” Perhaps there is also the suggestion
that eros, for the stranger, is to be associated with what is soft or
tender rather than with the sort of tough love that Diotima describes
in the Symposium (203c-e). In any case, because of their unmeasured love of order, these people slip unwittingly into an unwarlike
condition and raise their children to be similarly unwarlike. The
condition spreads through the city like an infection and becomes
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more virulent with each generation. Since unmixed moderation
cannot accommodate itself to the aggression of an enemy, cannot
rouse citizens to display a decisive and manly spirit when this is
needed, the city eventually loses its freedom and becomes enslaved.
The very same result awaits the macho city that wants war at
any cost and is driven by thymos, spiritedness, rather than eros.
The rage for courage leads citizens and rulers to be constantly tensing up their cities for opportunities to display what they wrongly
take to be the whole of virtue. Before too long, the city that idolizes
courage eventually picks a fight with the wrong adversary, an
enemy it can’t vanquish, and so is vanquished in turn. Like the
peace-loving city, the war-driven city ends in destruction and slavery (308a).
Now we normally think of faction, stasis, as the strife between
two parties within a single city. But the stranger’s view in the present context is very different. The political problem par excellence
is, for him, not violent heterogeneity (for example, champions of
oligarchy vs. champions of democracy) but virtuous homogeneity,
the idolatry of one of two opposed virtues, either courage or moderation. To be sure, there is faction in its usual sense within the
form of virtue. This is the eidetic situation, known only to the
philosophic statesman. But the real-life political problem occurs
when the two naturally opposed virtues are not simultaneously
present. Hence, as the stranger sees it, the devastating political outcome of the principle “likes attract and opposites repel” is enacted
on the stage of inter-polis relations, when a city suffers destruction
at the hands of another city rather than from internal discord. The
stranger is surely not unaware of the evils of faction in this latter
sense—the horrors, for example, that Thucydides describes in the
case of Corcyra (Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War,
3.82). But for the stranger this is not the central political problem,
which has its source in the eidetic opposition between the beautifully tough and the beautifully gentle that pervades “many of the
things that are.” The problem is not vice, or human nature simply,
or intense disagreement over which regime is best, but virtue,
which is by nature turned against itself.
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We might try to make sense of the stranger’s unsettling account
by citing Aristotle’s distinction between natural and ethical virtue,
the latter being guided by the intellectual virtue of phronēsis or
practical wisdom, which allows the virtuous individual to avoid
excess and deficiency by perceiving the mean (Nichomachean
Ethics, 6.13). This is helpful to an extent, but it takes the sting out
of the stranger’s insight into why virtue is a problem. The stranger
would no doubt agree with Aristotle’s opinion that virtuous dispositions, when left to themselves, are dangerous, and that they
need practical wisdom in order to be reliable virtues. But far more
important to the stranger is the primordial dyad of courage and
moderation—the dyad that defines the task of the political art.
That task is not how to interweave a multiplicity of virtues in order
to make them one but how to unite two naturally opposed virtues
so that they may complement rather than repel one another and
contribute their distinctive powers to the political web. These are
toughness and flexibility, quickness and caution, forcefulness and
grace.
It is tempting to say that the problem of politics, for the stranger,
is that of knowing how to interweave the male and the female
forms of ethical beauty. It is true that each virtue, by the stranger’s
account, must apply to both men and women. How else could one
trait come to dominate a city’s population through marriage and
procreation? Nevertheless, the manliness of courage strongly suggests as its correlate the femininity of moderation. If we admit this
sexual distinction in the case of the two virtues, it becomes interesting, to say the least, that the paradigm for political wisdom in
the dialogue is the feminine art of weaving. This may be Plato’s
way of showing that, of the two opposed virtues, moderation, as
the love of order and peace, is closer than courage to justice and
wisdom. It may also show Plato’s philosophic preference for
music over gymnastic, since weaving engages in deft material harmonization. In good statesmanship, as in philosophy, grace trumps
force to become the greatest force of all. This is true even for our
tough-minded, methodically rigorous stranger, who tells young
Socrates that the statesman and good lawgiver knows how to instil
right opinions in others “by the muse of kingship” (309d).
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The stranger proceeds to outline the education and nurture that
will generate the needful thing—the artful synthesis of virtuous
opposites in a coherent political whole. This whole, this web, in
order to be beautiful, requires beautiful threads that have been previously prepared by means of a subsidiary art. Statesmanship, like
all compositional art, is elitist: only the best materials will do. And
so, there must be an artful way to determine who is fit for an ethical-political education, and who is not. This consists in observing
children at play in order to see which ones show signs of a virtuous
disposition, whether of courage or moderation. The stranger lays
special emphasis on those who prove to be uneducable. He describes them as “violently driven off course by a bad nature into
godlessness and arrogance and injustice” (308E-309A). The political art, here seen in its harsh and decisive aspect, casts them out
“by punishing them with death penalties and exiles and the greatest
dishonors.” And those who “wallow in ignorance and much baseness” are put into the class of slaves.
The stranger at this point explicitly connects the union of manly
and moderate natures with the intertwining of warp and woof
(309b), in effect closing the paradigm-web he began to weave earlier in the dialogue. The city, in order to be a durable garment suited
to the protection of all those it embraces, needs both kinds of
human threads: the hard and the soft. This unity of opposites requires a two-tiered system of civic education that produces two
sorts of “bonds”—one higher, one lower. The higher bond is said
to be divine, since it applies to the part of the soul that is “eternalborn,” the part that thinks and holds opinions. The lower, human
bond is marriage, which applies to what the stranger calls “the animal-born part,” that is, the part of the soul that has to do with bodily desire. The bonds are produced successively: first the higher,
then the lower. Once the higher bond of right opinion is in place,
the stranger asserts, the lower one isn’t difficult to bring about
(310a). This optimism presupposes that the divine bond is strong
enough to overcome the greatest of all human drives—the erotic
attraction that human beings have for one another and that connects
them, as we hear in the Symposium, with the striving for immortality (207a).
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The higher tier of the educational process aims at inculcating
“genuinely true and also steadfast opinions about beautiful and just
and good things” (309c). These opinions are implanted in both
types of noble individuals. In other words, the inculcation of “one
opinion about what’s beautiful and just and good” supersedes the
idolatry of a single virtue and overcomes the natural impulse to
welcome one’s like and shun one’s unlike. Moderate and courageous individuals will share the opinion that it is good for the city
that they mingle, and bad if they don’t. In other words, they will
learn to respect, if not love, a virtue higher than either courage or
moderation—the virtue of justice. They will believe that they and
their respective virtues are threads that must be woven together to
form the political web.
I note in passing that the education the stranger describes is
based entirely on the cultivation of habits and right opinion. There
is no philosophic education for guardians, no turning of the soul
from becoming to being, as there is in the Republic. The stranger’s
version of a city in speech may be the work of a philosophic statesman, but it does not appear that this statesman, though possessing
kingly science, is in fact a king in this city.
The stranger dwells on how the higher sort of education, which
aims at the divine bond, tempers the excess in the two opposed
virtues. If a manly individual takes hold of true opinions about
what is good and beautiful and just, he will “grow tame and in this
way be most willing to commune with just things.” Without these
opinions, he will degenerate into a beast (309e). Similarly, the
order-loving individual who holds these same true opinions will
become “genuinely moderate and intelligent,” and the one who
doesn’t will rightly be called simpleminded or foolish. The establishment of these true opinions takes place through laws and customs that apply only to those naturally suited for an ethical
education. This education, the stranger asserts, is the “drug” prescribed by the ever-vigilant art of politics. It is the antidote for onesided virtue.
At last we reach the stranger’s account of marriage, the “human
bond” implanted by the political art. This bond, though lower than
the other, is crucial, since the city’s continuance and well-being
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depend on procreation through sexual union. We should recall that
it is not courage and moderation per se that bring about political
downfall but rather the gradual build-up and concentration of a single virtue through sexual generation over the course of time. As
the stranger approaches his culminating definition, he gets down
to the nitty-gritty of why people marry. He dismisses those who
marry for wealth or power and focuses on those whose care is family and children. These are the people who marry, or who arrange
the marriages of their sons and daughters, for the serious (if wrong)
reason that they always choose partners who are of their own family when it comes to virtue and eschew members of the opposite
family.
The political art counteracts this error, goes against nature, by
compelling members of each “family” to overcome their natural
repugnance for the other and to marry against type. This will prevent the spread of a single trait by producing hybrids that combine
both virtuous types. The stranger does not say what home life will
be like for married opposites, nor does he care. The only thing that
matters, from a political standpoint, is that the virtues are mixed
rather than kept separate. Of course, genesis in the Reign of Zeus
is unpredictable: there will always be children whose nature reduplicates that of, say, a courageous mother rather than a moderate
father. And so, the political art must exercise perpetual vigilance
and continually oversee marriage and sexual union. The war on
nature must go on.
The needful union of opposed virtues must be enforced at the
highest level of the city—that of the rulers. The stranger acknowledges that it is possible for one individual to have both virtues
(311a). The monarchic city must choose this sort of individual as
its supervisor. If more than one ruler is required—if the city is aristocratic—then the ruling class must have both kinds of virtuous individuals. The reason is that moderate rulers are cautious, just, and
conservative, but they lack, the stranger says, the needful acuity
and vigor, which would be supplied by the courageous among the
ruling class. The stranger ends his “astonishing account” of virtue
on a negative note: “And it’s impossible for all things having to do
with cities to turn out beautifully in private and in public when
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these characters [courage and moderation] aren’t present as a pair”
(311b).
Only one thing remains: the final definition of the web that is
produced by the true statesman’s knowledge. Will this web, as the
stranger glowingly describes it, ever be woven in deed as it is in
speech? From the stranger’s perspective, it does not matter. The
goal was to define statesmanship solely in terms of the statesman’s
knowledge or science, apart from whether he actually rules,
founds, reforms, or advises (259b).
What, then, does the statesman know? Not, it seems, how to
lead individuals to virtue, but how to temper the virtue they already
have by nature. The statesman’s wisdom is the wisdom of defence.
That is why the stranger tends to dwell more on bad things to be
avoided and feared than on good things to be sought and aspired
to. Politics is a defensive art. It is embodied in the web that ends
the dialogue. Strange to say, when we finally find the statesman
“naked and alone,” he turns out to be a maker of garments, which
earlier in the dialogue were placed in the class of defences (279c280a). He is the maker of the web that is both the body politic and
the political cloak that defends the otherwise naked city from its
enemies, the virtuous from their monomania and wrong marriages,
and all its inhabitants from exposure and need. Perhaps most of
all, the political web protects the city from the ravages and uncertainties of time. A good garment is one that wears well. It must
protect us from seasonal extremes. The same is true of the political
garment, which must defend the city not only during the winter of
war and its discontents but also during the summer of peace, prosperity, and inattention.
In Plato’s Statesman, politics appears in its true light only when
it is seen in the context of the stranger’s cosmic myth about the
Reign of Kronos and the Reign of Zeus. The myth compels us to
judge the tension-riddled, endangered life we have now by contrasting it with an earlier peaceful life that ended in disappearance
rather than old age and death, that had no sex or sexual desire, and
that needed neither politics nor clothes. The myth discloses what
is most needful for beleaguered humanity in this our Reign of
Zeus—the era that depends on the god-like statesman and shepherd
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because it can no longer depend on a kindly nature and a caretaking
god.
I suspect that the world for the stranger is, like virtue, fundamentally incoherent. Strictly speaking, there is no kosmos, no permanent world-order that grounds the inherent goodness of the
virtues. Instead there are two opposed cosmic eras, two opposed directions of becoming, and two opposed forms of human life and
human nature. In the Reign of Zeus—that is, in the realm of politics—the “condition of ancient disharmony,” the tendency toward
degenerateness that is woven into the very constitution of the world
on account of its bodily being, asserts itself (273c). That is why we
need the Promethean powers of method and art—to make order
where there is no order. In the Statesman—one of Plato’s fascinating experiments in post-Socratic philosophy—Plato tempts us to
consider the grounds and implications of this modern-sounding
world-view.
�ESSAYS & LECTURES
Raskolnikov’s Redemption
Nicholas Maistrellis
99
The narrative of Crime and Punishment is very straightforward.
An impoverished university student named Raskolnikov plans and
commits a murder. The murder accidently turns into a double
murder. There follows a sequence of incidents and conversations
that reveal the turmoil this act causes in the soul of the criminal.
Through two conversations with a young prostitute named Sonya
the murderer finally confesses his crime, first to her and then to
the authorities. Finally there is an epilogue in which we are told
that Raskolnikov is sentenced to a period of imprisonment in
Siberia. Sonya follows him to Siberia. Remarkable things happen
to him there.
Of all the four great novels of Dostoevsky–Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons, and The Brothers Karamazov—it is only
in this one that Dostoevsky creates a sustained dialectic with the interior life of one and only one character. Crime, on the other hand,
is a theme in all the novels, but it’s only in this one that Dostoevsky
focuses single-mindedly on unfolding the nature of crime, together
with its causes and effects in the human soul. This makes it particularly relevant to the theme of this conference. However, Dostoevsky is not as interested in criminal justice as he is in the effects
of crime, first on the soul of the criminal, and finally, on the whole
human community. This doesn’t mean that he ignores justice. In
fact, the question of Raskolnikov’s debt to society occupies a large
part of the book, especially in the interrogation of Raskolnikov by
Porfiry Petrovitch, the investigating detective who suspects very
early in the book that Raskolnikov is the murderer, and in the conversations with Sonya, the prostitute who befriends Raskolnikov.
Considerations of justice are a dialectical moment in the unfolding
of crime, and not the highest moment. By “dialectical moment” I
mean that the claims of justice are gathered up and form part of the
transformation of the redeemed criminal. These dialectical moments
cannot be the highest moment of the transformation.
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Now, the claims of justice could be said to be satisfied when
the criminal is punished. But Dostoevsky is not interested in punishment as retribution. He thinks it is ineffective. He is interested
in punishment only in so far as the demand for it arises in the criminal himself, and results in his redemption. The highest moment
is when the criminal acknowledges his crime and asks for forgiveness from the whole human community. Thus, Dostoevsky’s treatment is “psychological,” if it is clear that by psychology one does
not mean a putative science of the soul, but an attempt to get to
know another human being. In his notebooks on Crime and Punishment Dostoevsky makes the extraordinary claim that it is the
crime itself that makes Raskolnikov a moral being. “His moral development begins from the crime itself; the possibility of such
questions arises which would not have existed previously.”1 It is
impossible in a short paper to do more than give a sketch of this
theme, and even this sketch will focus on only a few incidents.
Let me begin with Dostoevsky’s account of crime. The commission of a crime, for him, is a sign that the criminal has separated
himself from his fellow human beings. It is not the crime that separates the criminal, but some transformation in his soul which
causes him to focus his attention entirely on himself. Such transformations are hard to discern. Often, even those closest to the
criminal are puzzled about what is going on. Even the criminal
himself is not fully aware of what is moving him. He becomes surprised at his own behavior. I think this is Dostoevsky’s reason for
believing that ordinary punishment is useless in reforming the
criminal. Since the criminal has separated himself from society, he
feels that the power of society is arbitrary and that the freedom he
has given himself precisely by his separation from his fellows
makes retribution merely another act of violence equivalent to his
own. He both resents the power of society and despises it. Redemption cannot come from actions done to the criminal; it has to
arise in his own soul.
The whole novel takes place over the span of two weeks, and
the crime occurs at the end of Part I, about three days into the action. In the days leading up to the crime, Raskolnikov has stopped
going out. He has stopped seeing his friend Razhumikin, and has
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stopped communicating with his mother and sister. He has also
stopped tutoring students. He has no income. He hasn’t paid his
rent for a long time. He spends most of his time sleeping in his
room—a horrible garret. He eats only when Natashya, the caretaker, brings him something. He is withdrawing from the world.
On the very first page of the novel, the narrator says, “He was so
immersed in himself, and had isolated himself so much from everyone that he was afraid not only of meeting his landlady, but of meeting anyone at all.”2 Very soon, however, we are introduced to an
ambiguity in Raskolnikov. At the beginning of the second chapter
of Part I, we are told that he “was not used to crowds. . . . But now
something suddenly drew him to people.”3 This is the first indication of the doubleness in Raskolnikov’s soul. He separates himself
from others, but he cannot do it with his whole soul. Later we will
learn that it is this doubleness that makes redemption possible.
The sequence of events in Part I leading up to the murder is
very important to Dostoevsky’s dialectic, so I will take some time
going over them. On the first day, Raskolnikov wakes up, goes out,
and almost immediately visits the pawnbroker, Alyona Ivanovna,
whom he is planning to murder. He pretends he wants to pawn
something. Dostoevsky carefully reveals to us Alyona’s poisonous,
grasping character. This visit is a rehearsal of the murder, so the
murder is committed twice in his soul. He assures himself of the
rightness of what he is planning by reminding himself of Alyona’s
wickedness. By this he shows the conventional side of his character, which he despises. He then decides that he wants to be with
people, and decides to go to the tavern. There he enters into conversation with Marmeladov, a civil servant and a drunkard who is
deliberately destroying his own life and his family’s life. Raskolnikov helps bring him home and meets his consumptive wife and
hungry children. Marmeladov is the father of Sonya, the fourteenyear-old prostitute with whom Raskolnikov falls in love. When he
departs, Raskolnikov leaves behind, without saying anything, most
of his money. The narrator makes it clear that Raskolnikov’s own
generosity at this moment is unintelligible to him. He returns home
and goes to sleep.
The next morning, he is given a letter from his mother that re-
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counts in great detail her numerous trials, including the decision
by his sister to marry someone despicable in order to escape
poverty. While reading the letter, the narrator tells us, his face was
wet with tears, but when he finishes, “it was pale, twisted convulsively, and a heavy bilious, spiteful smile wandered over his lips.”4
Raskolnikov returns to wandering around town, and he encounters a drunk girl whose disheveled clothing had clearly been
thrown on her by those who had made use of her before turning
her out on the street. She is being followed by a middle-aged, welldressed man whose intentions are obvious. Raskolnikov’s first impulse is to help her. He yells at the man, and calls to a nearby police
officer for assistance. He gives the officer some money for a taxi
to bring the girl home when they find where she lives. The narrator
then tells us, “At that moment it was as if something stung Raskolnikov, as if he had been turned about in an instant.” He immediately says to the police officer, “Forget it! What do you care? Leave
her alone. Let him have fun. . . . What is it to you?”5 Raskolnikov
now identifies with the presumed violator.
He then continues his frantic pilgrimage through St. Petersburg, and finally collapses in complete exhaustion under some
bushes, where he falls asleep. He dreams a terrible dream: He is a
boy walking with his father and they witness a peasant beating his
horse to death, accompanied by cheers from the crowd. He tries to
stop the peasant, but he cannot. He asks his father to explain, but
he only replies that it is none of their business. When Raskolnikov
wakes up, he exclaims, “Thank God it was only a dream!” followed almost immediately by “God! But can it be, can it be that I
will really take an axe and hit her on the head and smash her skull
. . . slip in the sticky warm blood, break the lock, steal, and tremble,
and hide, all covered with blood . . . with the axe . . . Lord, can it
be?”6 He has now identified himself not with the helpless witness
of the slaughter but with both the murderer and the victim, and he
is horrified. He continues walking and inadvertently discovers by
means of an overheard conversation that Alyona’s sister Lizaveta
will not be in their apartment at a certain time on the next day. He
takes this as a kind of presentiment, and the narrator tells us, “He
was not reasoning about anything, and was totally unable to reason;
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but suddenly felt with his whole being that he no longer had any
freedom either of mind or of will, and that everything had been
suddenly and finally decided.”7
On the next day, the third day, he kills Alyona with an ax. Unfortunately, Lizaveta comes home unexpectedly, and he has to kill
her too. He hurriedly and inexpertly steals some things and returns
to his apartment. He falls asleep again. He sleeps for a very long
time.
This is the account of Raskolnikov’s actions before, during,
and after the crime. The main thing I want to point out is Raskolnikov’s extraordinary ambivalence: he affirms the crime and yet is
horrified by it. He rejects human contact and yet seeks it. He weeps
for his mother and sister, yet he is filled with spite, and so on. He
cannot affirm anything in himself whole-heartedly.
Dostoevsky has structured the crime quite deliberately. In the
first place, he makes Alyona an unsympathetic victim. She is
greedy and selfish, and looks it. He does not want our confrontation
with the issue of crime to be sentimentalized by feelings of pity
for the victim. On the other hand, Lizaveta is a sympathetic character. We find that, although simple-minded, she is kind. In fact,
she is friendly with Sonya. Raskolnikov murders her purely for the
sake of concealment. So the disunity in Raskolnikov is mirrored
in the victims. Also, it is essential to the narrative that there is no
evidence against Raskolnikov. Through an improbable series of
circumstances, and in spite of his own blunders, Raskolnikov escapes undetected from a building filled with people, and manages
to hide what he stole before he is searched. Dostoevsky makes it
clear that all this is purely by chance, and even in spite of Raskolnikov doing things that could make it more likely that he would
be suspected. Dostoevsky has, in fact, constructed something like
a controlled experiment in which all variables except for the feelings and reactions of the criminal are controlled. If Raskolnikov is
to be found out, it would have to be by some action of his own.
We are ready now to consider the crime from Raskolnikov’s
point of view. He initially gives two reasons for the crime: first, he
needs the money to advance his career; second, he needs the money
to help his mother and sister. He understands both to be humani-
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tarian reasons. He is a very able man, and if he could advance his
career, he could do valuable work for mankind. He is a very able
man, and if he could advance his career, he could help his mother
and sister—and especially, he could prevent the unfortunate marriage of his sister, which she is clearly undertaking for financial
reasons. Contrasted with this is the fact that Alyona is a terrible
person, who not only has done nothing good for anyone but, in
fact, has done untold harm. Her death would be a blessing. Underlying these reasons is the idea that for the sake of humanity higher
human beings can transgress ordinary moral and civil laws. In fact,
Raskolnikov accepts the idea that great men do this all the time.
His recurrent example is Napoleon. In fact, Raskolnikov apparently
wrote an essay, which had been published, on this theme. Dostoevsky does not give his readers the opportunity to read it.
Up to this point in Raskolnikov’s internal dialectic, he considers himself a great man like Napoleon or Isaac Newton, a superior
person who needs to sacrifice ordinary conventions for some
higher good. But the conduct of the crime continually speaks
against this. The theft was botched because he didn’t take the time
to find the large cache of money in the apartment. He hides and
keeps the money and jewels he did manage to steal, ostensibly because it would be too dangerous to spend the money or sell the
jewels, but it is clear that its presence horrifies Raskolnikov because it reminds him of what he did. It becomes increasingly clear
that the reasons given for the crime do not come close to revealing
what is in his soul, or what he thinks is in his soul. This comes out
most decisively in what he says to Sonya during their second conversation:
“I tormented myself for so many days: would Napoleon
have gone ahead or not? It means I must already have
felt clearly that I was not Napoleon . . . . I endured all,
all the torment of this babble, Sonya, and I longed to
shake it all off my back: I wanted to kill without casuistry, Sonya, to kill for myself, for myself alone. I
didn’t want to lie about it even to myself! It was not to
help my mother that I killed—nonsense! I did not kill
so that, having acquired means and power, I could become a benefactor of mankind. Nonsense! I simply
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killed—killed for myself alone—and whether I would
later become anyone’s benefactor, or would spend my
life like a spider, catching everyone in my web and
sucking the life-sap out of everyone, should at that moment have made no difference to me! . . . And it was
not the money above all that I wanted when I killed,
Sonya; not the money so much as something else. . . .
I know all this now. . . . Understand me: perhaps, continuing on that same path, I would never again repeat
that murder. There was something else I wanted to
know; something else was nudging my arm. I wanted
to find out then, and find out quickly, whether I was a
louse like all the rest, or a man? Would I be able to step
over or not! Would I dare to reach down and take, or not?
Am I a trembling creature, or do I have the right—”
“To kill? The right to kill?” Sonya clasped her hands.8
105
What did Raskolnikov mean here when he says that he committed the crime entirely for himself?
The question of freedom was very important to Dostoevsky,
and especially the claim that the only way for a human being to affirm his freedom is through the commission of a crime for its own
sake. It is present in one way or another in all four of his major
works. Think, for example, of Nikolai Stavrogin in Demons. Dostoevsky takes this idea very seriously, and, in fact, affirms its truth
in some way. It is freedom that Raskolnikov is seeking, First, he is
seeking freedom from the bounds of social conventions, and also,
most importantly, from what he considers his own sentimental tendencies. This is why he has to separate himself off from other
human beings, why this separation is the source of crime. I do not
believe that Dostoevsky is saying that all criminals have motives
exactly like those of Raskolnikov, but I do think that some separation from mankind is at work in all criminals. Dostoevsky is particularly interested in exploring what happens when someone tries
to do this deliberately. After he commits the murder, Raskolnikov
is still torn, but now the stakes are much higher than before. Now
he has to see if he has the fortitude to affirm his crime, not as a
project, but as his deed. This affirmation would be the sign that
he was in fact a superior being, a free man, and not an ordinary
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criminal. But he discovers very quickly that he cannot affirm his
crime as he wishes. Sentimental regrets plague him. He becomes
ill, and experiences an almost overwhelming desire to confess. It
is this desire to confess which that exposes him to the interest of
the police. He now begins to feel regret for what he has done, but
this is not the regret the reader might expect. He does not regret
that he has done something wrong; he regrets that he cannot wholeheartedly affirm his crime. Of course, there is a part of him that
does regret the crime profoundly, that knows that he has done a
terrible thing; but it takes the the entire rest of the book for Raskolnikov to acknowledge that this other part is truly himself, and not
internalized convention. The doubleness we have seen in Raskolnikov’s behavior is now revealed as a doubleness within himself.
Through our own ambivalence, which is revealed to us as we read,
Dostoevsky shows us that this doubleness is not peculiar to Raskolnikov, but is true of us as well.
The novel proper ends with Raskolnikov’s confession, once to
Sonya, and once to the police. He has two conversations with
Sonya: the first is a rehearsal of his confession; the second is his
actual confession. This behavior mirrors the commission of the
murder. The confession to the police also has a doubleness about
it. He goes to the police station to confess, but at the last moment
runs out of the station. When he sees Sonya looking at him from
the street, he returns to the police station and confesses. The novel
ends with Raskolnikov’s confession, but the motive for it ambiguous. Is Raskolnikov finally filled with true remorse and the desire
for repentance, or is he confessing because he has failed to live up
to his own view of the murder and himself? Is he simply acknowledging his failure to affirm his crime? The novel inclines us to the
latter account, but it is hard to be sure.
In the Epilogue (which, by the way, does not appear at all in
Dostoevsky’s notebooks), we are told the Raskolnikov was sentenced to eight years hard labor in Siberia. Dostoevsky makes it
clear that both spirits in Raskolnikov are still at war during his imprisonment. The narrator tells us that Raskolnikov was suffering
not from remorse at the crime he committed, but from “wounded
pride” at the fact that he had to confess in order to find “some peace
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for himself.”9 But this was not repentance. “He did not repent of
his crime.”10 By the end of the Epilogue, however, he does repent.
How does this happen? I only have time here to give a bare sketch
of this transformation.
The first and most fundamental element of the change is his
love for Sonya. This love began almost from the moment he first
met her. This love was not intelligible to him. In fact, it annoys
him, and he tries to get rid of it, but it is clear, whether he likes it
or not, that she is what ties him to life itself. In Siberia, she becomes indispensible to him.
A second element in the change arises after an extraordinary
experience he undergoes while in Siberia. He discovers that all his
fellow prisoners, who have had much harder lives than he, love
life. “He looked at his fellow convicts and was amazed at how they,
too, all loved life, how they valued it! It precisely seemed to him
that in prison they loved and valued it even more, cherished it even
more than in freedom.”11 This experience, combined with his realization of the depth of Sonya’s love, brought about his transformation. Retributive punishment did nothing to heal his soul; but the
experience of living with dangerous, desperate men who nevertheless loved life made him whole again. This experience makes him
realize the meaning of the murders he committed: they were acts
against life itself, and thus against all human beings. In some
wholly mysterious way, this experience allows him to discover the
love of life in himself.
Let me end with a brief epilogue: a story of retribution and
penance related by my friend and colleague, Howard Zeiderman,
in an essay about the educational work he has been doing the last
fifteen years with prisoners at the maximum security prison in Jessup, Maryland. A group of prisoners were discussing a drawing as
a text:
The text was a drawing by Kathe Kolwitz, Prisoners
Listening to Music. The three prisoners depicted are
skeletal, with hollow eyes—and all seemingly gripped
by something. The session was not going very well and
I regretted trying to use a text that connected too
vividly with their situation. A number of the younger
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members were clearly repulsed by the drawing. When
I asked why a few who spoke often were silent, Larry
answered. “It’s scary looking at them. I don’t want that
to be me.” As he finished, another prisoner, Craig, a
man almost seventy years old who first served time
more than fifty years before, laughed. “You don’t understand nothing. They’re not dying. They’re gettin’
past their hungers. It’s the music that makes them
pure—like angels. Listen—when I was young down
south we had a chaplain. Every day he would play
music for us. Old music, beautiful. At first we couldn’t
listen to it. We never heard nothing like it. Sometimes
a song would last a long time, no words. But then we
started to love it. We would listen like in the picture,
and we’d remember things. And we’d cry. Sometimes
you could hear ten men cry. And sometimes the priest
would cry too. We were all together in it. But then he
retired and a new chaplain came. He was different. He
wanted us to see the doctors and counselors, the case
workers. They would ask us questions about ourselves
and make us go to classes, programs. They were working on us and the music ended. It was different. It was
them against us.” Correction, as Craig sensed, is entirely different from penance.12
NOTES
Fyodr Dostoevsky, The Notebooks for Crime and Punishment (Chicago:
Chicago University Press, 1967), 64.
1
Fyodr Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment, trans. Richard Pevear and
Larissa Volokhonsky (New York: Vintage, 1993), 3.
2
Ibid., 11.
Ibid., 39.
5
Ibid., 49.
6
Ibid., 59.
7
Ibid., 62.
8
Ibid., 419
9
Ibid., 543.
3
4
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10
11
Ibid., 544.
Ibid., 545.
109
Howard Zeiderman, “Caged Explorers: The Hunger for Control,” The
St. John’s Review 53.2 (2012): 157.
12
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Justice in Plato’s Statesman
Eric Salem
Ordinary politicians love to talk about justice, and to go on—and
on—about all the just things they have done, are doing, or mean to
do in the future. We see it all the time—just turn on the television,
especially in an election year. But what about the genuine article,
the true politikos, the statesman who possesses genuine political
science and who practices or could practice the genuine political
art? What role does justice play in such a man’s thinking and doing
and speaking?
A selective glance at our tradition suggests that justice plays a
very large role indeed. Consider, for instance, our own founding
documents—certainly works of statesmanship of a very high order.
The Constitution bluntly proclaims in its preamble that one of its
purposes is to “establish justice.” And the Declaration declares,
among other things, that governments exist for the sake of justice—that “governments are instituted among men to secure” the
rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Or consider the
Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle’s prolegomena to the Politics: his
treatment of justice is longer by far than his treatment of any other
virtue, and second in length only to his two-book treatment of
friendship—a topic that, for Aristotle, is itself deeply intertwined
with matters of justice and political life. Or to move a little closer
to our chosen topic, consider the Republic, Plato’s most famous
book about political affairs: all of Book I is devoted to justice, and
the inquiry into the goodness of justice that begins in Book II is
based on the assumption that an investigation of a well-constituted
city is bound to come across justice—because well-ordered cities,
like well-ordered souls, always contain it. In other words, all of
these texts suggest that a fairly deep connection exists between
politics and justice, and between thinking about justice and thinking about politics.
Suppose, then, we turn as novice readers to Plato’s Statesman,
which purports to be an inquiry into the nature of the statesman,
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the politikos, and the nature of his art or science, politikē. Given
the sketch we have just seen, we might expect the dialogue to contain a series of acute reflections on the relation between justice and
the true science of politics. We might even expect the Stranger
from Elea to take up again the question that Socrates had wanted
to pursue further at the end of Book I of the Republic, the “Socratic” question, “What is justice?” In fact we get nothing of the
sort. We get a strange, vast myth about the cosmos; we get an extended—some might say over-extended—account of weaving and
its attendant arts; we learn that men as herd-animals closely resemble pigs, on the one hand, and chickens, on the other. But we hear
next to nothing about justice.
To begin with, there is no extended discussion of justice in the
Statesman—no discussion of what it is or whether it’s good or bad
or anything else. As a matter of fact, justice-words, that is, words
cognate with Greek word for justice, turn up only about thirty times
in the entire dialogue. (In the Republic such words turn up more
than two hundred times in Book I alone.) What’s more, only about
half those appearances have the moral and political connotations
that we ordinarily associate with the word “justice.” In fact the
Greek word for justice, dikaiosunē, the word that is so central to
Socrates’s inquiry in the Republic and Aristotle’s inquiry in the
Ethics, does not appear in the Statesman at all. The word injustice
does turn up, once, but it refers, not to a tendency in citizens that
needs to be corrected, but to a disqualification for citizenship altogether. As for the remaining cases in the dialogue where justicewords are used with moral or political meaning, most are
disappointingly conventional, while the most interesting or promising phrases appear to come out of nowhere.
What are we to make of this peculiar state of affairs? Does
the relative rarity of justice-words in the dialogue point to a deep
divergence between the Stranger’s approach to politics and human
affairs and the approach of Socrates? Do considerations of justice
simply not play a major role in his thinking about politics? Do his
interests lie elsewhere? Or, on the contrary, is the Stranger’s thinking about politics shaped by a distinct conception of justice, but
one that leads him to employ the language of justice sparingly?
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In the end I want to suggest that the Stranger’s thinking about
politics is in fact profoundly shaped by a certain conception of justice—a peculiar one, to be sure, but perhaps no more peculiar than
the one Socrates lays out in the Republic, and perhaps not so very
different from it either. But I mean to approach this conclusion in
a rather roundabout way, by first considering seriously the possibility that the Stranger is just not very interested in justice and that
his lack of interest is reflected in his thinking about the science of
politics. My hope is that this indirect approach will force out into
the light what is distinctive about his understanding.
If the Stranger is not interested in justice, what is he interested
in? Almost any page of the Statesman—or the Sophist—gives us
the answer: the arts and sciences, including his own science or art
of division. In the Phaedrus, Socrates calls himself a lover of collections and divisions, and elsewhere in the dialogues he makes
constant use of analogies with the arts. But the Stranger goes much
further: he seems to see the whole human world as an interconnected array of always-multiplying arts, the sorting out of which
into their more or less natural divisions is one of the philosopher’s
prime tasks. Angling and sophistry, louse-catching and generalship,
doctoring and potion-making—all these arts and at least fifty more
make their appearance somewhere in the Sophist or Statesman.
The Stranger’s myth, his cosmic vision, helps us to understand
this remarkable proliferation of arts and the Stranger’s acute interest
in them. During the age of Saturn, we enjoyed a carefree life under
the care of the gods. With no regimes and no families, we lived on
the fruits that sprang spontaneously from trees and bushes, talked
with the animals, slept naked on the grass and woke up every
morning feeling just a little bit . . . younger. But that time is long
past. This is the age of Zeus. The world has grown harsh, the gods
have withdrawn, and we grow old. We have been left to our own
devices, and those devices, the first fruits of our new-age thinking,
are the arts. Men need food; the arts of agriculture and herding and
hunting (including the art of angling) must be developed. Men need
shelter from winter cold and summer sun, from the animals that no
longer like us and from . . . other men. The arts of wall-making and
house-building, shoe-making and armor-crafting, rug-making and
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wool-working must come on the scene. This list could go on: along
with needs arise desires. Every need or desire demands a new art,
and every new art demands a new sub-array of subordinate arts to
provide materials to be worked up and tools to work with.
Atop this dizzying array of arts is a kind of art of arts, an überart, if you will. For man the artisan is also man the herd animal,
and the human herd, like all herds, needs to be tended and managed. This art or science of herd management as applied to the
human herd is . . . statesmanship. Its task is neither simple nor easy.
It must rule over the other arts and sciences, deciding which ones
are to be learned and to what degree. To retain its purity of purpose,
it must keep itself separate from the arts most akin to itself, the arts
of persuasion and generalship and judging. Under certain circumstances it must engage in lawmaking. But its most difficult task
has to do with the noblest natures under its sway. Just as nature left
to itself, and permeated by the Other, seems to give rise to deception, and thus to sophistry (including the sophistry that masquerades as statesmanship), so too, human nature left to itself seems to
give rise to two distinct and opposed temperaments: courageous
natures and moderate natures. Left to themselves, these natures
tend to separate from each other and, in the end, degenerate into
self-destructive factions. To combat this most dangerous of threats,
the statesman must become a master weaver, a webmaster of the
spirit and of the body too; he must find ways to knit together the
lives of the city’s noblest natures. For only thus can the city become
and remain a self-bound, self-sufficient whole.
This would seem to be a good time to ask what place, if any,
justice has in this picture of politics and political life. The obvious
answer seems to be: a place that is important, but rather small and
decidedly subordinate. Human herd management would seem to
differ from other forms of herd management in this: all herding involves giving commands, but members of the human herd, especially in the age of Zeus, seem to need explicit commands or
prescriptions, explicit rules, to govern their communal life. These
rules, which allow men in cities to get along with one another, constitute justice. Now from the point of view of citizens, especially
artisan citizens going about their daily, commerce-driven lives,
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such rules—we call them laws—might seem to be the most important manifestation of the political art. But they are in fact only an
imperfect and secondary manifestation of that art, in part because
they are riddled with imprecision, and in part because, as we have
already seen, the first business and real work of the political art
lies in the weaving together of courage and moderation. It would
be a mistake, according to this account, to think of justice as a
virtue, just as it would be a mistake to think of justice as something
high, a criterion that the political art has to look up to as it goes
about its business. Justice is nothing high or deep or fancy; it is
nothing but the set of rules, invented by the statesman, that allow
us to lead reasonably decent lives in an unfriendly world.
Is this account of justice in the Statesman adequate? Does it,
as we say, do justice to the Stranger’s view of justice? There are
certainly a number of passages in the dialogue that lend credence
to it. For instance, at one point the Stranger makes it very clear that
the power of the judge is separate from, and sub-ordinate to, the
art of the statesman. Then he asks if the judge
has any power more far-reaching than, in matters
pertaining to contracts, that of discerning the
things ordained as both just and unjust by keeping
in sight whatever is laid down as lawful and which
it received from a law-giver king (305b).
It looks here as if justice is simply identical to the legal, as it
is defined by the law-giving king—that is, the statesman. This language of contracts also turns up a bit earlier, in the course of the
Stranger’s critique of law and its lack of precision, when he speaks
of those who “supervise the herds with respect to the just and their
contracts with each other” (294e). Once again justice seems to be
equated with the contractual obligations defined by the law—and
the baseness involved in dealing with matters of justice, its distance
from real statesmanly activity, is underscored by the re-introduction of the language of “herds.” The text of the Statesman also
lends support to the thought that justice is not a virtue: there is no
place in the dialogue where the Stranger states or even implies that
it is the statesman’s task to instill justice or anything resembling
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justice in the souls of his citizens. The closest we get is the suggestion very near the end of the dialogue that moderate natures
tend to be more just than courageous ones, but this does not seem
to be a matter of education, and in any case, “just” in this context
seems to mean “cautious and therefore inclined to follow the law.”
The meaning of “just” here is perfectly compatible with passages
that identify the just with the legal; it simply means “law-abiding.”
Are we to conclude, then, that justice has no meaning in the
Statesman other than a set of rules laid down by the statesman in
his law-making capacity, and then turned over to a subordinate
power? We might have to reach this conclusion were it not for a
handful of odd passages where the Stranger seems to be pointing
us in a different direction. Let me briefly go over three of them. In
the first, the Stranger argues that rulers in “the correct regime” can
do anything, including banishing and even killing inhabitants, “so
long as they make it better from worse and preserve it as far as
they’re able by using science and the just” (293d). In the second,
which comes just as he is beginning his critique of law, the Stranger
notes that law “could never, by having comprehended what’s most
excellent and most just, command what’s best” (294a-b). And in
the third, the Stranger claims that:
there is no error for thoughtful rulers, whatever
they do, so long as they guard one great thing, and,
by at all times distributing to those in the city
what’s most just with intellect and art, both are
able to preserve them and make better men from
worse as much as possible (297a-b).
These passages share several features in common. In all of
them, the just is linked to, and subordinated to, the good —either
the good of the citizens or the good of the city. In addition, the just
is paired with, or at least linked to, thought in some form—science
in the first passage, comprehension in the second, and intellect and
art in the third. Finally—and most important for the issue we are
considering—in all three passages the just in these passages simply cannot be identified with what is lawful or what is defined
by the law. In the first passage, the just seems to function as a
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criterion or standard at least co-equal with science; according to
the second, the just cannot be comprehended by law; and in the
third, the just arises directly from intellect and art, without the
mediation of law. Clearly then, justice or “the just” has more than
one meaning in the Statesman and in the Stranger’s mind. But exactly what does it mean in this second set of passages? For instance, what does it mean in the peculiar phrase “science and the
just”? We can’t look to the immediate context of the phrase for an
answer. In all three passages the language of justice seems to come
out of nowhere.
To answer this question we need to take a step back. I mentioned earlier that there are a number of places in the Statesman
where the language of justice is used with a meaning that is nonmoral and non-political. Let me add that, with one exception,
which I’ll get to later, every appearance of this language before the
“science and the just” passage falls into this category. Now in all
of these earlier appearances, “just” and “justly” have a specific
meaning and specific range: they are used to characterize speech
or thought; and they refer to correctness or precision or aptness of
thought or speech, as when we say, in English—as I did a little
while ago—that we want to do justice to someone’s thought or that
someone has gotten something “just right.” Now it is “precisely”
this meaning of justice that I think we must import, and are meant
to import, into the passages in question. The intellectual quality
that the Stranger prizes most in his own science of division—the
ability to divide well, to find a “part” that is also a “form” (262b263b)—is also the quality that defines or gives meaning to justice.
Thus when the Stranger says that rulers in the “correct regime”
must employ “science and the just,” “the just” is not being introduced here as an extraneous criterion that comes out of nowhere.
It rather refers to the exactness or precision of application that is
implicit in the very notion of science—in this case, the science of
statesmanship. Or again, when the Stranger faults the law for failing to comprehend what’s most excellent and most just, he is simply faulting the law’s characteristic lack of precision: because laws
are necessarily universal, they cannot help but miss what is best
here and now and must be inexact in their attainment of it. It should
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come as no surprise, then, that the Stranger keeps referring to the
“correct” or “most correct regime” where we would probably say
“best regime”—the best regime is, for him, “precisely” the regime
in which precision or correctness is the ruling principle.
There is another way to formulate this thought in the language
of the dialogue. At the very center of the Statesman there is an extended discussion of the art of measurement, and at the very center
of that discussion, the Stranger introduces, without much explanation, the phrase “the precise itself.” Why? It turns out that the very
existence of statesmanship—in fact the very existence of all the arts
that generate something—rests on the existence of something called
due measure. All the arts aim to achieve or produce some good.
Sometimes they miss the mark: they fall short of or exceed their
aims. But when they bring about the goods they aim at, they attain
what the Stranger calls “due measure.” At such moments, when
they get things just right, when they arrive at due measure, the precise itself is present. But what holds for the other arts holds for
statesmanship as well. Whenever the statesman, aiming at the
preservation or improvement of his city or its citizens, brings about
this good, he attains due measure, and in attaining due measure,
he participates in the precise itself. But if I am right in thinking
that, in at least a select number of passages in the dialogue, the just
coincides with what is correct or precise, then at such a moment
the statesman can also be said to have achieved justice. To achieve
the good is to achieve justice.
This brings me to my final point. I want to bring what I have
just said to bear on the most important activity of statesmanship:
the weaving together of courage and moderation. I mentioned a little while ago that there is one passage early on in the dialogue
where the language of justice is not used to refer to precision of
thought. It occurs in the myth. Interestingly enough, precision is
also mentioned but here refers to precision in the movement of the
cosmos. The claim is that when the cosmos is first allowed to move
on its own, it moves with precision, but over time, because of the
bodily aspect of the cosmos, it gradually winds down. Everything
beautiful in the cosmos comes from its composer, while everything
“harsh and unjust” has its source in this “fellow nursling of
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primeval nature” (273b-d). Of course this is a myth and we have
to be careful about what we extract from it. Still, I cannot help but
think that the Stranger is here positing something like a primal
principle of disorder, a principle that is always at war with beauty,
with precision of movement, with the very notion of a cosmos, that
is, an ordered whole. That he associates this principle with harshness and injustice suggests that this principle is at work in the
human world as well: the city is an attempt to found something
like a human cosmos in the face of primal disorder, primal imprecision, primal injustice. The ordinary arts that ground ordinary life
within cities are one aspect of this cosmos-formation. Each is an
attempt to bring forth due measure within some specific context;
each is an attempt to wrestle with its material’s resistance to being
given proper form. But the greatest of such attempts is the effort
of the statesman to bring forth due measure in and through his
weaving together of courage and moderation. Justice in the primary
sense, then, is not to be found in law-making or judging in accordance with law. Nor is it to be found in the accomplishing of this
or that good thing for the city. It is found right here, in the overcoming of primal injustice, primal resistance to having a city at all.
We might think of it this way: In the Sophist, the Stranger suggests
that being is not rest, or motion, or some third thing. He suggests
instead that being is the belonging together of rest and motion. But
within the sphere of politics, courage corresponds to motion and
rest to moderation. Where, then, and what is justice? It is not something present in the soul of the courageous man, nor something
present in the soul of the moderate man. Nor is it some third thing
hovering over the two. Instead, justice in the primary sense is present whenever the statesman, by thinking precisely and achieving
due measure, keeps the primal dyad from falling asunder; it is there
both in and as the belonging together, the being woven together,
of courage and moderation.
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119
A Review of Richard McCombs’s The Paradoxical
Rationality of Søren Kierkegaard. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 2013. 244 pages, $36.00.
James Carey
On first looking into Kierkegaard, the student who has already read
around in the history of philosophy or has limited his studies primarily to twentieth century philosophy, whether analytic or “continental,” is likely to find himself puzzled at several levels. He may
have heard that Kierkegaard is both a Christian and an existentialist, even a founder of existentialism, and he might be interested to
find out how one man can be both of these things at once. Or,
doubting that one man could be both these things at once without
being confused, he might be inclined to shrug him off. But then he
may also have heard that Heidegger was profoundly influenced by
Kierkegaard and that Wittgenstein declared him to be a “saint.” So
he sets out to get a better sense of who Kierke-gaard is and what
he is aiming at. After reading the first few pages of, say, Fear and
Trembling, he comes quickly to recognize that he is in the presence
of an original and incisive thinker. But he also encounters obscure
arguments and formulations that seem more colorful than illuminating. And sooner or later he runs up against assertions about the
relation of Socrates to Christianity that seem naïve at best, perverse
at worse. He begins to suspect that Kierkegaard, for all his undeniable brilliance, is in full control of neither his intellect nor his
imagination. After reading a relatively accessible book such as
Philosophical Fragments he might turn to Concluding Unscientific
Postscript to Philosophical Fragments (the latter book four times
the length of what it is advertised as a “postscript” to) in hopes of
finding a resolution to some of the perplexities in which the former
James Carey is a tutor and former Dean at St. John’s College in Santa Fe,
New Mexico.
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work left him. Instead, he finds himself by turns beguiled and exasperated by an art of writing that is both concentrated and ironic.
He is not sure whether he is being led towards the truth or being
manipulated. And if he has not done so sooner, he begins to wonder
exactly what Kierkegaard intends by presenting some of his books,
but then not all them, under pseudonyms, and in particular why one
book is presented as written by Climacus and another by anti-Climacus. Can all Kierkegaard’s books be understood as expressing
his own thoughts? Can any of them be understood as expressing
his own thoughts? Not knowing how to find an answer to these
and related questions, the student may decide at this point to postpone engaging with the full sweep of Kierkegaard’s project until
later on, more or less indefinitely later on.
Needless to say, not all who have struggled with Kierke-gaard
at some stage of their studies fit the above profile. But some—I
suspect quite a few—do fit it. After reading through one or two of
Kierkegaard’s books and probing around in a few others, they will
profit immensely by stepping back from his oeuvre and reading
Richard McCombs’s The Paradoxical Rationality of Søren Kierkegaard. Those who have read a larger number of Kierkegaard’s
books will profit immensely as well. I for one can say that there is
a not a single question I have asked myself about Kierkegaard over
the years that McCombs’s carefully argued and beautifully written
book does not answer, clearly, comprehensively, and convincingly.
The title of McCombs’s book expresses his general intention,
which is to show that Kierkegaard is a rational thinker and that he
employs paradox in the service of reason. What Kierkegaard calls
“subjectivity” McCombs calls “paradoxical rationality.” The
provocative conclusion of McCombs’s study is that paradoxical
rationality reaches its perfection not in knowledge, either theoretical or practical, but in faith. In this review I will highlight only a
few of the observations that McCombs makes en route to this conclusion.
In Chapter 1, McCombs considers evidence in favor of the
view the Kierkegaard is an irrationalist and then evidence in favor
of the view that he is a rationalist. He argues, persuasively, that the
preponderance of evidence is in favor of the latter view. When
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Kierkegaard directly or through one of his pseudonymous authors
affirms what he calls a contradiction, he means not a flat-our logical absurdity but rather “a tension or an unresolved opposition”
(13).1 And, as Kierkegaard sees it, “when the believer has faith,
the absurd is not absurd—faith transforms it” (22). Kierkegaard’s
Climacus calls the Incarnation a contradiction. But, as McCombs
points out, to show that such a thing is an irresolvable logical contradiction “one would need a thorough understanding of the
essence of God and of temporal, finite human existence” (13).
Kierkegaard is aware that this understanding is not at our disposal.
The appearance of irrationality is only feigned by Kierkegaard. It
is a pretense in the service of a pedagogical aim. “The human
model for Kierkegaard’s incognito of irrationalism is Socrates. If
Socrates ironically feigned ignorance in the service of knowledge,
Kierkegaard ‘goes further’ and ironically feigns irrationality in the
service of reason” (2). He “creates Climacus specifically to address
and appeal to philosophical readers . . . in order to find such readers
‘where they are’ and to lead them to subjectivity” (5). Where philosophical readers “are” is not simply in their thinking but in their
existing. There is, it should go without saying, more to existing
than thinking.
Near the conclusion of this chapter, McCombs offers a perceptive analysis of the limitations of Johannes de Silentio, the pseudonymous author of Fear and Trembling. This author attempts to
show to philosophical readers who regard faith as a demotic substitute for knowledge, or as a station that gets aufgehoben on the
way to absolute knowing, that genuine faith, as exemplified by
Abraham, is in fact rare, awesome in the exact sense of the word,
and more difficult to achieve than any knowledge we humans can
attain or pretend to. But Kierkegaard also subtly leads his readers
to see that Johannes de Silentio can, or rather will, only admire
faith. He will not attempt it. Faith is a task—a task that Silentio
evades (24). Faith is, moreover, not merely a task but “a difficult,
dangerous, strenuous, and painful duty, and human beings will do
virtually anything to evade such a duty” (30). In Fear and Trembling, “Kierkegaard first tries to get readers to admire the greatness
of faith, and then breaks the distressing news to them that the faith
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that they admire is an absolute duty.” Kierkegaard has “constructed
Fear and Trembling so ingeniously that interpretation of it unexpectedly and disconcertingly turns into self-examination” (31).
In Chapter 2, McCombs argues that subjectivity or paradoxical
rationality is, like all rationality, consistency. It is consistency not
just of thought, however, but of the whole person. “To be subjective means consistently to relate oneself, the subject of thinking,
to what one thinks. It is to think about life and action, most of all
about one’s own life and action, and to strive to feel, will, and act
consistently with one’s thoughts” (35). Not everyone who prides
himself on the consistency of his thinking aims at this more comprehensive consistency. For example, a person who holds in his
thinking that everything is determined—whether by the will of
God, physical mechanism, or the apparent good—and that the future is thereby fixed, nonetheless deliberates and acts, as all human
beings must, on the assumption that the future is not fixed and that
how it turns out depends in some measure on one’s choices. Such
a person is not wholly rational no matter how impressively his theory holds together qua theory merely.2 His speculative thinking,
however consistent it may be in itself, is inconsistent with his practical thinking. Kierkegaard’s subjectivity is not so much the opposite of objectivity, an inner and private domain as distinct from an
outer and public one, as it is the whole of rationality. Subjectivity
comprehends objectivity as a part, assigning it its altogether legitimate, though limited, role within a properly integrated life of reason. Subjectivity, for Kierkegaard, is integrity.
It is “Kierkegaard’s belief that thinking is unavoidably interested.”(37). Objective thinkers frequently claim to be disinterested.
But they are wrong. For objectivity is not without an interest: speculative reason (which could be called, somewhat misleadingly, objective reason) is interested in the true, just as practical reason
(which could be called, also somewhat misleadingly, subjective
reason) is interested in the good. Pursuit of the true and pursuit of
the good are two pursuits of one and the same reason.3 As McCombs later points out, interest derives from interesse, literally,
“to be in between” (155). Human reason is in between the temporal
and the eternal. It moves teleologically from the temporal toward
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the eternal, as it moves teleologically from the conditioned toward
the unconditioned and from the finite toward the infinite.
Subjective thinkers have a better appreciation of the wholeness
of reason, its teleological orientation toward both truth and goodness, than do objective thinkers. Kierkegaard suspects that many
who take pride in their commitment to objectivity use the search
for knowledge “as a way to delay or to evade ethical action” (45).
He also thinks that, “because the human will is free, the rationality
of human beings—his own included—is always precarious” (75).
This is true of speculative reason no of less than of practical reason.
McCombs speaks of the “shaky foundations” of logic and its “liability to perversion” (60). In my view, logic per se—certainly its
indemonstrable but self-evident first principles, such as the principle of non-contradiction—is sound.4 But logical principles and
rules of inference, unimpeachable in themselves, can be used to
deduce questionable conclusions from questionable premises. In
that way logic can assist one in rationalizing the satisfaction of certain desires that, unlike the desire for integrity in thought and action, are not intrinsic to reason and are often at odds with the telē
of reason. “When these desires are threatened by the strenuous requirements of ethics, they fight back with astonishing cunning and
sagacity, by co-opting the powers of logic for specious reasoning
and self-deception” (60). And So McCombs rightly recommends
“rectifying [not logic itself but] one’s use of logic” (65).
In Chapter 3, McCombs distinguishes between traditional negative theology, which he understands to be primarily theoretical,
and the negative theology of Climacus, which he understands to
be primarily practical. “Climacus thinks that if anything has priority in salvation it is or would be love and not knowledge” (87).5
This chapter contains helpful accounts of the Kierkegaardian conceptions of resignation and guilt-consciousness, and of
Kierkegaard’s arresting formulation that “to need God is a human
being’s highest perfection” (88-89; on resignation see also 106).
Of course, from the perspective of Christianity all human beings
need God. The perfection of humanity consists then not in the need,
simply, but in the recognition of the need and the follow-through
on what it ultimately entails: “reverence, awe, adoration, worship,
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or as Johannes de Silentio calls it, ‘fear and trembling’” (88-89).
We naturally desire perfect happiness; but for Kierkegaard perfect
happiness is “the good that is attained by absolutely venturing
everything” (95), for it is “essentially uncertain” (98). McCombs
concludes this chapter with a reflection on how Kierkegaard understands the relation between the good and one’s own good. There
is no “tension” between them: “one most truly loves the good by
loving one’s own good in the right way” (99).6
In Chapter 4, McCombs shows what Kierkegaard means by
simplicity. It is “translating one’s understanding . . . immediately
into action” (101). Just as McCombs discloses limitations, which
Kierkegaard intends his readers to recognize, in Johannes de Silentio’s admiration, absent imitation, of faith, so he discloses limitations in Climacus’s conception of “hidden inwardness.” Climacus
recognizes that there is something wrong with flaunting one’s efforts at becoming a Christian. But, McCombs notes, “going out of
one’s way to look ‘just like everyone else’” while “being very different from most people in one’s heart” can stand in the way of
“witnessing the truth and thus risking suffering and persecution”
(112; cf. 117-118; 124). In Chapter 5, McCombs continues the critique of Climacus he initiated in Chapter 4, with the focus now on
the limitations of indirect communication and its need to be complemented by direct communication. By expressing himself so
obliquely and paradoxically, Climacus runs the risk of detaining
the reader in the process of interpretation so that he fails to undertake the practical tasks that it is Climacus’s main intention to urge
him toward. McCombs intends this chapter as a criticism of Climacus, not necessarily of Kierkegaard. But because “Kierkegaard
never explicitly addresses some of the vices or weaknesses of indirect communication” (115), McCombs concedes that perhaps
Kierkegaard “is not adequately aware of its pitfalls and shortcomings” (117). As the chapter progresses, criticisms of Kierkegaard
himself come to replace criticisms of his pseudonymous author.
Though Kierkegaard recognizes that his position is one of faith and
not knowledge, his employment of indirect communication does
not allow much room for serious confrontation with thoughtful criticisms of Christianity. McCombs goes so far as to express a con-
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cern that if Kierkegaard not only does not know where the full truth
about Christianity lies—and no believer can claim to know—but
is actually wrong about where the full truth lies, he “bears responsibility for risking the ruination of many lives” (131). More direct,
and less indirect, communication would go a long way toward reducing this risk. It would leave the reader greater freedom to make
a responsible decision for or against faith, being more cognizant
of both the case for and the case against, in light of the very little
that we humans are actually capable of knowing beyond the
shadow of a doubt.
In the first five chapters of his book McCombs occasionally
speaks to some of the initially mystifying albeit intriguing things
that Kierkegaard says about Socrates. In Chapter 6 and 7, and also
in part of Chapter 8, he treats Kierkegaard’s interpretation of “the
figure of Socrates” thematically. McCombs makes, I think, as wellinformed and cogent a case as can be made for the coherence of
Kierkegaard’s understanding of Socrates.
In Chapter 6, McCombs shows how and why Kierkegaard
presents Socrates as embodying “climacean capacity,” which is the
capacity “to be a climber over boundaries and a transgressor of
limits” (134).7 “[T]he climacean capacity is a power of synthesizing an eternal, infinite, universal, and absolute ideal with or in the
temporal, finite, particular, and relative aspects of oneself and one’s
everyday life, which is to say that the climacean capacity is a capacity for subjectivity” (154). “Human beings seem to be finite,
temporal, particular, and conditioned animals. And yet they also
seem to be able to conceive, however inadequately, the infinite,
the eternal, and the unconditioned.” (157).8 As Kierkegaard sees
it, “Socratic ignorance is an essential component of faith and Christianity” (135). According to the Concluding Unscientific Postscript, the Philosophical Fragments misrepresents Socrates “as an
objective thinker, whereas he was really a subjective thinker”
(139). Climacus recognizes that “if one could not discover one’s
incapacity before God, then neither could one exist as a being who
attempts to live in time according to an eternal ideal” (147). “[T]he
god is ‘present just as soon as the uncertainty of everything is
thought infinitely’” (151).
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Whereas in Chapter 6 McCombs focuses on Kierke-gaard’s
understanding of Socrates’s ascent, in Chapter 7 he focuses on
Kierkegaard’s understanding of Socrates’s downfall. Kierkegaard
finds this downfall expressed in a striking passage from the Phaedrus. There Socrates confesses that he does not know himself.9
And so he investigates himself rather than other things in order to
find out whether he happens to be a monster (thērion) more multiply-twisted and lustful (epitethymenon) than Typhon or a gentler
and simpler animal having by nature a share in a certain divine and
non-arrogant (atyphon) allotment.10 As Kierkegaard interprets this
passage from the Phaedrus, “‘he who believed that he knew himself’ becomes so perplexed that he cannot decide between utterly
opposite self-interpretations.” This is the “downfall of the understanding.” Kierkegaard, through Climacus, suggests that Socrates
actually willed this downfall (162-163).
On first hearing, this suggestion sounds like Kierkegaardian
hyperbole. But, if the will is the appetite of reason,11 then human
reason is naturally propelled by its own appetite toward truth, including, paradoxically, the truth that human reason is not capable
of answering all the questions it naturally proposes to itself.12 In
the case at hand, Socrates’s will propels his reason toward selfknowledge; but the knowledge he attains is that he does not have
complete self-knowledge. It is in this way that Socrates wills the
downfall of his understanding. The will moves reason to the discovery and acknowledgment of its natural limits. This is not a merely
negative development, however. For “to will the downfall of reason
is to transform and perfect reason” (163). As McCombs writes in
an earlier chapter, “[T]he power of reason comes to light in the act
of becoming aware of its weakness” (69).
This transformation and perfection is not of theoretical reason
alone, but of practical reason as well (cf. 211).13 The standard interpretation of the downfall of reason is that it results in “an openness or receptivity to a divine revelation of truths that exceed the
capacity of natural reason” (164). McCombs thinks that this interpretation is correct as far as it goes. But he thinks that it does not
go far enough, for it places stress only on the theoretical consequences of the downfall. As McCombs argues, it has practical con-
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sequences as well. “The thing that falls in the downfall of the understanding is the whole human capacity to achieve the highest
human end—an eternal happiness, which includes not only joy, but
wisdom and goodness as well. Consequently, the downfall is a disavowal of the pretentions that one can become good, wise, and joyful on one’s own, a rejection of the determination to rely only on
oneself in striving for one’s highest end” (165).
The disavowal of these pretensions results indeed in an openness to revelation. According to Christianity, there is a revelation
of truths regarding action: how to become truly good through repentance, on the one hand, and through cultivating love of God
and neighbor, on the other. And there is a revelation of truths regarding being as well: that God is a Trinity of persons, without the
slightest compromise to his unity but as its perfection through the
unqualified love that unites the three persons, and that one of these
persons became incarnate in order to save us from sin and call us
toward fuller and fuller participation, through love, in the divine
nature.14 “[O]ne accepts revelation not in order to become a better
philosopher but in order to become a better person” (165).
It should be noted that Socrates’s qualification in the Phaedrus
that he does not “yet” know himself implies that he has not simply
given up on the possibility of attaining complete self-knowledge.15
Furthermore, any openness to revelation that he might have arrived
at is, in the absence of actual revelation, an openness only to the
possibility of revelation.16 But until and unless Socrates does attain
complete self-knowledge, he cannot definitively know whether all
so-called choice is merely a case of being determined by the apparent good, more precisely by the apparent best;17 or whether, instead, man is capable of radically free choice and
self-determination, including the abuse of radically free choice and
self-determination that is sin. The crucial issue, then, is whether
Socrates has any inkling of sin. Though “Climacus claims that neither Socrates nor anyone else can be aware of sin without revelation” he nonetheless “portrays Socrates as suspecting his sinful
condition” and “as suspecting that he is misrelated to the divine
owing to Typhonic arrogance” (167-168; cf. 175). Plato surely expects the reader of the Phaedrus to remember that Typhon was, as
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McCombs says, “an arrogant, violent, and defiant enemy of the
gods.” Moreover, with his hundred heads, he was “presumably not
even friendly to himself” (167). A monster like Typhon cannot be
happy.
We noted earlier that the interest of reason lies in its being between the temporal and the eternal, and that it moves teleologically
from the temporal toward the eternal. According to Kierkegaard, it
cannot reach its ultimate telos without supernatural assistance. This
assistance becomes available only when the eternal, at its own initiative, becomes temporal “in the fullness of time.” In what Christians
believe to be the historical event of the Incarnation, a synthesis of
the eternal and the temporal is achieved in deed and not just in
thought. The Incarnation is for Kierkegaard the paradox (146); it is
the absolute paradox (219).
Assuming both (1) that neither complete self-knowledge nor
complete knowledge of the whole and its ground is humanly possible, and (2) that one has heard the Gospel of Christ, Kierkegaard
thinks that only two responses to what one has heard are possible:
faith, which is not knowledge,18 and offense, which is not doubt. Offense is “a delusion of rational autonomy”—deluded because human
reason has limits and thus is not “self-sufficient.” Offense is “unhappy self-assertion”—unhappy because one asserts oneself on the
basis of what one knows, deep down, is insufficient knowledge of
oneself. In the human being there are “two elements in tension with
one another: a desire for happiness and a desire for autonomy or selfsufficiency.” These elements are incompatible, and “one or the other
of them must fall. Faith . . . is the downfall of the desire for self-assertion, while offense is the downfall of the desire for happiness”
(176-177).
In Chapter 8, McCombs further explores the consequences of
Kierkegaard’s conviction that there are no “public demonstrations of
the answers to certain crucial questions: Is there a personal God who
created and maintains the world? Does a human being have an immortal soul? Is there a best life for human beings?” (184) If by “public demonstrations” Kierkegaard means rationally accessible
demonstrations, it can be countered that there are such demonstrations, pro and contra, on these and related matters, particularly in
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medieval theology and in the reaction of modern philosophy against
medieval theology. There has indeed never been universal acceptance
of either theological or anti-theological arguments. But then there
has also never been universal acceptance, not even by the greatest
minds, of many philosophical arguments, such as, for example, the
divergent arguments regarding the scope of human knowledge (think
of Hume and Hegel), the relation of acts of thought to the objects of
thought (think of Plato and Husserl), the relationship between the
good and the pleasant (think of Kant and Mill), and the authority of
reason (think of Aristotle and Heidegger). It is likely that there is no
“public demonstration” on these matters because the public is insufficiently perceptive to follow the arguments. In considering a disagreement between great philosophers, say, the disagreement
between Locke and Leibniz on how much our knowledge arises from
the senses, one has to consider the possibility that one of the two
thinkers penetrated closer to the root of the matter than did the other.
It seems improbable that there will ever be universal acceptance of
most philosophical and theological demonstrations. But that does not
mean that these demonstrations are not rationally accessible.
That theological and philosophical demonstrations are so controverted might not be due solely to different capacities for clear
thinking. McCombs highlights Kierkegaard’s conviction that character cannot be easily separated from the quest for knowledge.
“[D]esires, fears, emotions, actions, and habits have an influence
on what and how a person thinks, or on what a person can see,
understand, know, or become aware of. In other words, some desires, habits, emotions, and actions are conducive to truth, and
some are inimical to it” (192). McCombs illustrates this claim by
referring to the limitations of Meno and Ivan Karamazov. “[T]he
deep thinker must be a spiritual knight with the strength and
courage to think terrible thoughts that others cannot endure to
think” (193). One terrible thought, of course, is that, even if there
is a first cause or ground of our finite existence, it takes no interest
in us and how we live our lives. But an equally terrible thought is
that we have deceived ourselves into thinking that we know this
to be true when we do not, and cannot, know any such thing. Both
terrible thoughts have to be explored.
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McCombs writes, “It is hard to believe that a person who
often lies to himself about his own actions and qualities, about the
actions and qualities of other people, and about his social and personal relations to other people will be honest when he tries to answer the most important philosophical questions” (194; cf. 65).
The examined life does not consist exclusively, or even primarily,
in the reading and discussion of philosophical texts. Most of all it
requires ongoing self-examination, including especially the examination of conscience that is needed to check the self-deception
that is at the root of sin, including the sin of vanity, especially intellectual vanity (cf. 215). McCombs recognizes that not all intellectual endeavors are equally compromised by corrupt character.
Corrupt character has little effect on “cognition of scientific, mathematical, and linguistic truths.” But corrupt character can pervert
“cognition of human nature and the best life for human beings”
(202). Anyone who is attempting to live a wholly rational life,
whether he is a believer or a nonbeliever, stands under an obligation of ongoing and unrelenting self-scrutiny.
On Kierkegaard’s understanding of the close connection between theory and practice, McCombs writes, “Seeing for oneself
requires acting for oneself…by one’s own self-activity, at one’s
own risk, and on one’s own responsibility. In short, autopsy requires autopraxy” (198). One gains humility, and thereby overcomes doubt through “the bitter method of trying to imitate Christ
and failing” (215). Humility is notoriously misunderstood, and
caricatured as well. McCombs corrects the common misunderstanding: “a meek and beaten-down milksop does not have the audacity to believe. . . . Honestly admitting one’s utter weakness
before God takes the greatest human strength. . . . [O]nly heroes
of the spirit have the audacity to believe . . . what pride cannot
tolerate and therefore willfully ignores: namely, a supreme being
to whom humans ought utterly to subordinate themselves” (215).
In humility, self-transcendence overcomes irrational egoism and
self-importance.
Kierkegaard’s project, like Pascal’s and Dostoyevsky’s, is obviously based on the assumption that the existence of the Biblical
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God cannot be definitively disproven. But some philosophers have
advanced arguments, not subjective but objective arguments,
aimed at definitively disproving the existence of God, especially
as one who freely reveals himself. So a non-Kierkegaardian, but
not anti-Kierkegaardian, task remains for the theologian. First to
examine these arguments dispassionately to assess their cogency;
and then, if they are found to be less than absolutely compelling,
to expose their limitations. For if a man thinks—let us assume,
thinks altogether innocently—that the concept of Christ as true
God and true man, both together, is a logical contradiction, then
exhorting him to imitate Christ is pointless. There is still a lot left
for the theologian to do at the level of objectivity.
McCombs ends his book by raising a question that some readers will have already asked themselves: has Kierkegaard merely
conscripted Socrates into his project? McCombs answers in the
negative. “[T]here are many passages in Plato’s dialogues in
which Socrates professes ignorance, self-blame, suspicions of his
own monstrosity, repentance, and in which he warns against a
self-justifying egoism that undermines truth and justice. Together
these passages seem to constitute a solid basis for a responsible
interpretation of Socrates as a thinker who willed the downfall of
his own understanding because he suspected something very like
sin” (218). McCombs supports this answer with references to the
telling texts. One might object that he has cherry picked the passages that support the Kierkegaardian interpretation of Socrates.
But all interpretations of Plato that aim at taking the dialogic form
of his teaching seriously have to come to terms with everything
that is said and happens in the dialogues, including occasional observations of Socrates’s that do not fit with preconceived notions
of what Platonism is supposed to be. The passages that McCombs
cites in support of Kierkegaard’s Socrates are not more salutary
and comforting than passages one might cite in support of someone else’s Socrates. On the contrary, they are among the most startling and disconcerting passages to be found in the entire Platonic
corpus. It is the singular, though by no means the sole, merit of
McCombs’s study that it forces many of us, just when we thought
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that we, with the assistance of our teachers and our friends, might
have finally gotten a relatively firm grasp of what Socrates is up
to, to take a fresh look at the enigmatic figure through whom Plato
presents his teaching.
NOTES
1. Unless otherwise noted, numbers in parentheses after quotations refer
to the pagination of The Paradoxical Rationality of Søren Kierkegaard,
even where the sentence quoted is Kierkegaard’s and not McCombs’s.
2. Determinism cannot be known, definitively and beyond the shadow of
a doubt, to be true. As David Hume has shown, the proposition, “Every
event has a cause,” is not an analytic judgment. It follows a fortiori that
the proposition, “Every event has a cause outside itself,” which is the thesis of determinism, is not an analytic judgment. It can be denied without
contradiction. The thesis of determinism is not self-evident; and any attempt to demonstrate it begs the question.
3. This is also the view of thinkers as different as Thomas Aquinas and
Kant.
4. Cf. Aristotle, Posterior Analytics 71b20-35; 72a26-31; 72b19-2;
90b19-100b18; Metaphysics 1005b6-1006a10; 1011a7-13.
5. Kierkegaard seems here to be close to Gregory of Nyssa, who understands the supernatural end of man to consist not simply in a reposeful
intellectual vision of God, but in infinite and yet unimpeded progress,
progress in love especially. Gregory interprets the claim that we are called
to become partakers of the divine nature (koinōnoi theias physeōs—2
Peter 1: 3-4) to imply theosis, i.e., becoming more and more like God.
This goal, perfect love, can be infinitely approached by man, starting even
in this life, but never attained once and for all, even in the next life. Perhaps surprisingly, Kant similarly understands immortality of the soul to
consist in infinite progress. See Critique of Practical Reason Part 2, Bk.
2, Ch. 2, iv.
6. McCombs draws attention (199) to a remarkable statement made by
the Athenian Stranger in Plato’s Laws: “Truly the cause of all errors
(aition . . . tōn pantōn hamartēmatōn) is in every case excessive friendship for oneself ” (731e3-5). If Plato is expressing his own thought here,
it is not easy to see how he could have held, as some seem to think he
held, that the good is essentially one’s own good, understood narrowly
as one’s own sweet pleasure.
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7. As McCombs notes (173), it is likely that Kierkegaard selected the
pseudonym “Johannes Climacus” (Greek, Iōannēs tēs klimakos, literally,
“John of the Ladder,” the name given to a twelfth century Christian monk
and saint, who wrote The Ladder of Divine Ascent) with an eye on the
“ladder of love” described in the Symposium.
8. Whatever share irrational animals have in the eternal, there is no reason
to think that they conceive of the eternal, much less concern themselves
about it.
9. Phaedrus 229e8.
10. Ibid., 229a3-a8. McCombs notes that the name Typhon can be translated “puffed up” (167). On the difficulty of complete self-knowledge,
consider the qualifier eis dynamin at Philebus 63c3.
11. Aristotle, De Anima 432b5-8 and 433a8-31; Thomas Aquinas Super
Sent., lib. 2 d. 30 q. 1 art. 3, ad 4. Summa Theologiae 1-2 q. 6, introd.; q.
8 art. 1, co.; q. 56 art. 5, ad 1; ibid., 3 q. 19 art. 2, co.; Kant, Critique of
Practical Reason, Book 1, Ch. 1, Theorem 3, Remark 1.
12. See the first sentence of the “First Preface” of Kant’s Critique of Pure
Reason.
13. Here Kierkegaard parts ways with Kant. Consider the qualification
in the sentence cited in the previous note: “in one [!] species of its cognition.”
14. Cf. note 5 above.
15. See pō at 229e8 and eti at 230a1.
16. An inability to refute, and hence a consequent openness to, even the
bare possibility of revelation would situate the philosopher qua philosopher in an untenable position, at least according to Leo Strauss: Natural
Right and History (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1953). 75.
Cf. “Reason and Revelation” (appended to Heinrich Meier’s study, Leo
Strauss and the Theological-Problem, trans. Marcus Brainard [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006] 150, 176-177; “Progress or
Return” (in Leo Strauss, Jewish Philosophy and the Crisis of Modernity,
ed. Kenneth Hart Green [Albany: State University of New York Press,
1997], 117, 131. On this crucial point, however much they otherwise differ, Strauss and Kierkegaard are in essential agreement: opposition to
faith cannot consistently be based on an act of faith, or on anything resembling faith.
17. Gorgias 466e2; Meno 77d8-e3.
18. John 20:29.
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Plato’s Political Polyphony
A Book Review of Plato: Statesman. Translated by
Eva Brann, Peter Kalkavage, and Eric Salem. Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 2012. vii + 166 pp.
$10.95.
Gregory Recco
Continuing the work begun in their previous two translations of
Plato,* Eva Brann, Peter Kalkavage, and Eric Salem have now
translated Plato’s Statesman. In addition to the translation, the volume includes an introduction, a glossary, an interpretive essay, and
two appendices. The introduction situates the dialogue in the context of Plato’s works, both dramatically and conceptually, announcing its main themes and connecting it with other
works—particularly its immediate dramatic predecessor, the
Sophist, and its thematic siblings, the Republic and the Laws. The
translation contains footnotes that provide pertinent literary or cultural background, references to other dialogues, and pointers to the
attached glossary when particularly important words or ideas first
appear. The glossary, like those in the earlier translations, is organized into meaning-clusters, groups of related or associated words
that together make up one important conceptual unit of the dialogue. The selection and discussion of these words, then, constitutes a work of interpretation—or at least the preparation of
material for such a work—and gives the translators a natural opportunity to discuss the rationale behind their English renderings
of important Greek terms. After the glossary comes a substantial
essay on the whole of Statesman, a thoughtful recapitulation and
reflection that presents a systematic and thorough survey of questions raised in the dialogue. Finally, the appendices: the first
*Plato: Phaedo (Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 1998) and Plato:
Timaeus (Newburyport, MA: Focus Publishing, 2001).
Gregory Recco is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland.
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graphically presents an overview in word and image of the practice of weaving which forms the dialogue’s most densely intertwined “paradigm,” or model, of the work of statesmanship; the
second unravels and graphically portrays the various heuristic
“divisions” by which the Stranger investigated questions of definition in the Sophist and here seeks the politikos, or statesman.
The translation is of very high quality—a fact that will likely
not surprise readers of the team’s previous two efforts. To describe
its excellence I must make some preparatory remarks about what
a translation is, who Plato is, and how Plato ought to be translated.
And I must discuss the particularities (or rather peculiarities) of
the Statesman.
The art of translation possesses, in a particularly pronounced
degree, a feature that characterizes all arts: What directs the activity
of artists is not their own wishes and ideas, but the necessities of
the work to be done. Becoming the practitioner of an art involves
a kind of surrender to something alien, namely, the determinacies
of the product and the conditions of its production. In translation,
this relinquishment of authority is especially evident in the very
nature of the work, which consists of transplanting a thought that
belongs to someone else from its native home into the foreign soil
of another language while keeping it intact and alive. Because the
translator does not create the being of that which he translates, his
excellence consists in his ability to let the thought of another shine
forth unimpeded and unaltered.
Plato’s thought poses special challenges to the prospective
translator, because the dialogue form in which it predominantly
resides gives it a uniquely amorphous character unparalleled anywhere else in Western literature. Because of their polyphonic conversational style, the dialogues of Plato give no authoritative
indication of how they are to be interpreted, no explicit endorsement of some message, so that it is quite difficult to say just what
Plato’s thought actually is. Without some definite notion of how
to deal with this difficulty, the choices and judgments that the
translator must make run the risk of being severally ad hoc and,
taken together, inconsistent. But in the dialogues themselves Plato
is completely silent about this difficulty. Faced with this apparent
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authorial dereliction, it is tempting to conclude with a kind of misplaced strictness that the phrase “Plato’s thought” signifies but
does not refer, as Heraclitus nearly says of the oracle at Delphi.
But this is the counsel of despair, and it leaves out the third leg of
Heraclitus’s saying: the oracle, who does not speak, but gives sign,
does not conceal. Something similar must be said of Plato. Even
cursory comparison of the dialogues uncovers themes that recur
with some frequency. Longer acquaintance reveals how generous
Plato can be to the careful reader, who discovers that the cracks
in the surface form a pattern, so to speak. The latter point deserves
fuller and more literal articulation, both on its own terms and because it is so often overlooked—which leads to bad interpretation
and consequently to bad translation.
Many of the dialogues take on the outward form of a “Socratic”
conversation, with one dialectically more experienced person taking the lead and questioning another in what seems to be a more or
less directed way, so that the latter gradually takes on views suggested by the former. But the inner truth of the dialogues is that
they are documents bearing witness to the event of thinking, paradoxically more akin to Thucydides’s record of a great event than
to Hippocrates’s scientific investigation of the causes of sickness
and health. The dialogues are not treatises of Socratic dogma thinly
disguised as conversations, but more or less dramatized presentations of what it looks like to think. I say “dramatized” because, as
I hinted above, that is where Plato’s artistry lies: this is his real
work, which is also something like the work of a translator.
Plato’s art is to show us the event of thinking, by dramatically
portraying what it looks like when it happens among human beings, in both its grandeur and its modesty. To say that thinking is
such and such, or has such and such characteristics, is perhaps a
fairly idle and undemanding pursuit, but to show it—that is, to
make manifest through a single instance the structure of intelligibility that informs it and gives it life—is an accomplishment of an
exceedingly high order. Somehow the dialogue must both be a conversation and exhibit “conversationality.” Not surprisingly, the investigation of how conversing ought to take place in order to get
at truth is one of those recurring themes that give the dialogues of
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Plato their distinctive mark. But the exhibition of thinking as such
occurs in several other, less immediate, ways. To note just one,
briefly, let me point out the structure of errancy and return, or wandering and recapitulation.
In the Statesman, as in the Sophist and so many other dialogues, the tentative answers given to the guiding questions are
forever turning up inadequate, coming unmoored as they are jostled by fresh contenders that look no less promising, even if they,
too, ultimately fall apart. This is especially evident in the bewildering multiplicity of “definitions” that fail, by the very fact of
their being multiple, to hem in or pin down the sort of men being
sought in these two dialogues. The various ways in which the dialogues can acquaint us with perplexity, and thus make us feel
thought’s errancy, are probably familiar to many readers. No less
important, however, is a dimension of thought that tends to belong
less to the one questioned than to the one doing the questioning:
to put a name to it, the dimension of redemption, of making up for
what has gone wrong by noticing how it has gone wrong. The dialogues are chock-full of bad arguments, wrong turns, and dead
ends. But these errors never just lie there. They stand out, and and
were made to stand out by their author. Plato calls on us to respond
more adequately than Socrates’s interlocutors and to consider how
an attentive and active questioner might help things move forward
from there. Giving us the opportunity to become better at thinking
is a great gift that is squandered by dogmatic interpretations (and
the translations founded on them), for they can see only the degree
to which the things said in the dialogues do not form a very compelling body of theory, even as they tantalizingly hint at one.
Brann, Kalkavage, and Salem understand quite well both this difficulty and other difficulties related to Plato’s portrayal of the
drama of thinking; their understanding guides their choices and
contributes greatly to the excellence of their translations.
In general, Plato’s artistry exists on the level of style, in the
nuances of diction and register, metaphor and allusion, that reveal
the character behind the thought, and give us something further to
think about when the resources of the argument turn out to be insufficient to answer all our questions. In the case of Socrates, this
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
is well known and acknowledged, though less so for his interlocutors: it is a commonplace to mock their “dialogue” as merely a series
of more or less undifferentiated assents. The characters in Plato who
are generally considered to be well drawn are usually the ones who
disagree, and they are considered better drawn the more vehemently they disagree with Socrates (like Callicles and Thrasymachus). The Statesman has neither of these advantages: its main
speaker is the somewhat opaque Stranger from Elea, and its main
respondent is the somewhat colorless Young Socrates. Not a very
promising circumstance for the translation that seeks to reveal a
Plato who is a master of style. It is the particular excellence of this
translation that it is able to show us a Plato who is at work in his
accustomed ways even in these changed circumstances.
The translation is above all else trustworthy. If a word or
phrase jars (such as Socrates’s having “mixed it up” with Theaetetus on the previous day [258a]), consulting the Greek reassures
(perhaps he is meant to sound relatively informal compared with
the Stranger or perhaps he wants to recall the Stranger’s mixing of
the eidē). Words whose polysemy is troublesome are rendered consistently, in a neutral and readable way that has no axe to grind.
Instead of translating most replies as “Yes, Socrates,” the translators make the responses both differentiated and differentiable, an
absolutely invaluable aid to the close reader who is keeping watch
over the fitness of the interlocutor’s responses. The Stranger’s
humor, which verges, it is no exaggeration to say, on aridity, appears in all its understated, deadpan glory. Picture the face of a very
serious old man intoning these words: “The king at least is manifest
to us as one who pastures a certain horn-shorn herd” (265d). Even
when the syntax becomes tortuous, the translation remains not only
readable, but even speakable. What is perhaps most impressive is
that the translation’s readability does not come at the cost of overly
interpretive (or inventive) construal. Heidegger said approvingly
of Kant that he left obscure what is in itself obscure. In this rendering of the Statesman, it should be said that what is puzzling in
the original remains so in translation, but because of what is said,
not because of any obscurity in how it is said. The translation’s
simultaneous readability and faithfulness (in the fullest sense of
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that word), coupled with its generous and thoughtful supplementary materials, strongly recommend its use for classroom study by
serious students, with or without some knowledge of the Greek. It
should also be of interest to, and useable by, any sort of serious
reader at all. In contrast to the translators’ earlier editions of the
Phaedo and the Sophist, this one clearly distinguishes the functions
of the Introduction and the Essay, placing the latter, appropriately,
after the dialogue itself. The “Essay” pithily and unpretentiously
raises questions that cut to the very heart of the dialogue, questions
about the nature and possibility of rational politics, and questions
about the very identity of philosophy. No mere “student edition,”
this; the Plato scholar, too, will find much here that advances serious thinking.
�
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Pastille, William
Brann, Eva T.H.
Hunt, Frank
Sachs, Joe
Van Doren, John
Williamson, Robert B.
Zuckerman, Elliott
Arnaiz, Deziree
Sachs, Joe
Frost, Bryan-Paul
Levine, David
Burke, Chester
Kalkavage, Peter
Maistrellis, Nicholas
Salem, Eric
Carey, James
Recco, Gregory
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The St. John’s Review
Volume 55.2 (Spring 2014)
Editor
William Pastille
Editorial Board
Eva T. H. Brann
Frank Hunt
Joe Sachs
John Van Doren
Robert B. Williamson
Elliott Zuckerman
Subscriptions and Editorial Assistant
Deziree Arnaiz
The St. John’s Review is published by the Office of the Dean,
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��Contents
Essays & Lectures
The Mutuality of Imagining and Thinking: On Dennis Sepper’s
Understanding Imagination: The Reason of Images ..................1
Eva Brann
Similarity and Equality in Euclid and Apollonius ............................17
Michael N. Fried
The Soul’s Choice of Life.................................................................41
Greg Recco
Artistic Expression in Animals .........................................................61
Linda Wiener
Poems
Troy...................................................................................................82
Hannah Eagleson
Three Poems from Les Fleurs du Mal
by Charles Baudelaire...................................................................84
Peter Kalkavage
The Second Sense .............................................................................88
Elliott Zuckerman
Review
To Save the Ideas
Book Review of Daniel Sherman’s Soul, World, and Idea:
An Interpretation of Plato’s Republic and Phaedo ...................89
Eva Brann
��The Mutuality of
Imagining and Thinking:
On Dennis Sepper’s
Understanding Imagination:
The Reason of Images1
Eva Brann
When Professor Rosemann invited me to this colloquium—small
in scale, but to my mind great in significance—I told him that I
conceived my talk on Dennis Sepper’s newly published Understanding Imagination as a sort of book review, which earned me a
wonderful possession, a copy of this magnum opus, as he called
it, rightly.
There cannot be even the hint of a wink in this appellation. It is
indeed a magnum opus, magnificent, powerful, and copious. I want
to address this last feature first, since it colors the reading of the
book.
This work takes its time. Since, to describe its thesis in a first
approximation, there is no activity homo sapiens sapiens engages
in as such that is not imaginative, Sepper ventures into all sorts of
intellectual territory and calls on a variety of theories and concepts.
The point is that instead of dropping names allusively and naming
notions abbreviatedly he takes his time in explaining what he uses,
and he does it so that a reader can follow. He needs the idea of a
field. Do we all know off-hand what a field, formally speaking, is?
1. New York: Springer, 2013. This review-lecture was written for a colloquium held on October 30, 2013 in honor of the book by the Department
of Philosophy at the University of Dallas, Irving, Texas, where Professor
Sepper teaches. Eva Brann, tutor at St. John’s College, Annapolis, was invited to be the main speaker because Professor Sepper has had close relations to St. John’s, and because her book The World of the Imagination
(Savage, MD: Rowan and Littlefield, 1991), is cited in Understanding
Imagination as a sort of predecessor in the attempt to treat the imagination
somewhat comprehensively and with due regard to the reflective tradition.
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Well, now we know. Is everyone interested in the imagination familiar with Saussurian linguistic theory? Well, a lucid exposition
is given. Does that sane remainder among us who is convinced that
opining without some grounding in the tradition of thought is like
Chanticleer standing on top of a middenheap crowing, know exactly why, and how, to study texts of the past? Well, though I come
from a school that deliberately resorts to that tradition as a treasury
of texts, yet on reading Dennis Sepper’s first introductory chapter
I felt better armed in what looks at the moment like a rear-guard
action in its defense. Let me quickly inject here that I think this is
a sufficiently winnable battle, that the last shall soon enough be
first, and that books like this one will belong to the special forces
of this fight. One element in its effectiveness is precisely that its
generalities are highly and acutely specified. What I mean by that
I’ll say before long, and I’ll even express some misgivings. But
they are the queries and doubts of a reader who has been made to
think hard.
So let me begin my review of the content of Understanding
Imagination by saying that the plenitude of notions introduced is
lucidly organized. This book knows exactly where it’s going. The
title announces the comprehensive topic of the book. (Topic, topos,
topology, topography, I should say, are not casual but carefully expounded terms of the work.) This overarching topic is the imagination and its two aspects: the activity of imagining, and its
product, images. First, the imagination is to be understood, that is,
subjected to thinking. And anyone who has ever developed an interest in this topic will know that this endeavor opens a can of
worms—particularly the problematic idea that one mental function
can be applied to another, and the implied pseudo-traditional notion that the imagination is in fact a separable faculty. (I’ll explain
“pseudo-traditional” in a moment.) The subtitle, then, implies that
this understanding will yield the “reason of images.” Now believe
it or not, the book itself contains an explication, applicable to this
phrase, of genitives, objective and subjective. Thus “the reason of
images” means both “what is the reason we have images, how and
for what purpose they come about” (objective) and “the rationality
belonging to images themselves, how images and logoi (reasons
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN
3
and ratios) are identical” (subjective). The main title has a similar
double meaning. The book will make good on both parts of the
promise, to elucidate both the activity and the product of images—
and, of course, these expositions will raise questions.
The organization of so large a number of mental motions must,
as I said, be lucid, and it is. I’ll first set it out summarily, then permit myself to pick out the particular aspects that got to me, and finally formulate some of the aforesaid queries. That’s as much as
to say that this is a personal take on the book, but that way of proceeding needs no excuse in respect to this work. For the author
himself has some keen observations bearing on the strenuous selfdenial of the impersonal approach, with which I have my own experience: Academic treatments of the inner life, driven by some
misguided notion of objectivity (I don’t want to say, individual inadequacy) quite often read as if the scholar had mislaid his soul
and excised his personal experience while writing on, say, the passions, the will, or the imagination. In these matters, our author
might agree, taking it personally gains something even more valuable than objectivity—call it verity.
I must say at this point what “taking it personally” shouldn’t
mean. Dennis gives the most generous praise and acknowledgment
to my own book, The World of the Imagination, which he clearly
regards as a worthy predecessor to be worthily superseded. There’s
no cause for grief in that. What better chance for an afterlife than
to find a delimited place in the next, more global treatment? At the
end, I’ll indicate briefly how the picture-making view of the imagination preferred in my book both accommodates itself and is recalcitrant to Dennis’s topology.
Chapter 1 begins by giving shape to the questions that matter
about the imagination: How do we come by the idea? Why is it
important? And it promises answers. It then goes on to a critique
of what Sepper calls “the occluded-occulted tradition” of sapient
imagining. He mounts a fair attack on what one might call the
canned version of the tradition, the “pseudo-tradition,” which is
divorced from the subtleties of the actual texts and thus set up to
miss the meaning. Here he produces a pointed answer to two questions: One, what killed the tradition? Answer: survey-type, textless
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textbook accounts. And two, what have the original texts to give
us? Answer: fresh, unstereotyped approaches to truth.
Chapter 2 offers a five-line definition of the imagination, which
is deliberately comprehensive and incidentally shows that good
books are written back to front. My students tend to think, wrongly,
I believe, that philosophy is about and ends in definitions. Yet it is
a part of the intelligent plan of this book that it begins by focusing
the mind on the topic by means of this definition. It is a risky and
arresting strategy: risky because, unlike the Socratic initiation of a
search by means of a definition that is at once popular and self-refuting, Sepper’s definition is at once demanding and conclusive;
arresting because you can tell that it is new-old, not one of the
going formulas, yet rooted in the intellectual tradition.
His ultimate aim is, as I said, comprehensiveness, initiated by
actually practicing imagining, by attending to the act. There are
guided exercises asking you to determine such aspects as how
much of imaginative remembering is reproduction, how much
detail is present, etc. There is a first engagement with various approaches, such as psychologism, which regards knowledge as
“what people in fact think” rather than “what objects actually
are,” and works on the supposition that we have similar, naturally
given, minds which have before them mental objects, and also
posits that both the mind’s thinking and its objects are accessible
to introspection. One can see that “having images”—pictures
held in or before the mind—goes well with this school of thought.
It is, however, afflicted with many quandaries. Its opponent, antipsychologism, argues that it is not from mental, thus subjective,
objects that knowledge comes but from objective public objects,
from logic, mathematics, the world. Internal objects are denied
in favor of overt behavior; mental images, at least the claim that
there are well-formed, stable mental pictures, are obvious targets
of anti-psychologism. It, too, has its difficulties.
Sepper gives notice that he will sail between these Clashing
Rocks: A mental image must be somehow based both in its situation and its forming activity—must be both public and private.
To escape falsifying fixations, we must reradicalize imagination,
recover its roots, its ontology. Sepper proposes a guiding idea
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN
5
that will avoid getting caught in the conventional commonplaces:
a “topology” of the imagination.
Chapter 3 could be said to set out the methodology of the book,
but that would be falsifying Sepper’s enterprise, which is premethodological. I might describe it as putting to work, for all it’s
worth, a well-found metaphor. Topos, the Greek word for “place,”
has many spaces—physical territories supporting settled locales;
reversely, mathematical fields constituted from the relations among
its elements, its sites; topological space in which expansible shapes
undergo transformations without tearing; and the index in which
rhetorical “common-places,” in Greek, topoi, can be looked up.
These are all versions of a “conceptual topology.” This rich notion
is the notable discovery, or I should say, rediscovery of the book.
Sepper finds that certain philosophers’ writings about imagination,
when directly approached, in fact employed a conceptual topology
all along.
Here is a very preliminary description of the topological approach, as exercised by people who have some preparation:
They have not acquired just a greater quantity of discrete
ideas and their associations. They have cultivated new
fields of imagination as such, as whole fields; they have
learned to mark out special positions in the field; they
have come to isolate (or section out) subfields and sometimes they learn how to relate the various fields to one
another in a new entity or a new field (94).
This much is already evident about a topological understanding
of the imagination: It will see imagining as holistic, fluid, multilevelled—and all that to the second degree. I mean that the above
is not only a description of the imagination but also of the understanding of imagination. For if the imagination is a “topography,”
a placing-in-fields activity, so much the more must its understanding
be a “topology,” an account of a topography. And conversely, if the
approach is adequate in its metaphoricity—for “place” as primarily
used and defined by Aristotle, is a phenomenon of extension—then
so must the imagination be a power of metaphorical placing. But
this is not Sepper’s explicit vocabulary; it is perhaps more an expression of my misgivings, which I’ll articulate at the end.
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Chapters 4 through 7 then do what is obviously next: give a
reradicalized reading of the deepest philosophical texts bearing on
the subject—Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant.
Chapter 8, on post-Kantian treatments, displays what happens
sooner or later to anyone who tries to trace the tradition of a topic
chronologically. Eventually things fall apart into multifariousness;
one is obliged to choose a few authors out of a multitude. Sepper
concentrates on those, namely Wittgenstein (in his Tractatus) and
Saussure, who exemplify an important consequence of his own
heuristic, his topological device: that logos, far from being the antithesis of an image, is an image.
To explain the assertion that the overlapping of language with
imaging is implied in the topological approach, I must return to
Chapter 3 to introduce Sepper’s notion of “biplanarity.” It refers
to a sort of double sight by which one imaginative plane is simultaneously present with another, and the imaginer sees one in terms
of the other. It is first mentioned as a sort of dissociation, such as
happens when one distances oneself from the sense-filled experience of the world in order to see it as reason-resistant appearance,
opposed to intelligible being, if one is Socratically inclined. Or reversely, if one tends to Husserlian phenomenology, then it is real
existence that is “bracketed,” so that one may see the world as an
analyzable phenomenon. Later this relation between the planes is
called a projection. “Seeing-as” has in fact become a topos.
So logos or reason and image or picture can live simultaneously
on two planes while being, moreover, somehow projectible—that
is, in some aspect isomorphic. I have some misgivings about this
rather broad application of the notion of projection that I will offer
later on.
Now before going to those central chapters that revive the tradition and reradicalize the problem, let me just complete the sketch
of the book’s organization.
Chapter 9, the last chapter, presents the initial definition, now
endowed with enough mental material to shed the term definition
and to become a delimitation—a kinder, gentler, more inclusivesounding term. Like any thoughtful philosopher (there is, after all,
the other kind), Sepper does not in fact highly value definitions,
because they are too bare, and he says that they never deliver an
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN
7
unpackable essence. Nonetheless his now much amplified delimitation does invite an analytic reading. I will sketch out what this
reading yields, since that is the crux of the book, yet I know full
well that I’m reversing Sepper’s deliberate expansion. But what
else to do? Let me call it whetting your appetites.
So: the imagination is an activity; one might say that the imagination is nothing but imagining. This identification does an end
run around the “mental modularity” debate, which is concerned
with the problem hinted at before: whether the mind has a multiplicity of distinct faculties or is a global activity. The imagination
is neither a separate faculty nor an undiscriminable activity. This
imagining is a third something, quite positive, quite specific. It acts
evocatively, calls something forth, and that in a dual way: “abstractional” and “concretional.” Its evocative work produces on the one
hand something drawn away from, abstracted from, detached from
the original. But on the other hand, the emergent imaginative phenomenon has—this is my term now, (Sepper avoids it)—quasi-sensory characteristics, reminiscent of the embodied original insofar
as that it is a concretion, a thickening, of features. The definition
then goes on to specify this activity of imagining. First, it envisions
imaginative fields of concern with a basically potential nature, in
which the fixities of the sensory world become fluid. Second, it
exploits this potentiality to allow the projection of field upon field,
that is, of biplanarity. I have, of course, truncated this concluding
exposition and so robbed it of its subtlety.
The chapter then gathers in the topics that give the potential features form, actualize them, as it were, and so shape the field into a
topography, an expression of the field’s potentials. Recall that these
topoi or topics are figurative places, mental foci.
Here are some examples: Imagining begins with “the emergence
of appearance as appearance,” a formulation that implies “not as
appearance of a stably real thing,” and which is, by reason of this
divorce from reality, both initially placeable in the imaginative
field and essentially evanescent. Fixing this appearance, giving it
firmer shape is a further work of the imagination.
A second topic is the image as inchoate, labile, and contextual.
Contextuality in particular is a recurrent and crucial topic, since in
its shiftiness it partly explains the mobile character of images, but
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even more because context is placing, and placement is the necessary correlative of place. Further on, a topic zeroes in on imagining
as abstracting from perception. One might say “abstraction from
perception” is the preliminary activity that yields appearances as
appearances, since perception is the sensing of things as things.
But one can regard this abstraction from perception also in an opposite way: When the imagination strips the thing of its perceptual
accidents it produces a rationalized image, one having the lucidity
of reason—reason in image-shape. I think of diagrams and blueprints in connection with this.
Nine such topoi are mentioned, features both of and in the field
that have now become topics, subject-areas for future study and
theorizing, and with these “areas” the book concludes. One stems
from Sepper’s unapologetic acknowledgment that he has “cognitivized” the imagination and omitted the human depths of affectivity. He regards the future incorporation of these factors as
plausible and predicts a complex inquiry.
Another concern is the anthropological positioning of the imagination: How does the imagination fit into our humanity? Sepper
suggests that Heidegger’s Being and Time might be translated into
a more conventional philosophical anthropology, in which terms
like attunement (Stimmung) might be put to use. Here I am driven
to an aside: I would applaud this outcome, because if such a normalized derivation had been plausibly accomplished, that would
imply what some of us suspect—that Heidegger’s original existential analytic is, after all, an ordinary ontic anthropology ratcheted
up by fiat into an extraordinary ontology.
Ontology is indeed another concern. Sepper’s envisions ontological explanations that are imaginative in the sense of being fieldto-field projections, one field being the explanatory, the other the
explained field. A bonus is that this duality avoids destructive reductionism, since in the imaginative mode the field elucidated is
not collapsed into the explaining field. Simultaneity of levels is
maintained, and the object explained survives in its plane, unreduced to its explanatory elements in the underlying parallel plane.
Finally an ethics of imagination is adumbrated. Sepper speaks
of an ethos of imagination as the “inhabitable place of imagina-
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN
9
tion”—how we live in its fields. Such a way of life will develop
an ethics that requires this way of life to be good. His book has
shown that thinking and imagining are inseparable. The obsession
with formal and procedural rationality and the relegation of imagination to the arts is disastrous in children’s education and, by implication, to adult practice:
The only adequate way of developing rationality is to develop our ability to imagine comprehensively; we must
start with ourselves, or we will inevitably fail our children and the future world (524).
In leaping from the first three chapters to the last, I have hollowed out the nourishing marrow of Understanding Imagination,
the “reradicalized” readings of imagination’s great philosophical
texts. I would keep you here past lunch, dinner, and nightcap, if I
attempted to fill the gap. Those interpretations are based on close
and acute textual analyses, and they take their time.
Instead I will try to say, briefly, in gist, what in each of the four
philosophers to which Sepper gives a chapter is particularly germane to the delineation of the imagination just outlined. In this
sketchy review I shall have to omit entirely the history-of-ideas
glue that holds these philosophers steady in the context of a—putatively—coherent development.
It is, incidentally, not clear to me what the actual order of discovery was: Did Sepper formulate his understanding of the imagination first and then discover previously occulted corroboration
in the textual tradition, or was it the other way around, or both simultaneously? Maybe he will tell us later.
I’m not sure whether this attempt to pinpoint the intention of an
extended exposition, to find the crux of a highly textured lay-out,
amounts to a subversion or a highlighting of Sepper’s work. Anyhow, I mean it for the latter and will try not to miss the point, but
if Dennis says I did, I will gladly yield to correction. So, then:
Chapter 4: Plato. The chapter intends a major correction of standard interpretations that downplay images in the dialogues. In fact,
“for Plato reality is mimetic,” meaning that the levels of being are
seen as a cascade of images along which the viewer rises and descends in inquiry. Moreover the image-beings produced by what I
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might call “ontological imaging” are analogically connected, that
is, by proportions constituted of logoi, ratios—as in the Divided
Line of the Republic. So they can be said to be logos-involved
(though I’m not sure that ratio-logos so readily translates into reason-logos). I also want to add that Plato calls the lowest human
thought capacity eikasia, “image-recognition,” but then puts it to
work throughout the realm of knowing, for the ascent of knowing
is through recognizing images as images.
Chapter 5: Aristotle. Next, the imagination is retrieved from a
truncated conventional account of Aristotle’s On the Soul which
suppresses two aspects—that imagination seems to be a sort of motion and that it is one aspect of intellection. The imagination’s motion is that of abstracting from the matter of the sensory object and
locating the resulting appearance in the thinking, noetic part of the
soul. There, as “intellectualized imagination” (Sepper’s term), it
functions freely over a field of shifting conformations and contexts,
over a topography. Here I want to add that Aristotle calls even the
Divine Intellect a topos eidōn, a “place of forms,” and the very fact
that this description is figurative (since the Intellect is beyond all
place) may strengthen Sepper’s claim: thoughts and images are
“concreted” in the highest reaches.
Chapter 6: Descartes. Now the topological view of the imagination is refounded in modernity, though again conventional imagination-suppressing selectivity has obscured this fact. Descartes is
a persistent practitioner of the imagination, particularly in the
mathematization of physical nature. Imagination, however, is identified as an activity of the intellect, which is capable of “remotion,”
of stepping back from its imagined figures to rethink them as
purely intellectual existences. Thus intellect exceeds imagination
so as to become, from beyond it, the source of its directed mobility,
that is, the source of its biplanarity and field-topography.
Chapter 7: Kant. Sepper precedes his exposition with an account
of the post-Cartesian occultation of the imagination by rationalism
and its revival within a new science of sensibility, aesthetics. To
these developments Kant responds with a radical epistemology—
an account, called “transcendental,” as yielding knowledge going
beyond the only conscious material knowledge possible, an account
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11
that traces experience to its root. This root is dual, a passively receptive sensibility “looked at” by intuition, and an actively constructive conceptuality “functioning” by understanding. The
sensibility is again dual, consisting of transcendental, that is, hypersensory space and time. Spatiality and temporality are thus with
us from the first, a priori. Into these notional receptacles flows—
from somewhere—a sensory manifold, an unstructured matter. The
imagination is a synthesizing power, a power of “placing together”
disparate elements, both at the very origin and on several higher
knowledge-producing levels of the soul. Thus imagination is, for
the first time in philosophy, productive before it is reproductive. It
is now knowledge-shaping rather than knowledge-aiding, as it was
for Aristotle, for whom it presented to thought the sensible world
without its matter. The first work of Kant’s transcendental imagination is that of informing the sense-manifold spatially and temporally, so that all sensation of the world comes to our
consciousness “in” space and “in” time, extendedly and sequentially. Mathematics, then, is a product of another imaginative synthesis, which directs thinking to invoke, to inscribe, in space
particular geometric figures, and also calls on time to develop them
progressively. Of the several syntheses, the highest and deepest,
most original, hence most mysterious, work of the imagination is
done by a procedure that is called a schematism. It “puts together,”
or rather infuses, the functions of the understanding, which is a rational power, with the space and time, the pure intuitions of the
sensibility, which is a receptive mode. On the face of it, their disparateness would seem to preclude this miracle of involvement.
But the imagination provides the ground of their union. One example: “Substance,” as a mere rational notion, is an empty concept.
When time-informed it becomes the more concrete category of that
which persists in time, a locus of underlying stability.
There are further syntheses, those that produce the ascending
ways consciousness deals with the representations before it: first,
an “apprehension,” a mere awareness of a representation as an
item; then, a “reproduction” of the representation as a memoryimage; finally, a “recognition” that by coming under concepts the
representation is now stably settled in consciousness and fully ac-
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quired by self-consciousness.
So the Kantian imagination is an activity responsible for the togetherness of analytically disparate factors. It works at the roots of
consciousness, to give it its basic constitution, and then over multiple and layered fields of knowing, by projections from the level
of mere awareness to full self-consciousness. Sepper says that
Kant, as the most consequential representative of the eclipsed tradition, “brought the . . . intelligible dynamism of imagining to a
high point that was not exceeded even by the romantics”—which
is saying a lot, and rightly.
To summarize my summary: Plato introduces an ontological
imagination, whose places are held together in a bond of logoi, ratios. Aristotle adds a psychological activity working at the crux of
human knowing, between thing and soul. Descartes conceives an
intellect that contains and directs the imagination; hence the dynamism of images—their mobility, responsiveness to context, and
biplanarity—is not intrinsic to images but is the inspiriting work
of the intellect. And Kant discovers a synthetic power merging sensibility and understanding, the two aspects of cognitive consciousness; this power originates at its unknowable root of the human
subject and works at all its levels.
These four philosophers anticipate in various degrees of prominence the two chief elements of Sepper’s analysis: the close linkage of reason with imagination and the shifting field-topography
notion of mobile imagining. And they corroborate his respect for
the tradition as a source of illumination.
Now, to do my job as reviewer, I should subjoin some misgivings—and I do mean misgivings and queries, not criticisms and
condemnations.
First, then, I’ll articulate a sort of global unease about explanatory delineations like Sepper’s efforts that make the—surely
heroic—attempt to capture the mobile multifariousness and closeup complexity of embodied beings, and particularly, of their mental
life. In one of his many helpful footnotes he explains the mental
motions of “abstracting” and “prescinding” (drawing off and cutting away), both of which are a kind of simplifying fixative; the
imagination itself, as a cooperating power of understanding works
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | BRANN
13
with these devices. If the project is to understand understanding
imagination through a descriptive analysis that preserves the flexible richness of a participating power, a certain swampy doubletalk is the penalty. So for example, a key word, topos, carries,
as I pointed out, the dual meaning of a given subject of inquiry
fitted into a topology and of a placing function of the imagination
producing a topography. And the imagination itself appears—indeed early Descartes is the predecessor here—in two forms. On
the one hand, it is a general power of figurative reconception—
whence its relation to human “creativity.” This human power is,
of course, nothing like the divine creation of the Bible that makes
a world out of chaos; it is rather a new perspective on an old situation or its reconfiguration. This general imagination is a Protean
power. On the other hand, there is also the narrower power of producing and manipulating images; it is a rather specialized capability. I wonder if prescinding, cutting away, containing, would
not be an authorial virtue here. But then again, if something, the
imagination par excellence, is by nature duplicitous, perhaps its
account must display intentional ambiguities and homonymous
doublings—never mind Occam’s Razor and its injunction not to
multiply explanatory entities.
The second item is only a specification of the first. Certain notions don’t seem to lend themselves to clarity—for example, contextualization and fusion. A context, as Sepper fully appreciates, is
logically definable by what is sometimes called an infinite judgment, as the indefinitely large negativity surrounding a place. So
“contextualization” means putting a small island in a large ocean
and calling that a placement. This misgiving, incidentally, reaches
to all those unhelpful politico-socio-economico-psychological explanations: You can’t zero in on an apprehended “this” by means
of too-big-to-know “that.” Something analogous goes for fusion,
the togetherness of word and thought or thing and image. It doesn’t,
incidentally, matter whether the cognitive union is to be of thought
with a material object or with its matter-stripped image; their mutuality is, by the very reason of being a fact, a mystery, and it might
be most incisive to call it that.
Third, this mutuality or reciprocity of intellect and imagination
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seems to me the mystery of mysteries, one attested to by the very
variety of grappling devices proposed for their union, precisely because of their structural dissimilarity. All of Sepper’s four philosophers, however they may assimilate the intellect to its object—as,
for example, when Aristotle analogizes sensing and intellection—
at the end of their ruminations admit, either explicitly or implicitly,
the existence of a non-sensing, imageless power of intellect. This
shows, I think, that in those high reaches the intellect itself is an
imageless power. How does a power which at its purest is placeless
come to govern placements?
These considerations make me wonder about the biplanar, fieldto-field-projecting imagination. It is, to begin with, a very congenial notion to me, this double-sight (for which Dennis kindly gives
me credit), in which an image over- or underlies worldly events,
lending them a resonance from other world-venues. Such are the
Homeric similes of the Iliad that alleviate the excruciating concentration of the battlefield by overlaying it with a bonding analogy
to the rest of the world, from the heavens to the household.
But that template notion presupposes some articulated similarity,
some isomorphism, and I have not quite understood on what basis
Sepper’s fields are actually projectible onto one another, how they
are homologous. For example, he says that there is something perverse in the claim that geometry is left behind in analytic, that is
algebraic, geometry. And yet there is a powerful notion, set out recently in Burt Hopkins’s extended commentary on Jacob Klein’s
work on the origin of algebra,2 that just this is the case. Symbolic
mathematics casts loose from image-mathematics and thereby
founds the very modernity Sepper is trying to reform, the world of
abstract reckoning that has suppressed concrete imagining and has
no structural relation to it and is simply not homologous with it.
Another example is word-painting, the power of language to
arouse mental images. No one knows just how words intend toward
and reach the world, nor, therefore, how they instigate its images.
So, it seems to me, the field of thinking and its articulation in words,
2. Burt Hopkins, The Origin of the Logic of Symbolic Mathematics: Edmund Husserl and Jacob Klein (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press,
2011). Jacob Klein was the third Dean of the New Program at St. John’s.
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this field of logos, is not, at least not obviously, in the field-to-field
relation to the imagination that the notion of a reasoning image requires—and yet I know that language often delineates pictures and
passion usually infuses words.
That brings me to a fourth and final query. Sepper quite intentionally barely touches the relation of imagining to phantasy, to
painting, and to the passions. Might it not be that in relation to
these the understanding of imagination requires different rubrics
and emphases from those in Understanding Imagination? I’ll post
brief surmises.
Cognitively useful imaging is fed from the outside face, so to
speak, of consciousness by the sensed world. Phantasy, by which
I mean fiction, presents what-is-not, and so offers a re-presentation
of no worldly original. No receptive taker-in of a fiction thinks of
it as a re-arranged reality, a reality-collage. Should one not consider
that there might be a conduit from the inside, for which the term
“unconscious” is just an evasive makeshift? Although I am here in
the company of soberly sane thinkers, I am nevertheless suggesting
that one might seriously consider what the practitioners of poetry
meant by the Muses, who live on Olympus and not in neuronal networks. The question here is, Whence comes imagining in its most
life-enhancing aspect?
When the visual arts are drawn into the inquiry, painting is apt
to come front and center, because, if a painting is (as we pre-postmoderns tend to think) an externalization of a mental image (of
course modified in its passage from quasi- to real space), then the
embodied product might in turn throw light on that immaterial
image. It might be that we are drawn to flat-medium imagery because it reminds us of our soul’s imagining—in its plane dimension
(that is, lacking volume), in its immobility (or virtual mobility),
and in what I’ll call its momentousness (its excerpting from the
banal spatial and temporal context a moment of intensified significance). The question here is, Whence issues the imagination’s
most poignant work? Even to ask that question is, to be sure, a surreptitious bit of special pleading on my part, since the answers I’ve
just suggested are the ones given in my book.
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And finally, when the imagination is properly related to the passions, from the devastating storms of erotic desire to the delicate
atmospheres of esthetic feeling, might the imagination not appear
in yet another capacity than that of abstracting from the round reality outside, or of receiving influxes from a ghostly source beyond?
I mean the capacity to transmogrify the blind shapelessness of our
most intimate psychic condition, our affectivity, into formed feeling—a phrase that surely describes some of our internal imagery.
The question here would be whether the image as an effluvium of
feeling is the same as or different from the cognitive, the art-producing, the Muse-inspired image. Thus the question of questions:
Is the imagination—be it activity, capacity, power, faculty—one or
many? Almost two and a half millennia, and we are still in medias
res. Well, I seem to have talked myself into acknowledging that
Dennis’s multiplication of entities may mirror the way things are.
Thus Understanding Imagination is a wonderfully anticipatory
waystation. So here, in conclusion, are my wishes for the book:
First, that it gain influence enough to encourage a new round of
broadly conceived image-inquiries aided by fresh, close attention
to the great predecessors and perhaps some new, ingeniously devised, imagination-informed image-research. And then, that its call
be heeded for a reform which I’ll put in my own words: There is
in our world a strong strain of relentless reductionism and blind
rationalism whose inevitable complements are mechanical creativity-mongering and thoughtless image-proliferation. One antidote,
perhaps only topically applicable—but then positive good usually
is local—would be a revivified attention to the reason of images.
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Similarity and Equality in
Euclid and Apollonius
Michael N. Fried
By Way of Introduction
My subject today is the meaning of similarity and equality in Euclid and Apollonius—and, by implication, in Greek mathematics
generally during its climax in Hellenistic times. But before I actually begin, I want to say just a few words about history of mathematics and St. John’s College, and I would like to do so by telling
a little story. I told this story the last time I spoke at St. John’s,1
but I would like to tell it again, for I still think about it and am
still unsettled by it.
Not long after I finished my doctorate, I was invited to Delphi
for a meeting of historians of ancient mathematics—a small intimate group, only slightly larger than a St. John’s seminar. During
one of the morning coffee breaks, Alexander Jones, the classicist
and historian of Greek mathematics, casually asked how I felt having made the transition from a St. John’s way of thinking to a historian’s. Like a good seminar question, I was stunned by this, and
I was not sure how to answer. This was mainly because I could not
decide whether there really was a difference between a St. John’s
way of thinking and the way of thinking of a historian of ideas,
that is, whether it really was true I had made any kind of transition
at all.
With a kind of dullness until that moment, I had no trouble, on
the one hand, claiming that in the work I was doing as a historian of
Greek mathematics I was continuing what I had learned at St. John’s,
and, on the other hand, feeling frustration, sometimes bordering on
Michael N. Fried is Professor of Science and Technology Education at
Ben Gurion University of the Negev in Beer-Sheva, Israel. This lecture
was delivered on July 31, 2013 at St. John’s College in Santa Fe.
1. At the conference Classical Mathematics and Its Transformation, held
at the Annapolis campus in 2004.
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resentment, at having to explain yet again how, despite its centering
on texts mostly written long ago, the St. John’s approach was not
historical. Jones’s question made me face the possibility that there
might be a real contradiction here. Of course the reason it still preoccupies me is not because I am overly concerned about my identity
as a Johnny, but because it raises the question of history altogether.
Let me say just a word about this.
When Alexander Jones contrasted the study of history with the St.
John’s program he had in mind, I believe, a view of history, particularly the history of ideas, in which the thought of thinkers in the past
is assumed to be conditioned by times and contexts; understanding
Euclid or Apollonius must, in that view, always be mediated. The contrast with St. John’s may have been based on a mere caricature of the
College where students deal with “eternal ideas” able to be grasped in
an unmediated way. But there is another non-historical view of Euclid
and Apollonius that involves assuming such authors can be read with
no mediation beyond a good Greek lexicon, one that is related to that
caricature version of St. John’s, while not, I hasten to add, the St.
John’s way. It is that in which one comes to mathematics of the past
through modern mathematical concepts and methods, as if the mathematicians of the past were merely writing about the same ideas in a
different language—as John Edensor Littlewood famously said, like
“fellows of another college.”2 Modern mathematical ideas, for those
who approach ancient texts in this way, do not mediate a reading of
the past, but only clarify what those older mathematicians were actually saying. Modern mathematical insight, on that view, becomes the
key to historical insight. A historian like Jones could well see that same
modern insight as obscuring what the mathematicians of the past understood.
For Jones, what the older mathematicians were actually saying is
what they did say in the body of texts they left behind. In order to recover the original meaning of those texts, if we can, one must read
them attentively and with the thought that they were meant to be read.
This unmediated reading of texts, I think, is not far from what one
tries to do at St. John’s. The difficulty here is that having read the texts
2. Quoted in G. H. Hardy, A Mathematician’s Apology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940), 81.
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one must nevertheless interpret them—and what it means to interpret
can be interpreted in many ways! Here there can be deep divisions in
outlook.
It may be that Alexander Jones, as a historian of mathematics, is a
historicist, that is, that he truly believes mathematics to be entirely a
product of historical forces so that Greek mathematics, say, belongs
immovably to its own time. In that case he would certainly see a divide
between the way he relates to the past and the way one does at St.
John’s. But whether he really is a historicist I do not know; I never
asked him. Whatever the case, in approaching the history of mathematics, he must, as I must as well, begin at least with a working assumption that the mathematics of the past is different from that of the
present.
The subject of this lecture is not the idea of history, to use the title
of R. G. Collingwood’s famous book,3 and so I shall have to risk your
being left with the impression that this working assumption is only a
kind of maxim. However, I do want to stress that it is in fact fundamental to the way a historian must come to the past. For example, in
the chapter on historical experience in Michael Oakeshott’s Experience and Its Modes, the author distinguishes different kinds of past,
of which one is the historical past, or, we might say, the historians’
past:
The differentia [emphasis in the original] of the historical past
lies in its very disparity from what is contemporary. The historian does not set out to discover a past where the same beliefs, the same actions, the same intentions obtain as those
which occupy his own world. His business is to elucidate a
past independent of the present, and he is never (as an historian) tempted to subsume past events under general rules. He
is concerned with a particular past. It is true, of course, that
the historian postulates a general similarity between the historical past and the present, because he assumes the possibility
of understanding what belongs to the historical past. But his
particular business lies, not with this bare and general similarity, but with the detailed dissimilarity of past and present.
3. R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1946), which collects together the author’s works on his philosophy
of history.
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He is concerned with the past as past, and with each moment
of the past in so far as it is unlike any other moment.4
As a position regarding the way one should come to the past rather
than a position about how the past really is, this is not very different
from a good rule for listening or reading well, as we try to do at St.
John’s: you will listen better to what authors are trying to say if you
do not assume you already know what they are saying—if you assume, rather, that they are saying something different from anything
you have ever heard before.
That said, we are creatures of the present; we cannot pretend the
present does not affect us in any way. For this reason, it is at least useful, if not essential, to be cognizant of the present even while we are
trying to find a very different past. So, while my purpose today is to
try to clarify the notions of similarity and equality in Euclid and Apollonius, I want to begin with a certain aspect of how we moderns tend
to think about similarity and equality: I hope it will help to bring out
the tremendous difference and even strangeness in the ways these notions were understood in classical times.
Similarity and Equality in a Modern Context
Let me begin with a problem someone gave to me sometime before
my flight from Israel to Santa Fe (it is a long flight so it is always
good to have a mathematics problem to work on in transit). The
solution I will present is a modern one.
Let A and B be given points and let C lie on a given
circle. Let P be the centroid of triangle ABC. Find
the locus of point P.
Let E be the midpoint of AB. Then if EC is any line from E to a
point C on the circle, EP:EC=1:3, since P is the centroid of triangle
ACB. Hence, we may think of E as a center of similitude—a point
from which the plane is dilated or contracted uniformly, that is,
that the distance between points is enlarged or diminished by a
fixed ratio (3:1 in this case). The locus PP′P″ is then the image of
4. Michael Oakeshott, Experience and Its Modes (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1933), 106.
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circle CC′C″ via a contraction relative to E. Therefore, the locus
PP′P″ is a circle having a radius 1/3 that of the given circle CC′C″.
By the same argument, we can see that if C moved on any other
shape, say, an ellipse or a square, the locus of P would also be an
ellipse or a square 1/3 the dimensions of the original ellipse or
square.
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
In fact, it can be a completely arbitrary shape.
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In every case, the locus required is a shape similar to the original
shape and 1/3 its dimensions.
For our purposes, there are two things we should observe. The
first is the form of the problem, the mere question of locus. What
does it mean to “Find the locus of P”? The idea of locus, or in
Greek, topos, is not an easy one. It would require a lecture of its
own. Yet, it is related, I think, to my main subject, similarity and
equality. I shall say a word about this later.
The second thing to observe, putting the difficulties of locus
aside, is my own way of answering the question, namely, “The
locus required is a shape similar to the original shape” What allows me to speak so generally? Why is it that I need to know nothing about the original shape, none of its special properties? What
allows me, a post-nineteenth century person, to speak of the similarity of a shape I know nothing about?
The answer to this is that in solving the problem I only referred
to a relation between EC, wherever C happens to be, and EP. More
precisely, I took P as an image of C when the entire plane was
contracted by a factor of 1/3 with respect to the point E. That ABC
happened to be a triangle and that P was the centroid of ABC was
really incidental. More importantly, in the original problem, the
fact that the point C moved along a circle was incidental. I did
not, even once, refer to a property of circles!
The modern turn here is precisely to ignore any particular shape
and give all of one’s attention to the space in which it is found.
The contraction by 1/3 is of the space itself, the entire plane:
everything in it will be contracted, shrunk, by a factor of 1/3, so
whatever the shape, it will be the same, only smaller (and in another instance of course it could also be larger)—it is as if we
make a change of scale. This kind of transformation of the plane
is called a “dilation,” and, in general, we can speak about similarity in terms of a dilation combined with other transformations
of the plane that preserve distances between points, translations,
reflections, rotations (these are known as “isometries”).5 This centering on the space is crucial in almost every aspect of modern
5. In fact, it turns out to be enough to speak about reflections: translations
and rotations can be defined in terms of combinations of reflections.
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
mathematics.6 And it is what links similarity and equality, or congruence. For since a dilation is determined by the factor of contraction or enlargement, one can speak of a unit dilation where the
factor is 1. Congruence—and we shall have to confront the problem of congruence versus equality later—is only a special case of
similarity, so that if two figures are congruent they are automatically similar as well.
I want drive home the point that modern geometry is colored by
its emphasis on space by quoting a nineteenth century geometer
who is thought of as a classical geometer, that is, one whose work
is not governed by algebraic ideas—and, indeed, he is considered
one of the greatest geometers of nineteenth century. This is Jakob
Steiner. One of the ideas Steiner developed (though he may not
have invented it) was called the “center of similitude.” In the problem above, this is the point E, the point with respect to which we
dilate the plane. Steiner speaks of this in more than one work; here
is how he describes it in “Geometrical Constructions with a Ruler
Given a Fixed Circle with its Center”:
If in a plane through any point E we draw rays (lines) in
all directions EA1, EB1, EC1, . . . and by means of these
rays, so connect with one another all points of the plane
that to every point A1 on such a ray as EA1 corresponds another point A2 on the same ray; and indeed, under the condition that the distance of every two corresponding points
from the point E, and EA1 and EA2, have throughout one
and the same given ratio, as n1:n2, then such a system of
correspondence is thereby brought about that the plane is
6. I think Jacob Klein put his finger on the same tendency when he wrote,
“Descartes’s 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 linesegments, a domain which is defined by a coordinate system, a rational
system, as we say nowadays. ‘Euclidean Space’ is by no means the domain of the figures 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 structures.” Jacob Klein, “The
World of Physics and the ‘Natural’ World,” The St. John’s Review 28.1
(1981): 29.
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traversed twice. Or, we can also imagine that two planes,
which may be called α and α′, lie one upon the other, while
every point may be considered as belonging as well in one
as in the other plane.7
Although Steiner will use the center of similitude specifically for
circles, lines, and angles, his way of presenting it in terms of a
transformation of the entire plane—or, as we would say, a mapping
of one plane onto another—shows the generality of his conception.
So, to reiterate the main point above, similarity can be a general
notion for us since in our modern mathematics similarity refers to
such an operation on the entire plane in which geometric figures
live. And because we focus on the entire plane rather than the objects themselves, the particularity of the objects deemed similar becomes unimportant, as we have seen. It is in this way that the
conception of similarity in Euclid and Apollonius (and, I would
add, Archimedes as well) is profoundly different from that in modern, post-nineteenth-century mathematics.8
7. Jakob Steiner, “Geometrical Constructions with a Ruler Given a Fixed Circle with its Center,” trans. M. E. Stark, ed. R. C. Archibald, Scripta Mathematica 4 (1948): 222. Steiner’s diagram is slightly different from the one
included above, for there are a few more points he wants to emphasize beyond
the mere definition.
8. For this reason, comments such as this from Jeremy Gray seem to me completely wrongheaded: “The Greek geometrical proofs worked because of assumptions made about the underlying space, which are reflected in the ideas
of congruence, similarity, and parallelism.” (Jeremy Gray, Ideas of Space
[Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979], 29.)
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THE ST. JOHN’S REVIEW
Similarity in Euclid and Apollonius
In some ways, the radical departure of the modern conception of similarity from the classical Greek conception has everything do with
how mathematicians like Euclid and Apollonius treated the plane itself. The plane, epipedon, in Greek geometry has, one might say, two
expressions, 1) as an object, and 2) as a place. As an object, it can be
considered in relation to other objects, for example, it may be inclined
to another plane, or a line may be inclined to it. It may cut another
figure, a parallelepiped as in Euclid, Elements XI.25 (“If a parallelepipedal solid be cut by a plane which is parallel to the opposite
planes, then, as the base is to the base so will the solid be to the solid”),
or as in Apollonius, Conics I.11-14 where the conic sections are produced by cutting a cone by a plane. Sometimes a plane is nearly identified with part of itself, as in the face of a solid figure (see for
example, Elements XI, Definitions 9 and 10), in which case it becomes an object in a sense not much different from the way a triangle
is an object.
As a place, it is not something manipulated: it is there, and there
are things in it—they can be manipulated, but it cannot.9 Thus in Elements I, Definition 8, “A plane angle is the inclination to one another
of two lines in a plane (en epipedōi) which meet one another and do
not lie in a straight line.” Again in Book XI, Proposition 1, “A part of
a straight line cannot be in the plane of reference (en tōi hupokeimenōi
epipedōi) and a part in a plane more elevated,” the plane is an immovable place. This phrase “the plane of reference,” or “the plane
placed under,” as a place on which things may be situated, also appears in Apollonius’s Conics I.5210 where Apollonius constructs a
parabola in a plane. Even though the plane is not the exclusive field
of action here, as it is in Book I of the Elements, and may have a relation to other objects or be constructed, it is, nevertheless, unmanipulated in these contexts, a that-with-respect-to-which other things may
be manipulated. It is also the place in which the similarity of figures
9. This idea is important in connection to Book IV of the Conics. See Michael
Fried, Apollonius of Perga’s Conics, Book IV: Translation, Introduction, and
Diagrams (Santa Fe: Green Lion Press, 2002).
10. See, for example, Apollonii Pergaei quae Graece exstant cum commentariis antiquis, ed. I. L. Heiberg, Vol. 1 (Leipzig: Teubner, 1891), 160, line 15.
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is explored. Of course the plane is a place in which the similarity of
figures is explored for the moderns as well; however, they do so by
treating the plane as a place that is able to be manipulated, as if the
place were an object. As such, it can also be compared to other planes,
as we saw in the example from Jakob Steiner.11
To return to the main point, however, the upshot of the ancient
view is that the similarity of figures must be a comparison of the figures themselves within a plane. One’s attention, therefore, must be
sharply focused on the figures and their properties. The foundation
of similarity rests in the look of geometrical figures. I use the word
“look” intentionally; it is a fair translation of the Greek word eidos,
which besides its well-known Platonic context has a mathematical
meaning of “shape,” or “form” in the sense of “shape.” For example,
in Euclid’s Data, Definition 3, we find the following explanation:
“Rectilineal figures are said to be given in form (tōi eidei), if the angles are given one by one and the ratios of the sides to one another
are given.”12 This definition is notable not only because of its resemblance to the definition of similarity in the Elements (see below), but
also because it makes clear that “similar” is related to something the
figures themselves possess,13 namely, their own look or form: for
one figure to be similar (homoios) to another means that they are in
possession of the same shape, the same form, the same look.
The shape of a person may be different from the person, but the
shape of a triangle is impossible to separate from what it is to be
a triangle. In geometry, the shape of something depends on what
that something is. There are, for this reason, as many criteria for
similar figures as there are different kinds of shapes: this is why
for the Greek mathematician there is no single governing rule for
11. See pp. 24-25 above.
12. Translation from Christian Marinus Taisbak, Euclid’s Data: The Importance of Being Given (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2003), 115.
Taisbak’s book contains a deep discussion of the idea of “givenness in form”
and of Euclid’s Data generally.
13. In this connection, Taisbak points out, “The Elements compare triangles.
The Data deals with individuals [emphasis in the original], and with the
‘knowledge’ we may have of such individual triangles, within the language
of Givens.” (Taisbak, Euclid’s Data, 126-127.)
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determining similarity. In the Elements, for example, we have the
following different criteria for similarity:
Elements III, Def. 11, Similar circular segments: “Similar
segments of circles are those which contain equal angles
or in which there are angles equal to one another.”
Elements VI, Def. 1, Similar rectilineal figures: “Similar
rectilineal figures are such that they have each of their angles equal and sides about the equal angles proportional.”
Elements IX, Def. 9, Similar solid figures: “Similar solid
figures are those contained by similar plane areas
(epipedōn) equal in number.”
Elements IX, Def. 24, Similar cones and cylinders: “Similar cones and cylinders are those of which the axes and
diameters of the bases are proportional.”
Add to these other definitions from Apollonius and Archimedes:
Apollonius, Conics VI, Def. 2, Similar conic sections: “[S]imilar [conic sections] are such that, when ordinates are drawn
in them to fall on the axes, the ratios of the ordinates to the
lengths they cut off from the axes from the vertex of the section are equal to one another, while the ratios to each other of
the portions which the ordinates cut off from the axes are
equal ratios.”14
Archimedes, Conoids and Spheroids, Introduction, Similar obtuse-angled conoids (i.e. hyperbolas of revolution): “Obtuse-angled conoids are called similar when
the cones containing the conoids are similar.”
Each of these definitions demands prior knowledge of the object
to which the word “similar” is being applied; for example, one
must know that the angles contained in a segment of a circle are
all equal so that one can speak of the angle of the segment. The
necessity of such prerequisite knowledge precludes a general definition of similarity: “similar” always awaits the particular geometrical entities which are to be similar—even ratio and
14. All translations of Books V-VII are from G. J. Toomer, Apollonius Conics
Books V to VII: The Arabic Translation of the Lost Greek Original in the Version of the Banu Musa, 2 vols., (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1990).
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proportion is not fundamental, as the case of similar circular segments shows. And since “similar” for triangles is one thing and
“similar” for conic sections something else, one could not ask
whether some shape is similar to some other shape without first
assuming that they are of the same type—a polygon, for example,
or, again, a conic section.15
Thus, while Apollonius can ask whether or not a parabola is similar to a hyperbola or even an ellipse in Conics VI.14, the question
remains strictly within the context of the similarity of conic sections for which there is a general definition. And when we look at
that general definition, we see how deeply it is rooted in the foundations of conic sections developed in Book I of the Conics. Let
us restate it:
Similar [conic sections] are such that, when ordinates are
drawn in them to fall on the axes, the ratios of the ordinates to the lengths they cut off from the axes from the
vertex of the section are equal to one another, while the
ratios to each other of the portions which the ordinates
cut off from the axes are equal ratios.
15. I am referring of course to “similarity” in its strict mathematical sense, as
opposed to the use of “similar,” in a non-mathematical context, even within
a mathematical work. For example, in the preface to his Phenomena, Euclid
writes that “if a cone or cylinder be cut by a plane not parallel to the base, the
resulting section is a section of an acute-angled cone which is similar to a
shield (homoia thureōi).” (Euclidis Phaenomena et Scripta Musica, ed. Heinrich Menge and I. L. Heiberg [Leipzig: Teubner, 1916], 6.)
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So, suppose ACD and PMN are two conic sections. Let AB and
PQ be their respective axes, and let CEC′, DFD′, MRM′, NSN′
be drawn ordinatewise.
Then ACD and PMN are similar if CC′:EA::MM′:RP and
DD′:FA::NN′:SP whenever AE:PR::AF:PS.
In order to follow this definition one must understand what
an axis is and what lines drawn ordinatewise means—and, naturally, one must understand that every conic section has an axis,
or, more generally, a diameter with respect to which lines may
be drawn ordinatewise.16 Unlike the little problem with which
I began the discussion, a proposition about similarity in Apollonius’s Conics must concern conic sections and their particular properties: Conics VI, the book which treats similarity (and
equality) is, after all, a book about conic sections!
As an easy example of how Apollonius uses the definition
and how not only its formulation but also its use depends on the
properties of conic sections, consider Conics VI.11, which
proves that every parabola is similar to every other parabola.
Here is a paraphrase of the proof.
Suppose AB and GD are two parabolas, AK, GO are their
axes, and AP, GR are their respective latera recta.
16. There are other definitions, notably one implied by Archimedes for
the ellipse and hyperbola. If PQ and pq are the axes of, say, the two ellipses and AR is an arbitrary ordinate in the one while bs is an arbitrary
ordinate in the other, Archimedes says that the two ellipses will be similar if it is true that:
sq.AR:rectPR,RQ = sq.bs:rect.ps,sq
Note that nothing is said about where R and s are on the respective axes.
The condition is equivalent to Conics, VI.12, for this ratio is always that
of the latus rectum to the transverse diameter, by Conics, I. 21. I might
add that although Toomer calls this a definition, Archimedes does not:
he simply states the fact that the conics will be similar if this is so—and
that at the end of a proposition! (See Conoids and Spheroids, Proposition
14 ad fin., in T. L. Heath, The Works of Archimedes [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1897], 125.) In any case, like Apollonius’s definition of similarity, this condition of Archimedes is also tied closely to
conic sections as opposed to any other kind of shape.
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Let AK:AP::GO:GR, and suppose Z and Q are arbitrary points on
AK.
Choose M and C so that they cut GO into segments having the same
ratios as the corresponding segments defined by Z and Q.
In parabola AB, draw EZI, HQS, BKT ordinatewise, that is perpendicular to AK since AK is an axis. Similarly, in GD, draw LMU, NCF,
DOX ordinatewise.
Now, by Conics I.11, BK and DO are mean proportionals between
AP and AK and GR and GO, respectively (i.e., AP:BK::BK:AK and
GR:DO::DO:GO)
Therefore, BK:AK::DO:GO, so that BT:AK::DX:GO [since
BT=2BK and DX=2DO].
Since AP:AK::GR:GO, AK:AQ::GO:GC, therefore, AP:AQ::GR:GC.
Thus, repeating the argument used to prove BT:AK::DX:GO above,
we can show also HS:AQ::NF:GC and, again, EI:AZ::LU:GM.
And so Apollonius concludes:
Therefore, the ratio of each of the lines BT, HS, EI,
which are perpendiculars to the axis [AK], to the
amounts which they cut off from the axis, namely, to
AK, AQ AZ is equal, respectively, to the ratio of the
lines DX, NF, LU, which are perpendiculars to the axis
[GO], to the amounts which they cut off from the axis,
namely OG, CG, MG.
And the ratios of the segments cut off from one of
the axes to the segments cut off from the other are
equal.
So section AB is similar to section GD.
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Again, what I wish to stress about this proof is not the details of
the argument, but the mere fact of its appealing at every step to the
specific properties of the parabola demonstrated in Conics I.
Perhaps the most striking reflection of how the similarity of
conic sections completely depends on the definition of conic sections, their geometric identity as the section of a cone, is the fact
that book ends with a set of eight constructions involving the cone
and locating conic sections within the cone, for example, “Given
a cone and given a parabola, find a cone containing the parabola
that is similar to the given cone” (Conics VI.31). Significantly,
Book VI is the only book in the Conics, besides Book I, in which
the cone appears explicitly.
We need now to move on to the question of equality. For, remember, Conics VI is not just about similarity, but also about
equality.
Equality in Euclid and Apollonius
As we noted above, with the modern view of similarity in which
similarity relates to a transformation of the space in which objects
are found, congruence becomes a completely derivative notion. And
here I should say that moderns speak about congruence and not
equality—and I think there is much to say about that—but more
often than not the use of one or the other is a matter of convention.
For example, when Hilbert comes to the axioms of congruence in
his Foundations of Geometry he more than once uses the expression
“kongruent oder gleich,” that is, “congruent or equal.” That it can
be a matter of convention is an important aspect of the modern perspective. Greek mathematicians do have a special designation,
“equal and similar” (isos te kai homoios); nevertheless, they do not
have a separate term for the relation of “congruence.” We shall have
to confront this combination “equal and similar” later, but for now
suffice it to say that there are only two basic terms “equal” and “similar.” The difficulty of their relationship cannot be swept away.
Thomas Heath’s treatment of this, for example, is quite unsatisfying.
When Euclid uses the word “equal,” isos, in a manner corresponding
to our notion of congruence, Heath just takes that to be the sense of
the word, and when Euclid then uses it in a manner corresponding
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to our notion of equal areas (Elements I.35), Heath says this is
“equality in a new sense.”17 Nevertheless, Euclid does use the same
word, isos. One cannot escape that.
For Euclid at least, equality is a very general notion, and it is certainly one of principal themes of Book I of the Elements, if not the
principal theme. As such, it is an idea that undergoes development
in the book; one might say the book develops a kind of theory of
equality. Let us consider briefly the overall direction of that development.
The theory of equality is contained in the five Common Notions
(koinai ennoiai) at the start of Book I of the Elements.18 These Common Notions are the following:
1. Things equal to the same thing are equal to one another.
2. And if equal things be adjoined (prostethēi) to the
same thing, the wholes are equal.
3. And if equals be removed from the same thing, the remainders are equal.
4. And things fitting (epharmozonta) on one another are
equal to one another.
5. And the whole is greater than the part.19
Of these, the fourth provides the basic criterion, the basic test for
equality: if one figure can be fitted exactly on top of another, then
the figures are equal (isos). It makes its first appearance in proposition I.4, which states that two triangles will be equal if they have
17. T. L. Heath, The Thirteen Books of Euclid’s Elements, Vol. 1 (New
York: Dover, 1956), 327.
18. Heiberg mentions other common notions appearing in some manuscripts; for example, “If unequals be adjoined to unequals, the whole is
unequal” and “Doubles of the same thing are equal to one another,” as
well as, “Two lines do not contain a space.” Except for the last about two
lines not containing a space—which, as Proclus himself seems to suggest,
is odd fish among the others—all of these common notions, therefore,
concern equality—and even that last common notion may be connected
to the nature of coinciding.
19. My translation.
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equal sides surrounding an equal angle. The entire demonstration,
problematic though it may be, plays on Common Notion 4: equal
lines are fitted on equal lines; the equal angle is fitted on the equal
angle; this forces the one triangle to fit on the other, so that the two
are equal.
In fact, that equal lines can be fitted on equal lines and equal angles on equal angles is not truly an application of Common Notion
4, but its converse; however, with simple undivided objects like
lines and angles, being equal and fitting on one another are treated
as identical relations.20 And in this connection we must return to
Book VI of the Conics for a moment. For Apollonius takes the criterion for equality provided by Common Notion 4 as the very definition of equality of conic sections:
Conic sections which are called equal are those which
can be fitted, one on another, so that the one does not exceed the other. Those which are said to be unequal are
those for which that is not so.
In the Elements, however, Euclid shows that the converse of
Common Notion 4 cannot be assumed in all generality. It is here
that the other Common Notions clarify why the criterion of “fitting on one another” is sufficient but not necessary for equality:
in Elements I.35, Euclid shows that things can be equal without
having the same shape, that is, without being able to fit on one on
the other.
Proposition I.35 states that “Parallelograms on the same base
and in the same parallels are equal to one another.” Thus the
proposition tells us that parallelograms such as ABCD and EBCF,
which are clearly not the same shape, may, nevertheless be equal.
It is instructive to look at Euclid’s proof of the proposition (in
paraphrase):
Since ABCD is a parallelogram, AD is equal to BC.
For the same reason, EF is equal to BC. Whence also
AD is equal EZ (by Common Notion 1); and DE is
common; therefore, the whole AE is equal to the whole
20. See Michael N. Fried and Sabetai Unguru, Apollonius of Perga’s
Conica: Text, Context, Subtext (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 228.
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DF (by Common Notion 2).21 But also AB is equal to
DC. So the two lines EA, AB are equal to the two lines
DF, DC, each to each. Also the angle contained by FDC
is equal to the angle contained by EAB, the exterior to
the interior. Therefore, the base EB is equal to the base
FC and the triangle EAB is equal to the triangle FDC
(by I.4 and, derivatively therefore, Common Notion 4];
let the common part DGE have been removed; therefore, the remaining trapezoid ABGD is equal to the remaining trapezoid EGCF (by Common Notion 3); let
the common triangle BGC have been adjoined; the
whole parallelogram ABCD is therefore equal to the
whole parallelogram EBCF (by Common Notion 2).
The parallelograms being on the same base and in the
same parallels are, therefore, equal to one another.
What we see in this proposition is no “new conception of equality,”
as Heath says; on the contrary, what we see is that the Common Notions—which comprise, as I said, the theory of equality—begin from
the basic notion of “fitting on one another” to show how equality applies also to shapes that do not fit on one another. It is an elaboration
of equality, a spelling out of the theory, not a new kind of equality. Even
Elements I.47, the “Pythagorean Theorem,” can be seen in this light,
since it shows not only how one figure can equal another of a different
shape, but also how one figure can equal two others of the same shape.
21. It is typical that Common Notions 2 and 3 are used when a single thing
is removed from two equals. This assumes that anything that can be equal
to something is always at least equal to itself. It is curious—and perhaps significant—that this fundamental fact is missing from the Common Notions.
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And, I would argue, Book II continues this inquiry with its attention to
how one or several rectangles may equal other rectangles.
This elaboration of the idea of equality demonstrates how things
can be equal even though they have far from the same shape. Conversely, things can be of the same shape and yet not be equal. Aristotle points this out, tellingly enough, in the section on motion
and alteration in the Categories (15a, 30-33): “there are things that
increase and are not thereby altered as well. For example, if a gnomon is added, a square is increased in its size but does not undergo
alteration (ēuxētai men, alloioteron de ouden gegenētai).
Thus, in both directions, equality of figures is not identical with
sameness of shape. Equality cannot be subsumed under similarity
and similarity under equality. Yet, equality has to do with shape in
some way. It is rooted in shape inasmuch as superimposition is its
basic test; and it can be used to probe shape, for example, in showing that a line through the center of an ellipse divides an ellipse
into two equal halves (Conics VI.4 and 5). But, again, because
equality does not necessarily mean sameness of shape, shape itself
cannot be its main object. That main object of equality is similarity.
Thus it is a kind of counterpoint between similarity and equality,
rather than a logical dependence one way or another, that characterizes how these ideas appear in Apollonius and Euclid.
Equal and similar
The logical disconnection between equal and similar is particularly
clear in the Conics, where propositions for similarity are kept separate from those on equality: one proposition will show when two
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sections are equal and a different proposition later in the book will
show when they are similar. Now we must return to the idea of
“equal and similar” (isos te kai homoios) in Apollonius and Euclid,
for here the two notions do come together. But it is a peculiar coming-together—not a logical joining, but only slightly more than a
mere conjunction. This has the effect of forming a new term while
leaving the independence of the original terms. There is “equal,”
there is “similar,” and there is “equal and similar.”
As a unit of meaning, Charles Mugler, in his dictionary of Greek
mathematical terminology, notes a non-mathematical use of isos te
kai homoios: he cites Thucydides’s account of the battle between
Corinth and Corcyra over the fate of Epidamnus, in which Corinth
at one point advertised Epidamnus as a colony where citizens would
be “in perfect equality” (epi tēi isēi kai homoiai).22 The two words
isos and homoios come together almost as mutual intensifiers. Greek
mathematics does not use intensifiers—“really round,” “really
straight,” “really parallel,” “really similar” don’t appear! Yet “equal
and similar” does seem to have the sense of “equal in every way.”
And this puts objects into a new class. Thus, in the Elements, “equal
and similar” solid figures makes its appearance in Book XI, Definition 10 as an independent definition after the definition of similar
solid figures quoted above: “Equal and similar solid figures are those
contained by similar plane areas equal in number and in magnitude.”
Euclid might have defined equal and similar solid figures as similar
solid figures whose faces are not only similar but equal as well—
that is, he might have subordinated “equal and similar solids” to
“similar solids,” and, therefore, also have eliminated any need for a
separate definition. Obviously there is a relationship between “similar solids” and “equal and similar solids,” but in Euclidean discourse
it is a relationship between inhabitants of distinct categories.
This understanding of “equal and similar” can also be seen in
Book VI of Apollonius’s Conics. Proposition VI.16, for example,
tells us that “Opposite sections are similar and equal.” The proof
runs as follows: in Conics I.14, Apollonius proved that the latera
recta of the opposite sections are equal; therefore, the figures of the
22. Charles Mugler, Dictionaire historique de la terminologie géométrique
des Grecs (Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1958).
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two opposite sections (the rectangle whose sides are the latus rectum
and the transverse axis) are equal and also similar; therefore, by VI.2,
the hyperbolas are equal (this is unmentioned in the text), and, by
VI.12, they are similar. The proof is simple, but there is a subtlety.
In proposition VI.2, Apollonius proved that “If the figures that are
constructed on the transverse axes of hyperbolas or ellipses are equal
and similar, then the sections [themselves] will be equal.” From this,
as I said, it follows that the opposite sections are equal, which, by
Appolonius’s definition (in contrast to Euclid’s Common Notion 4),
means they may be fitted one on the other. It would seem then an
immediate inference that they are also similar, that they have the
same shape. But Apollonius says this only after VI.12, which shows
that if the figures of hyperbolas (or ellipses) are similar then the hyperbolas (or ellipses) are similar, and what is more, he cites only
VI.12 as his justification.
Therefore, for Apollonius, to be equal—even when this means
“able to be fit one on another,”—and to be similar are different relations: the assertion that the opposite sections are “equal and similar”
demands proving that the distinction can be made. For us moderns,
who see a logical connection between “equal” and similar,” saying
“similar and equal” is understandable but redundant—like saying
“rectangular and square.”
Conclusion
Let us then go over the ground again and see where we have arrived.
The modern notion of a transformation of a plane ignores the particularity of a given object and acts only on the space within which it is
placed. Such transformations can be chosen in many ways, but, for
similarity, one can be chosen so that all distances between points in
the original space can be dilated or contracted by a fixed ratio; the
ratio, treated as a number, can be greater than 1, less than 1, or equal
to 1. In this way, similarity and equality can be taken as concepts that
are not fundamentally different, equality being the case when the fixed
ratio happens to be 1.
This way of approaching the subject of similarity and equality is
foreign to the mathematics of Euclid and Apollonius because of its
roots in specific geometric figures and their specific properties. Similarity in Greek geometry begins and ends in the sameness of shape.
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Equality begins with the sameness of shape, with superimposition, but
its special character, as seen explicitly in Euclid, is its ability to depart
from the sameness of shape. In this way, similarity and equality are
independent, so that recognizing a similarity, a sameness of shape, is
a different process from recognizing an identity, even though the
processes are tantalizingly close—should I say similar? Still, the two
processes can meet, and when they do, they create a third notion,
“equal and similar.” But, as I argued above, they create a third notion
precisely because they are not joined in logical way—they are simply
brought together.
But this presents us with a difficulty. If similarity and equality are
indeed independent notions, what then is Book VI of the Conics really
about? It cannot be exclusively about shape, as I have thought in the
past, because that, as I have argued, is the province of similarity, not
of equality. So when Apollonius describes Book VI as a book about
similarity and equality in the letter introducing the entire Conics, does
he mean to say that it is simply about two unrelated or vaguely related
topics? Perhaps.
But I think there is more to it than that, chiefly for two reasons. The
first is, as we have noted above, the reappearance of the cone in Book
VI, drawing us back to conic sections as whole, definable objects. The
second is the form of the definition of equality, which is, I believe,
more problematic than similarity, as I have implied throughout this
lecture. The difference between this definition and Euclid’s Common
Notion 4 is found in its second phrase, “Those [conic sections] which
are said to be unequal are those for which that is not so”—making superimposition the exclusive test of equality for conic sections. Thus,
when Apollonius wants to show that sections, or segments of sections,
are equal, he assumes typically that there is some point that does not
coincide with a point on the section presumed equal, and then demonstrates that contradiction follows. What I would like to bring out is
that equality has something to do with every point on the conic section.
In this way, what links similarity23 and equality is their way of looking
at a conic section, or a segment of a conic section, all at once.
23. In the Protagoras (331e), Plato has Protagoras make the remark, concerning justice and holiness, that we should not call things dissimilar just
because there is one point of dissimilarity between them. Socrates replies,
“I was surprised at this.”
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This is the connection, I believe, in which the problem of similarity and equality is related to the idea of locus, which I mentioned
in regard to the little problem with which I started. It too concerns
not an arbitrary place, but a definite identifiable place, all of whose
points have a certain property. It too, in other words, concerns in
some way the whole of conic sections, but in a less direct way.
There is no time, of course, to go into this in detail here, but I do
want to make clear that as we approach an understanding of similarity and equality, it is likely we shall also approach an understanding of other fundamental notions in Greek mathematics.
This, I might add as a final word, was the not the view of older
historians of mathematics, such as H. G. Zeuthen (1839-1920).
Zeuthen had no doubt that the modern point of view was Apollonius’s point of view, and on that basis wrote his expansive and deep
work on the ancient theory of conic sections (Zeuthen, 1886), which
set the tone of Apollonius scholarship for almost a century.24 He
could brush Conics VI aside, saying that it was “of no great significance” in the attempt to understand the Greek theory of conic sections.25 I hope that the discussion here makes that statement moot,
to the say the least.
24. H. G. Zeuthen, Die Lehre von den Kegelschnitten im Altertum (Kopenhagen: Höst und Sohn, 1886).
25. Zeuthen, 384.
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The Soul’s Choice of Life
Greg Recco
Most dreams are forgotten, perhaps even before the night has
passed. Others obtrude into daytime thought, even as their meaning
remains obscure. They haunt us, and seem to promise a rare and
precious revelation. Their coming insistently to mind implies a
faint undertone of reproach, like hearing your name repeated on
waking, before you are quite sure who you are. Such dreams seem
to call from afar, and from where we stand, they can only seem
alien. But we also suspect that we are the ones who are out of place,
and that the dream is calling us back from our wandering. In this
recollection of the unfamiliar, we sense dimly that we are tied to
what is familiar by only a specious kinship, and that our true home
lies elsewhere.
This sort of strange appeal that calls us back from estrangement
can occur not only in dreams or visions, but also in deliberately
produced works of art such as poems, paintings, and stories. In refusing to make any ordinary sort of sense, they contradict our
everyday understanding and invite us to speak along with them in
something like a foreign tongue. The dialogues of Plato, in particular, contain many examples of images or tales of this sort, beguiling works of imagination that linger in memory on the far horizon
of intelligibility. For those of us who read and talk together about
Plato with some frequency, such tales or images have become part
of the vocabulary of our thought—perhaps even a large part, just
as loan-words can come to outnumber a language’s own stock of
true-born names. Before moving on to our main theme, it will be
worthwhile to reflect briefly on a familiar example—the image of
the cave in the Republic—so that we can begin to meditate on how
such images work and what they accomplish.
Socrates asks his interlocutor Glaucon to imagine a cave in
which people are chained in such a way as to be able to see only
what is directly before them, the cave wall on which shadows are
Greg Recco is a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. This
lecture was delivered in Annapolis on 12 November 2012.
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projected by a fire above and behind them. Glaucon exclaims that
these are “strange prisoners” (515a).1 “Like us,” Socrates replies.
But then something odd happens. At the very moment when we
might expect Socrates to offer the key by which to decipher these
unfamiliar letters, he instead continues to speak in the language
of the image. The prisoners are “like us,” he continues, “for do
you suppose such men would have seen anything of themselves
or one another other than the shadows cast by the fire on the wall
facing them?” Now, this is not so strange a move as to pose an
impossible task of interpretation, especially to someone who has
thought about the image for some time. We might start with the
idea that our ordinary efforts to know are wrongly oriented and
thus largely unsuccessful, and from there move on to the idea that
this concerns not only our attempts to know the world but even
our self-knowledge and knowledge of others. That sounds about
right. But we should try to imagine what Socrates’s reply would
sound like to someone who had never heard the rest, to someone
who has not had the time to think about it, to someone who does
not know where Socrates is going. To this person, Socrates’s response must seem pretty nearly the opposite of the explanation
that Glaucon’s remark implicitly requested. After hearing it, Glaucon would probably still say that the prisoners are strange, perhaps
as a sort of polite way of saying that the man telling him about
the prisoners is strange—and it would be hard to disagree.
But whether or not Glaucon meant his remark as a reproach, and
however strange Socrates’s speech is, its strangeness does not stem
from some madness of his, some disordered state of his powers of
thought or imagination. What is truly strange here is not the image
to which he gives voice, but the situation it is intended to portray,
namely, the fact that creatures destined for knowledge should
spend their lives so unaware of, and so unwittingly cooperative
with, the powerful impediments to knowing that characterize their
situation. The proper way to hear Socrates’s response to Glaucon’s
remark about the prisoners’ strangeness is thus affirmatively—not
“the prisoners are not strange; they are like us,” but, “they are like
1. Translations throughout are lightly adapted from Allan Bloom’s The
Republic of Plato (New York: Basic Books, 1968).
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us, strange.” And his explanation is an explanation not of the prisoners’ likeness to us but of their strangeness; again, “do you suppose such men”—those described in the image—“would have seen
anything of themselves or of each other than the shadows?” Given
what Socrates is trying to accomplish, deflecting the question of
likeness and going farther into the image may be the only way to
make it work. The image presents important features of our epistemic situation that are normally difficult to discern, but that we
can come to perceive if we take up an initially unfamiliar and awkward perspective, make it our own, and then turn this view back
on what had previously gone unquestioned. In order to know, we
must learn to speak strangely.
With a few small, though significant, differences, this kind of
change in understanding is what is aimed at by the final pages of
the Republic, the so-called Myth of Er (614b-621b). It, too, is a
fantastical story that represents in figurative form an important but
overlooked dimension of our actual situation. Its fantastical character is not a product of wild genius, but arises from Plato’s rigorous attention to both the nature of human freedom and the
difficulty of discerning it from within our ordinary perspective.
In the case of the cave image our learned familiarity with it
makes it relatively easy to put a name to what it is about; unlike
Glaucon, we have read the Republic. And we get some more help
from the fact that Socrates tells us outright what the image is meant
to be an image of. “Make an image,” he says, “of our nature in its
education and want of education” (514a). The Myth of Er, by contrast, is not presented as an image of anything at all. It is ostensibly
the report of a man who returned from the dead to tell of what
awaits souls after life. Socrates presents it as the completion of the
dialogue’s investigation of justice, inasmuch as it gives an account
of the good and bad that come from being just or unjust, not in this
life, but after death.
In this connection, the story is a fitting end for the dialogue, in
that it recapitulates a theme first sounded very near the beginning.
Cephalus reports that as a young man he scoffed at the stories of
punishment in the afterlife, but old age has found him and his agemates more fearful of what is to come. They are looking back over
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lives that contain perhaps no small measure of wrongdoing.
Cephalus is thankful for his wealth, above all for the ability it gives
him to conduct the costly private rituals of expiation that his fear
has made seem prudent. Socrates’s return to this theme at the end
of the dialogue, then, seems to endorse Cephalus’s anxious piety,
at least in confirming that there is something to fear for those who
have done wrong. But the story contains much more than is necessary for this purpose and, indeed, much that does not directly or
obviously further it. Also, it is just very strange. Even with some
degree of paraphrase, it will take a short while to recount it. So
here it is.
Upon his death, the soul of Er traveled along with other souls of
the dead and came to a place where there were two openings in the
earth and two in the sky, above and across from them. Between the
pairs of openings sat judges, who directed the just to continue to
the right and upward through the opening in the sky, and the unjust
to go to the left and downward into the earth. Er himself they instructed to remain, observe, and report what he saw on his return
to the world of the living. What he saw first was this: as some souls
were going into the two openings indicated by the judges, other
souls were coming out of the others, some up from earth, others
down from the heavens. All those who had returned went off with
delight to a nearby meadow, where they made camp and engaged
in conversation. Those who had known each other in life greeted
each other and asked what it was like in the other place. So they
all told their stories, some lamenting and crying as they recalled
all they had seen and undergone in the thousand-year journey beneath the earth, the others telling of the beauty of the sights and
experiences above. In general, those who came from below the
earth said they had received a tenfold punishment for each of their
acts of injustice, once each hundred years, on the grounds that a
human life was about a hundred years long. For acts of impiety towards the gods, the penalty was yet worse. Of one particularly terrible tyrant named Ardiaeus it was related that when his thousand
years had passed and it was his turn to go up, he and other perpetrators of unholy deeds were rejected by the opening. Men standing
nearby seized them, then bound them, flayed them, and dragged
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them along the rough ground in the sight of the others, finally casting them into the pit of Tartarus, from which none return. Fear of
being rejected by the opening and subjected to this torment was
thus the last of the punishments for souls who had lived an unjust
life. The rewards for justice were said to be the counterparts of
these.
On the eighth day, the souls who had returned were made to
leave the meadow and continue their journey. In four days’ time,
they came to a place from which they could see a sort of pillar of
light stretched from above through all of heaven and earth, like a
rainbow. This light was said to bind the earth and the heavens and
be connected to a complex, interlocking arrangement of whorls
forming a sort of spindle, which belongs to the goddess Ananke or
Necessity. Her daughters, the Fates Atropos, Clotho, and Lachesis,
put their hands to the turning of these otherworldly whorls and
were associated with the three dimensions of time: Atropos, she
who cannot be turned, with the future, Clotho, the weaver, with the
present, and Lachesis, the dispenser of lots, with the past.
The souls were then brought before Lachesis. Her spokesman
gathered up the lots and patterns of lives that lay in her lap, and
then delivered the goddess’s message to the souls arrayed before
him. He said: “This is the speech of Ananke’s maiden daughter,
Lachesis: ‘Ephemeral souls, this is the beginning of another deathbringing cycle for the mortal race. A spirit shall not be allotted to
you, but you shall choose a spirit. Let the holder of the first lot
make the first choice of a life to which it shall be bound by Ananke.
Virtue is without a master; as each honors her, it shall have more
or less of her. The blame belongs to the chooser; the god is blameless.’”
Then the lots were distributed to the souls and the patterns of
lives were laid out on the ground before them, lives of all sorts—
lives of animals and tyrants, lives of the famous and the obscure—
and these lives far outnumbered the souls present.
The spokesman continued: “Even for the one who comes forward last, if he chooses intelligently and lives earnestly, a life to
be happy with has been laid out, and not a bad one. Let the first
not be careless in his choice, nor the last disheartened.”
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Since the soul’s choice of life is my theme, let me quote without
paraphrase the section that follows, which deals most directly with
that choice.
“And the first to choose came forward and immediately chose
the greatest tyranny, and, because of folly and gluttony, chose without having considered everything adequately; and it escaped his
notice that eating his own children and other evils were fated to be
a part of that life. When he considered it at his leisure, he beat his
breast and lamented the choice, not abiding by the spokesman’s
forewarning. For he didn’t blame himself for the evils but chance,
demons, and anything rather than himself. He was one of those
who had come from heaven, having lived under an orderly constitution in his former life, partaking of virtue by habit, without philosophy. And, it may be said, not the least number of those who
were caught in such circumstances came from heaven, because
they were unpracticed in labors. But most of those who came from
the earth, because they themselves had labored and had seen the
labors of others, weren’t in a rush to make their choices. For just
this reason, and because of the chance of the lot, there was an exchange of evils and goods for most of the souls.”
“He said that this was a sight surely worth seeing: how each of
the several souls chose a life. For it was pitiable, laughable, and
wonderful to see. For the most part the choice was made according
to the habit of their former life. He said he saw a soul that once belonged to Orpheus choosing the life of a swan, out of hatred for
womankind; because he died at their hands, he refused to be generated in and born of a woman. He saw Thamyras’s soul choosing
the life of a nightingale. And he also saw a swan changing to the
choice of a human life; other musical animals did the same thing.
The soul that got the twentieth lot chose the life of a lion; it was
the soul of Telamonian Ajax, which shunned becoming a human
being, for it remembered the judgment of arms. And after it was
the soul of Agamemnon; it, too, hated humankind as a result of its
sufferings and therefore changed to the life of an eagle. Atalanta’s
soul had drawn one of the middle lots; it saw the great honors of
an athletic man and couldn’t pass them by but took them. After this
he saw that of Epieius, son of Panopeus, going into the nature of
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an artisan woman. And far out among the last he saw the soul of
the buffoon Thersites, clothing itself as an ape. And by chance the
soul of Odysseus had drawn the last lot of all and went to choose;
from memory of its former labors, it had recovered from love of
honor; it went around for a long time looking for the life of a private man who minds his own business; and with effort it found one
lying somewhere, neglected by the others. It said when it saw this
life that it would have done the same even if it had drawn the first
lot, and was delighted to choose it. And from the other beasts, similarly some went into human lives and into one another—the unjust
changing into savage ones, the just into tame ones, and there were
all kinds of mixtures.”
So far the report of Er. Socrates interrupts his recounting it just
once, to emphasize the supreme importance of this choice of a life
and to point out that we really ought to devote all our energies to
acquiring the art of making this choice well. His way of talking
about what would make for a good choice is very interesting, and
I will return to it near the end of this lecture. But for now, let us reflect on the many ways in which the story gives the attentive reader
pause and does not simply supplement the dialogue’s account of
what justice is and what effect it has on souls. The story, it must
be said, does not do just what it was said to do.
In the first place, it is worth reflecting on how extravagant the
whole section on the souls’ choice of life is. The account was introduced and admitted on the pretext that it would supplement the
dialogue’s account of the power that justice has in the soul without
the assistance of reputation or other external benefits. Like other
such familiar tales, it accomplishes this by adding to whatever uncertain external benefits justice and injustice might win in life and
among humans, a certain and unerring exactitude in punishment
and reward from the gods in a sort of life after life. So, one might
reasonably inquire how this purpose is advanced at all by the elaborate account of the spindle of Necessity or the whole idea of souls
choosing their next life, not to mention the many examples of particular choices made by souls famous and unknown. At most, one
might argue that the fact that the lives for which the souls are being
rewarded or punished were of their own choosing underscores
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souls’ responsibility for their own justice or injustice, and thus
shows that the rewards and punishments are deserved. Even according to this explanation, however, the wealth of detail concerning particular souls’ choices, as well as the cosmic backdrop, would
be only so much ornament.
But of all the reasons for taking the Myth of Er as a figure for
something other than what it is said to be, the most compelling is
the fact that the rewards and punishments pointedly do not have
the character we might expect they ought to have: they are ineffectual or at least unfathomably obscure in their mechanism.
That the rewards for a just life are ineffectual we learn from the
example of the soul that draws the first lot and chooses its next life
first. It had come from heaven, and apparently a thousand years’
worth of beautiful sights and enjoyment was not enough to persuade it of anything but its own fitness to be the biggest tyrant of
all. Although it was happy enough to reach immediately for this
life, it was also particularly resistant to taking responsibility for its
own choice when it became clear that the life contained many evils.
This kind of remorse over bad choices, Socrates’s summary indicates, was not uncommon among those who came down from the
heavens.
What of the others? Those who had toiled and suffered below
the earth and had seen the toils and suffering of others were said
to choose more carefully, and thus on the whole, we are told, there
was an exchange of goods and evils for most souls. This might lead
one to the conclusion that while the rewards do not promote the
choice of justice, the punishments do.
But several things undercut the confidence we might have in the
efficacy of posthumous punishments: in particular, the fate of the
incurable or unholy, the complete forgetfulness of the living, and
above all the impossibility of adequately representing injustice to
the unjust perspective. As for the first, there are those like Ardiaeus,
for whose crimes, it seems, no finite punishment could be adequate, on the grounds that his soul was incurable, and possibly also
because of the enormity of his crimes, which transcend the horizon
of justice altogether, being not only unjust but also unholy.
A second problem with the notion that the punishments of the
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afterlife are effective in curbing injustice lies in the fact that souls
are made to drink from the river of Carelessness on the plain of
Forgetfulness before continuing into the life they have chosen, and,
as a result, forget everything. Those who have chosen a just life,
being the majority of those who completed the underground passage, will go through it and then join those who make the heavenly
passage. Now having forgotten their former labors, they are likely
to choose hastily and with misplaced confidence in their ability to
discern what is a good life. Interestingly, this “exchange of goods
and evils” for most souls was already inscribed, so to speak, in the
topography of the place of judgment: the opening that leads out of
heaven is located above and opposite the one that leads into the
earth, as the one that leads out of the earth lies below and opposite
the opening that leads back into heaven. Forgetfulness and carelessness seem to guarantee that there will be a revolution not only
of whorls, but also of souls. But forgetfulness and carelessness are
not magical effects brought about by the eponymous plain and
river. If punishment is the engine driving the motion of souls upwards and towards justice, then the beautiful sights and enjoyment
found in the heavenly passage do no less to drive them down, towards injustice. This is precisely not the image of a world-order
that uses rewards and punishments to produce justice with mechanical accuracy and inevitability, but the image of a world-order that
strongly inclines souls towards an eternal and predictable alternation of good and bad. Why should this be the purpose of the cosmos?
A third problem with the account is that it is difficult to see what
the souls must be in order for their passage to be able to teach them
anything. This difficulty is thrown into relief by a significant omission. Of the souls returning from beneath the earth, Socrates says:
“They were punished for each injustice once every hundred years;
taking this as the length of a human life, they could in this way pay
off the penalty for the injustice ten times over. Thus, for example,
if some men were causes of the death of many, either by betraying
cities or armies and had reduced men to slavery, or were involved
in any other wrongdoing”—and here I interrupt to note that just
where one might hope to learn precisely how such acts are an-
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swered in that other place, Socrates concludes simply, “they received for each of these things tenfold sufferings.” In other words,
Socrates provides us with no specific information. Plato handles
the issue of narration very deftly here, for he has Socrates preface
this section with a warning about its incompleteness; Socrates says,
“Now, to go through the many things would take a long time, Glaucon. But the chief thing is this,” and then proceeds with the summary I just read. But if the purpose of resorting to summary was
to avoid trouble, then it is difficult to understand Socrates’s choice
of examples.
In the first place, the list of specific forms of injustice by itself
leads one to expect a similarly specific list of punishments. Also,
the fact that each “cycle” of punishments is calibrated to the length
of an average human life supports the expectation that punishments
will somehow correspond to, mirror, or just repeat in inverted form
the particular wrongs one has done. But the examples of injustice
Socrates in fact offers do not fulfill any of these expectations, for
the important reason that the victims of these injustices are in each
case many in number. If a man betrays an entire city, how can his
single life (or a single afterlife) stand any chance of comprising
the myriad injustices done to his fellow citizens? If he sold dozens
into slavery, how could his life encompass suffering the same fate
dozens of times? Even if somehow it could, it would also have to
contain dozens of instances of the state of freedom that slavery destroys. And each of these would have to be in some way pristine,
so that the evil that is enslavement could have its full effect on the
soul being punished in this way—for enslaving one person twice
is not the same as enslaving two different people. In general, then,
it is unclear how a single life can have the evil it does to many represented to it effectively.
One solution to this conundrum, of course, is to take one sort of
evil to stand for all others, to serve as a kind of medium of exchange. Maybe pain could serve as such a punitive currency, repaying specific evils with generic badness. The extravagant
punishment of the soul of Ardiaeus, however, serves both as an example of this sort of thinking and as a sign of its insufficiency. The
punishment is not only of infinite duration; it is also unimaginably
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intense, and the one being punished in this way does not in any
way signal to us what his experience is. Now, it is possible, of
course, that we hear nothing from the soul of Ardiaeus because
there is no need. If his soul is incurable, perhaps his punishment is
not for him but an example to others, and in order for him to serve
as an example, all that matters is that they take his experience as
an example, whatever he himself may think of it. Consistent with
this interpretation is the presence of the guards who point out to
the others why these souls are being singled out for such treatment;
that is, it seems at least in part to be a show put on for their benefit.
Also consistent with this view is the claim that what improves the
judgment of those who make the underground passage is not just
that they have labored and suffered themselves, but also that they
have seen the labors and sufferings of others. Nonetheless, the absence of the directly suffering soul’s perspective on the single particular punishment reported to us underscores the problem,
outlined by omission in the preceding passage, of how a soul’s evil
can be represented to it—and this remains a problem.
If the soul’s thousand-year journey below the earth is to teach it
anything—as the improvement in its choice of life suggests it
does—then the soul must somehow have the evils it engaged in as
though they were something good presented to it as what they in
fact are. But in order to recognize one’s own wrongdoing for what
it is, the perpetrator must have a different perspective than was
available to him during the act, and this kind of thoroughgoing
change in perspective is, as we have learned, terribly difficult. In
the cave image, it is represented as a turning around that can simultaneously be a passage from what is darker to what is brighter
(that is, an actual improvement) and a passage from what is perceived clearly and comfortably to what is perceived only dimly
and painfully (that is, an apparent worsening). Something else is
needed: a trustworthy and trusted guide who can articulate what is
happening to the soul being forcibly turned around in this way. In
the end, pain by itself is too diffuse, too immediate, and too uncontextualized to bear the articulated meaning that would be necessary in order to effect this change, a fact that is perhaps hinted at
by the punishment’s tenfold repetition. Even the torture of the souls
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of the unholy, which might seem to stand on its own as an object
lesson in the wages of wrongdoing, is supplemented in the story
by agents standing by to explain it, which suggests that it cannot
bear its meaning within itself on its own.
In the case of both punishments and rewards, then, the report of
Er sets up certain expectations or requirements that it then pointedly does not or cannot fulfill. The rewards for a just life, we feel,
ought to reinforce the choice of justice, but instead they are presented as strongly correlated with the careless haste and entitled
self-importance that lead to a bad choice of life. As for the punishments, while they are said to have the effect they ought to, still,
the mechanism by which they are meant to accomplish this is
markedly obscure, and inquiring more closely into it only makes
the confusion more intense, particularly by directing attention to
the source of the problem: the soul and its perception of, or perspective on, the good. If the myth’s self-presentation is at odds with
its content, particularly in its central conceit, we have to turn elsewhere to discover its real import. One thing that is clear, as we
have just seen, is that the story concerns the soul. Just what is the
soul in this story?
One phrase in the description of souls’ choice of lives incidentally brings to the fore one of the key features of the myth’s portrayal of the soul. Er saw “a soul that used to belong to Orpheus”
choosing the life of a swan. The striking phrase “used to belong”
underlines something that must be assumed in order for the story
to work at all, and it does so compactly and forcefully. For the myth
to work, a soul, whatever else it may be, cannot be identical with
any named person. The name “Orpheus” must indicate the temporary composite of an otherwise anonymous soul with the singer’s
life whose story we know from myth. Any name, then, must miss
the soul and indicate only such a composite, even my name or
yours. The possessive in the phrase “my soul” becomes particularly
obscure. If I were to utter the words “my soul,” who would I be
saying the soul belongs to, and what would I be taking myself to
be that is distinct from my soul? Who or what is speaking when
the words “my soul” are uttered? Whatever we might previously
have thought it was, the story is now telling us that a soul is not
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identical with a life or a person, since it precedes and outlives both.
One possible source for this strange conception of the soul is the
discussion of its immortality earlier in Book 10 (608d-612a).
There, the question arises how the soul can be both immortal and
capable of being at odds with itself. Self-opposition (of the sort examined in Book 4) is associated with being composite, and this, in
turn, is associated with change and decay. A soul composed of
parts, it seems, could only be mortal. Instead of investigating this
dilemma, Socrates merely suggests that the view of soul that we
have—and that he and his interlocutors have had throughout the
whole of the dialogue—is like the view one would have of how a
man looks if one were to see only the statue of him that had lain at
the bottom of the sea for many years and become disfigured and
covered with shells, seaweed, rocks and so forth, as in the case of
the statue of Glaucus. The image more or less directly asserts that
our embeddedness in body, change, and manyness has made our
souls unrecognizable. This is an unpromising starting point, but
Socrates remains confident and ventures the guess that the soul’s
true nature is to be found by our looking to its philosophia, its love
of wisdom. This recalls another account of the division of the soul
that emerges from the yet earlier discussion of the terrible evils of
tragic poetry in Book 10. This account divides the soul’s philosophical, calculating, law-abiding part, which suffers misfortune
in silence and tranquility, from another part, which indulges in loud
lamentation. The latter is itself indulged by writers of tragedies,
who trick even the decent man into weeping immoderately at the
misfortunes of another on the grounds that this is at least not selfpitying, and is only a kind of play (606a-b). The gist seems to be
that the first part of the soul would do its work better without the
second. Both accounts, then, solve the problem of manyness by
making one part stand for the whole. Whatever the merits or faults
of such a solution, we should consider that if the true identity of
the soul should turn out to be only its rational part understood in
this way, then the whole drama of existence—the stories of our
lives as we commonly understand them—would be wholly irrelevant, composed entirely of a sort of encrustation of alien matter
that only serves to obscure the soul from view. By themselves, on
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this view, souls might essentially have nothing to do with lives.
While these two prior discussions of soul seem relevant to the
myth and are consonant with some aspects of its sharp distinctions
between soul and person and between soul and life, they are at odds
with others. Souls in the myth are not heartless calculating machines, but beings capable of feeling and expressing emotion.
When the souls complete their respective journeys, they go off
“with delight” to the meadow where they confer. When those who
came from the underground passage recount what they have seen
and undergone there, they cry and lament in recalling it. When
these souls are nearing the exit and see some like the soul of Ardiaeus being rejected, they experience a great fear, which they note
is only one among many they have suffered. In sum, then, the souls
in the story respond emotively and expressively to their situation,
even during this time when they are presumed to exist in separation
from body and life.
In addition to transitory affections such as a moment of fear,
souls in the myth also have longer-standing dispositions or traits
of character. The soul of Ajax, son of Telamon, bitterly recalls the
judgment that granted the arms of the departed hero Achilles to
Odysseus instead of to him, and so flees humanity. The souls of
Orpheus and Agamemnon, in turn, make their choices of animal
lives out of long-standing hatred, of women in the first case and
of humanity in general in the second. In each case, these quasi-permanent states were crystallized, so to speak, by the trauma of their
previous lives (the very ones we associate with their names, as if
their souls had become those single lives). Their hatreds and resentment are very much not the passions of a moment, as they appear to have persisted unchanged and utterly undiminished
throughout their millennial journeys. A final, most significant example of a state or characteristic of soul allowed by the myth is
that of the soul of Odysseus, which “from memory of its former
labors, . . . had recovered from love of honor.” Somehow, the soul
as portrayed in the myth is capable of being affected by its life,
and affected in such a way as to be able to learn, not just greedily
carry forward the savor of bitter memory. In either case, however,
what we see is that however distinct souls may be from lives, their
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lives affect them. In light of this, perhaps it is time finally to turn
directly to what the story must take a life to be.
This is in one way the most straightforward and familiar element
of the story; everyone knows what a life is, what it is composed
of, why it is important, what makes it good or bad, and so forth. In
another way, however, the central conceit of the myth of Er requires a life to be something that is almost impossible to understand. Recall that the life contains elements like wealth or poverty,
good or bad birth, strength, beauty, political office or rule, and indeed everything that could characterize a life, or almost everything.
For, as was explained, since the soul that lives the life must be
changed by it, the life considered by itself does not contain an “ordering” or “arrangement” of soul (taxis). If our question is what
we ought to remove in thought from our usual conception of what
a life is in order to arrive at an idea of the lives whose paradigms
lie in the lap of Lachesis, the answer is both simple and perplexing:
we must remove everything that soul is. As it has done in many
places, the dialogue is once again causing a problem by treating a
distinction as a separation. When Socrates manages to bring the
conversation to a halt of this sort, he often turns to an image or example that retroactively modifies one of the discussion’s starting
points. We could try the same, and instead of trying to proceed with
delimitation or definition in the face of aporia, we might turn to an
example of what the myth takes to be a life, which it obligingly
provides.
None of the lives is very extensively described, but the first example of a life that is chosen is among the fullest. The nameless
soul that drew the first lot—which “participated in virtue out of
habit, without philosophy” after living in “an ordered regime”—
picked the life containing the biggest tyranny straightaway, “but it
escaped its notice that eating his children and other evils accompanied this.” It escaped his notice. How strange. How can we understand this? Should we agree with the old song that “the large print
giveth and the small print taketh away”?2 Do the events or elements
of a life presented to choice differ in their prominence, such that
some would count as the large print, and some as the small? And
2. Tom Waits, “Step Right Up” (Small Change, Asylum Records, 1976).
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what would determine which appear more or less prominent? Just
what is written or figured on the paradigms of lives in the lap of
Lachesis? In the example just considered, the great tyranny looks
good at first, but when the soul “considered the life at its leisure,”
it discovered its evils, and was unhappy with its lot.
In a way, this latter portrait of a life is familiar and cogent: a life
containing an apparent good may of necessity also contain actual
evils that counterbalance or even outweigh the apparent good. But
in another way, this is an unsatisfactory way of talking about a life.
It tries to mark the badness of the life that contains one sort of fact
sometimes thought to be good (being a tyrant) by pointing out that
it also contains another sort of fact, which is generally acknowledged to be bad (eating one’s children). The whole question of
what makes a life good or bad has been reduced to the piecemeal
evaluation of particulars, and the summation of such judgments,
as in what is sometimes called a rubric.
But we really ought to doubt this soul’s assessment of its chosen
life, since we have already been told that it makes the choice affected by folly and gluttony. It could be so misguided as to be mistaken about which of the life’s elements is good and which bad. In
fact, we have already been told in Book 9 that the worst possible
eventuality for a soul that is tyrannically inclined is for it to become
an actual tyrant. Conversely, it may be that something as horrible
as eating his children is an appropriate accompaniment to the
“large print” of his being a tyrant.
But just inverting the assessment this foolish soul made of each
of these facts does not really solve the deeper problem, of which
the problem of the relative prominence of a life’s parts—its large
and its small print—is just a symptom. The component elements
of a life in the myth are subject to two seemingly contradictory demands: they must be “without an arrangement of soul,” and thus
be somehow meaningless, and they must be capable of “leading”
the soul to being just or unjust, and thus somehow have a meaning.
As for the former term of the contradiction, given that there are
good and bad among rich and poor alike, wealth, to pick one example, looks like the sort of thing that the Stoic Epictetus would
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call indifferent, something that is of no importance when compared
with the greater question of whether we are living well, and does
not by itself answer the question. As for the latter, however, the
soul that has learned the art of choosing lives well, Socrates says,
will call lives good or bad depending on whether they “lead to
virtue or vice.” But now we have to ask: how can events be said to
“lead” to virtue or vice at all unless they have within them the germ
of a sense, an incipient significance that is preserved in what it
gives rise to?
As in other similar cases, the commentary on the myth is quite
relevant and helpful, if somewhat oblique. Socrates portrays in
some detail the person who has acquired the art of choosing lives
well. He says: “He will take into account all the things we have
just mentioned and how in combination and separately they affect
the virtue of a life. Thus he may know the effects, bad and good,
of beauty mixed with poverty or wealth and accompanied by this
or that habit of soul; and the effects of any particular mixture with
one another of good and bad birth, private station and ruling office,
strength and weakness, facility and difficulty in learning, and all
such things that are connected with a soul by nature or are acquired.
From all this he will be able to draw a conclusion and choose—
while looking off toward the nature of the soul—between the worse
and the better life, calling worse the one that leads it toward becoming more unjust, and better the one that leads it to becoming
more just” (618c-e).
One of the most striking things in this passage, I think, is the intensity of its emphasis on combination. The possessor of the art of
choosing lives is said to consider the elements of lives both “separately and in combination” but all the examples are of complex
configurations. Here, then, is one way in which something can both
have a meaning and not have it in itself: it can have its meaning in
being combined with something else. Note that the myth helps us
here. The composition of elements that makes up each life is not
something chosen; the lives have already been assembled by the
time the souls have to choose them. Rather, souls are to call lives
good or bad on the basis of no element in them, but on the basis of
what living such a life will work in the soul that lives it. That is,
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what was being chosen (whether or not this escaped the choosers’
notice) was not an indifferently composed aggregate of particular
life-events or features, but something whose value lies on another
level.
Another striking feature of the passage is how thoroughly confusing it makes the separation of life and soul that lies at the basis
of the myth. In the first place, the possessor of the art is said to
know about the effects of mixtures that include elements such as
“this or that habit of soul.” This seems directly opposed to the
claim that lives are without an “ordering” or “arrangement” of soul.
Including this feature does not in itself introduce an inconsistency;
rather, it states the problem well: the soul that sets out to have
wealth or any other good thing will be changed by its pursuit, so
that there is no guarantee it will still want or be able to enjoy what
it was pursuing by the time it gets it. The one who possesses the
art would have to be able to predict what changes the living of a
life would work in the soul. In short, what makes elements of a life
part of a life that can be called good or bad is their connection with
the soul that has to live that life—the suffering, rejoicing, experiencing, remembering, expressing, and thinking being. These powers are what lend to those events or conditions whatever sense they
have. Here we see another way in which a life has a meaning, but
not in itself; it has a meaning in and for a soul.
To state the matter most generally, elements of a life are capable
of having a meaning that is not in them because that’s just what it
is to be an element of a life: to be a “Here” that is also, with all the
weight Plotinus gives the word, a “There.” The seeming paradox
is just the reality of our situation, and one that Plato has been carefully directing our attention to throughout the dialogue. We spend
as much time as we do in this dialogue on the proper organization
of an educational program not merely for the stated reason—that
we need guardians who will be both harsh with the city’s enemies
and gentle with its citizens. Rather, as the central books show and
the final myth signifies, the deeper issue is that what is most immediately apparent is always somehow a distraction from the intelligible reality of what is. But the sensible is not merely
something other than the intelligible: it is the region wherein the
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intelligible shows itself; it is where we live. The small things matter. The ball I learn to catch may be little more than arbitrary mineral, vegetable, and animal products refashioned to the measure of
a human hand, but the act of catching that this ball makes possible
is an emblem and anticipation of all sorts of future forms of mastery. The little bumps and tussles of playground life are like so
many prophetic utterances spoken to us in childhood that foretell
adult life’s disappointments—its alliances and betrayals, its kindness and its savagery—and they foretell them with both the accuracy and the obscurity that are characteristic of an oracle. Our lives
consist not in isolated events, but in pattern and paradigm, eidē on
the move.
This strange mode of being of the elements of our lives is a feature of the world of the myth of Er that also happens to be a feature
of our world; it is the literally true thing at the center of a mass of
figurative falsehoods, and around which the whole turns. It is the
true thing that seems strange to us who have become strangers to
it. The elements of lives can appear big or small, cruel twists of
fate, or irrelevant impediments to powers we find we do not need
to get by. We who live them do not experience ourselves as having
chosen them. But reflecting on the image of our souls choosing
our lives can awaken us from the dream-state in which we treat the
meanings of our lives as beings, as ta onta, as things that always
are, with no tincture of ambiguity or self-opposition, no dependence on perspective or interpretation, no horizon of possible transformation. On the contrary, we should recognize our lives in their
truth: they are the materials—somehow both indifferent and essential—out of which souls weave the tissue of meaning they first put
on and then inhabit; they are elements that stand to our souls and
hearts as those other elements—earth, air, fire, and water—stand
to the multifariously capable bodies of living beings of all kinds,
their material support and flesh. When the elements of our bodies
or lives fail us, we break, but when they cooperate, we succeed in
being something they would not be on their own, something other
and beyond.
The myth tells us that we need to learn how to cooperate with
these elements and their ways, so that we may make a good pas-
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sage in this life and the next, and perhaps in the next after that. But
what would make for a good passage? What should we hope for?
A well-deserved reward? Or a suffering that makes the soul better?
The beautiful sights and pleasant experiences that the myth sets up
as a reward for a good life carry with them the same ambiguity as
the goods of this life: many souls are not improved by them, but
turn out worse. To answer the question, we might think of the soul
that once belonged to Odysseus. Of this restless and clever soul,
we were not told whether it had come down from heaven or up
from the earth, only that memory of its former labors had cured it.
Those labors could have been carried out on earth as part of the
life we associate with Odysseus’s name—where he struggled to
regain his home after long years in foreign lands, losing all his
comrades—or they could have been performed as payment in that
place beneath the earth, some days’ journey from the spindle of
Necessity where lives are woven. Perhaps our hope and prayer
should be the same as his could have been: may we all perform
such labors, and remember them, and be cured of what ails us.
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Artistic Expression in Animals
Linda Wiener
I have three main goals in this lecture. The first, and most important, is to inspire you to be more open to and aware of the animals
all around you. The second is to give some history of a fascinating
debate on animal color and behavior that began in the early twentieth century in the United States; this will illustrate how difficult
it is to elicit any sort of Truth from the phenomena of nature. The
third is to persuade you that, at least some of the time, animals engage in artistic expression for its own sake.
Ever since Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species
in 1859,1 by far the most popular way of interpreting the appearance and behavior of organisms has been through the theory of natural selection. According to this theory, if a mutation appears in an
animal and that mutation helps the animal survive and reproduce
better than similar animals in their environment, the mutation and
the animals that carry it will be preserved while others will eventually decline and die out. But ever since this theory was published
there has been dissent. The most well known dissents are from religious objectors, however there have always been some scientists,
naturalists, philosophers, and others who work intimately with
plants and animals who accept the theory of evolution through natural selection, but believe that it is not sufficient to account for all
the phenomena of nature. I am one of this latter group.
In this lecture, I will use the lens of artistic expression in animals
as a way of exploring this question. I begin with an example from
bird song. I was at a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony,
Linda Wiener is a tutor at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
This paper is adapted from a lecture delivered at the College’s Annapolis
campus on September 6, 2013. The original lecture involved images and
some video clips. This version makes do with some photographs, as well
as links to images on the web. Be sure to open the links and look at the
images while reading!
1. Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, first edition (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2001.
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given by the Santa Fe Community Orchestra at the Santa Fe Opera
House in May, 2008. The opera house is covered on top, but open
around the sides. At the very beginning of the third movement, a
flock of house finches flew in and perched above the orchestra.
One male joined in singing with the music in such a way that it
seemed a part of the piece. He sang for most of the third movement
and at the very end of that movement, when the orchestra plays
four notes, the bird came in afterward, using the contact chirps of
the species, and mimicked those last four notes.
This is an example of a bird singing in his capacity as a musician. He shows that he knows something about music and can employ it appropriately outside its use for attracting mates and
protecting territories. This propensity of a least some birds to sing
outside the mating and nesting seasons was noted by Thoreau and
more recently by David Rothenberg in his book Why Birds Sing.2
David is a philosopher and jazz clarinetist. He plays his clarinet
with birds in aviaries and in the wild, sometimes with remarkable
results. As with the bird at the opera house, some birds respond
musically to his musical prompting. I particularly like a duet he
participated in with a laughing thrush; it can be heard online.3
Rothenberg concludes that birds sing because they enjoy it.
Other animals have been reported to respond to human music. I
read that crickets will approach when they hear music and start
singing. My own experiments with two species of crickets were
inconclusive; they chirped so much it was hard to tell when they
were responding to music and when they were chirping in their
natural rhythms. I have been told stories of raccoons coming on
stage during a concert. There is also record of a bear doing the
same thing (Fig. 1).
Moving on from music, probably the most famous artistic animals are the bowerbirds of Australia and New Guinea. For instance,
the satin bowerbird builds an oval shaped bower out of sticks and
decorates it with mostly blue objects. This includes flowers, berries,
and even human-made items like plastic drinking straws. Other
species have differently shaped bowers and use different color
2. David Rothenberg, Why Birds Sing (New York: Basic Books, 2005).
3. http://www.whybirdssing.com
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63
Fig. 1: Bear at concert4
schemes. The vogelkop bowerbird builds a conical bower and decorates mostly with red and orange objects.5 The females come
around to check out the male bowers, the males dance for them, and
then the female selects a male to mate with. She then goes off to
build a nest and raises the young on her own.
This is a classic example of what Darwin called “sexual selection” in his book Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex.6
In Darwin’s account, the females have aesthetic standards and
whichever male best meets those standards is the one she chooses
as a mate.
Darwin thought sexual selection less rigorous than ordinary natural selection because it was not a life and death matter. Recently,
Darwin's view of sexual selection has been revised. Now, the
building, decorating, and dancing activities of the male are seen
as direct reflections of the actual genetic quality of the males. The
females are selecting the males not according to an aesthetic standard, but according to which are the most genetically fit. This
brings sexual selection theory more in line with the classic theory
of natural selection.
4. From Carl Marty, Northenaire’s Ginger and Her Woodland Orphans
(Park Falls, Wisconsin: MacGregor Litho, 1953).
5. http://www.duskyswondersite.com/animals/bower-birds
6. Charles Darwin, Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (New
York: Penguin, 2004).
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A group of birds called the catbirds, in the same family as the
bower birds, helps raise a few questions about this modern understanding. In the catbirds, the males and females cooperate to build
the nest and rear the young; on average catbirds rear more offspring than the bowerbirds. An alternative explanation for bowerbird behavior is that the bower birds have “chosen” in some way
to forgo their maximum reproductive potential in order to devote
energy to the creation and appreciation of art.
Closer to home, there are other collecting and decorating animals. The pack rat of the Southwestern states is one. They are
beloved by archaeologists because they collect all sorts of things
from their surroundings and store them in their nests. An ancient
pack rat nest can tell scientists a lot about the sorts of things that
were around at the time. Pack rats are also famous for being destructive when they choose to nest in your home or vehicle. Whenever I hear friends complain about a pack rat nest, I beg them for
photographs.
Pack rats have different preferences when constructing their
nests. Sometimes, it is just a bunch of sticks and a few fabulous
items they have collected. My friends Betsy and Jamie had a nest
in their vehicle with a central white fluffy nest structure, then an
attractive bed of greens with dried red chiles piled in the center
(Fig. 2a). My friends Robert and Susan had a pack rat nest in their
vehicle with a central grey fluffy nest structure surrounded by a
variety of sticks, stems, and cholla cactus pads (Fig. 2b).
Fig. 2a
Photo by Jaimie Haskell
Fig. 2b
Photo by Robert Schlaer
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ESSAYS & LECTURES | WIENER
Another friend, Pam, tells this story about a pack rat nest she
found in her truck. She was so mad when she saw the nest, she
threw everything on the ground; when she came back some time
later, it was all back in the truck. Not only that, it was back in just
the way it had been before, with each major element, stems, sticks,
and other items in exactly the same spot. This shows us that the
nest isn’t just a bunch of stuff thrown around. The pack rat arranges
her space to her own taste. Just as when someone messes up one
of your rooms, you put it back to its original arrangement, so too
does the pack rat.
Let’s look at some domestic animals. I had three ferrets over a
period of about nine years. They were all avid collectors. They had
stashes of the stuff they collected; there was a main stash usually
under and couch or in a cabinet, and smaller satellite stashes in
various locations. I noticed that they went through periods of collecting. My ferret Fennel collected soft things like beanie babies
and stuffed animals for a while and then switched to hard things
like pill bottles and vials. They also had a sense of value. If they
found something unusual, it would be hidden way in the back underneath other items in the stash, whereas a common object like a
pencil would just be thrown in anywhere.
My colleague Llyd Wells in Santa Fe has a ferret named Tomato
who makes stashes.
Tomato keeps a stash of mostly soft items in the closet in the
bedroom (Fig. 3a) and another stash of mostly harder rubber items
under the sink in the bathroom (Fig. 3b). Llyd will switch an item
Fig. 3a
Tomato’s bedroom stash
Fig. 3b
Tomato’s bathroom stash
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out of one stash into the other and Tomato is quick to “correct”
this. Tomato has organized her stashes and knows how they are
supposed to be.
If it seems like I am talking about ferret collecting in much the
same way I might talk about human collecting, it is because I am.
This brings up the bad word anthropomorphism. I am accused of
projecting my own desires, intentions, and activities onto the ferrets. However, if I see an animal acting in much the same way I
would in a similar situation, why shouldn't I, at least as a first step,
assume that it is acting with similar desires and motivations? After
all, the ferret, the pack rat, and me are all children of nature. We
have all evolved on this earth; why should we be assumed to be so
alien to one another?
Here is one more example from our domestic animals. Robby
is a dog who belongs to friends Jonathan and Barbara. He has a
basket of stuffed animals and when his people are away he makes
careful arrangements of them on the living room floor. A typical
one has four evenly spaced animals in a straight line, with one off
center (Fig. 4a). A slightly more complex arrangement has two of
the same animals, in different colors, together. There are two animals, evenly spaced on either side of these two and then down from
the ends, another animal on each side with different, but still even,
spacing (Fig. 4b).
Fig. 4a
Robby’s animals, simple
Fig. 4b
Robby’s animals, complex
Also typical of Robby’s work: the stuffed frog is in every arrange-
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67
ment. This is definitely not the work of an animal just throwing
things around because he is mad that his people are away.
A few years ago on YouTube there was a doberman who made
similar stuffed animal arrangements, though he went in more for
circular patterns. Let me take a moment to recommend YouTube
as a valuable source of information about animal behavior. Now
that most people have small video cameras or cell phones with
them all the time, an amazing variety of animal behavior has been
recorded and put online. Behaviors that I would have been called
crazy for reporting ten years ago are now accessible to everyone.
And everyone can judge for themself.
These collecting and decorating behaviors show us a range of
possibilities in nature. They are essential to the reproductive biology of the bower birds and certainly serve a utilitarian function for
them. For pack rats and ferrets these activities are typical of the
species, but do not serve any essential functions that we know of.
Robby the dog’s activities are not at all typical of the species, but
such behavior pops up now and then among dogs. I have read of
other cases in which one or a few animals engage in these kinds of
activities, though, again, they are not typical of the species. There
were a group of pigs7 who made arrangements out of shingles and
dirt and even a wolverine who made arrangements of sticks in a
chain link fence, left them up for a few days, and then made a new
arrangement.8
I suggest that the musical, collecting, and decorating activities I
have been chronicling are not always specifically evolved to serve
mating rituals or other survival needs, but may be part of a much
broader expressiveness in the natural world that can be turned to
utilitarian functions, but need not be.
When we look at invertebrates, it is a little harder to judge what
they intend, because they are not so closely related to us. Let’s look
at a few examples that might count as art for art’s sake. The decorator urchin collects various materials from the ocean floor and
7. Noel Perrin, Second Person Rural (Boston: David R. Godine, 1980).
8. Douglas Chadwick, The Wolverine Way (Ventura, California: Patagonia
Books; 2010).
9. http://www.flickr.com/photos/benjaminbull/2844381114
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puts them on top of its spines. I have read that this is for camouflage, but the photos that I have seen do not support this; they are
all highly visible.9
Harvester ants are common in the Southwestern United States.
Their nests are covered with small stones and are famous as collecting sites for various materials that people want. Some are covered
in crystals and sparkle in the sun. People know they are the place to
go to find turquoise and beads. Paleontologists find small fossils
from rodents on their nests, and scientists studying radioactive minerals go to their nests to find trinitite, the mineral formed from the
first atomic bomb test at the Trinity site in New Mexico.10
Garden spiders, also called writing spiders, build orb webs and
decorate them with zig zag patterns that are different for each
species.11 Henri Fabre, the great French entomologist, called these
their “signature.” I had, until recently, not read any plausible accounts of their function. It turns out, however, that the silk in the
“signature” is different from the web silk. It reflects ultraviolet
light and may function to attract insects into the web.
This is still untested, but does seem plausible. Even so, a further
question is why the web is decorated in just this way. Why do such
decorations seem more than is needed to fulfill the functions they
serve? This is one of the main questions that David Rothenberg,
the man who wrote Why Birds Sing, pursues in a more recent book
called Survival of the Beautiful.12
Usually when we think about animals and art, we are not thinking
about the arrangement of a pack rat’s nest or the beads on a harvester ant’s nest. We are thinking, rather, that animals are beautiful.
Humans have long appropriated bird feathers and animal skins for
our own adornment. I am an entomologist, and so I look at insects
a lot. Consider this beetle (Fig. 5)—the highly ornamented form of
the legs, the shape and texture of the thorax, the colors and patterns
on the wing covers. It is a fantastic animal and only has to be put
on a background and photographed to be easily seen as art. This is
10. http://www.flickr.com/photos/mouser-nerdbot/5334689193
11. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Argiope_aurantia_web.jpg
12. David Rothenberg, Survival of the Beautiful: Art, Science, and Evolution (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2011).
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69
Fig. 5
“Coleoptera” by Jo Whaley
one of the ideas behind a book, The Theater of Insects,13 that I collaborated on with photographer Jo Whaley.
Other insect colors are understood as serving important protective functions. The great purple hairstreak, a butterfly I see in New
Mexico, has prominent white polka dots set in a black background
on its head and thorax, a bright orange abdomen, and iridescent
scales on its wings.14 The top of the wings are a beautiful irridescent purple. The bold black, white, and orange colors are referred
to as warning coloration. Insects that are poisonous such as the
black and orange monarch butterfly, or dangerous like the yellowand-black-striped wasps and bees, have these kinds of color patterns. The theory is that predators such as birds learn to avoid these
patterns and so the animals are protected. Also, insects that are neither poisonous nor dangerous may evolve these patterns to fool
predators into refusing to eat them.
The peacock spiders, a group of jumping spiders, have wonderful bright color patterns, and special flag-like structures on their
second pair of legs.15 They do elaborate courtship dances for the
females. This again seems like a classic example of sexual selection in that the colors, patterns, ornaments, and dancing serve an
13. Jo Whaley, Deborah Klochko, and Linda Wiener, The Theater of Insects (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2008).
14. http://www.jeffpippen.com/butterflies/greatpurplehairstreak.htm
15. http://amazinglist.net/2013/02/the-peacock-spider-maratus-volans
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essential function in attaining a mate.
Consider, however, the radiolarians. They are one-celled animals
that live in the ocean. They are an old lineage, existing for over
600 million years. They have an amazing variety of forms, ornaments, and textures that serve no known functions.16 It seems that
as soon as there were animals, even just single-celled ones, there
was already a tendency toward elaboration. Again, I suggest that
such elaboration may be part of a basic expressive function of nature. Such appearances are not necessarily evolved to serve particular survival or reproductive functions.
Hold that thought. Now I am going to turn to the debate I mentioned earlier. Abbott Thayer was a well known portrait painter in
New England at the turn of the twentieth century. He was famous
for portraits of women with angel’s wings. He was also famous for
his theory of animal coloration. With his son Gerald, he published
a book in 1909 called Concealing-Coloration in the Animal Kingdom.17 I came across this book quite by accident about eight years
ago and was enthralled by it. Contrary to the theory of his day, and
also contrary to the theory of our day, the Thayers thought that all
animal colors were concealing.
The frontispiece of the book, a painting, shows a male peacock
with his colorful tail concealed in the colorful leaves on the forest
floor and his beautiful blue neck concealed against the sky (Fig. 6).
This vantage would be from the point of view of a ground predator
such as a fox.
More plausible, perhaps, is his photographic plate of a grouse
showing it concealed in its forest environment (Fig. 7).
Almost everyone would agree that grouse are well concealed in
the forests in which they live. But, Thayer goes further. He tells us
that if you want to know what a forest looks like, you should not go
around looking at forests because they will confuse you with their
idiosyncracies. You should look at animals such as the grouse who
must be concealed wherever they are in the forest. Thayer writes:
16. http://incrediblebeings.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/radiolarians-10species-2.jpg
17. Gerald Thayer and Abbott Thayer, Concealing-Coloration in the Animal Kingdom (New York: MacMillan, 1909).
�ESSAYS & LECTURES | WIENER
71
Fig. 6
Thayer plate of a grouse
concealed in the forest
Fig. 7
Thayer plate of a grouse
concealed in the woods
They are, in the best sense of the word, triumphs of art;
and in a sense they are absolute, as human art can never
be . . . There he will find it in epitome, painted and perfected by nature herself. Color and pattern, line and shading, all are true beyond the power of man to imitate, or
even fully to discern.18
It was this insight that led Thayer to become the father of military camouflage. He went around trying to get the U. S. military
18. Thayer, 240.
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to adopt the idea. He failed, though the French military took him
up on it. Now, of course, military camouflage is well established
everywhere.
Under the influence of this book, I was failing to see animals
everywhere. Driving in the high plains along Route 285 in New
Mexico in the early spring, I would think of Thayer’s claim that
antelope are marked so as to be concealed on the patchy background of snow and bare soil.19 I would be thinking that there were
hundreds of antelope out there, but that I could not see any of them.
The problem with this construal is that in fact you can see them,
especially if you are looking for them.
One person who read Thayer’s book and was incensed by it was
Theodore Roosevelt. In fact, he was so incensed that he published
a 120-page rebuttal in the Bulletin of the American Museum of
Natural History.20 Roosevelt writes: “It is impossible to go over
page by page the really countless erroneous statements, wild
guesses, and absurd interpretations of fact which the book contains.” He cuts the Thayers some slack because of their artistic temperaments, but finds their lack of knowledge inexcusable. As you
may know, Roosevelt was famous as a big game hunter and could
easily take the point of view of a predator. He was also an excellent
naturalist and knew the names and habits of all the small birds and
mammals that lived around him. Going back to the frontispiece,
Roosevelt points out that if the peacock is indeed concealed in the
forest environment, then the peahen—which is very differently colored—must be conspicuous in that environment.
Here is a summary of some of his main objections: First, Roosevelt says that it is our eyes, and not the colors of the animals,
that determine whether we will see them. He tells us that his native
guides in Africa could often see animals he failed to pick out. Further, cover is more important in concealing animals than their colors, motion is also more important than colors, and besides, most
predators hunt by scent and do not use their eyes until they are very
19. http://kenarcherphotos.com/p953706307/h1BF0CD15#h1bf0cd15
20. Theodore Roosevelt, "Revealing and Concealing Coloration in Birds
and Mammals,” Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 30
(1911):119-239.
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73
close—and by then they already know the animal is there. All these
objections have merit. In fact, Roosevelt almost, not quite, but almost, claims that all animals are conspicuously colored, the opposite of the Thayers’ claim.
Before going on I want to relate an incident that happened while
I was still very much under the influence of Thayer’s book. I was
watching mallard ducks on a pond at sunset with my daughter. The
speckled brown females were difficult to see wherever they were—
on the bank, in a tree, or in the water. The males, which Thayer
claims are concealingly colored in the pond environment, were
very easy to see.21 We were watching a particular male swim across
the pond, and at one point it suddenly and completely disappeared.
That is, its white back matched the sparkly white water of the pond
at sunset, its brown breast matched the reflection of a tree trunk in
the water, and its green head matched the reflection of foliage in
the water. It was so startling that I actually jumped. Then, a halfsecond or a second later, it swam out of that position and again
could be easily seen.
So, Thayer is only a little bit right when he claims that male mallards are concealed in their pond environment. For the most part
they are not. However, a kind of secret was revealed through this
experience. They seem somehow born of their environment. It was
as if someone had taken a piece out of a jigsaw puzzle of a pond
at sunset and turned it into a male mallard duck.
One more important participant in this debate on animal coloration was John Burroughs, a naturalist and writer from New York
state. He published an essay in 1908 entitled “Gay Plumes and
Dull.”22 In it he takes up the topic of concealing coloration. He has
his own set of objections to the theory. He points out that if concealing coloration were so important to animal survival, you would
expect all animals in a given environment to be the same color, yet
we see that they are not. Also, we would expect concealingly colored animals such as grouse to be more abundant than brightly col21. http://www.flickr.com/photos/mclap/4366013629
22. John Burroughs, “Gay Plumes and Dull,” in Leaf and Tendril (New
York: Houghton Mifflin, 1908).
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ored animals such as male cardinals and pheasants, and we would
expect the females of these last two species to be more abundant
than the males. Yet, this is not what we see. From experience I can
say that this is also the case with insects. Species with concealing
colors are not more numerous as a rule than brightly colored ones.
Burroughs writes:
Whatever truth there may be in this theory of protective
coloration, one has only to look about him to discover
that it is a matter which Nature does not have very much
at heart. She plays fast and loose with it on every hand.
Now she seems to set great store by it, the next moment
she discards it entirely.23
Burroughs accounts for the colors of the antelope and other animals like this:
Things in nature blend and harmonize. One thing
matches with another. . . . Arctic life will blend more or
less with Arctic snows, tree animals will show greater
variety in tint and form, plains animals will be dull of
hue like the plains . . . through the law of natural assimilation, like begetting like, variety breeding variety.24
He reaches for a “law of natural assimilation” to explain this,
and also reaches for another natural law to explain differences in
coloration between males and females of the same species:
His gay plumes are the badge of his masculinity . . . the
riot and overflow of the male sexual principle.25
Females being generally more dull in hue partake in a more passive female principle of nature. Burroughs still feels that the appearances have not been fully accounted for. He goes further,
speculating that:
It is like the caprice of fashion . . . exaggerated plumes,
fantastic colors, and monstrous beaks of many birds in
both hemispheres have as little apparent utility, and seem
23. Burroughs, Leaf and Tendril, 61.
24. Ibid., 80.
25. Ibid., 95.
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75
to be quite as much the result of caprice, as are any of
the extreme fashions in dress among human beings.26
Even in the animal world, there is fashion. One man who takes
up this theme, decades later, is Roger Caillois, a French philosopher who published a book in 1964 entitled The Mask of Medusa.27
Caillois was especially interested in the phenomenon of mimicry
in the insect world. The dead leaf butterfly is a good exarnple.28
The undersides of the wings are a perfect mimic of a dead leaf,
complete with leaf veins, fungal spots, and a broken stem. If this
butterfly was immobile in leaves on a forest floor, you would never
see it. However, it is not uncommon to see these insects outside of
the environment where they would be concealed, as if they are,
perhaps, showing off.
Another spectacular mimetic caterpillar is Hemeroplanes triptolemus, found in Central America.29 It looks like a regular caterpillar when it is feeding on a branch, however in the last stage
before it pupates, if disturbed, it turns upside down and comes at
you looking for all the world like a tree viper, though the “eyes”
are not real and cannot see. The theory is that birds or other predators think they are in the presence of an animal that is dangerous to
them and are frightened away, instead of eating the caterpillar. It is
thought that any caterpillar that deviates from the perfect mimetic
form will be spotted and eaten by predators until, eventually, the
most perfect mimics are “created” by this selective predation.
Many butterflies and moths are known as snake mimics. The
spicebush swallowtail, native to the United States, is one such
caterpillar.30 To me, this caterpillar looks more like a friendly
stuffed toy snake than a dangerous enemy. We need to wonder why
it is that the first mimic is so perfect if this second one is an effective deterrent of predation. Adults may also be identified as snake
26. Ibid., 90.
27. Roger Caillois, The Mask of Medusa, tr. George Ordish (New York:
C. N. Potter, 1964).
28. http://beastlyvirtues.blogspot.com/2013/03/fuxianhuia-who.html
29. http://madasamarinebiologist.com/post/16015203836/snake-mimiccatepillar
30. http://www.pinterest.com/pin/459859811920520201/
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mimics. Philip Howse, of Southampton University in England
claims that the wing of the atlas moth is a cobra mimic.30 Look at
a whole atlas moth.31 Again, we are led to wonder why, if birds are
such astute and perceptive predators, they don’t know that cobras
are five feet long and live in the rice paddies, not five inches long
and hanging in the air.
Caillois notes this “aimless delirium of perfection in nature,”
and proposes that mimicry is an autonomous force in the world of
biology that does not require utilitarian explanations. He goes further and also invokes, like Burroughs, a principle of fashion, connecting it with the phenomenon of mimicry:
But in the case of man, fashion is also a phenomenon of
mimicry, of an obscure contagion of fascination with a
model which is imitated for no real reason.32
The plant hoppers are a group of sap-sucking insects that live
on trees and shrubs. They have an astounding variety of forms.33
They may resemble wasps as one of the photos on the foregoing
site sort of does. You can see the black and white stripes, the narrow “wasp waist,” and a variety of pointed projections that may
deter a predator. Notice that the real body is underneath the wings.
The whole “wasp” is a projection of the prothoracic segment. It is
as if the plant hopper is wearing a mask or a costume. If we look
at other plant hoppers, we will be impressed that many do not seem
to be mimics at all. Their colors, shapes, and ornaments seem more
like the work of a playful, creative imagination.
So far, I have been referring to art as something like “the beautiful.” Now we are seeing, in the natural world, a different category
of art, that of mask and costume, a category that has a wide variety
of functions in the human world. Caillois was especially interested
in an insect called the lantern bug (Fig. 8). They are related to the
30. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/8082739/Butterflies-andmoths-mimic-snakes-and-foxes-to-fool-predators-claims-researcher.html
31. http://butterflycircle.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-atlas-moth-chroniclesepisode-1.html
32. Caillois, The Mask of Medusa, 41.
33. http://femtasia.blogspot.com/2010/11/membracidae.html
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Fig. 8
Lantern Bug34
tree hoppers and also live by sucking sap from trees. It is a Swiss
army knife of a bug; the forewings mimic dead leaves, when they
are lifted up there are two prominent eye spots. These are generally
interpreted as looking like vertebrate eyes so that a potential predator, thinking it is in the presence of a larger predator that could be
a danger to it, will be frightened away. Best of all, it has a large alligator mask above its real head. You can see the eyes, the nostrils,
and the row of teeth. Again, we must question. Don’t the predators
know that alligators are 6 feet long and live in the river, rather than
an inch or so long and in a tree?
Caillois compares the lantern bug to a human shaman. The dead
leaf forewings are its cloak of invisibility which can be suddenly
thrown off to reveal the conscious being who had been hidden. He
writes:
Where there was nothing, there is suddenly horror. The
insect knows how to frighten; what is more it gives rise
34. James Duncan, Introduction to Entomology, Vol. 1 [Vol. 30 of The
Naturalist’s Library, ed. Sir William Jardine] (Edinburgh: W. H. Lizars,
1840), Plate 22.
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to a particular kind of fear, an imaginary terror not corresponding to any real danger . . . working through the
strange and fantastic.35
One further example of this phenomenon is the oleander hawkmoth caterpillar, Daphnis nerii.36 This caterpillar, when viewed
from a certain angle, exhibits creepy glowing eyes that do not look
like those of any animal, but evoke horror. They have the same kind
of effect as eyes painted on a shield or the bow of a ship. This suggests that birds, monkeys and other predators may be susceptible
to a kind of existential dread brought on by these false, staring eyes.
The wide range of such costume- and mask-effects in insects
mirrors the many uses of masks in human communities. There
are masks to disguise, to camoflauge, to frighten, to take on the
look and energies of another kind of creature—there are even
masks just for play. If we go with Caillois’s thought, we can see
that humans are not isolated from the rest of the natural world by
our art, our mythology, our psychology. We belong to the world
and can see aspects of these human features represented in the
behavior, or printed on the actual anatomy, of other animals.
I have been arguing that there is more going on in the world of
biology than natural selection for the purposes of survival and reproduction. Especially today, when most thinking about evolution
is connected with thinking about genes, we confine ourselves to a
narrow range of interpretation of biological phenomena. As a result,
we are continually underestimating the capacities of animals, and
this underestimation takes place before there are any data. We are
always tempted to read the capacities of animals off of their genes
or anatomy and from the theory of natural selection. No matter how
many times this is shown to be wrong-headed, these strategies are
constantly invoked. Truly, it is not possible to know what an animal
is capable of without actually observing its behavior for a long time
under a variety of circumstances.
It is assumed that bees have such tiny brains that they cannot do
symbolic reasoning, but showing that they do somehow does not
35. Caillois, The Mask of Medusa, 104.
36. http://www.flickr.com/photos/77995220@N00/9398097107
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challenge the general principle. When we limit beforehand what
we believe is possible, we often cannot see what is right in front
of our eyes, or we fail to reflect about it at all because we have already sorted out the observed appearance or behavior into one of
our preset categories. One thing is warning coloration, another is
sexual selection, another is protective coloration—and we’re done.
Not only do we fail to see, we lose a language that is adequate to
the actual phenomena. We lose a sense of Nature with a capital
“N,” a nature rife with potentiality and surprises, Nature as a principle of motion and change. Only the poets still use this sort of language with a good conscience.
I’ve been using the lens of artistic expression in animals as a
way to explore this issue.
Here at the end, in the coda, I would like to switch to a different
sort of example to illustrate this point. A few years ago there
showed up on YouTube some footage of an elk, named Shooter, at
the Pocatello Zoo in Idaho, saving a marmot from drowning in a
water tank.37 There were two witnesses, a veterinarian and an educator. The whole event took about 15 minutes. The elk was pawing at the water and with his big unwieldy antlers, trying to get his
head in the tank. Finally he lifted out the marmot, put it on the
ground, and gently nudged it with his foot. In a little while the marmot shook itself and ran into its hole. It is wonderful footage.
The odd thing to me was the narrative of the witnesses. Even as
we are watching, they are explaining that elk don’t do this. They
are all about survival. They speculate that it is only because
Shooter lives in a zoo and has his needs met that he can develop
more elaborate behavior. The scientist in me immediately asks how
we know that elk don’t do this. Do we have dozens of examples of
marmots squeaking in distress as they drown in mountain lakes
while elk graze unconcernedly on the shore? We don’t really know
as we only have one example of an elk confronted with this situation. Underlying the narrative is the view that elk behavior is
generic and aimed only toward survival. I suggest that the elk and
37. http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?id=8211416
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the marmot, who after all live in the exact same place, know each
other. This may be an act of individual friendship, not calling for
any explanation at all in terms of natural selection.
I hope I have stimulated you to look more carefully and think
more widely when you observe animals. The world of animal appearance and behavior is wide and wonderful. The next step is for
you to go outside and start looking around for yourself.
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Troy
Hannah Eagleson
Eris
You cannot even bite into it,
Feel color burst in your mouth,
Taste nectar on your tongue.
Hard gold spinning down the table,
Stopping talk,
Clanging pitchers,
Breaking glasses.
Spilling wine
On immortal gowns.
Setting at war
Beauty, wisdom, power
Unleashing the bronze spear and gleaming chariot,
The arrows’ iron,
Drawing jagged lines.
Eve had at least the momentary taste,
Flavor widening her eyes,
Fruit in her mouth
In exchange for Eden lost.
Troy fell for an apple no one tasted.
�POEMS | EAGLESON
Judgment
Did Priam ever wonder,
Why Paris? Like a filigree circlet,
Looking fine enough, delicately wrought,
But not much use in battle.
Why not Hector, steady and strong,
Brave and to be trusted?
Why not honey-tongued Odysseus on the other side,
Or fierce Agamemnon himself?
Why should Paris be unlucky enough
To stumble near the gods’ celebration,
Fool enough to think he could judge
Among beauty, wisdom, power?
And who would choose beauty?
What good is that,
To managing a kingdom?
Does it build the walls or feed the hungry?
Does it grow the wheat or press the grapes?
Does it strengthen the gates or make the wells run deeper?
Who would have thought that epics begin
Not with the bright spear or bronze helmet,
Not even with the twist of golden hair,
But with the slight prince
Strayed to the wrong table,
Making a fool’s choice?
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Three Poems from Les Fleurs du Mal
by Charles Baudelaire
Translated by Peter Kalkavage
The Swan (to Victor Hugo)
I
Andromache, I think of you! That little stream,
Poor and gloomy mirror where once there shone so bright
The tremendous majesty of your widow’s grief,
That lying Simoïs that grew great through your tears,1
Impregnated at once my fertile memory,
As I made my way across the new Carrousel. 2
Old Paris is no more (the form of one’s hometown
Is quicker to change, alas! than a mortal’s heart);
I see but in my mind that whole camp of makeshift huts,
Those piles of capitals, rough-hewn, and column-shafts,
The grass, the massive blocks turned green by standing pools,
And shining in the panes the scattered bric-a-brac.
There a menagerie at one time was spread out;
There I saw, one morning, under skies cold and clear,
At the hour when Work wakes, when street cleaners push
A menacing storm into the silent air,
A swan that had recently escaped from his cage,
And, scraping the dry pavement with his webby feet,
Was dragging his white plumage on the rugged ground.
Near a waterless ditch, the beast, opening his beak,
1. In the Aeneid (III, 302), Andromache, now a refugee in Epirus, weeps
for Hector near a “false” Simoïs, a river near Troy.
2. The Place du Carrousel, an area near the Louvre, underwent continual
renovation in the 1850s.
�POEMS | KALKAVAGE
85
Was nervously bathing his wings in the dust,
And said, heart full of his beautiful native lake:
“Water, when will you rain? Lightning, when will you roar?”
I see this ill-starred wretch, a strange and fatal myth,
Toward the heavens sometimes, like Man in Ovid’s poem,3
Toward the heavens ironic and cruelly blue,
On his convulsive neck straining his thirsty head,
As though he were addressing reproaches to God!
II
Paris changes! But nothing in my melancholy
Has budged! New palaces and scaffoldings and blocks,
Old quarters, all turns to allegory for me,
And my precious memories are heavier than rocks.
In front of that Louvre too an image weighs me down:4
I think of my great swan, with his gestures insane,
Like people in exile, ludicrous and sublime,
And gnawed by relentless desire! And then of you,
Andromache, fallen from a great husband’s arms,
Vile beast of the field, under Pyrrhus’s proud hand,
Near a bodiless grave, bent over in a swoon;
Hector’s widow, alas! and Helenus’s wife!5
I think of the negress, all consumptive and thin,
Trudging in the mud, and searching with haggard eye
For the now-absent palms of proud Africa’s land
In the distance behind the immense wall of fog;
3. Metamorphoses I, 84-85: “All other animals look downward; Man,/
Alone, erect, can raise his face toward Heaven.” (Ovid, Metamorphoses,
trans. Rolfe Humphries [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1960], 5.)
4. That Louvre, i.e., the Louvre before the reconstruction in 1852 that
eliminated the old streets separating the Louvre from the Palace of the
Tuileries.
5. After the fall of Troy, Andromache and Helenus (Priam’s son) became
the slaves of Achilles’s son, Pyrrhus, who eventually let them marry
(Aeneid III, 321-336).
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Of whoever has lost what will never return—
Ever, ever! Of those who sate themselves with tears
And are suckled by Grief as by a good she-wolf!
Of skin-and-bone orphans withering like flowers!
And so, in the forest that inexiles my mind
An old Memory sounds with full blast of the horn!
I think of the sailors forgotten on an isle,
Of captives, the vanquished! . . . and many others still!
Fogs and Rains
O ends of autumn, winters, springtimes steeped in mud,
Sleepy-headed seasons! I love you and I praise you
For enveloping thus both my heart and my brain
With a vaporous shroud and a vague sort of tomb.
On that vast open plain where the cold storm-wind plays,
Where the weathercock rasps through the long drawn-out nights,
My soul, even better than in spring’s tepid time,
Will proceed to spread wide its great raven-black wings.
Nothing is more sweet to the funereal heart,
And on which for so long winter’s chill has come down,
O seasons drenched in pallor, you queens of our clime,
Than the unchanging look of your deathly-white gloom,
—Lest it be, on a night without moon, two by two,
To put sorrow to sleep on a perilous bed.
�POEMS | KALKAVAGE
87
The Vampire
You who, like a thrust of the knife,
Entered inside my plaintive heart;
You who, as mighty as a herd
Of demons, came, adorned and mad,
To make your bed and your domain
Of my humiliated mind;
—Obscene one, to whom I am bound
Like the galley slave to his chain,
Like the hard gambler to his game,
Like the wretched sot to his bottle,
Like the carrion to its vermin,
—Accursèd, accursèd be you!
I pleaded with the rapid blade
To win my freedom back by force,
And told the poison, schooled in guile,
To come and aid my coward’s will.
Alas! the poison and the blade
Both held me in disdain and said:
“You’re not worthy to be relieved
From your accursèd servitude,
Fool! —if from that empire of hers
Our efforts would deliver you,
Your kisses would resuscitate
The cadaver of your vampire!”
�POEMS | ZUCKERMAN
The Second Sense
Elliott Zuckerman
Listen: In wind and water,
the second sense
records a message for the sixth
Before our birth
only a patch of reason moved the pulse
Before the germ
of anything like melody,
maternal heartbeat set the meter’s pace
In harmony
the pulse ascends to the unheard. Though sound
is left below, compatible numbers
continue climbing
That’s why the masters of man’s sound
enthralled by breeze and shower
and friendliness of field and leaf
reiterate the triad tirelessly
sustained beyond the call of need or taste
The level field
the rising cliff or tree
are the co-ordinates of the soul
In simple chords sustained
beyond all reason
one master celebrated greenery
striding and hunched, hands clasped behind his back.
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89
To Save the Ideas
A Review of Daniel Sherman’s Soul, World, and Idea: An
Interpretation of Plato’s Republic and Phaedo. Lanham,
MD: Lexington Books, 2013. viii + 410 pages, $110.
Eva Brann
“To save the phenomena” of heavenly motions by undergirding
them with rational, that is, mathematical, hypotheses—that is said
to be the problem Plato set for astronomers in a passage from the
Republic frequently referenced by Daniel Sherman.1 His own
project is, as I understand it, the inverse one: to save the Platonic
ideas by a new interpretation of the dialogues in the title of his
book. It might be said to be the deeper and more difficult problem
to solve—and just as enticing.
But what, you may think, is the use of an inviting review, when
you blanch at the price? This book, written by an alumnus of St.
John’s (Annapolis, 1963) after a long teaching career and obviously
much study and reflection, should be kept in mind by anyone of us
who has more than a nostalgic interest in the Platonic dialogues; if
you can’t afford it, you might persuade your local library to acquire
it or get it for you on interlibrary loan.
It is surely a book not to be overlooked in any serious study of
the Platonic dialogues, not just the Republic and the Phaedo. But—
in any responsible review there must be “buts,” and I’ll get them
out of the way, the more uninhibitedly to do this huge work justice—its very volume raises some obstacles, thought-provoking
enough to induce the following little prefatory meditation on voluminousness.
There is an aphorism by Callimachus (third century BCE), the
most famous librarian of the great ancient Library at Alexandria:
mega biblion, mega kakon, which our wicked undergraduates at
St. John’s used to translate: “A great book is a great evil.” What he
actually meant is probably: “A long book is a big pain,” since he
1. Republic 528 ff. Simplicius (Commentary 2.43, 46) reports Plato’s
challenge to the astronomers.
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considered long epics to be antiquated. Having, on several occasions, inflicted such pain, I have come to think of book length as
an independently significant factor. For one thing, it is involved
with the distinction between “primary” and “secondary” literature—between a difficult, rebarbative original and its ancillary elucidation. There’s “learning’s crabbed text” and then “there’s the
comment,” as Robert Browning says in “The Grammarian’s Funeral.”
A primary text may be as long as it pleases, say, the roughly
seven hundred pages of the Critique of Pure Reason or the nearly
double that of War and Peace. But a secondary text, a commenting
explication? Well, how can it help but be a good deal longer than
the original? It is, after all, an explication or “unfolding,” an explanation or “planing-out,” an exposition or “setting-out,” an elucidation or “bringing-to-light.” Anything that is smoothed-out will
be larger in bulk than it was in its original implicitness or self-entanglement. However, the length of an exegesis that “leads-out” of
a textual complexity is a very real problem of human temporality.
Even for willing learners, since ars longa, vita brevis, if the artfulness of the text is great and the commentator tries to be adequate
to it, there is the risk of displacing it, because human life is always
short on time. Moreover, while words clarify, wordiness obscures
matters.
To my mind this means that to make up for its preempting bulk,
an interpretation has the obligation to be easier—and so, faster—
to read, and the interpreter has the obligation to accordingly be
willing to accept a loss of subtlety and depth. Although one might
say that a great text is one long aphorism, being too brief for what
it bears, surely the difference between a weighty text and its analysis is not merely that of succinctness and amplitude. In addition,
an interpretation should willingly forego that mysterious penumbra
of connotation and resonance which attends a great book and candidly admit that a great author’s scope is apt to exceed the interpreter’s perspective (not withstanding his—dubious—advantage
of an added historical distance). To say it plainly: secondary writing has a smoothing function; to it shallowness is mandatory. So
much here for one of its qualities; more about its quantity below.
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There is a now often deprecated notion behind the “primary/secondary” distinction which goes beyond that of “original/commentary,” namely, “great/not-so-great.” The one main mark of textual
greatness is just this: exposition-proneness. Whatever spatial
metaphor you may apply to the effort—illuminating the surface,
delving into the depths, unrolling the convolutions—there is always more to be said about it. The exegete may be exhausted; the
book never is. Put another way: A great book will contain many
serendipities but few inadvertencies. (Even Homer nods, but rarely.)
Thus the interpreter’s care is safely invested; there will be returns.
I have slipped from “commentary” to “interpretation” because,
while a commentary might be pretty innocent, hovering around the
factual extrinsicalities of the text, interpretations get inside it and
are fraught with potential culpability. First of these is inadequacy
to the meaning of the text: To interpret well, you have to begin
reading literally, attend to the letter of the text. Any willing student
can be trained to do that. But then it gets complicated, especially
for the Socratic dialogues of Plato. Who among the participants
understands what Socrates is asking and what he himself is saying?
What is Socrates’s intention? Where is Plato? Which words or suppressions bear the meaning of the conversation? In what sayings
or silences is its locus of truth? The effort of cluing this out is very
nearly simultaneous with the exposition of that truth or of its occlusion—here’s a version of that notorious “hermeneutic circle,” that
the parts are known by the whole, but also, inversely, the whole by
its parts.2 Inadequacy, lack of acuteness in construing the text from
both ends, here vitiates the interpretation—but that is not at all the
problem of Sherman’s book, and thus not my problem here.
Second, the pedagogic ineffectiveness of interpretative commentary: I want to frame this aspect of secondary writing as a large
problem, so to speak, that is little regarded—the problem of bulk.
Having myself perpetrated several big books, I suppose I’m qualified. Here’s the problem: In writing of that sort there are levels of
aboutness. At the bottom there is, once again, what the primary
2. The “hermeneutic” or interpretational art is named after the herald-god
Hermes, one of whose offices it was to convey plainly the meaning of
messages.
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book literally says. On top of that (or wherever it’s to be located)
there is the originating writer’s meaning—not that he failed in saying
what he intended, but that he may have reached for a new language
to convey his original notions, or that he may have suppressed complete articulation so as to involve the attentive reader. For most (no
longer all) interpreters, it is an article of hermeneutic faith that there
is such an implicit meaning, that its novel language often needs an
interpreter, that the author’s intention is often not immediately obvious—and that they’re elected to open up the book to others’ view.
So on top of that comes the secondary writer’s own understanding
of the primary text, which any candid commentator will, by that
little margin of modest doubt, know how to distinguish from its
underlying template. And now, to top it off, there is a tertiary level,
huge and growing: the more or less deviationist opinions of all the
fellow interpreters, who each have different perspectives, reconcilable and irreconcilable. And in this perspectival fecundity lies
the proof both of the primary text’s grander scope and of its human
limitations.
Secondary bulk is a real and present danger: smoothing turns
into smothering. Oddly enough, there is a device for the self-neutralization of big secondary books: the Index. For original books,
excerpted reading is a hermeneutic no-no, precisely because of the
hermeneutic circle, because the clue to the whole may lie in any
or all parts. Not so in interpretative commentaries, whose writer
should not be out to piggy-back a masterpiece on the underlying
text, but should help the user to check out names, find definitive
passages, and follow up themes. Indices affirm the secondary
writer’s modesty; a detailed index signifies the writer’s blanket
permission to spot-read, to use the interpretation in thinking about
the text thus served. Primary texts usually aren’t indexed to begin
with. Soul, World, and Idea has an index, but I wish Lexington
Books had invested in a more ample one.
“Careful” unpacking, analysis, reading, is a phrase, the favorite
one in Soul, World, and Idea, of hermeneutic virtue. Here’s the
“but”: it leads to pertinent paraphrases of the text to be interpreted,
together with commenting qualifications, modifications, cautious
retractions—in short, to lengthiness. Add to this the dutiful inclu-
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93
sion, both in the text and in long footnotes, of tertiary commentary,
in which the work comes to grips with, analyzes, critiques, or accepts a large number of contemporary interpretations by fellow
scholars. Just as the careful reading often yields welcome insights
(of which I’ll give an example a little below), the referencing of
scholarship is often helpful. Instead of just citing names and numbers, Sherman actually reproduces arguments. But it nearly doubles
the book’s length.
I am, as they say, “conflicted” about both of these efforts: the
written record of “careful reading” and the learned absorption of
“scholarship.” Who can doubt the value of carefully thinking
through a worthy text by engaging in extensive internal i-dotting
or the propriety of responsively considering others’ understandings
and making a mental note of their putative mistakes? But, then,
isn’t it the next best step to allow the bulk—not the gist—of our
own thinkings and others’ errors to pass away, unpublished, into
forgetfulness? Treat them as ephemeral, and let them die within
days of their birth (as do those eponymous ephemerids, the
mayflies) and enter forgetfulness, there to become the soil of reflection. Shouldn’t philosophy be resolutely anti-cumulative, ever
at the beginning? Absent a firm settlement of my misgivings about
bulky writings and extensive sourcing, I take refuge in a very practical solution: at least to pay attention to what is near and dear, and
certainly to the works of alumni.
So let me start with a sample of insights Daniel Sherman’s book
offers, combining close reading and responsiveness to scholarship
(p. 165). An interesting issue is “the autonomy of philosophy” seen
in personal terms, namely as the ability of ordinarily thoughtful
human beings to withstand the social order. Pierre Bourdieu, a
French sociologist, surmises that the categories imposed by the
power structure are intractable because they are unconsciously involved in the very struggle to escape them; thus even the not-soconforming characters of the Republic respond to Socrates’s
sedition with responses varying from “metaphysical fury,” through
friendly doubt, to sullen withdrawal. Against this defeatism, Sherman pits his interpretation of Platonic discourse as being very
awarely situated in medias res. Socrates indeed operates, albeit
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quite consciously, in the context of the social setting and its implicit
opinions. He employs dialogic practices to make these explicit and
to ascend, starting from within the social and natural world, to the
alternative realm of Ideas; the ideas are thus both continuous with
and opposed to the given social context, hence in a tension of critique and acceptance with respect to ordinary meanings. One might
say that Sherman saves the autonomy of thinking from circumstance by arguing that it is its very implication in the opinionenvironment of the world which, when brought to awareness,
gives it its rightful claim to independent knowledge. (P. 165.)
I’ve begun with this example, taken from the middle of the book,
because it is typical of Sherman’s saving, composing, middle-ofthe-way responses to exaggeratedly alienating views of Plato’s
project. Now it’s time to give a glimpse of the over-all structure of
the book, chapter by chapter. Keep in mind that this is a dense exposition, consisting of four-hundred meticulously argued pages, so
my summary will be skeletal indeed, and my queries will loom
larger than they would were the detail not suppressed.
The Introduction sets out the interrelation of cognizing soul,
experienced world, and Sherman’s own conception of discourseembedded ideas, in the Republic and the Phaedo. He reviews the
various values accorded by scholars to their dramatic aspect, from
mere embellishment, through an attendant enactment of philosophical life to an inextricable involvement of action and argument.
Jacob Klein3 was an early and vivid proponent of this third view,
and Sherman recalls Klein’s influence on him in the warm appreciation of his Preface. In particular, Klein’s close-to-life reading
of the dialogues is reflected in Sherman’s “most radical and challenging suggestion”: the ideas are not atemporal beings separated
from the world but have a temporal, world-implicated dimension;
consequently the Platonic account of ideal being can the better be
the operative basis of a philosophic life of learning, teaching, talking. Images and image-making—and image-recognition, I would
add—will be crucial in drawing the ideas into human cognition
and moral activity.
3. Jacob Klein (1899-1978) was tutor (1938-69) and dean (1948-58) at
St. John’s College, and teacher until his death.
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Chapter 1. The Interlocutor’s Request analyzes the problems
posed to Socrates in the Republic by Plato’s two brothers, Glaucon and Adeimantus: to show that justice is an inherent good,
hence a source of happiness. Here, I might comment, is a first
occasion for Sherman’s “careful parsing”; he delves deep into
the shallowness of Socrates’s talking partners. I think that approach, a dimension of the whole book, is a little hard on these
young men, as well as the all-but-boys of the Phaedo. After all,
they are there all night in the Republic and all day in the Phaedo,
attentive and eager; they do about as well as would any of us. If
I’d been there I wouldn’t have intruded my every mental reservation either, and, I think, that the same experience of a tacit
critical descant that Plato asks of a reader, Socrates respects in
his companions. We must supply knowing smiles, snickers,
raised eyebrows, furrowed brows, just as in a St. John’s seminar.
I think Socrates is more apt to bring out his present partners’
strengths than to expose their efforts to our cavils—if they’re
young.
To satisfy the brothers’ request Socrates sets up that problemfraught analogy between the offices of the castes of a well-constituted political community and the powers of the parts of the
soul. Sherman’s thorough expository prose obscures a little—a
dramatic hiccup would have helped—the arresting political assumption of this magnifying image, in which the individual psychology is said to be mirrored in the communal “constitution”
(whence the Greek title Politeia, “Polity”): civic justice is understood as the image of psychic adjustment. The consideration
of imaging becomes more urgent.
Chapter 2. Discourse treats of the possibility of realizing a
city so constituted. Recall here that Socrates in fact gives an unambiguous final answer: It makes no difference whether the
ideal city will ever exist or is just a model laid up in heaven; the
point is to practice our inner politics in its image—to use its politeia in turn as a model for constituting our own, individual,
psychic balance (592b). However, Sherman introduces several
levels on which the possibility question may play out. One condition for the existence of the just city is that a philosopher-king
will turn up—and, I would add, before he arrives there must be
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a pre-royal philosopher-founder—a proven unlikelihood, as is
shown by Plato’s misadventures with Syracuse’s tyrant-dynasty,
set out in his Letters. Therefore Sherman now reviews these
royal philosophers’ nature and their education, and in preparation, the underlying characteristics of degrees of cognition and
their objects. Thus the “digression of the central books” (p. 77)
is justified. Some readers may recall that Rousseau saw the center of the Republic in these books. Whatever the title may imply,
he says, it is really a treatise on education (Émile I) and, I might
add, on the constitution of the soul and the beings of the world.
Apparently, Sherman agrees (p. 137). However, he regards the
application of the ontology (the account of Being) and its realization in a program of education as provisional, incomplete.
The Phaedo is a necessary supplement. In any case, for him the
prerequisite imaging of the ideal in discourse looms yet larger.
Chapter 3. The Cave: Education and the Lack of It deals with
the Image of the Cave (the venue of human life) and the Divided Line (the gradation of beings and the ascent of cognition). Sherman takes the cave to be the city and, in clever
accord with the order of the Republic’s earlier books, where
city precedes soul, but in reversal of Books VI-VII, where the
enabling ontological line precedes the consequent civic cave,
manages neatly to insinuate his main thesis, the implication of
the Ideas in the human experience and knowledge of the world.
A bonus is Sherman’s account and critique of Heidegger’s interpretation of the Cave Image as embodying a loss of openness to the direct presence of beings, a receptivity still retained
by the Presocratics. Sherman shows that Heidegger himself actually appeals to the “ungrasped essence,” said to be deformed
by discourse, an appeal that vitiates the purity of his cherished
immediacy. Since Sherman himself supposes that beings come,
so to speak, into Being only in thinking and its speech, he argues that Plato’s image-dynamics more adequately facilitates
the sharing of Ideas between soul and world than does Heidegger’s hope of “unhiddenness.”
Chapter 4. The Divided Line and Dynamic of Ascent gives a
dynamic interpretation of the Divided Line, as an ascent and
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descent, turn and turn-about, of living thinking, whose motor,
so to speak, is imaging: the Divided Line represents the cosmos, both its shifting appearances and its stable beings, as a
top-down cascade of images and a bottom-up effort of imagerecognition.4 Sherman begins with the triple causation attributed to the Idea of the Good, which is off the line, “beyond
Being.” It is a hyper-principle that brings things into being, allows them to flourish, and makes them knowable (as its image,
the sun, causes birth, growth, and visibility). Sherman deals
with a scholarly claim (Annas’s) that the Good is too impersonal and offers no human fulfillment thus: As the source of
the world’s intelligibility it is surely good for human beings. I
would add that the Good was in Plato’s “Unwritten Doctrines”5
named the One; thus it is a principle of unification, hence responsible for all human community, be it the civic union of
politics or the private bond of friendship; that is why it is introduced in the Republic.
There follows a close reading of the Line as a ladder of dialectic
ascent, which cannot be thrown away—“a serious claim” (p. 134)
moving toward Sherman’s interpretation of the Ideas as tied to psychic activity. The problem of images comes ever more front and
center in a critique of one scholar’s (Patterson’s) analytic treatment
of the sort of things the original Forms (Ideas) must be if worldly
things are their images: The Form is what its name says it is, but
not as having the qualities its namesake images possess. This
makes more sense than you’d think (though like all analytic expla4. “Image-recognition,” which is the mode of ascent along the Divided
Line, is Jacob Klein’s rectifying translation of eikasia, often understood
as a mode of guessing, conjecturing (as by Sherman himself, p. 151). Thus
the ability to distinguish between original and copy becomes the basic and
pervasive ontological capacity. Images, the objects recognized by imagerecognition, the central problem of Plato’s Sophist, present a never-ending
enticement to ontological reflection, some of which is being carried on in
issues of this journal: Review of Eva Brann, The World of the Imagination
(1991) by Dennis Sepper, The St. John’s Review 42.1 (1993): 1-19; review
of Dennis Sepper, Understanding Imagination (2013) by Eva Brann in
this issue, 1-16; and now this review of Sherman’s book.
5. Plato’s oral speculations, reported first by Aristotle.
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nations it’s flatly clarifying rather than brightly illuminating): A
Horse-Form is what a horse in truth is, but it’s not for riding. Sherman must object. Whatever this analysis of being a form means, it
implies that forms, ideas, are quite separate in kind from their physical images; he is preparing to bring forward a way of understanding the (moderated) separateness of Ideas from Soul and World
that requires their (ultimate) interdependence. The rest of the chapter concerns the soul’s different cognitive relations to the rising reality of the objects represented by the upright Line.
Chapter 5. Education and the Mind’s Eye attends to
Socrates’s filling in the lack of education in the Cave with the
education for the philosophic rulers. Sherman dwells on the
significance of Socrates’s beginning the program of study with
arithmetic—not the technique of numerical calculation but the
science of the nature of numbers.6 This science, beginning with
the unit, the one that constitutes each of the unit-assemblages
called arithmos, has special powers of philosophical levitation.
The “one” that is the beginning of counting-up, of generating
numbers, is, one might say, the inverted image of the One that
is the principle of the unity of all that is, the Good: the least
constituent mirrors the whole constitution.
From the first study I pass directly—Sherman leaves no such
lacuna—to the final one, dialectic, which dwells on the Ideas:
“Dialectic, then, produces the image of discourse [my italics]
as the song of reason of which the relations of Ideas as a harmony of the whole is the ultimate objective content” (p. 198).
Sherman means this literally: the identity of Ideas is inseparable from the relations among them, and those relations are insubstantial, it would seem. By “insubstantial” I mean that
normally relations emanate from and terminate in beings,
6. He takes his departure from Jacob Klein’s Greek Mathematical
Thought and the Origin of Algebra (Mineola, NY: Dover, 1992). Alumni
of the St. John’s Program will recognize all the elements of Socrates’s
program of learning, but will want to ponder the fact that we begin our
mathematical studies with Euclid’s geometry, with shapes and magnitudes
rather than with numbers and multitudes. I’d like to hear speculations
about, and opinions of, this pedagogic reversal.
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which is why humans have to be somebody to relate to somebody. It’s not that existence as a mere node of relations is unthinkable, but rather that it’s demeaning. However, since the
treatment of the objects of dialectic, the Ideas, is deliberately
inexplicit in the Republic, it is in any case insufficient for a
persuasive theory of ideal being, and that deficiency makes
room for Sherman’s speculation.
Chapters 6-8. The Phaedo’s Arguments for Immortality, The
Problem of Wrong Beginnings, From Logos to Idea—these
chapters bring in the Phaedo’s fuller account of the soul as capable of learning and its more direct treatment of the Ideas as
necessary hypotheses; “image” and “separation” (chorismos)
are the concepts to be further clarified (p. 211).
In Chapter 6, the issue is whether the separation of the soul
from the body that the Phaedo appears to propose, be it as a
means of moral purification or as a condition of immortality,
is to be taken literally or imagistically, whether it is logos or
mythos (p. 221, though as it turns out logoi are also “images”).
Sherman prepares for his denial of this separate existence of
the soul and that of the Forms, whose separation is implicated
in the immortality and thus in the separability of the soul, by
arguing that if the reading of the text is properly dramatic, separation will always appear as “mythical” (p. 256), that is to say,
figurative—and that the naive boys of the Phaedo are not up
to the image-recognition required by Socrates’s myths.
It is a little absurd to balk at a book’s bulk and then to ask
for more. But, by concentrating on the boys’ inept literalism,7
an image-ontology, though projected in Chapter 7, is displaced
by a critique of the interlocutor’s powers of image-recognition
and interpretation. Such an ontology would, I think, give an
account of two aspects of image-being: 1. whence comes the
difference in plenitude of being that distinguishes an original
from its image, that admixture of being and non-being which
7. I keep saying “boys.” Simmias and Cebes are neaniskoi (Phaedo 89a),
adolescents with incipient whiskers or youths with first beards. To me
they seem the age of freshman, boys and men in turn.
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makes an image a mere image to the detriment of its dignity
(as set out in Plato’s Sophist);8 and 2. what is that similarity,
that admixture of sameness and difference, that connects an
image to its original—a far more complex question. It is this
second inquiry that would seem to me pertinent to Sherman’s
central thesis, which will involve a right reading of imagistic
logoi or rational mythoi. Here is how the philosophical problem
of similitude presents itself to me: Can objects from realms that
are conjoined by no exhibitable “isomorphism,” no structural
identity, have an image-relation? How far can the ordinary
word “image” be stretched, salva significatione, with its meaning being saved?
But perhaps before ontology should come phenomenology, an
account of the way imagining works and images appear.9 Sherman
puts to use a long passage from Proust’s Remembrance of Things
Past (p. 236), a practice I like very much because good novelists
are master-phenomenologists—it’s their métier. Marcel is enamored of a black-eyed woman, but every time he re-envisions her
the memory presents her as blue-eyed—as he says, because she
was a blonde. Perhaps, he perversely concludes, if her eyes had
not been so strikingly, intensely black, he would not have been so
particulièrement amoureux with her as blue-eyed. Sherman understands Proust’s passage—due notice being given to its perversity—
to illuminate a kind of “recollection,” here of dredging up those
image-memories from the soul in which the image of an object
brings with it the image of a person, as in the Phaedo a lyre is associated with its owner, a beloved boy. His point is that this boyimage lacks observed detail; it is of a “total person,” and the details
8. Generally the original is distinguished by several primacies: in time,
dimensionality, functionality, reality. Not so in representative art: A
mound of two-dimensional, inedible, unreal apples, painted by Cezanne
from a prior arrangement, is generally regarded with more respect (and
certainly costs more) than a bag of Pink Ladies bought by anyone at the
supermarket. That’s the valuation Socrates wants, on ontological grounds,
to forestall in Republic X.
9. As Sherman comes near saying (p. 388). For if human discourse is
image-making, then its interpretation is image-recognition (p. 391).
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may well be mistaken. But—here’s the difficulty—Marcel is not
making a mistake. He knows, first and last, that the woman is
black-eyed. He is engaging in deliberate perversity: the imaginative potentiation by willful modulation of an observed reality that
is too opaquely positive for a languid sensibility. More simply put:
Marcel rearranges reality on the slight excuse of blondness to make
it his; so adjusted, it furnishes the object of his self-pleasingly
repetitive daydreams (je repensai); you might call it bed-ridden
love.10
I’ve picked on the Proust passage because Sherman infers from
it a solution to the problem of similarity I posed just above:
The picture does not look exactly like its original, but
then neither does the lyre look like the young boy, yet
we bridge this difficulty by our ability to respond to the
image as image. The sense of both “like” and “unlike”
is in fact multiple; it can be both in order of vivacity (picture vs. object) and visual resemblance (lyre-person).
And this is true of relations of the non-visible of “resemblance” and recollection (p. 237).
Sherman concludes that in the lyre-boy passage Plato is stressing
the possibility of such non-similar resemblance (I’ve intentionally
put it as a contradiction in terms), and that is what I want to question: When push comes to shove, how far up the ascent to Being
can image-recognition take you without obscuring the very nature
of the objects, the Ideas, which you want to attain?11
10. Proust’s way with love meets its refutation in a charming movie, It
Happened in Brooklyn, a 1947 film directed by Richard Whorf, starring
Frank Sinatra, Peter Lawford, and Jimmy Durante. The Sinatra character
takes his girl for granted, Lawford’s is really in love with her. Durante
(Brooklyn’s wise man) tests Sinatra: What’s the color of her eyes? He
dithers: perhaps blue? And so with other detail. Lawford knows on the
instant: brown. Q.E.D.: True love is hyper-observant; in fact that’s its
hallmark: acutely observational concentration.
11. Sherman has certainly considered, but apparently without consequence, the notion that for the highest thought, for noesis, the imagelogos might fail (p. 392, n. 1); but perhaps it is fairer to say that because
he gives so much “a wider interpretation” of images and image-making,
he considers the restriction overcome.
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In Chapter 8, From Logos to Idea, Sherman’s thesis is fully developed, once again with the aid of the Phaedo, where on his last
day Socrates himself says more about the Ideas than anywhere
else.12 Socrates recounts his taking refuge in the use of of logoi for
looking at the truth of beings, lest his soul be blinded by sensory
looking. To pursue this way Socrates has recourse to hypothesizing
(literally, “sup-posing”), a way of proceeding by hypotheses,
namely Ideas, such as the Beautiful Itself (Phaedo 100a ff.). Sherman observes helpfully that a Socratic hypothesis is not, as for us,
a theory to be verified by being tested against experience, but the
converse: experience derives such being and intelligibility as it has
through some sort of presence in it of the forms (pp. 294-5).
But to test (worldly) things against the (transcendental) idea
means—and here I am not certain I follow (that is, understand
rightly or, if I do, agree)—to test them against the “idea functioning
as a logos” (ibid.). Moreover, it now turns out that “the hypotheses
as the particular idea expressed as a dianoetic [discursive] logos is
the idea at work,” and that this logos-idea is in fact to be verified,
not to the detriment of the idea but to the logos which may have
applied it wrongly by misclassifying the things of which it meant
to give an account. This human action (praxis) is, then, “a verification of the idea as logos, that is to say, as a hypothesis which is
an image of its idea” (p. 299; I’ve italicized the last clause). But
Socrates has already said that his images are both deficient and not
logoi: “for I don’t at all concede that somebody who looks into beings in accounts [logoi] looks at them in likenesses [images] to a
greater extent than one who does so in actions” (Phaedo 100a)13—
namely, does not look at them at all.
12. Along with his first appearance, as a boy in the Parmenides, so that
they are shown to preoccupy him first and last as problems; the Socratic
Ideas are ever works-in-progress. In the Symposium and the Phaedrus the
vision of the Ideas is imaginatively consummated.
13. I’ve taken this rendering from Plato’s Phaedo, trans., with introduction
and glossary by Eva Brann, Peter Kalkavage, and Eric Salem (Newburyport, MA: Focus, 1998). We thought that “in actions” means something
like “in sensory reality” (p. 14). My own sense, expressed elsewhere, is
that the Phaedo’s blatantly unpersuasive arguments for the immortality of
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The clearest formulation of Sherman’s thesis I found is this:
“The subjective form reflected in a logos must be seen as an image
of the objective Idea: the form is a rational image” (p. 217). The
soul’s ability to make and read “noetic images”14 is its very immortality, and the ideas it images are correspondingly eternal (p.
320). The logos-involved soul, that is, the form-informed soul and
the ideas share an ontology because they are interdependent;
“though something more than concepts, ideas do not have any real
independent existence outside this human dialectical triad of world,
soul and idea” (p. 387). And, as the logos-soul, the soul of the subjective form, is immortal and atemporal in the act of knowing in
which it accepts the eternal idea, so, reciprocally, the objective
ideas are timeless because they are congruent with the soul, not
because of some otherworldly stability (ibid.).
This account, if I have it correct, is certainly circular,15 which is no
argument against it. The most invulnerable philosophical accounts
are circular; they are ontological mirror images of the above-mentioned hermeneutic circle: Grounds “cause” consequences, consequences “confirm” grounds; inquiry requires pre-knowledge,
knowledge comes from inquiry. But in this perfect mutuality of
soul and idea, the outside third, the world (and the Idea of the Good
that makes the world intelligible) have somehow dropped out; how
are worldly things, which ideas were to serve both as causes
(sources of existence) and as reasons (sources of intelligibility),
actually involved in the triad?
the soul are each occasions for Socrates’s formulating the questions he is
leaving behind; he is handing on his forms as works-in-progress, as problems for future philosophy.
14. Sherman apparently identifies “rational” (dianoetic, discursive) and
“noetic” (intellective, directly beheld); they are, however, different segments
on the Divided Line.
15. While circularity—certainly no venial sin in secular argumentation—
is excusable in philosophical discourse, equivocation is, except in deliberate, inspired double-speak (such as Socrates’s “invisible looks,” the
Ideas) not so acceptable. I think some of my difficulties stem from subtle
meaning-shifts in key words such as image, separation, soul, rationality—
shifts away from common usage and also variations of use within the book.
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There is surely much at stake here for those of us who have the
sense that the explication of these matters might be, in all unhyperbolic sobriety, a matter of life and death. The reason is that, if we
believe that philosophical reflection (even if only occasional) makes
life more—and death less—real, this is an ever-present question:
Are there supersensible realms for us but also beyond us, attainable
but not just yet? And Sherman is surely speaking to just that question, but perhaps not altogether clearly.
Chapter 9. Closing the Circle. Now Sherman “closes the circle”
by returning to the Republic, to its last book. On the basis of his
theory of thinking as primarily image-recognition, he defends
Socrates’s condemnation of the imitative arts as practiced primarily
by painters and also poets against various scholarly critiques:
Socrates is not simply against the fine arts and their ways with reality, but he, in fact, has knowledge of a more veracious imagemaking and a more truth-telling myth-making (p. 349). So
Sherman ends by recurring to the inadequacy of the conversation
partners here, especially the vein of reward-seeking he discerns in
Glaucon (which is, in accord with the pervasive human theme of
the Republic, the happiness to be gotten from practicing justice
even incognito). Finally he resumes his own hermeneutic preoccupation by interpreting in his own mode the final myth, the myth
of Er, who returned from the Afterworld: It requires us “to see
through our images to the invisible in this life” (p. 379).16
Although it is not Sherman’s modus scribendi to collect his theses in one place succinctly and crisply as he goes, the Conclusion
does contain some summations, and therefore I may properly park
my three main queries under its title, ready to withdraw them if
I’ve misread the text.
16. That sounds just like our understanding in the Phaedo translation: the
Socratic invitation to practice death in this life (61c ff.) intends us to rise
in thought to the invisible realm here and now (and, of course, now and
then). But we did not mean that the realm of invisibility is somehow subjective, that is, only equivocally objective, psychically objective, so to
speak, or, on the other hand, that human beings come within actual sight
of it—except perhaps Socrates in the several episodes mentioned in the
dialogues, when he seems to be enraptured (e.g., Symposium 175b, 220c).
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1. This three-pronged question eventually arises in reading Platonic texts: Do the thirty-six dialogues form a somewhat organic
corpus, are the dialogues parts of a whole, or is each dialogue its
own dialectic universe, a conversational world of its own? In reading dialogues, we should, I have no doubt, begin with the latter
supposition. But for a global interpretation it seems necessary to
take notice of the ensemble. Sherman leaves the erotic dialogues,
the Symposium and the Phaedrus, out of account, and in these (as
well as in Plato’s Seventh Letter) the ascent to the Ideas is a work
of love, the virtues are practiced to disencumber the soul from the
world, the logos ceases as the soul comes within sight of the Ideas,
and the sojourn with them has an ecstatic element. In fact, in the
Symposium it is said explicitly of the paradigm form, Beauty, that
it is “neither some logos nor some knowledge” (211a).17 So I think
that Sherman’s sort of implication, his dialogical immanence, has
to be balanced, reconciled—whatever—with the other-world separateness of the Ideas as desirable and distinct objects. And, to be
sure, that is practically impossible within the constraints of “careful” dissection, scholarly respectability, and the effort to keep Plato
plausible to contemporaries. For it requires a certain—rightly suspect—suspension of scrupulosity.18
2. I have misgivings about a Socratic (though not so much about
a Platonic) ontology of the soul. To be sure, Socrates is a master
of psychology, of the soul’s phenomenology. But it seems to me
that in the Socratic dialogues, and so in Plato’s view of Socrates,
the human soul hovers outside and around the structure of beings
and Being. As Sherman flips the Socratic sequence of Divided Line
and Cave, to give preeminence to the human context, so he seems
to me to have flipped the Divided Line laterally, so to speak. Reading left to right, the four line segments representing objects of
17. However, the logos—not as thinking but as uttered language—is
imaged, “as in a mirror,” namely, in sounds (Theaetetus 206d).
18. It is a fair question what role the very desire for a beautiful Beyond
plays in making it plausible. One side might well say that such longing
vitiates sober inquiry. The other may counter that, on the contrary, the
desire is itself a testimonial to transcendence, since it is fed by veracious
intimations.
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knowledge come first, on the left side, together with their inherent
kind of knowability. The four corresponding human capacities, including image-recognition, are appended in one sentence (Republic
513d) to the right—an afterthought, as it were. But Sherman gives
them priority. Perhaps the thoughtful soul’s standing among beings
remained a rousing enough problem in the Platonic Academy for
Aristotle to center his own philosophy around its solution, achieved
by setting up the unmovable moving divinity of his cosmos as Nous,
“Thought” or “Intellect,” whose activity is noesis, “intellection,”
the highest power for Socrates. Thus Aristotle made possible an integration of soul and being—and a soul-ontology. For now beings
do not one-sidedly inform the soul, but intellect reciprocally moves
the world into its own being, its fulfillment.
But if it is the case that the soul for Socrates is not within but
about being, then it may be difficult to make it the part-parent of
the Ideas. And even if the soul is a being among beings, I don’t
grasp just how the Ideas can be in their relation to it dependent and
also in themselves independent, in short, how they can be both subjective and objective. I am all for paradoxes; I think our world is
such that they are its most adequate type of speech—provided the
inner nature of the beings that elicit them is first clearly worked
out, so that paradoxical speech is summary speech, language that
collects necessarily disparate insights. That is why I here conclude
with queries rather than with counter-claims—because I’m not sure
how the “both/and” is justified, what mental incongruities I must—
and would willingly—entertain to get the good of the duality.
3. Now comes the more technical crux of these inquiries. Just
how is logos imagistic? Out of the welter of uses for the word
logos, let me choose the two most prominent ones: word (or noun)
and rational discourse (or thoughtful speech). One word names,
intends (how is unknown) numerous instances, distinct in time,
place, or shape (morphe) and yet the same in some respect (or we
would not have a natural inclination to use this logos collectively);
that something “same” in all of them is what a logos picks out and
names; it is Socrates’s form (idea). A word conveys (how is unknown) the idea without being in any normal sense a likeness: I
think it is impossible to detect any image-function in this naming-
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logos without stretching the meaning out of all recognition. I shall
say why.
“Rational discourse” consists largely of propositions conveying
meaning. Some of these sentences are descriptive and raise mental
images (how is unknown), and such logoi are indeed image-making
(Plato, Sophist 234c). Others, however, are not descriptive but dialectic or “dianoetic;” they “think through” the thought-structure
of appearances and beings, and such logoi are only forcibly imagistic. To be sure, in the lower reaches, some logical arguments can
indeed sometimes be represented in spatial diagrams19 (how is unknown), because the logic-diagrams image not the proposition but
a mental image, a quasi-spatial corralling of class-members: Visualize “All bulls are bovines” as a herd of cattle, enclosed in a
barbed-wire fence, which includes a round pen just for the uncastrated males; then erase the cattle and retain the spatial schematism.
So, if, going from the second to the third part of the Divided
Line, I recognize by the power of dianoetic (thoughtful) imagerecognition that a geometric sphere is the true, more being-replete
original of a soccer ball (quite a feat, since to ordinary thoughtless
image-recognition the ball is surely more real), it is not because
the logos is an image but because it isn’t; it’s about images; it comprehends them. In other words, insights of image-recognition (eikasia) seem to be expressible in logoi, but they aren’t images.20 I have
a suspicion why that is: The logos has a negative capability: not or
non-, while images have no inherent negativity. They have the
same thoroughgoing positivity as the spatial world. It takes words
to dub any aspect or space, even emptiness, as a not-this or an absence. As I said, with Sherman I like to see the novelists bear me
out: The fatal Marabar Cave, in Forster’s Passage to India (Ch.
XIV), is the venue of negation in words, but in experience it is a
resounding “boum”—for negation has no sensory image as such,
and so propositions that are negated can’t be wordlessly imaged.
19. Such as Euler diagrams.
20. Sherman actually speaks mostly of image-making rather than imagerecognition. But I think the logos penetrates rather than produces images.
The difficulty may be located just here: What, in Sherman’s view, is the
work, what are the processes proper to logos?
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In sum, I’m not sure whether language intends, symbolizes, or represents,21 but it doesn’t seem to be at all isomorphic with sensible
objects so as to image them. And when it comes to speech about
the Forms, verbal, expressible thinking seems to fail, as Sherman’s
helpful report of scholars’ battles, for example, with self-predication22 amply shows.
****
These queries have been about Sherman’s unquestionably
thought-arousing interpretation of the Republic and the
Phaedo, or rather, about its philosophical consequences; indeed
they are the very proof of its interest. But Sherman also has,
besides the intention of doing the texts justice by reading them
as conversations among differently inclined and diversely responsive human beings, a motive, a hoped-for effect, which his
interpretation is to serve: to let us, with Socrates, “see ourselves as essentially engaging collectively in a discourse that
brings us together rather than drives us apart” (p. 392). And
that aim is beyond querying; what is an open question, one on
whose terms Sherman’s opus focuses the mind, is this: Do we
come closer to the way things are by recourse to the workinghypothesis of Ideas, unattainable in this life but informing the
soul from beyond with expectant desire and responsive logoi?
Or do we do better by means of Sherman’s thesis of a human
rationality so inseparably involved with the Ideas that they are
“not manifest” outside this union, within which they are interpretable “as essentially atemporal experience wholly in this
21. I half suspect that Sherman would answer my difficulty by saying that
he has enlarged the meaning of “image” so as to mean representation, a
way of re-presenting something, of recalling, of standing-for a thing, that
requires no similarity. I think it would still be necessary to show how
logos “represents.” The proper naming of logos’s relation to the things it
is about is, I think, the perplexity of language.
22. For example is the Idea of Justice itself just? The problem is a version
of the question raised in a note above: Is “similarity” reciprocal between
an idea and its copy? I should say that to me philosophy becomes wonderful just when “rational speech” (actually a redundancy: logikos logos)
fails, becomes para-doxical, “counter-credible.”
�ESSAYS & LECTURES |
109
life” (p. 386)—as our experience, it seems, not as unequivocally separate Beings?
Has Daniel Sherman saved the Ideas and if so, are they
Socrates’s Ideas? I leave that question open. But he has surely
done his part to see that the “myth was saved” (Republic, 621b)
and is now before us to consider—just as Er did by not drinking of the River of Forgetting.
�
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Fried, Michael N.
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The St. John's Review
Volume XXXVIII, number one (1988 - I)
Editor
Elliott Zuckerman
Editorial Board
Eva Brann
Beate Ruhm von Oppen
Cary Stickney (Santa Fe)
John Jim Doren (Alumni)
Robert B. Williamson
Assistant to the Editor
John Lavery
The St. John's Review is published thrice yearly by the Office of the Dean, St.
John's College, Annapolis; William Dyal, President; Thomas Slakey, Dean. For
those not on the distribution list, subscriptions are $12.00 yearly. Unsolicited essays,
stories, poems, and reasoned letters are welcome. Address correspondence to the
Review, St. John's College, Annapolis, MD 21404. Back issues are available, at
$4.00 per issue, from the St. John's College Bookstore.
© 1988 St. John's College. All rights reserved; reproduction in whole or in part
without permission is prohibited.
ISSN OT/7-4720
Composition
Best Impressions
Printing
The St. John's College Print Shop
�A Notice about Volume Numbering and Dating
The two preceding issues of the Review were Volume 37, number one, which
contained the writings ofWilliam O'Grady, and Volume :rl, numbers two and three,
the double issuethatincludedessays in honor of Mr. O'Grady. They bore the dates
Winter, 1986, and Spring, 1986. The Review now continues with Volume 38, of which
there will be three issues, labelled one, two, and three, and bearing the date 1988,
without the specification of seasons. No issues of the Review bore the date 1987.
�Contents
LECTURES
1 ...
25 . "
'Ear-Tickling Nonsense':
A New Context for Musical Expression
in Mozart's 'Haydn' Quartets
ftYe J. Allanbrook
Some Interpretations of The Magic Flute:
The Auden Translation and the Bergman Film
Beate Ruhm von Oppen
OCCASIONAL SPEECHES
41
The Program Old and New
Douglas Allanbrook
47
Truth Given and Truth Sought: Two Colleges
J. Winfree Smith
FICTION
55 ...
How Liberty Won the Sweet Sixteen
From The Tales of the Liberty Renaissance
Ken Colston
VERSE
66
Two Translations of La Fontaine
Elliott Zuckerman
BOOK REVIEW
71 . "
Allan Bloom: The Closing of the American Mind
Eva Brann
Decorations by Emily Kutler
Musical calligraphy by Tina Davidson
��'Ear-Tickling Nonsense': A New
Context for Musical Expression in
Mozart's 'Haydn' Quartets
Wye J. Allanbrook
My talk today is a "likely story" -an attempt to present a coherent aesthetic context in which to place some familiar music, in the
light of several questions that have occupied me recently. The music
is some string quartets of Mozart. The questions are threefold: first,
the problem referred to by the teaser in my title: why did late-eighteenthcentury theorists and critics think so little of music without a text, that
"ear-tickling nonsense," as one described it?' Second, why is there
so little recognition today of the importance of the topos, or characteristic musical style, to the rhetoric of Classic music? And finally,
perhaps most perplexingly, what does instrumental music express? Can
we say that it is about something? I think the three questions are related, and the following is my attempt to tell a convincing story about
this music that takes them into account.
It is strange that a repertoire we place high in the canon of serious music-the Classic instrumental ·repertoire-developed without
Wye J. Allanbrook is a Tutor and Assistant Dean at St. John's College, Annapolis. She
is the author of Rhythmic Gesture inMozarl: Le nozzedi Figaro and Don Giovanni (University of Chicago, 1983). This lecture was written while she was in residence at the National
Humanities Center in North Carolina. It is a sketch for the introduction to a book on the
chamber music of Mozart and Haydn.
A shorter version of the lecture was delivered at the October, 1987, conference of
the Midwest Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, and was awarded the prize for the
best paper.
1
�2
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
spokesmen for its new and.compelling ways; no one seemed to be watching. Or the few who were watching clung to a tradition that devalued
instrumental music as at best unnatural and uninstructive, and at worst
"nothing but mere noise. " 2 We think of the last decades of the eighteenth century as the time when instrumental music had at last attained
its majority: Haydn "fathered" the string quartet and symphony, so
the story goes, and J.S. Bach had already contributed masterworks for
various instrumental ensembles. Nevertheless, as one observer points
out, in Bach's oeuvre vocal works predominate; he did not grant pride
of place to these autonomous instrumental marvels. 3 And, as the quotations suggest, writers on music in the latter half of the century seem
strangely to overlook the untexted works of instrumental genius that
were being composed under their noses. We expect such "mainstream"
music to have been as central to its own time as it is to ours, and not,
as is more the truth, somewhat condescended to. Did late-eighteenthcentury writers on music simply ignore a considerable body of eloquent
and popular music? Is this another occasion to chide music theory for
being myopic about actual musical practice? My "likely story" lays
less blame at the feet of the theorists and critics of the period, although
it does not pretend to return them to full authority. The very aesthetic
theories that devalued instrumental music-the body of mimetic
doctrine-nevertheless provide a surer foundation for understanding its
late-eighteenth-century flowering than any theory that followed. But
our peculiar modern unease with aesthetic theories that characterize art
as referential, not to say imitative, has blinded us to this relationship,
leaving us to construct after our own lights a picture of Classic instrumental music that has stubbornly prevailed.
Although it is fairly well accepted that Baroque music operated
under the old-fashioned Aristotelian dogma that art is imitation, most
students of what we call "Classic" music abandon this kind of talk with
relief, even though these two repertoires have in fact much in common. Talk that suggests pictorialism or a program is avoided by the
sophisticated. Of course it is difficult to ignore the obvious: no one would
think of discussing Beethoven's Sixth Symphony without mentioning
the pastoral, or Mozart's so-called "Hunt" Quartet without a reference to the type of music that gave it its nickname. But these are considered exceptional, and the ubiquity of such allusions is ignored: no
standard analysis of the first movement of Mozart's String Quartet in
D minor, K. 421, mentions the flavor of the antique lament it takes
on by using that old-fashioned organizing device, the chaconne bass;
or that his Sonata in B-flat major, K. 333, opens with the piano imitating a music box playing a tune in the so-called Empfindsamer, or "sen-
�ALLAN BROOK
3
sitive" style. Although sophisticated techniques exist for structural
analysis on the deepest levels, the level that is in fact most palpable,
and moves us most directly-the level on which the expressive gestures
that enliven the work are operating-is generally treated as though it
didn't exist.
One reason for this silence is the powerful legacy left by writers
on music aesthetics in the nineteenth century. The intellectual traditions
of the previous age have been rendered opaque to us by the radical change
in attitudes toward expression in music that took place over a period
of one hundred years. Two oft-quoted remarks provide the extremes
for this enormous traversal of aesthetic distance. "Sonata, what do you
want of me?" asked Fontenelle, or at least, more importantly, in 1768
Rousseau says he did. 4 A little over one hundred years later Walter
Pater turned matters on their head in a remark that has become an
aphorism: "All art aspires constantly to the condition of music. " 5 My
gloss of this hypothetical exchange between epochs: the eighteenth century asks a rhetorical question: "Instrumental music, whatever can you
imagine you offer me?" The nineteenth century's reply is, resoundingly, "Everything. "
Clearly, the type of music each era embraced as the appropriate
paradigm for the art was closely linked to the prevalent attitude toward
musical expression. Eighteenth-century theorists and composers consistently gave primacy to vocal music, to music "completed" by a text.
Rousseau quotes Fontenelle approvingly on instrumental music's inscrutability because of his own strong preference for song. His article
on unite de melodie in the Dictionnaire (1768) clearly articulates this
prejudice:
Now the pleasure in harmony is a pleasure of the senses pure and sirilple,
and the pleasure of the senses is always brief; saturation and boredom fol-
low it quickly. But the pleasure in melody and song is a pleasure of interest
and feeling which speaks to the heart . ...
Music, therefore, must necessarily sing in order to move, to please,
to sustain interest and attention . ... Any music that does not sing is boring.
[italics mine]
Rousseau's judgment was echoed by most respectable writers through
the century. H. C. Koch, an important thinker about musio to whose
work I will return, could still write in his Musikalisches Lexikon of 1802,
in the article Instrumentalmusik, "It remains an absolute fact that song
maintains a most obvious and undeniable superiority over instrumental
music. " 6
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
4
It is true that Koch has some positive things to say about the possibilities for imitation in the instrumental works of certain composers:
The possibility of injecting ... a particular [bestimmt] character into the sonata, as a pure piece of instrumental music, has long since been demonstrated
by the sonatas of C. Ph. E. Bach, and in Haydn's and Mozart's works of
this type one finds more recent evidence for this assertion. (article Sonate)
But he still finds it necessary in the last analysis to make the same judgement about the relative merits of instrumental and vocal music that his
predecessors had been making throughout the century. The sonata
presents a blank and impenetrable facade to these writers because, in
their opinion, without language it can imitate no objects, and thereby
offers the listener mere sensual pleasure instead of moral articulacy.
Music left to itself, they argued, can paint feelings only in a vague and
generic way, since its means of painting are necessarily "indeterminate"
(unbestimmt). Koch concedes that textless music can "work directly
on our hearts and ... arouse in us pleasant or unpleasant feelings." "If,
however," he continues,
it should undertake to stimulate in us feelings for which the situation in which
we find ourselves offers no occasion, feelings to which our hearts are not
open, . .. it lacks the means to make these feelings interesting to our hearts.
It cannot make intelligible to us in these circumstances why it wants to transport us into gentle or sad, exalted or happy, feelings; it cannot awaken in
us either the images of that good whose enjoyment is to delight us, or the
images of that evil that is to cause fear or distress . ... In vocal music, on
the other hand, the text prepares the spectator, helps him to the intended
frame of mind, and gives interest to the feelings to be expressed. (article
Instrumentalmusik)
Only a text can provide a context, can supply for the music the determinacy necessary if the listener's cognitive and moral faculties are to
be brought into play. Because pure instrumental music moves the feelings directly, without reference to an external correlative or final cause,
it must always remain incomplete.
But confidence in the expression in music of such moral universals, and in the existence of the universals themselves, was on the wane.
Thus, as the nineteenth century began, this apparent deficiency began
to take on the look of a virtue. As they came to place a high value on
originality and individual expression, writers delighted in the very muteness and lack of prescription in instrumental music that had so disturbed
the eighteenth-century rationalists. As Joseph Kerman points out, it was
not "hymns or waltzes or cantatas" that Pater idealized, but "pure"
symphonic music, 7 which, precisely because of this freedom from con-
�ALLAN BROOK
5
nection with extra-musical things, epitomized to the Romantics what
is most "musical" about music. "Pure music" had the potential to be
the truest poetry, "which is all the purer," said one early nineteenthcentury critic, "the less it is dragged down into the region of vulgar
meaning by words (which are always laden with connotations). " 8 In
short, the doctrine of music as a mimetic art yielded to that of music
as an autonomous one, and there was little looking back. We today have
inherited this aesthetic with its elevation of instrumental music as the
dominant mode, and consequently we resist a perspective that asserts
the natural primacy of song as a first principle. So firmly are we in
the grip of this particular notion of musical priorities, however dimly
we perceive it, that the high position the eighteenth century accorded
to melody seems touchingly primitive, and not worthy of much attention.
***
If Classic instrumental music is not the ideal and autonomous
music the Romantics imagined, how can we bend mimetic doctrine to
describe it? A brief look at the long history of the doctrine is in order:
in one form or another it influenced thinking about art from classical
antiquity until the end of the eighteenth century, when it seems to disappear. Although the nature of object and imitator has varied with different aesthetic practices, one central assumption unifies them all: that of
a world held in common among human beings, which it is the artist's
role to copy in some fashion in his art-to "catch in his mirror," in
M. H. Abrams' well-known metaphor.• This world is external to the
individual soul, and the composer must look to it to give form to his
musical materials. Of course the constituency of this external worldthe nature of nature-has varied from time to time. Most mimetic doctrines are in some way didactic or corrective: in the Renaissance music
was essentially a Pythagorean art, imitating the numbers that inform
God's cosmos; human music, by vibrating in time with universal harmony, would bring human souls into a proper attunement. But over
the years after the publication of works like Descartes' Les passions
de l'ame in 1649, attention turned to humankind in a more rational,
mechanistic cosmos, and the enterprise was to represent human nature
by codifying our passions and thus speaking to our· souls. Descartes
legitimized the passions, acquitting them of mere excess, and proposing them as an instrument whereby the body could be brought under
some measure of control. ''Even those who have the weakest souls,''
he stated, "could acquire absolute mastery over all their passions if
we employed sufficient ingenuity in training and guiding them." 10 Thus,
�6
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
although the moral intent was somewhat mooted in the eighteenth century, still to "paint the passions" amounted to a moral imperative to
the composer. "The expression of the passions in their different modifications," says Koch in his article on expression, "is the proper aim
of music, and ... the principal requirement of every composition.''
''Expression'' became the word of choice in the later eighteenth
century, supplanting "imitation" in accounts of music's natural task,
and this use of the all-important word has misled many modern scholars. But too frequently in eighteenth-century texts the term has been
read as meaning "self-expression"-the venting, or "pressing out,"
of the artist's original and idiosyncratic feelings in an uncalculated, spontaneous manner. As a result, recent writers have tended to discover this
predominant doctrine of nineteenth-century aesthetics in texts earlier
and earlier in the eighteenth century, assuming that the word "expression" directs the composer to turn inward to his private passions. 11 Yet
in most cases the adoption of the word "expression" in eighteenthcentury texts does not represent a substantive rejection of mimetic doctrines, for the question does not actually turn on the use of the verb
to "express" over the verb to "imitate." The crux is whether or not
there exists a confidence that human feelings have models, which we
can construct because of our shared knowledge of what the passions
are like. If such a confidence exists, then the composer is involved in
the act of expressing feelings, of "painting the passions," not when
he looks to the unique inner authority of his own emotions to give shape
to his musical materials, but when he consults these universal authoritative models.
Where this confidence in a shared human nature is absent, as
it was in the nineteenth century, feelings are judged not to be susceptible of codification; they are fluid, mysterious, part of the dark self.
Clearly, however, Koch still trusts in the consensus gentium; he sees
the composer in possession of a "science"-a psych-ology-for portraying the passions, which he defines as "movements of the soul"
(Gemuthsbewegungen). Because music is a sequential art, he argues,
it is "fully suited to portray all these kinds of movements of the soul,
so to make them perceptible to the ear, if they are only sufficiently
familiar to the composer and he is sufficiently in possession of the science
to imitate each movement through harmony and melody." (article
Ausdruck 12)
On occasion Koch seems to hint that the source of the feelings
is to be found within the composer himself, in passages that have been
interpreted as a nod toward the doctrine of self-expression: "Only that,"
he says, "which [the composer] feels vividly will he express success-
�ALLAN BROOK
7
fully." (article Ausdruck) This sentiment would seem to echo the dictum of C.P. E. Bach-"the extreme expressionist of the eighteenth
century," as Dahlhaus calls him 13 -that a musician cannot move others
unless he himself is moved. But the rest of Koch's discussion leaves
no reason for doubt that for him the subject matter of music is not the
personal and interior, but the enduring and universal passions of men
as they are recognized by persons of reason and taste. Success comes
to the composer from his familiarity with the structure of these shared
passions, and from a careful study of the means music has at its disposal to imitate them. To "feel vividly" is to put oneself in the mode
that the model codifies, to see what it feels like to experience a particular passion; study-not self-expression-makes the artist.
Koch was not alone in styling passions as "movements of the
soul.'' It was the consensus in the eighteenth century that the link that
binds music and the passions is motion-that music imitates the passions by means of musical movement. One could quote as an exemplary passage Daniel Webb's argument from his Observations on the
Correspondence Between Poetry and Music (1769):
I shall suppose, that it is in the nature of music to excite similar vibrations,
to communicate similar movements to nerves and spirits. For, if music owes
its being to motion, and, if passion cannot well be conceived to exist without
it, we have a right to conclude, that the agreement of music with passion
can have no other origin than a coincidence of movements. 14
Johann Jakob Engel, in his Ueber die musikalische Malerey (On Painting in Music; 1780), a treatise that Koch quotes extensively, elaborates
a theory of the reciprocal transmission of these vibrations from soul
to body and from body to soul that is typical of popular attempts at
scientific explanations of music's effects:
Since all representations of the passions of the soul are bound inseparably
with certain corresponding movements in the nervous system, they are maintained and strengthened by the observation of these movements. Yet not only
do these corresponding natural vibrations arise in the body when previously
in the souls the representations of the passions have been aroused~ but also
these representations of the passions arise in the soul when p,reviously in
the body the related vibrations have been produced. The influence is mutual: the same path that travels from the soul into the body travels back from
the body into the soul. By nothing, however, are these vibrations so cer-
tainly, so powerfully, so variously produced, as through pitches. 15
In this resonance theory of affects, if the soul can be the sending oscillator, Engel reasons, why can't the process be reversed?
�8
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
There are obvious problems with this ''theory,'' none of which
should worry us unduly; they do not seem to have troubled its advocates, and our concern is with what satisfies them. The principal difficulty
is precisely what does occur in the soul of the listener: is he transported
by the effects of pitches to experience the passion in its fullness on the
spot, or does he merely recognize the feeling pricked out by the tones?
Somehow the motions of the tones, imitating the recognizable motions
of our passions, steal upon us as listeners and have thie effect; we recognize what we already knew, and in the directness of this sensing lies
the enigma that often causes heavy weather in modern struggles with
the question of expression in music. Engel's position on the question
is somewhat ambiguous. When he is advancing the theory of sympathetic
vibrations, he does use the verb "awakens" (erweckt), as if the listener
were roused to experience the same emotion as the subject. But he follows by comparing the effect on the soul of the listener to the ''compassion," or "feeling with" (Mitleid, Mitfreude), that arises in the soul
when one hears the howls of a suffering beast (p. 143). This comparison gives a certain distance to the feeling in the listener's soul; compassion is not the same as passion. In speaking of imitation in more
narrowly musical terms, he neatly sidesteps the problem by calling the
effect of the oscillations an "impression" (Eindruck) made on the soul.
When the actual act of composition is in question, the feeling is not
so much aroused in the soul as it is impressed therein, perceived, not
awakened: ''the impression of a gentle color has something similar to
the impression of a gentle pitch on the soul" (p. 140).
Peter Kivy, in his influential book on musical expression, The
Corded Shell, in which he elaborates a modern theory of expression
that takes its inspiration from eighteenth-century writings, is critical
of what he terms the "arousal" theory, arguing, for example, that no
listener could or would willingly endure the range of emotions and the
deep anguish depicted in a five-hour performance of Tristanl 6 His
studied readings of the texts seek an exactitude in these writers that they
do not possess. They are interested in the exercise of their craft, and
somewhat loose in determining the precise way in which the listener
is affected. Is the listener aroused? Does he recognize? Both accounts
have some plausibility. At times the notion of being "transported irresistibly" (p. 144) to joy or sadness does find a place in the prose,
but the specter of an audience now moved to martial wrath, now dulled
to melancholy, does not seem to weigh on the minds of these writers.
Surely they would find the picture of an audience collectively weeping
in the concert hall as absurd as does Kivy, and are using the verb "to
arouse" in a metaphorical sense. Perhaps the happiest resolution of the
�ALLAN BROOK
9
question is to take "arouse" as "arouse to sympathetic cognition of,"
in accord with the ambiguities eighteenth-century proponents of the
theory seemed to have comfortably accepted.
***
Both Engel and Koch assert that music has sufficient means to
imitate tbe motions of the passions, and they inventory these resources
in various passages. Here late-eighteenth-century mimetic theories grow
vague. Recent scholarship has rectified the false impression that writers
in the tradition of the Baroque doctrine of the affections-Mattheson
et al.-not only retained the confidence that the passions could be codified, but had codified them thoroughly . 17 Such attempts were, in fact,
rare, and often idiosyncratic; the confidence didn't produce the cookbook. Later eighteenth-century notions are even less specific; the notion of the imitation of move;nents is left to a large extent to the taste
and science of the composer. Koch, for example, lists as the devices
at music's disposal:
!)Harmony, ... which in gentle and pleasant affects must progress lightly
and naturally, without great complexities and heavy delays; in unpleasant,
especially vigorous affects, however, [it is] interrupted, with frequent modulations, . .. with greater complexities, many and uncommon dis-
sonances .... 2)Meter, by means of which just by itself we can imitate the
general quality of every kind of movement. 3) Melody and rhythm,
which ... are also already capable by themselves of picturing the speech of
all passions. 4) The alterations in strength and weakness of tones, which
also contribute much to expression. 5) The accompaniment, and especially
the choice and variety of accompanying instruments; and finally 6) Modulations and delays in other keys. (article Ausdruck)
Elsewhere, in the article Leidenschaft ("passion"), Koch quotes a long
excerpt from Engel that categorizes the passions themselves, following it up with a lengthy but again only general discussion of particular
musical devices for representing them.
The concern seems to be that too profuse a system of categories
will lead to gimmickry in music. We can better understand this concern if we look at the kind of composition these writers disapproved
of. The change in terminology from "imitation" and "mimesis" to
"expression," far from stemming from a disaffection from the aesthetic
position that art is properly a reflector of a common nature, seems to
have come about on account of a growing distaste for the narrowly
mimetic effect, for the habit of "madrigalism" or "word-painting."
Much of the word-painting in Baroque vocal texts seemed all too bes-
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
10
timmt, too "determinate," for this galant age. Engel makes clear this
distinction between the mimetic expression of feelings (Empfindungen)
and the mere representation of an object-"word-painting'' in the strictest sense of the word:
The composer should always paint feelings rather than objects of feeling;
always the state into which the soul and with it the body are removed through
contemplation of a certain circumstance and occasion, and not this circumstance and occasion itself . ... One should . .. paint the inner movements of
the soul in a storm rather than the actual storm that arouses these move-
ments. (p. 146)
Often, as both Koch and Engel point out, the internal and the external
will coincide. A musical figure, for example, which paints the restless
bobbing of a skiff on the sea is really catching the motion of the soul
torn between fear and hope; Koch uses this example in his own article
on "painting," "Malerey." In other cases, seizing on a single word
and giving it an individual expression- "painting" it-will either trivialize the feeling of the whole or divert it in an inappropriate direction.
The advice to paint feelings rather than objects was hardly new, having been given as early as 1719 by the Abbe Dubos, in his treatise
on a comparative system of the arts, 18 and it was echoed with increasing frequency as writers looked back with scorn on what they took as
the madrigalizing habits of their Baroque predecessors. By the end of
the century it had become canonical. The inscription placed by Beethoven
at the head of the Pastoral Symphony, ''Mehr Ausdruck der Empfindung als Malerey" ("Not painting, but the expression of feeling") has
been connected with Engel's formulation quoted above, ''The composer
should always paint feelings rather than objects of feelings." Beethoven's
characterization of the expressive matter of his famous programme symphony manifests the thorough distaste of the times for too literal a connection between tone and text. In this context Koch quotes an image
from Sulzer's article Ausdruck:
The kind of work that merely fills our imaginations with a row of harmonious tones without engaging our hearts, resembles a heaven beautifully painted
by the setting sun. The lovely mixture of various colors amuses us; but in
the figures of the clouds we see nothing that can engage the heart. (article
Ausdruck; italics mine)
Again there is the echo of that phrase of Rousseau's: ''to engage the
heart.'' The desideratum is a music that, neither abstract nor filled with
fussy pictorialisms, speaks directly to the soul. And the operative
metaphor is still captured in the word "speaks."
***
�ALLAN BROOK
11
Clearly, from this account, the aim of this music is the same as
that of the art of rhetoric-to persuade. That is, to arouse the listener
to sympathetic cognition of common human conditions. To learn just
how Classic instrumental music is to "speak to the heart," we can again
turn to Koch. In his article on instrumental music, he invents a pseudohistory for its development, hypothesizing that instruments first performed separately from voices at the time of the Pythian games in honor
of Apollo. This could take place because the victory songs with their
texts were already familiar to the spectators.
The entire substance of such a piece . .. was not only a well-known theme,
but also an engaging one. The feelings it was supposed to express were nearly
aroused in the spectators already; their hearts were . .. opened up just for
these feelings. It is thus understandable that music in these circumstances
could have a very specific effect on the hearts of the spectators even without
song, that is, without being united with poetry, through its inarticulate but
passionate tones, which in their sequence and movement had certain similarities with the natural utterances of these feelings. These were the circumstances in which at this time the remarkable separation of song from
instrumental music took place, which in later times had such a great influence
on music. On the one hand it gave rise to the high degree of development
instrumental music has now attained, but on the other hand ·it assured that
[instrumental music] would be used on those occasions and circumstances
in which it must necessarily work a specific effect on our heart.
If instrumental music . .. is meant to awaken and maintain specific feelings, then it must be involved in such political, religious, or domestic circumstances and actions as are of pronounced interest for us, and in which
our heart is predisposed to the expression of the feelings [the music] is supposed to awaken and maintain. (article lnstrumentalmusik)
Koch's account is revealing because it connects successfully expressive instrumental music closely with occasions; instrumental music is
properly "occasional music," because the occasion provides the particularity the medium lacks by itself. He thus identifies the source of
the efficacy of the topoi or characteristic styles: the "political, religious,
or domestic" associations they bring with them supply the context that
complements the indeterminate feelings aroused naturally by the textless music itself; the minuet was the favorite dance of the ancien nigime, fugues were popularly used in church music. The step Koch fails
to take is to realize that these occasional styles can be imported from
their religious or social rituals into art music to provide that music with
the particularity-the referentiality-mimesis requires. For this reason
he must always assert that the high instrumental forms are poorer than
their vocal correlates.
�12
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
At the same time these characteristic styles begin to be woven
together in a new way. Where a Baroque work would imitate one temperament, one stance, in each movement, a Classic movement admits
of several, in a play oflight and shadow. The result is that each movement is not monolithic, but an entire universe of discourse, functioning as a cosmic mirror, a micro-world reflecting the protean activities
on the stage of the theatrum mundi. Having a serene confidence in the
pre-existing hierarchy of kinds and classes, Classic instrumental music
approvingly images them in their variousness and order. The characteristic styles, the "commonplaces" of musical discourse, are a readyto-hand vocabulary of musical expression gathered from the simpler
music written to accompany daily activities: court life, worship, the
hunt. From their connections to the noble, middle-class, and humble,
the pious and impious, whatever is proud or abased, tranquil or restJess, antique or modern, in these occasions, they draw their referential
power and their affect.
There is a second way in which this music imitates the word:
the topoi, the content, as it were, have to be woven together "grammatically" into a convincing musical "text." Here the developing teaching about the "syntax" of a musical period is important. Whereas in
earlier music its resemblance to speech was most often remarked in
the most obvious imitations of speech rhythms-recitative, and its descendant, declamation-in Classic music the relation of speech to music becomes thoroughly internalized, extending to all articulations of musical
lengths. Koch begins his treatise on the composition of melody, a volume
entitled "The Mechanical Rules for Melody," by comparing melody
to oratory:
Certain . .. resting-points for the soul are generally necessary in speech, and
thus also in the products of those fine arts that attain their goal through speech,
namely poetry and rhetoric, if the subject they present is to be comprehensible. Such resting-points for the soul are just as necessary in melody if it
is to affect our feelings. 19
Although Koch never doubts that vocal music is music's paradigm, his
treatise is clearly about instrumental melody; it provides a sure training in the musical period-the 4-, 8-, or 16-measure phrase-and the
techniques like extension and elision that help to make "instrumental
speech" extensive, persuasive, and engaging. The point is not that vocal
music ceases to be a model for Koch, but that the new instrumental
music also maintains a connection with Rousseau's notion that passionate
speech is the origin of the art of music. The solidifying of the ways
of the musical period in imitation of rhetorical principles is connected
with the new habit of admitting contrasting affects into a movement,
�ALLAN BROOK
13
thus allowing variety and structural counterstatement. This combination results in works that do indeed "engage the heart" by their persuasive powers like a convincing oration-a "discourse of the passions."
The formal principles of this music are borrowed from rhetoric, with
the topoi-lively imitations of the way we are-embedded in its matrix
and shaping the surface. This interweaving produces the image of moral
suasion without a specific moral content; the principles of rhetoric and
mimesis come together in a passionate speech-without-words-the overt
theater of topic against the background of grammar and rhetoric as structural process.
The range of topoi available to Classic composers reflects the
homely and the elegant in their quotidian world-music that accompanies daily activities or has a resonance from concert life, the church,
even musical pedagogy:
the courtly-marches, fanfares;
the hunt;
the pastoral, as represented in the slow 6/8, the Siciliano, the
more sophisticated gavotte, and the drone or musette;
the exotic-for example, Turkish music;
the Empfindsamer or 'sensitive' style with its intimacy and unpredictability;
the declamatory, to break an even stride or make a regular rhythm
more thorny;
the musical dialogue;
the brilliant, soloistic, concertante style;
the passionate Sturm und Drang;
the singing allegro, with its trammel bass and vocal melody;
the music box, the mechanical clock;
the contrapuntal, otherwise known as the learned, or bound style
(stile legato), because of its strict old-fashioned control of dissonance,
often found in the solemn "church" meter of alia breve or 2/2;
its extension, the ecclesiastical, and, ultimately, the sublime, often
represented by a topos I have called the "exalted march" 20 ;
social dances such as the Liindler, the bourni'e, the minuet and
contredanse;
types of basses like the descending-tetrachord or chaconne, associated with lament and the antique;
the minor mode, which is a special affect for Classic composers,
not a mode of expression parallel to the major;
the wind serenade sound, so prevalent in Mozart's piano sonatas (he took great delight in having the salon-bound pianoforte imitate
out-of-doors music);
�14
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the "tune," which so often sprouts out of seemingly neutral
material to reveal a new rhythmic stratum and a newly articulate voice,
and is an effective stabilizing force.
Clearly, topoi, types, styles, tend to shade into structural
devices-opening and closing gestures, for example, or styles that normally create or undermine stability: the march is a typical opening
gesture, while the drone and the tune provide broad areas of arrival,
adding besides the flavor of folk and the country. Fugato is an obvious
undermining gesture. Topoi even become, as it were, "movementspecific.'' While the minuet and contredanse reveal Classic instrumental works as latter-day dance suites, they also have sound compositional and affective reasons for appearing there. The minuet provides a
laboratory for Classic composers' experiments with meter and topic,
because the paradigmatic regularity of the minuet's period structure,
combined with the built-in ambiguity of its evenly accented triple measures, offers an open field for experiment; often the first step away from
naivete results in the greatest complexity. The contredanse finale offers
a civilized wit that is an appealing closing gesture for a work; the notion of the sublime instrumental finale, so familiar to us from the symphonies of Beethoven, does not appear in Mozart's music except in the
last movement of the "Jupiter" Symphony.
Parts of the catalogue above suggest that topoi not only serve
a structural function, but often are topoi by virtue only of the structural
function they serve, and this is true: conventional opening and closing
gestures sometimes cannot be categorized as other than that. Indeed,
some movements offer more of a topical formedness than others, in
which the rhetorical play with periodicity, meter, harmony, and other
less referential musical devices presents itself as the surface of the work.
In other words, not all movements have as obvious a topical "conceit."
It begins to seem that structure itself is expression; the two weave in
and out in the Classic composer's effort to "engage the heart by a discourse of the passions.''
***
Having stunned you with this catalogue of topoi Leporello-style,
let me end with a few examples to illustrate the rich fund of devices
I've mentioned; they are drawn from Mozart's String Quartets dedicated to Haydn. I'll start with a favorite movement, the finale of the
Quartet in G major, K. 387, which brilliantly counterstates a motetlike alia breve fugue with a breakneck contredanse (ex. I):
�ALLAN BROOK
15
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Aside from the wit of decomposing a sober fugue into a country fiddler's tune, this opening illustrates the enormous power that the possibility of counterstatement gives to a work, assisted by the incisive profiles
of the tapai, and why the ultimate effect of this music is that of clearsighted comedy: the monoaffective style conduces to the survival of
the serious and magniloquent, but in music that plays with affect the
high-minded will always give way to the undermining commentary of
the comic.
Mozart uses fugal techniques more overtly in this movement than
in other sallies on the learned tapas: he sets up a second subject cleverly fashioned to fit in the interstices of the first: the t\'10 together build
up tension for the move away from home base to a new harmonic place,
the key of the fifth degree, the dominant. Final arrival there is confirmed by that most stabilizing of tapai, the "tune," which grows out
over the accompaniment figure in the first violin. Working on a third
�16
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
rhythmic level to provide a mean between the longbreathed phrases of
the fugue and the headlong fiddling of the contredanse, it specially "engages the heart" with the exuberance of its articulate singing voice while
providing closure for a major section of the movement. In the coda the
learned and the galant have a final tangle and resolution: a little imitative dialogue on the transition figure leads to a tight stretto of the opening subject-four entries of it in the space of six measures- which
relaxes into the reductio ad absurdum of a galant cadence crafted out
of that same sober motif Again the frame of comedy indicates that
nothing is immune to change in this gloriously many-faceted world.
The minuet of this same quartet shows us Mozart setting the
mechanical in motion, throwing off the rhythm both of the phrase and
of the measure. He creates two ten-measure phrases by offbeat punctuation in the accompaniment followed by a four-measure piano-forte alternation in duple rhythm, a playful "tick-tock" that momentarily
suspends the minuet's regular triple beat (ex. 2):
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�ALLAN BROOK
17
The imbalance created by this mechanical tick-tack is set right in measure
21 by a series of waltz-like four-measure phrases: again the "tune"
is a force for stability, and the more eccentric Minuets in the chamber
works all tend to end with one.
***
The first movement of the A-major Quartet, K. 464, has period
structure itself as a subject matter. One can clearly see the joins where
a 32-measure song reprise has been pulled apart and new, more mobile
and forceful material interleaved, to turn these 32 measures into a fullfledged quartet exposition. (At this point the reader will find the discussion easier to follow if he has a copy of the score at hand.) This
imaginary reprise would have a remarkable consistency in itself, and
could stand alone as the first section of a briefer, less imposing movement. It opens with a typical 16-measure period in a simple sentimental singing style, properly symmetrical and with all its parts. The triple
meter also emphasizes the unassuming nature of the theme (ex. 3):
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At arrival on the new harmonic plateau, the dominant, four more
measures of this Ur-Reprise stabilize the new key. Next, four measures provide a final cadence in E, the dominant, consisting of the opening
material made closing by a re-harmonization. And finally four more
measures provide a brief valedictory coda.
But the exposition is swollen from 32 to 87 measures by the much
more dramatic and labile material that forces itself in at the joins in
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
18
this Ur-Reprise; it is almost a textbook illustration of Koch's methods
of melodic extension. An inflection of the minor mode and a brief fugato
in the pathetic style on the opening theme provide the departure from
A major, home base, but only reach C, an intermediary between A and
E, where an entirely new "tune"-a Liindler with hurdy-gurdy drone
bass-provides four measures of a false stabilization, in the wrong key
(ex. 4):
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A passage in concerto style pushes away from the C major and arrives
in E for the second part of the Ur-Form. The four measures of this
so-called "second theme" look to be repeated, but a passage in dialogue style opens out into an ascending passage of parallel chords in
the "bound style," answered by a similar passage descending, but in
a more sentimental vein. More concerto style brings the exposition to
the embedded four-measure closing theme, which is separated from the
codetta by yet more measures in imitative style. The bound style in the
exposition is pure churning of the waters, but grows substantive in the
development, where harmonies and rhythms turn dense and clotted. Most
interesting is the Coda, where a rhythmic retardation in bound style
gives one serious pause before the opening motive is made three times
cadential-a final summary of the embedded Ur-Reprise.
I'll close with a discussion of the D-minor Quartet, K. 421, because it strikes me as a rare example of topical unity over four movements rather than the affective counterstatement that is usually the rule
from part to part. The first movement opens with a chaconne or
<;Jescending-tetrachord ba~s-a slow-motion descent through flat 7 to
5, and after a pause on 5, the tonic (ex. 5):
�ALLAN BROOK
19
J I;:J2J
This is an ambiguous opening for the first movement of a quartet, with
its suggestion of the antique and the pathetic, rather than the usual brisk
annunciatory march. Its unusual pathos caused one nineteenth-century
French theorist, Jerome-Joseph de Momigny, to put it to words as a
tragic duet between Dido and Aeneas. 21 The first violin ornaments the
pathetic bass with galant-style figures, but in bits and pieces (ex. 6):
The four measures are repeated in a more expansive register, and it
is this slightly varied repetition that articulates the frrst period's cadence,
rather than a through-composed unit as is more conventional in these
beginnings. This opening ambiguity is in keeping with a movement in
the minor mode, where often the key attained in the motion away from
home base provides not the usual counterstatement or challenge to the
home key, but a consolidation and stabilization in the major after the
weaker minor. Here the F major arrives as a singing allegro, with ornamental cantabile figures over repeated sixteenths, each measure arranged iambically to provide arrival (unlike the open-ended trochees
of the chaconne). The development begins with a startling play on the
linearity of the chaconne, at first mimicking the opening period but in
the surprising key of E-flat major; the bass, however, fails to stop at
the appropriate tone, extending the vertiginous scalar motion ad
absurdum-or four more steps to F, and a sleight-of-hand modulation
to the key of A minor. Thus the most distant key attained in the
movement-theE-flat -is abandoned in a matter of measures by this
cool dissolve down the scale to a key surprisingly close to home base.
�20
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
While the development proceeds to a further anatomizing of the figures
of the opening period, in part in fugal style with close entries, it takes
place in thoroughly familiar keys; the harmonic crisis is over before
it began, and it is the drama of the chaconne that has given form and
affect to the movement. Little that is new takes place in the recapitulation. But hearing the cantabile tune-earlier an affirmation of arrival
in upright F major-recast in the minor leaves an imbalance that, if
one accepts the premise that the minor is a weaker reflection of the major
mode, the rest of the quartet must put right.
I will pass more quickly over the other three movements, because my primary interest is in that unusual topical unity that seems
to prevail over the whole, and in how the D-minor uncertainty is worked
out. The second movement is a simple and grave Siciliano in F major.
Its single eccentricity is that the figuration in the opening phrase is rearranged: the normal fifth measure that we expect is inserted between
measures 2 and 3, causing a new and passionate accent to intrude in
the trim rhetoric of the eight-measure period. That we recognize this
displacement is further proof of the syntactical clarity that informs this
music (ex. 7):
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�ALLAN BROOK
21
Strikingly, Mozart ends the movement with measure 5-the triadic upbeat figure that was misplaced; he is clearly aware of his original permutation. In fact, I am increasingly struck by Mozart's habit of
summarizing in some neat and economical way at the end of a movement his primary intent with the whole.
The third movement, the Minuet, is based on another chaconnetype bass; it is a dense, gnarled, motet-like ten-measure period with
polyrhythms throughout, and no half-cadence-again the minuet as
ground for rhythmic and textural experiment.
The fourth movement, a theme and variations, echoes the topic
of the second, just as the Minuet did that of the first. The theme is a
bittersweet, Empfindsamer Siciliano-a nostalgic pastoral song-in D
minor, with gypsy violin figuration perhaps borrowed from a
tarantella-a high repeated-note figure (ex. 8):
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
22
The first reprise stays in D minor throughout, and the move to a major
key in the second reprise is damped by its brevity. So the movement
seems at first to provide no resolution to the grip of the minor. Since
even Mozart's great G-minor Quintet ends with an affirmative movement in G major, this dwelling in the minor seems uncharacteristic.
Yet at the very end a quicker, gigue-like variation, with the wayward
tarentella figure tossed obsessively from voice to voice and growing
into substantive material, ends in a surprising and otherworldly major
cadence in which the tarentella receives its apotheosis (ex. 9):
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The allusive brevity of the resolution-perhaps the Pythagorean perfection of the major third has an ecclesiastical resonance here-is fully
in keeping with this terse and idiosyncratic work.
***
What then is the end of Classic instrumental music? To engage
the heart, to persuade. To persuade of what? That a complete and winning whole has been presented, a convincing mirror of the cosmos in
its variety and its order; styles, types, ways of being are stated and counterstated, developed and transformed, tangled and resolved. Always there
is the narrative attitude, though never a story; always the shape of moral
oratory, but never the moral. The imitative and referential are rarely
absent from this great instrumental repertoire, which quietly blossomed
while everyone was praising song.
If at the end of my "likely story" I may diffidently offer what
may seem a fanciful comparison-! hope it won't seem utterly so in
�ALLAN BROOK
23
your second thoughts-I would summon up the comedic vision of Dante's
Divine Comedy with the panoramic nature of its embrace, nothing less
than all human affairs, and its tranquil confidence in the mode and order of God's creation, and its commitment to a comic equilibrium, adjusting imbalances and asserting a "happy ending." It is a view of the
world in which even the tragic mode must take its proper and limited
place (remember the special treatment of the minor mode in Classic
music as a dependent of the essential major). In service of this vision,
both men use the vernacular to "engage the heart." Dante develops
the vulgar tongue into his powerful dolce stile nuovo, that most appropriate language for speaking to common humanity about sin and redemption, while Mozart develops the charming simplicities of the galant
style-artless dance melodies and popular tunes-into a complex musicallanguage that nevertheless remains true to its origin in the musical
vulgate. Both had as predecessors an elevated and weighty languageDante the high Latin tongue and Mozart the grand and pathetic style
of the Baroque. Encompassing both hell and paradise, and the purgatorial
ground in between, the Comedy sets them in order, culminating in the
great final vision of the deity who holds them properly in place. In the
same way, the Classic repertoire, a secular divine comedy, taking the
best of the notion of passionate speech, and the best of the powers of
instrumental music and the dance, with them mirrors all categories of
human experience in a mode of profound urbanity; it is a moral entertainment in the deepest sense.
Footnotes
I. Christian Gottfried Krause, quoted by J. F. Reichardt, Schreiben iiber
die berlinische Musik, Hamburg, 1775. For a fuller discussion of
eighteenth-century opinions of the new instrumental music, see Bellamy
Hosler, Changing Aesthetic Views of Instrumental Music in 18th-Century
Germany (Ann Arbor, UMI Research Press, 1981), pp. 1-30.
2. Johann Georg Sulzer, Allgemeine Theorie der schonen kiinste, 2nd ed.,
4 vols. (Leipzig, 1786-87), s.v. lnstrumentalmusik.
3. James Winn, Unsuspected Eloquence: A History of the Relations between
Poetry and Music (New Haven, Yale University Press, 198l),y. 217.
4. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Dictionnaire de musique (Paris, 1768), s.v.
"Sonate." The translations in this essay are the work of the author.
5. Walter Pater, "The School of Giorgione," in The Renaissance, following the text of The Works of Walter Pater, vol. I, p. 135. Quoted in Winn,
p. 289.
6. Heinrich Christoph Koch, Musikalisches Lexikon (Frankfurt am Main:
August Hermann, 1802), s.v. Instrumentalmusik.
�24
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
7. Joseph Kerman, Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 65.
8. Remark in an article in Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung (1801) quoted
by Carl Dahlhaus, Esthetics of Music, trans. William Austin (Cambridge,
Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 27.
9. M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition, London: Oxford University Press, 1953.
10. Rene Descartes, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch; 2 vols. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1985), I, 348.
II. See, for example, John Hollander's distinction between "imitation" and
"expression" in The Untuning of the Sky: Ideas of Music in English Poetry
(Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1961), pp. 172-76; Alan Lessem,
"Imitation and Expression: Opposing French and British Views in the
18th Century," Journal of the American Musicological Society 27 (1974),
325-30; Winn, pp. 232-38. For a dissenting view, see John Neubauer,
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
The Emancipation of Music from Language: Departure from Mimesis in
18th-Century Aesthetics (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1986), pp.
149-67.
Here Koch is quoting from Sulzer (s.v. Instrumentalmusik), from whose
work he adopted many opinions.
Dahlhaus, p. 22.
Daniel Webb, Observations on the Correspondence between Poetry and
Music (London, 1769), p. 7.
Johann Jakob Engel, Ueber die musikalische Malerey (1780), in J. J. Engel's Schriften, Vol. IV: Reden und iisthetische Versuche (Berlin, 1844),
pp. 142-43.
Peter Kivy, The Corded Shell: Reflections on Musical Expression (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1980), p. 23.
See, for example, George Buelow, The New Grove Dictionary of Music
and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (London, 1980), s.v. "Rhetoric."
Dubos, Jean Baptiste. Reflexions critiques sur Ia pOesie et Ia peinture.
1719. Paris, 1770. Facs. rpt. Geneva: Slatkine, 1967.
Heinrich Christoph Koch, Versuch einer Anleitung zur Composition, 3
vols. (Leipzig, 1782-1793), II. S. 77.
Allanbrook, Wye J., Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro and
Don Giovanni (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1983), pp. 18-22.
JerOme-Joseph de Momigny, Cours complet d'harmonie et de composition, 2 vols. (Paris, 1806), I, p. 371 and pl. 30.
�Some Interpretations of
The Magic Flute:
The Auden Translation and the
Bergman Film
Beate Ruhm von Oppen
The interpretations I want to discuss are not those of the theoreticians but those of practitioners: producers, directors, translators. All
translation is bound to have an element of interpretation. I do not know
whether producers and directors are so bound; they could simply be
faithful to plot, text, music, and stage directions-unless there are compelling reasons to depart from them. And here I do not speak of "inner'' compulsions, but of political taboos. To take just two: the masonic
anti-feminism of Mozart's masonic opera and the wicked blackamoor
Monostatos. His one aria makes it quite clear that he is more lecherous
than wicked. It is very quick in tempo and to be sung pianissimo. Will
he have to become colorless in our enlightened age? Bergman, in his
film of 1975, had him somewhat swarthy, perhaps a swarthy redneck,
but took care to introduce representatives of all humanity, a cunning
racial mix, in the audience he shows us, people who are unlikely to
represent the audience of a Scandinavian opera house, but whom it
Beate Ruhm von Oppen is a Tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. Her German edition of the wartime letters of Helmuth James von Mo1tke is about to be published by
C.H. Beck Verlag, Munich, with an English edition to fol1ow. Her essay on Moltke,
'Trial in Berlin,' appeared in the January, 1977, issue of the Review.
25
�26
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
pleased the master of obtrusive symbolism to put there, so that we should
know that Mozart's Magic Flute is a work for everybody, every man,
woman, and child, and has a universal message.
In the second half of the twentieth century the Metropolitan Opera
in New York found this eighteenth-century fairy-tale blackamoor an
embarrassment. So the old Met had a production with a white Monostatos
and a black Pamina. The new Met, in a new production in the midsixties, with a gorgeous setting by Chagall, tampered with the German
text (they were singing the work in the original language and were afraid
that New Yorkers might understand it) so that in this aria of complaint
Monostatos is made to sing of his frustration not ''wei! ein Schwarzer
hiisslich ist" (because a black man is ugly) but "wei! ein Wilder hasslich ist" (because a savage is ugly). I do now know how many liberal
consciences were saved by that change. Mozart's music here is so light,
so unvengeful, in fact the music of a darker Papageno and not, say,
a raging Ferrando after Dorabella' s betrayal of him in Cosi fan tutte,
that the editorial precautions seem superfluous.
When W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman were commissioned
to produce an English version of The Magic Flute with which NBC was
going to celebrate the bicentenary of Mozart's birth on television in
1956, they too deleted all reference to the color of Monostatos (and
the performance had the black beauty Leontyne Price as Pamina). But
then they also deleted all elements of Freemasonry, deleted Pamina' s
dead father and made her illegitimate, changed the order of scenes, and
took a lot of other liberties. They produced an interesting and readableeven singable-libretto and one that I want to discuss later in some detail. Convinced, as they said in their preface, that the original libretto
needed not just translating but improving, they set to work to produce
something that would sound as though the music had really been composed for it-not the usual translation into a non-language they call
"operese" (we all know examples of that, I'm sure) but a poetic recreation, so to speak, which reads so well that they had it printed with
especially emphatic warnings against infractions of copyright.
Their work raises two or three questions. Did the original libretto
need improving? Is their version an improvement? How singable is it
and how faithful to the music? In other words, would Mozart, if he
knew enough English, have approved of it? We know that he took the
work very seriously-despite the tricks he played on one occasion, with
unexpected glockenspiel, on his fellow-mason, librettist and first Papageno, Emanuel Schikaneder. But then Schikaneder should have been the
first to understand, as an experienced Shakespearian actor who knew
the importance of light relief in certain circumstances. He just didn't
like to be upstaged from the wings.
�RUHM VON OPPEN
27
Despite the playfulness Mozart was very serious about the work,
as he told his wife, as he told those around him in his last illness, when
he was struggling-unsuccessfully-to finish his Requiem. When he
knew there was a performance of the Magic Flute at the Theater an
der Wieden, he took part in it in imagination, followed its progress,
saying: now they've got to this bit or to that, singing, and probably
wondering whether he would ever see it again. There is another reason
to think that Mozart took the work seriously: a contrapuntal study on
the cantus finnus of the Men in Armor in the second finale may have
been the first thing he wrote down of the entire opera, or at any rate
of the second act. It is an ancient hymn with text by Martin Luther based
on the twelfth Psalm, "Ach Gott vom Himmel sieh' darein." At the
most solemn moment of the Magic Flute it is the tune of this hymn which
is sung by the guardians of the dreadful gates of the final tests, but with
a text about purification by fire, water, air, and earth.
The Auden/Kallman translation has great felicities-one of them
the setting of this chorale, and no wonder, for Auden was a fervent
hymn-singer and came into his own with the language of hymnology
even in its Masonic-Egyptian variant: "Now shall the pilgrim tread a
valley dark and dire ... " ('Dir.e' is treated disyllabically, as a spondee.) But there are infelicities too and, what is worse, infidelities not
just to the original libretto but to that libretto as composed, interpreted
in the music. The composer, after all, was the first interpreter. Mozart
once wrote to his father, in connection with an earlier opera, The Abduction from the Seraglio, that the text has to be an altogether obedient
handmaiden to the music. That means for us that, since the music is
there, it must govern translations. The translator is bound by the interpretation of the composer. Wben the composer makes something clear,
he has to reproduce that clarity as best he can; where the composer
is deliberately ambiguous, he has to try to preserve the ambiguity. Just
one example: In Tamino's long and crucial dialogue with the Speaker,
where the Speaker patiently and forcefully and step by telling step disabuses Tamino of the illusions he arrived with, having believed the tale
of woe, vengeance, and promise of the Queen of the Night, this impetuous if noble young man reaches the point where he exclaims: ''So
ist denn alles Heuchelei!"-meaning "So then everything is hypocrisy!" The text in the score at that point has an exclamation mark, but
the music introduces doubt, indeed a question into this sentence. The
Speaker was in E-flat major. Tamino exclaims:
�28
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
(wW!Jehen)
~
)
~'j
.
The D flat on which he lands is a hovering 3, of B-flat minor, as shown
by the accompaniment: the exclamation is not just some accusation of
hypocrisy he casts in the Speaker's teeth, but an expression of agonized
doubt. And a translator must keep the ambivalence of that phrase and
not write, like Auden/Kallman: "Then it is all a painted lie" or, like
Dent: "Your wisdom's naught but vile deceit!" He should keep the
phrase open-ended, express some doubt about who is doing the deceiving, say something like "Then all is naught but vile deceit!" ~which
can apply either to what he has just been told here or what the Queen
told him before. When the Speaker is about to leave and when he has
left, the hypocrisy phrase has a counterpart in Tarnino's questions "When
will this veil of dark be lifted?" and "When, endless night, wilt thou
be riven?" (I follow the translation by Ruth and Thomas Martin). And
he gets the mysterious but reassuring answers first from the Speaker,
then from the Speaker's phrase played by the orchestra, while the unseen chorus shrouds itself in frightful ambiguity by singing that Tamino will see the light "Soon, soon~or never." It is the orchestra that
tells Tamino and the audience that all will be well.
Perhaps the time has come to give you a synopsis of the plot of
this two-act opera. Tamino, a prince, dressed in a Japanese hunting
outfit, runs on the stage, in C minor, pursued by a monstrous serpent.
He calls on the gods to help him and falls in a swoon. He still has his
bow, but no arrows left. Three Ladies come in on his last syllable and
downbeat and rescue him with javelins and a sudden switch, a deceptive cadence, to the chord of A flat which instantly moves on to the
dominant-seventh chord of E flat when they refer to their might making the monster die.
�29
RUHM VON OPPEN
1. u.z. Dame.
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They indulge in some triumphalism, then fall in love with the recumbent young man, then fall out with each other as they realize they must
tell their mistress (the Queen of the Night) about this incident and none
of them can trust the others not to take unfair advantage while she is
away. The only solution is to depart together.
Enter a man looking like a bird and singing a cheerful ditty about
his trade as bird-catcher and his desire to catch lots of birds from among
whom he could choose one. Tamino comes out of his swoon and in
the ensuing spoken dialogue tries to find out where he is and who this
Papageno is. Papageno does not know much-he does not even know
who his parents were-he only knows that he earns his keep by catching birds for the Star-Flaming Queen and her Ladies. Tamino remembers that his father often told him about her. But how did he stray into
her realm and who saved him from the serpent? Once assured that the
beast is quite dead, Papageno claims that he killed it, with his bare hands.
This is the signal for the Three Ladies to return, put the record straight,
put a lock on Papageno's mouth to teach him a lesson about lying, and
give a small portrait of the daughter of the Queen to Tamino, with
promises of happiness, honor, and renown if he does not remain indifferent to it. He does not. He sings a beautiful aria about it. It is love
at first sight.
�30
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
This brings on the Queen who, in a first plangent, then acrobatic, and always imperious recitative and aria instantly addresses and appropriates Tamino as "My dear son," telling him not to tremble; he
is, after all, guiltless, wise and pious, just the young man to console
her deeply injured maternal heart. Suffering has been her lot since her
daughter was abducted by a villain, despite all her cries for help. The
mother's help was too weak. But now, in Allegro moderato: Tamino
will go to liberate her, will be her rescuer and her husband. After the
Queen has left, with as much eclat as prepared her arrival, Tamino
wonders whether he is hallucinating and calls on the gods not to deceive him, but to protect and strengthen him. In the quintet that follows, the Three Ladies relieve Papageno of the lock on his mouth, give
Tamino a magic flute from their Queen, which has the power to protect its player, give Papageno a set of bells with similar properties, and
tell the men to proceed to the evil Sarastro' s realm. They say farewell
and turn to go but are asked how that destination is to be found. They
take a deep breath and tell the men, in an Andante that is free from
their previous assertiveness, that "Three Boys, young, fair, and wise"
will accompany them on their journey and will give counsel that should
be followed. The men repeat this most important piece of instruction
and another round of farewells concludes the scene.
Next we see a sumptuous Egyptian room and hear three slaves
complain of the black Monostatos, their overseer and tormentor, who,
they hope, will at last get his just deserts because he allowed Pamina
to escape. But they seem to be wrong: Monostatos drags her in, tells
them to chain and fetter her, and to leave him alone with her. In the
trio that follows, she pleads with him: though death cannot make her
tremble, it is her mother who will die of grief. She falls in a swoon;
but before Monostatos can do a thing, Papageno wanders in and he and
Monostatos scare each other into exits in opposite directions. Papageno rallies and returns with the sensible argument that since there are
black birds, why should there not be black men too-both he and
Monostatos had previously thought that the other was the devil. He finds
Pamina and they have quite a conversation. Pamina is very pleased that
the young Prince her mother is sending to her rescue is in love with
her already, and she assures Papageno that heaven will provide him
too with a friend of the opposite sex sooner than he thinks. Then follows their duet about love, by which alone we live and have our being
and, indeed, touch on divinity. The whole opera does not have a love
duet for the hero and heroine. So this duet for Pamina and the Child
of Nature is not only beautiful but important in the context of the whole.
The first Finale begins, as does the second, with the Three Boys.
It is their first appearance, Ingmar Bergman notwithstanding; we have
�RUHM VON OPPEN
31
only heard about them before; but here they are, telling Tamino that
this path will lead to his goal, but that to prevail he must conduct himself like a man. He must be steadfast, tolerant, and taciturn. When he
asks them about Pamina, they reply that it is not for them to tell him
about her and they just repeat their admonition to steadfastness, tolerance, and taciturnity; in brief, the Boys sing, be a Man and you will
win a Man's victory. They go off, leaving Tamino to mull over their
wise teachings and to explore the place they have led him to. Is it the
seat of the gods? The architecture is evidence of wisdom, work, and
arts, and where these dwell, vice is unlikely to maintain its dominion.
He sees a door, goes up to it, with threats against the cowardly villain
Sarastro, and is rebuffed by a voice from within. He sees and tries
another door, with the same result. But when he knocks on the third
door, an awe-inspiring Old Man appears and in a marvelous recitativic
dialogue of 52 bars gets him, in modulation after modulation, from Aflat major to A minor, and from naive and erroneous certainty to serious, painfully serious questioning. In other words-and in music quite
unlike any other in Mozart-he starts him on his quest in earnest. What
went before was just youthful impetuosity and heroics. The Old Man
calls the Queen's claims in doubt, says that Sarastro had good reasons
for his actions, but that he, the Speaker, is not free to divulge them.
After he has gone, Tamino is told by unseen voices that Pamina is still
alive and he starts to give thanks to the gods on his flute. But he breaks
off when he remembers that, though alive, Pamina is not there and goes
off in search of her.
She whom he seeks enters from another side, with Papageno and
a hurried little duet about the need for fast feet and quick courage against
the rage and ruses of the enemy. If only they could find Tamino before
they are caught! Pamina calls his name, Papageno tells her he has a
better signal and plays the five notes on his Pan pipe, to which Tamino
responds offstage on his flute. But before they have finished exclaiming about this happy turn of events, this establishment of communication, here is Monostatos, who has caught up with them and calls his
slaves to bind them. Papageno makes them dance instead, enchanted,
to a spell-binding tune from his bells. But then, with a sudden change
of key, we hear Sarastro's retinue from the distance: the Lord of the
Realm himself is approaching. Papageno would like to flee or hide,
or at least escape by verbal subterfuge; but Pamina tells him that the
truth must be told, whatever the consequences.
She kneels before Sarastro, confesses her guilt of trying to escape, but pleads the wicked moor's lecherous demands in mitigation.
Sarastro knows all and understands all. He knows whom she loves, he
will not force her to love-him?-but, but (lowest note) he will not give
�32
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
her her freedom. And all her pleas about her mother who will die of
grief are unavailing: Sarastro knows her to be a proud woman who would
make Pam ina unhappy. A man is needed to guide the hearts of women,
for without him all women exceed their proper sphere.
Enter the officious and triumphant Monostatos with the captive
Tamino. The lovers see each other for the first time but are restrained
from instant embrace by popular murmuring and the interference of
Monostatos. Then he prostrates himself before Sarastro, asks for due
punishment for the bold malefactor, Tamino, this daring would-be abductor, foiled only by the vigilant Monostatos, who anticipates a rich
reward and instead gets taken away for a beating. The people's acclaim
for the wise Sarastro ends the act. By now, of course, we have a prima
facie case for a complaint not only from the Civil Liberties Union but
also from the Women's Liberation Movement.
But the show must go on. I am still telling you the true story,
not what Auden and Bergman did with it.
The second Act opens with a solemn march of the Sarastrian
priests and a conference with Sarastro in which he informs them of
Tamino's arrival and his Quest. He seems to have all the qualities
needed-virtue, discretion, benevolence-and, Sarastro thinks, deserves
their help. When one of the priests asks whether, as a prince, he will
be up to what awaits him, Sarastro replies: he is more, he is a man.
The tests he is to undergo are not without risk and may, in fact, cost
him his life: but should he die, he will be given to Isis and Osiris and
taste the joys of the gods before those assembled. They signify their
assent at various stages of this proceeding with three lots of masonic
chords on wind instruments (without clarinets, though, since they would,
presumably, make the sound too soft). Sarastro and the priests then sing
a prayer to Isis and Osiris, not just for Tamino, but for the new pair.
There follow the tests for Tamino, with Papageno tagging along
and not trying very hard. The first test is silence, especially toward
women. The Three Ladies come to tempt the men and tell them of dire
things in store for them. Tamino speaks (or sings, it is a quintet) only
to shut up Papageno. The Ladies depart in dismay. The scene changes
and Monostatos sings his very light little aria of sexual frustration based
on racial injustice. The Queen of the Night enters, gives Pamina a dagger, and tells her to kill Sarastro, since Tamino had not done the job
she sent him to do. Pamina tries to plead with her, but her mother
launches herself into a furious aria about hell's vengeance boiling in
her bosom. If Pamina does not kill Sarastro, her mother will disown
her and sever all the bonds of nature. In the spoken dialogue after her
disappearance Monostatos tries to blackmail Pamina into entrusting herself to him, to love him or die. But Sarastro intervenes, simply dis-
�RUHM VON OPPEN
33
misses Monostatos and tells Pamina he will take no revenge on her
mother. He then sings his famous aria about the better ways of these
sacred precincts: if someone has fallen, love will bring about reform.
Guided by the hand of a friend he will walk into a better land. In these
sacred walls (Mauern: the German for Freemason is Freimaurer) no
traitor can lurk, because the enemy is forgiven. The last couplet is beautiful and hard to translate:
Wen solche Lehren nicht erfreu'n,
Verdienet nicht ein Mensch zu sein.
Literally it means: whoever does not rejoice in such teachings does not
deserve to be a human being. With its music it is a very powerful conclusion, because, as in the first stanza, where Sarastro sang about the
journey into a better land at the hand of a friend, the singer's vocal
ascent is continued by the strings when his voice turns down again. Wbat
can a translator do with a memorable phrase like that? The Martins have:
"Who by this law is led aright/will ever share the gods' delight"; Dent
has: ''Those whom this bond can not unite/are all unworthy of the light.''
Auden and Kallman go wild: "The tyrant on a golden throne/Lives in
the desert all alone.'' It is a message that seems to me excessively far
removed from Sarastro's, though, I admit, it scans right-but so do the
two others.
The Three Boys appear for a second time and in a trio tell Tamino and Papageno that they have come to restore their instruments to
them and that at the third meeting joy will be the reward of virtue. But
first there are more tests and troubles, the worst of them just about to
happen. Pamina enters, does not know of Tamino 's vow of silence,
thinks he no longer loves her and sings what is probably Mozart's saddest and most beautiful aria, in G minor: all the happiness of love is
gone, and if Tamino will not look at her tears and feels no more longing, she must find rest in death. She walks out to a brief four-bar postlude. But she does not-yet-attempt suicide. She is brought into the
presence of the Priests and Sarastro. Sarastro tells her to take her last
farewell of Tamino, who may now speak again and is about to undergo
his final testing. The farewell trio for her, Tamino, and Sarastro combines pathos with solace. Sarastro is clearly sympathetic to their plight
and, in fact, promises that they will all meet again. This trio, in this
place, does cause some confusion in the plot. But we are musically too
much captivated by it to worry about that. Still, Auden and Kallman
have a case for a reshuffle here.
Meanwhile Papageno, fond though he is of food and drink, does
want a wife too and has a nice strophic song about it all. Who turns
up? An old crone who says she is eighteen years old and that he must
�34
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
swear that he will marry her or forever live on bread and water. Papageno
as usual takes the line of least resistance and swears. She is transformed
into a young woman, feathery just like Papageno, and her name is
Papagena. But once more those priestly busybodies intervene and send
her packing because Papageno is not yet worthy of her.
Which brings us to the second Finale. The Three Boys start it,
with a song about the imminence of sunrise, the disappearance of
superstition, and the victory of the wise man. Then there is an invocation for the return of peace-when they see the distraught Pamina entering with her dagger and suicidal intentions. They stop her just in
time and restore her to life by telling her that Tamino loves her, whereupon they all go off in search of him. (I am giving a very bare account,
throughout this Finale, of the plot that is full of the most beautiful dramatic changes and music.) A change of scene brings us to two big mountains, of fire and of water. Two Men in Armor and with flaming helmets
guard the gates, and after the contrapuntal introduction mentioned before, they sing the solemn hymn about purification by the four elements:
whoever can overcome the fear of death will rise to heaven and, illumined, will then be in a state to devote himself entirely to the mysteries ofisis. Tamino presents himself and asks them to unlock the gates.
Pamina's voice is heard, calling to him that she must see him before
he goes. He is now allowed to speak to her and to enter the temple
with her. Once more a last couplet, sung by Tamino and the Two Men
in Armor, sums up a new message: A woman who fears neither night
nor death is worthy to be initiated.
Pamina enters on a simple but radiant musical transformation.
The bit about the woman worthy of initiation was in A-flat major, the
strings work up, touching on the relative F minor, to an emphatic halfcadence on the dominant of F, followed by a long rest, and Pamina
comes in on a rising major sixth, C -A, that is, in the unexpected parallel
major of the relative minor. It is one of Mozart's miraculous economies .
...
~
....
....--
Quar+.
I
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(.)
�35
RUHM VON OPPEN
Andantt
q~di
Pam ina (Tamino umarmend)
r If fijf I r ~
Ta - mi - no __ mein!
~ If
0
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'
}
welch em Gluck!
Tamino shows Pamina the dreadful gates which threaten death
and destruction. Pamina simply replies that she will be at his side, she
will lead him, herself guided by love. Tamino is to play the flute which
will protect them. Then she tells him the brief history of the flute. In
a magic hour her father carved it from the depths of a millennia! oak,
mid thunder and lightning and a roaring storm. But now it is to be played
and lead them on their dreadful journey. They pass safely and serenely
through the fire, accompanied only by flute, timpani, and some subdued brass chords; after the fire they go through the water. On emerging from that they see a door opening on a brightly illuminated temple
and are hailed and invited by the choir within.
The next transformation brings us back to Papageno and his
troubles. He is still wifeless and threatens to hang himself if no-one
will take pity on him. He seems about to do it when the Three Boys
once more intervene to save him, too, and tell him to play his magic
bells. When he does it, Papagena enters and "they sing of married bliss
and numerous progeny.
All that remains to be tied up is the matter of Monostatos, the
Queen of the Night, and her Three Ladies. They have a conspiratorial
quintet in which they propose to enter the temple and destroy it. Monostatos reminds the Queen that she has promised him the hand of her daughter
for his services. She reaffirms the promise. But before they can mount
their attack on the temple, they are discovered and plunged into eternal
night. The loudest chord reveals the whole stage transformed into a sun,
Tamino and Pamina are dressed in priestly robes, flanked by Egyptian
priests on both sides. The Three Boys hold flowers. Sarastro celebrates
the rays of the sun, which dispel the night and destroy the ill-gotten
power of the hypocrites. There is acclaim for the new initiates, and
the gods Isis and Osiris are given thanks before the final chorus, a chorus
about the victory of strength and the endowment of beauty and wisdom
with an eternal crown.
�36
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
So much, then, for the plot. It is not quite what you get in Bergman. Auden and Kallman, too, eliminated the masonic element, tampered with Pamina's parentage and switched the sequence of some scenes
around, perhaps to their advantage. But what strikes me as somewhat
wilful is a change in the general style of the text, at least at times; there
were no nymphs and shepherds in the original-there are in A & K.
There was good reason for their absence in the original; the serious
aspiration of the masonic enterprise and its serious antagonists, balanced
by the feathery children of nature, Papageno and Papagena. Nymphs
and shepherds conjure up the wrong imagery, something like Dresden
china. Auden and Kallman bring them into Sarastro's aria about forgiveness, at the point where they also depart from the mini-homily about
the importance of these teachings of the Brotherhood. Where Sarastro
just sings that "whoever does not rejoice in these teachings does not
deserve to be a human being," Auden and Kallman have, not just "The
tyrant on his golden throne/lives in the desert all alone" but two extra
lines before these two (they often introduce extra lines where Mozart
just repeats):
The homely shepherds when they love
A green and homely pasture rove,
The tyrant on his golden throne ... etc.
In fact that whole number is made, by A & K, into a new song, good
in itself, but rather remote from the-well-known-original. They say
in their preface that that is what an operatic translator may have to do
sometimes: get the gist of a number, then step back and write something really coherent and shapely of his own. That may be a tenable
point of view, though I still think it makes for better reading than singing.
Auden and Kallman must have relied on having an audience which
did not know too much about the original, not even famous highlights
like Sarastro's aria. They may also have thought there was no harm
in approximating Mozart to Sullivan by rendering his text, in places,
more in the manner of Gilbert. They had few qualms or none about
introducing extra syllables where there were available notes in the score,
even if in the original setting those notes were tied together. In the case
of Papageno it does not matter much. When he first introduces himself
as "Der Vogelfiinger bin ich ja," they have
The lark, the ruddock and the willow-wren
And the jolly nightingale I ken;
In vain do all the pretty little creatures fly
When they the tall birdcatcher spy.
�37
RUHM VON OPPEN
The German replaced by the pattering "In vain do all the pretty little
creatures fly" was "ich Vogelfiinger bin bekannt. ... "All right, give
patter song to Papageno:
J
r p
bin
be - kannt
rJ. Ei rJ. Gl I r . p
the
fan - 9er
[Ich] Vo - gel -
?:f
E
tJ CJ Q
[~
!H
J
[In] Vain do all
pret-ty lit -tie
crea-tures fly
In their Notes, Auden and Kallman grant that the effect is different but
take their stand on the belief "that The Magic Flute should sound more
staccato than Die Zauberjlote."
In another case, that of the duet about love sung by Pamina and
Papageno, the translators get slightly cold feet about this and their stand
begins to wobble, and quite rightly too. Still, pride forbids them to put
the "pedantic" alternative version, with its proper scansion, in the text
itself. They relegate it to the Notes at the back, where they inform us
that ''The German lyric is written in iambic rhythm, i.e., in 4/4 time''
(I merely quote, though I must interpolate that every sophomore knows
that iambs can be written in any time signature). They continue: "This
Mozart has set to a tune in 6/8, so that certain syllables have to be (my
italics) spread over two notes, linked by a slur." Naughty Mozart! If
only he'd had the sense to stick to the iambic 4/4, there would have
been no need to spread syllables over two notes. But now that the notes
are there, the translators are jolly well going to use them, and in their
main text give us this:
when IO"ve In his bOsOm desire hils impla'ntid
The heart Of th€ he'rO grOws g€ntli 3nd ta'me;
~
./
~
';'
.~
/
-
/
- -
./
-
And soon from his passiOn enkindled, enchanted,
- :""
- ~ /~The nymph receives the Impetuous flame ...
-
/
for the German
-/-
,--:
_
_,._/~
Bei Miinnern, welche Liebe fiihlen,
- _..-Fehlt auch ein gutes Herze nicht.
/
/
/
Die siissen
- dann derTrfebe mftzllfifhten, ..
-- - Weiber erste Pflicht.
,...,._-- lst
/
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
In the comments at the back of the book they say they ''found that the
English language cried out for an anapestic rhythm [?] similar to that
of the notes." And they continue: "If the original relation of syllables
to notes is not an accident of the German prosody, but a profound musical
idea, then, of course, we are wrong, so he who is pedantic, let him
be pedantic still and sing instead:
When Love his dart has deep implanted,
The hero's heart grows kind and tame,
And by his passion soon enchanted,
The nymph receives his impetuous flame . ... ·'
There's that nymph again, who, as I said, is absent not only from that
number in the original, but from the entire opera, which is simply not
written in the nymphs and shepherds and cupid style and in which love,
or Liebe, has the proper German feminine gender.
The posing of the phoney alternative between "accidental prosody" or "profound musical idea" is hardly worthy of the librettist of
The Rake's Progress. Simple respect for the gentle, not to say tender,
character of the combination of the two successive notes in one syllable, .or the music of the music-and-words together, should have made
the translators put the version they call "pedantic" in the main text.
In a later essay on "Translating Opera Libretti" they argue a bit more
cautiously, go into the interesting difference of quantitative and accentual prosody, and call on singers to sing both the iambic and the anapestic
versions (as they call them) several times without prejudice and ask themselves which, in English, sounds the more Mozartian. I am no singer,
but I have tried both, quite often, and have no doubt that a version with
Mozart's syllabification sounds more Mozartian. Perhaps they chose
the wrong idiom in their "When Love his dart has deep emplanted"?
They also state that "in English, on account of its vowels and
its many monosyllabic words, there are fewer syllables which sing well,
and are intelligible when spread over several notes, than there are in
either Italian or German-English being, intrinsically, a more staccato
tongue." They also say that feminine rhymes are more uncommon and
more often comic in English than in German. I wonder about both those
statements. Looking, for instance, at Dido and Aeneas, I found many
unfunny feminine rhymes and Purcell doing beautifully with more than
one note per syllable from the very outset and throughout the work.
I underline the syllables that are given more than one note:
�RUHM VON OPPEN
39
Shake the cloud from off your brow. Fate your wi-shes does allow.
Empire growing, pleasures flow-fig, Fortune smiles and so should
you.
Banish sorrow, banish care, I Grief should ne'er approach the fair;
Banish sorrow, ba-nish care, Grief etc.;
Then Dido herself: "Peace and I are strangers grown .... [and later]
Yet would not, yet would not, would not have ]1 guessed." It was, incidentally, on that monosyllabic two-note "it" that the German translators found themselves forced (or free?) to introduce an extra syllable.
And so on, throughout Dido, one comes up with quite a lot, from the
beginning right through to the end: ''With drooping wings ye Cu-pids come ... and scat-ter roses on her tomb.
Soft, soft and gentle ... as her heart, ... keep here your watch."
Remember, the Auden/Kallman translation was made for television. Its authors actually say that on the stage operas should be, they
think, performed in the original languages and audiences should get
a translation to read, so that they know what it is all about.
Along comes Ingmar Bergman and does a film on the Magic Flute
which is sung in Swedish and has captions, or translations, in the
languages of the country it is shown in. I was amazed at the syllabic
fidelity both of the sung Swedish and of the English translation. It was
faithful in other respects too: to the meaning of the text and, I think,
usually to the rhyme scheme. The only serious departure from the original that I detected in the Swedish and English was the excessive punishment given to Monostatos. In German he gets a bastinado of77 strokes,
in Swedish 555 (and Bergman's English translator follows that). I thought
it might be for the sake of syllables. Not so, I am told by a friend who
knows Swedish: it is simply that the number 7 is quite unsingable in
that language. But 555 seems rather a lot.
I have left myself with very little time to discuss that film. Opinions were violently divided, ranging from blissful enjoyment to outrage.
Let me simply mention some major distractions and distortions-leaving
aside the fillings in Tamino's teeth. The business, especially the sensuous business of pawing, is obtrusive and out of place. The fire and water
ordeals do not take place in Dante's Hell or Wagner's Venusberg and
we should be spared the writhing nude figures. If Bergman decided to
cut out the Freemasons, why did he have to make Sarastro and his Priests into Keepers of some Nordic Grail? How did he have the nerve
to bring on those cute three boys prematurely to sing music Mozart
gave to the Three Ladies? Why must the quintet of conspirators near
the end be represented as a heaving army on the move? Above all: he
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
makes Sarastro Pamina's father and not just in the spiritual sense, but
as her begetter, with clearly incestuous leanings. This is too much!
Mozart's opera is quite explicit about Pamina's deceased father and his
legacy of the flute and the Sevenfold Shield of the Sun, which he bequeathed to Sarastro, whom he considered a worthy successor. He very
particularly did not want his wife to inherit it. Why the change? To
foist some Freud on us?
Heaven forfend any importation of twentieth-century psychology into this work. But Jung would be more suitable than Freud if something of the kind were done. But if it were done, it were better done
honestly, in a new, twentieth-century opera. Michael Tippett has done
it and called it The Midsummer Marriage. It is clearly akin to the Magic
Flute, and equally clearly Tippett's own. Using Mozart for selfexpression, as Bergman does, strikes me as impermissible, despite all
the various beauties of the film and the many people it introduces to
the music. Seductive, verging on the corrupting.
�The Program Old and New
Douglas Allanbrook
Fifty years ago Stringfellow Barr and Scott Buchanan founded
a program of studies at St. John's College in Annapolis. We are here
tonight to celebrate that program, a program dedicated to the proposition that men are educable, a program grand in its aspirations and full
of good sense in the ways in which it lays out its specific course of
studies. Though it is difficult to imagine its having been instituted anywhere except the United States, the allegiance to the program may be
found in the minds and hearts of thoughtful men anywhere. Two men
are particularly linked with both the aspirations and the matter of the
program, Mr. Buchanan and Jacob Klein. Mr. Buchanan was a quintessential Yankee, Mr. Klein a Russian Jew. Without the imprint of
these two extraordinary men we would have no program. For all of
us-alumni, faculty, and students-who have studied the program with
some care there is no tension in this heritage other than that implicit
in the nature of discourse and study.
Fifty years is a long span of time in the ordinary train of human
events. Many students and many teachers have come and gone since
those waning years of the great Depression, years already shadowed
by the imminence of the second great war of the century. Technical
changes both beneficent and terrifying have multiplied at a geometric
rate these fifty years. Money and bombs can be mutually exchanged
Douglas Allanbrook, the composer, is a Tutor Emeritus at St. John's College, Annapolis.
This speech was delivered to the alumni of the college in September, 1987, on the
occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the New Program.
41
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
anywhere in no time at all. There has been a certain progress in the
medical lengthening of our lives. Politics remains the same, though more
expensive-a change in quantity that affects the quality. We are all tempted on many occasions to say as we grow older: tutto declina-everything
is going to pot. The phrase belongs most properly in the mouth ofFalstaff, in Verdi's opera. Verdi himself was of course at a remarkably
advanced age to have been writing such an ebullient marvel. Falstaff
is something of a fool, though a self-conscious one. He is also shrewd,
no dumbbell. He contemplates his youth, his salad days when he was
young and thin, a fetching page for the Duke of Norfolk. The comedy
for him and for us who are getting older consists in confusing our own
waning powers with whatever there is out there that is perennial and
young: love, romance, energy, glory, intellect, and sharp vision.
It takes a certain distance to realize how perennially fresh this
program remains as generations of students pursue its disciplines and
goals. The senior classes it has been my pleasure to teach in recent years
thrust in front of me the fact that this is not an experimental program
but a program that works, and works for an amazing range of people.
A class which discusses Valery and Wallace Stevens with acumen and
passion consisted a mere four years ago of high-school students, some
of whom knew no grammar, and whose cherished books, depending
on the generation, were Catcher in the Rye, and Lord of the Rings. Only
too often these would be accompanied by that ever-present virago, Ayn
Rand. One of our duties as tutors is to realize what can happen, to be
aware of all that does happen in these four years. I would hope that
the program would retain its luster for those of us who have spent our
adult lives in it. The reasons for the efficacy of the program should
now be stated. But before we talk of its grand aspirations, which keep
it pointed where it should be pointed, let us examine its good sense.
Its entrancing folly we will look at last.
The daily round of its tutorials and laboratories is a slogging
through elementary things slowly and methodically. There has never
been any reasonable doubt as to what these elements are and where they
lie. They are found underneath the common skills of daily life: the grammar, rhetoric, and logic of language, the reasoning and structures of
mathematics, the daily experience of nature, the rhythm and tones of
music. From the very beginning fifty years ago it was deemed essential that modern science be dealt with, both as theory and as a world
of objects to be sensed and measured. Many who are not acquainted
with our regular classes find what I have just said vague and just a bit
pious. The very term "liberal arts" is such a casual catch-all for almost
any curriculum. There has also always been the vulgar and catchy phrase
which would describe the program as the ''great books course.'' Peo-
�ALLAN BROOK
43
pie then quite naturally are apt to be either aghast or delighted to find
that elementary does mean elementary. Sentences are to be parsed, congruence of triangles to be proven, nitrates to be distinguished from nitrites, the lack of a urinary bladder in a bird to be noted, Yankee Doodle
to be played on a musical scale constructed on a monochord.
Tutorials are classes with stubborn simple things to learn. What
is studied in them is not arbitrary. The program has never subscribed
to the kind of looseness which finds that it makes little difference what
is studied as long as it is done with conviction and provides a "learning opportunity.'' What is studied in these classes at the college is not
cultural, not intended to be a substitute for experience of the world.
For fifty years neither history nor the fine arts have had a place on the
program. Elementary education has neither the intention nor the time
to expose students to the vast panoply of splendors which the world
exhibits, though a certain necessary nostalgia is present because we don't
look at Chinese painting or the French and Russian Revolutions, or,
in general, learn to appreciate what a sophisticated man appreciates.
There has been no faltering these fifty years that there be tutorials in
language and mathematics, that there be laboratories, and (for thirtyfour years) that there be music tutorials. As for modernity, we study
its roots in Baudelaire, Hegel, Marx, Freud, and Einstein more thoroughly than any other undergraduate college in the country. The program
does not change in any essential ways. This is not because of stultification; the program stays as it is because it has its roots in reasonable
judgments as to what is elementary. The tutorials and the laboratories
often employ manuals and similarly uninspired materials. This again
makes good sense if the learning of elements requires help, which it
so often does. The program has always had the obligation to exercise
a student in matters that in certain countries were traditionally dealt
with in high-schools, gymnasia, or lycees.
Tutorials are, however, fixed on splendors. The grandest books
are read: Baudelaire, the inventor of modern sensibility, Einstein and
Dedekind, Sophocles and Lavoisier, and, in the freshman language
tutorial, Plato's M eno, which deals with the crux of how men learn things
and how they deal with what they learn. These texts are read slowly
and at length. They are chosen as exemplifying the highest expressions
of the liberal arts, whether they be by Shakespeare, Euclid, Pascal, Newton, or Homer.
We are nearing the entrancing folly of the program. Sancho Panza
plods through the fields of elementary grammar, logic, rhetoric,
mathematics,and laboratory while simultaneously Don Quixote canters
on, reading Plato in Greek after three months of grammar, and Einstein after only the slightest acquaintance with Maxwell's equations.
�44
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
If we leave the tutorials the quest becomes more quixotic. The freshmen read Homer straight off on their entrance to the school, and the
nearly unreadable text of Hegel's Phenomenology is the roadblock which
the seniors encounter as they begin their last year. The good sense of
the plodding part of the program and the enormous difficulties in dealing with the true elements cannot be coped with without the ever-receding
goal of encompassing the very best that has been set down in writing.
Sancho Panza and Don Quixote belong together. The death of the knight
leaves Sancho bereft. Without Sancho the world is only half there, even
though his shrewd horse-sense is well up to ruling his "island."
For fifty years a proposition has been voiced that the books are
the teachers. A certain inference follows from this: Everyone in a class
is a learner, including the teacher. This inference is not quixotic. It is
founded not only on the importance of the books that are read but also
on an understanding of how things are learned-on an understanding
of the soul. Learning is not necessarily play, as some would have it, but
it certainly involves activity on the part of the learner. Opportunities
for learning must be placed in front of the student, his opinions tested
and challenged. It is for this reason that Plato's Meno is not only the
core of the freshman language tutorial but also provides the clue to how
learning is thought to come about in this old program of ours. Let us
list certain things that this implies: No answers given but every opportunity for any possible answer is provided, if there be an answer. Willingness to live with the skepticism that may follow upon this. Wit, irony,
and shrewd observations as to what any particular person is capable
of answering, given that person's make-up. Seriousness deeper than
faith concerning this natural life-giving endeavor of the intellect and
the heart. Living with and putting up with the open-ended and neverending quest that lies behind conversation and argument. It is all these
habits that lie behind our program, not any set doctrine of Platonic
"ideas" or Platonic "politics."
A certain role is then envisaged for a teacher or a tutor in this
program. He may or may not be an expert in some field of knowledge.
In class, with the help of books, materials, and instruments, he provides opportunities for learning, and he himselflearns as the perennial
conversation flows. This is the life of the program and hence of the
college. It could all be done just as well if we hired a bunch of twofamily houses and furnished them with chairs, tables, and blackboards.
These past several years or so when I was on the search committee for our new presidents, traveling around the country and talking
to a great variety of people, it has been illuminating to me to note that
the program is known and widely known and respected for what it is,
and not for what it is not. I have had the same experience in talking
�ALLAN BROOK
45
to many artists, writers, and composers whom I know as a director of
an Artists' Colony. What we are commands respect. Every college from
here to Peoria exposes its students to a mixed menu of liberal arts, fine
arts, history, and, in general, appreciation of what is appreciable. It
would be foolish of this college to attempt any such thing. It would
also be impractical, since most colleges and junior colleges are better
qualified than we are to-offer cultural education. The more serious objection would be that the program would be diluted. It should be clear
that without this program we are nothing in particular, though Annapolis
and Santa Fe are charming towns and the local cultures of some interest.
I was delighted when I arrived here thirty-five years ago, one
hot afternoon after riding the bus down from Baltimore, fresh from four
years as a professional musician, to walk into a remarkably messy office
and to begin talking with someone who did not consider music to be
the most important thing in the world. This was one of the principal
reasons for my coming to St. John's. The program is and always must
be dedicated to the excellences of the reason. That there are other splendors is too obvious, one would think, to be argued. These various splendors do not negate each other, but the program rightly insists that there
is a hierarchy of them. We may not need Aristotle to rank them for
us, but he is a great help. There is also implicit in the program another
perennial question having to do with the highest excellences. It takes
the form of a kind of debate, or better still a conversation, as to the
ends of the intellectual excellences: are they aimed at the theoretical
or the practical? ·
This may be stated more formally as enquiring about the relations between the moral and the intellectual virtues. Are we preparing
for citizenship or for something higher, more open-ended, more beguiling, and entrancingly more dangerous? Such a tension arises from
the nature of the intellectual excellences. It is a philosophic question.
The college, if one can speak of it apart from the program, must
always be chary of making claims for its graduates. The program is
no panacea for success or necessary preparation for good citizenship.
It also cannot teach anyone to think.
These fifty years have shown the freshness, the good sense, and
the grandeur of the program. There is no history of the program, apart
from all of us, old and young, who have passed through it. If we are
ashamed of this program, or bored with it, or unhappy that it does not
encompass a greater range of cultural splendors, we have been poor
students indeed. Its aspirations and humble good sense are meant as
a guide to all who would pay attention to their better selves. It is often
an aid for those who have not noticed what they came equipped with,
who have need to recollect from what race they are sprung. We need
�46
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
not be abashed at being different, nor should we boast too fervently
of our successes. We are a small place and the program will never swamp
the world. What it does is too normal, too extraordinary, and too little
interested in success. Let's hope it will never lose its great-souledness.
�Truth Given and Truth Sought:
Two Colleges
J. Winfree Smith
Bishop Ziemann, President McArthur, members of the Board
of Governors of Thomas Aquinas College, members of the faculty, students of the College, parents and guests of the graduating seniors, and
especially graduating seniors, members of the Class of 1987:
First of all, let me say that I was deeply moved by the invitation
to give this address. I regard it as a sign of the affection that exists between me and this class and between me and the members of this community, and also as a sign of the growth in mutual understanding and
Christian charity between the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion of which the American Episcopal Church to which
I belong is a part. This could indeed be an occasion for you to assure
me of what Pope Paul VI assured the Protestant theologian Karl Barth
sometime during an hour-long conversation in 1966. He lovingly assured him of his prayers that certain deeper insights might still be given
him in his old age. That, at least, is Barth's account. We do not have
the Holy Father's account of that conversation.
When I began thinking about what should be the subject of this
address, many reminiscences of my earliest experiences of the Catholic Church came to me. I shall mention a few that take me back more
The Reverend Mr. Smith is a Tutor Emeritus at St. John's College, Annapolis. This
speech was the commencement address, delivered in June, 1987, at Thomas Aquinas
College, Santa Paula, California, where he had been a visiting tutor for two years.
47
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
than fifty years. Sometime in the spring of 1935 I was called to the
priesthood of the Episcopal Church and was headed for seminary that
fall. I was then a graduate student in history at the University of Virginia. Having been a Presbyterian, I had acquired a bit of theology in
my early youth by memorizing the Westminster Shorter Catechism. But
one of my teachers at Virginia, Scott Buchanan, who more than any
other single person was later on the founder of the St. John's program
and hence one to whom Thomas Aquinas College is also indebted, got
me interested in the theology of St. Thomas, especially his theology
of the Eucharist. I thought I ought to find out how the Eucharist as understood by St. Thomas was celebrated in the Church which held his
doctrine. Every week day during Lent of 1935, I attended Mass at the
Catholic Church in Charlottesville and so became familiar with the Latin
Mass as it was celebrated in the United States fifty and more years ago.
I still have the missal edited by the Benedictine Abbot Cabrol which
I acquired in 1934 and took with me to Mass. During all the time that
I was in the Episcopal seminary, when I was not doing my assigned
work and maybe sometimes when I should have been, I was studying
the theology of St. Thomas, having acquired the twenty-one volume
translation of the Summa 7heologiae made early in this century by
English Dominicans. One day, a classmate of mine came in my room,
looked over my books and said, "You don't have books that anybody
else has." "I suppose that's right," I said. "Well," he exclaimed as
he left, "it doesn't seem to bother you."
I have always been grateful for this study and at this moment
am especially grateful because it means that what I have in common
with you and what we both hold precious entered my life a long while
ago.
Let me now cease reminiscing and come to the real subject of
my talk. Often when I was a visiting member of the faculty here, people asked me, and now often in Annapolis people ask me about the difference between Thomas Aquinas College and St. John's College. One
can consider this question about the difference only if one is aware of
how alike these colleges are. Both have in common the view that one
can best learn by reading books of the greatest excellence and that within
limits and always with the possibility of making changes one can identify these books and make a list. The lists for the two colleges are very
much the same, though not identical. The two colleges are in agreement that no student can learn as much from a book through reading
it by himself or through listening to a supposed "expert" explain it
as he can by conversing about it with his fellow-students under the
guidance of one or two fellow-learners called teachers. One can learn
through reading and conversing only if one has a good understanding
�SMITH
49
of grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Both colleges, therefore, have stressed
those traditional liberal disciplines, the arts of the trivium as well as
the quadrivial arts of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music that
provide readily accessible examples not only of ways of learning but
of learnable things.
What, then, is the difference between these colleges? A simple
answer to that question is that Thomas Aquinas College is a Christian
college, whereas St. John's has no commitment to Christianity. That,
however, does not tell one very much. Many colleges are nominally
Christian. At this college, the center of the curriculum, and hence the
center of intellectual life, is the Christian religion itself. The study of
sacred theology is the intellectual enterprise that gives direction to all
others. A sign of the centrality here of the Christian religion and of
sacred theology is the presence of a theology tutorial. At St. John's
there is no theology tutorial, although the Bible and several theological
works are read and seriously discussed by all the students. Thomas
Aquinas College, as a Christian college, assumes that there are truths
revealed by God and known by faith. St. John's does not make that
assumption but considers it a possibility to be earnestly investigated.
I have deliberately called this college a Christian college, and
so far I have not used the word "Catholic" of it. For I can imagine
that there might be an Eastern Orthodox college or an Anglican college or a Protestant college that might take this college as a model, and
so might have as the center of its curriculum sacred theology based on
what has been revealed by God in Holy Scripture and articulated through
the tradition of the Church. I am thinking of revealed truths held in
common with the Catholic Church by many Christian communions: that
God is the omnipotent, and consequently the omniscient, creator and
sustainer of the heavens and the earth, that He is three persons or
hypostases in one essence, that man's nature is corrupted by sin and
in need of grace, that grace is mediated through Jesus Christ who as
the second person of the triune God is truly God and who also is one
with us in being completely human, that those who put their trust in
Christ rejoice in the hope of the blessedness of the coming kingdom
of God. I am aware, to be sure, that the statement I have just given
of revealed truths held as such by many Christian communions is from
a Catholic point of view incomplete. It may indeed be incomplete from
the point of view of other communions, for as Pope John Paul II, anticipating the beginning of the Marian year, says in his March 25th
encyclical on the Mother of the Redeemer, "It is a hopeful sign that
these churches and ecclesial communities [he is referring to churches
and ecclesial communities other than the Catholic Church] are finding
agreement with the Catholic Church on fundamental points of Chris-
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
tian belief, including matters relating to the Virgin Mary. For they recognize her as Mother of the Lord and hold that this forms part of our faith
in Christ, true God and true man."
Thomas Aquinas College is definitely a Catholic college in its
adherence to the whole of what in the Catholic Church is to be taken
as matter of faith. It is its great merit that it stands so firmly and clearly
for God's saving truth as the foundation of theology, and for theology
as the supreme intellectual enterprise.
Sacred theology is, then, a quest that starts with faith. St. Anselm's phrase "faith seeking understanding" is a good way of describing it. It is not simply a body of demonstrations deduced from a minimum
of principles as Euclid's geometry or Newton's mathematical science
of nature is. The Bible itself does not, in the main, prove things about
God. It is a story to be read as a story-a true story of God in relation
to man, beginning in Genesis with the creation of man as the highest
earthly creature and ending with the new heaven and the new earth in
the Apocalypse. Sacred theology, whether as Biblical theology or as
based on articles of faith found in the Bible or in ecclesiastical tradition, offers a vast realm for the intellect and the intellectual imagination to explore. Sometimes in this exploration there occur demonstrative
reasonings. Sometimes, as St. Thomas indicates when he refers to the
various meanings the same text of Scripture may have, theology employs allegory and anagogical reasoning. Anagogical reasoning, in his
view, has to do with eternal glory and matters relating to the ultimate
object of hope; because of the origin of the word "anagogical," such
reasoning can also be thought of as reasoning that leads up to. There
is in theology reasoning that leads up to as well as reasoning that leads
down from. Theology is, in either case, faith seeking understanding.
The outcome in this life is not the replacement of faith by understanding. It is only in another life, the life of the age to come, that faith is
to be replaced by the intellect's vision of God. As long as those in the
pilgrim Church are wayfarers, to use a favorite name of St. Thomas
for Christians, they walk by faith and not by sight.
St. John's College, I have said, has no commitment to Christianity. That does not mean that it is hostile to Christianity. It is a
philosophical college in a very large sense of the word "philosophical.'' Philosophy, like sacred theology, is a quest, a quest for wisdom
moved by the love of wisdom. But it is a quest that does not presuppose revealed truth. What does it presuppose? It presupposes what
Socrates calls "the things around us" and what Genesis calls "the
heavens and the earth," the sky above, the earth on which we dwell,
plants and animals and human life on the earth. It presupposes also the
meaningfulness of human speech. For it is only in speech that we can
�SMITH
51
put before us the questions that arise as we behold with wonder the
things around us. It is worthy of note that Aristotle's names for particular categories are in the form of questions: the "what?", the "how
great?", the "where?", the "when?", and so on. The questions
philosophy raises are the questions that are most important for human
beings, such as the question of what the best life for man is, or the question of the relation of the human to the non-human, or the question that
Aristotle says was asked long ago and is always being asked and occasions difficulties: the question of what being is. Philosophy seeks wisdom or knowledge about being as a whole and in its parts.
One might well wonder whether with such an ambitious aim and
without the help of divine revelation the quest and the questioning ever
attain what is being sought. That wonder becomes all the greater when
one has to consider that over the centuries there have been many answers, often conflicting answers, to these questions and that the love
of truth requires that one not prejudge the answers but honestly and
humbly examine the reasons behind them. Of answers that really conflict with one another, some must be only opinions. Some opinions get
knocked out in the course of philosophizing. The true answer may be
something that is still to be sought with the benefit of whatever opinion
has stood the testing. Scott Buchanan used to give as one criterion for
a great book that it raises unanswerable questions. I would agree with
those who, on the other hand, say that a question, if it is meaningful,
is asking for a true answer. The true answer may not be easily accessible to the philosopher. There may be some answers never actually
reached. The undertaking is indeed a tremendously ambitious one. Some
Christian thinkers have regarded it as too ambitious and have spoken
of the pride of philosophers even to engage in such an undertaking.
However ambitious the undertaking is in itself, St. John's is defined by it. The faculty and students there may not be philosophers.
But they perceive philosophizing in the background of what they do
and they perceive the fundamental questions it raises. Among these is
the question of revelation. The very attempt to philosophize brings one
face to face with the question whether the most important truths are
not truths which cannot be seen as truths by the unaided human intellect
and so have to be accepted on authority. For us who are Christians,
that question is answered even if there are differences among Christians as to the relation between the authority of Scripture and the authority
of the Church.
Revelation contains all the truth we need to know for our salvation. It does not provide answers to all the questions inquiring minds
might legitimately ask. Sometimes we can test by revelation answers
not contained in revelation. Sometimes we are left wondering and, if
�52
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
no Socrates is present, or no one like Socrates, we have to remind ourselves of our ignorance of many things.
I believe that Christians must reject much of modern thought
which does not stand the test when examined in the light of revealed
truth. Of course, that it does not stand the test is something that has
to be shown. Is modernity, then, to be rejected wholesale? It is impossible to deny that modern science has led to the discovery of many truths
and that it has made possible an enormous increase in man's power over
the world at the same time that it has come to place all of human life
in jeopardy. One cannot say that it has led to wisdom. Respect for the
truth requires that we make distinctions. Never forgetting the ancient
and Biblical emphasis on duty and obedience to law as primary, we
must acknowledge the rightness of one modern idea that has been voiced
by several popes and that underlies the Constitution of the United States
with its amendments, and that is the idea that human beings just by being human have certain rights, for instance the right to liberty. In my
opinion, it is a good thing that the Constitution forbids any religious
test for public office under the United States and that the first amendment forbids Congress to make any law prohibiting the free exercise
of religion. It was a shameful thing that in England between 1673 and
1828 no one could hold civil or military offices without taking an oath
in denial of transubstantiation. One might be compelled with one's lips
to profess or deny this or that religious doctrine. But the heart cannot
be compelled. As the Second Vatical Council declared, "No one is to
be forced to embrace the Christian faith."
Aristotle in the Ethics presents two kinds of life as good kinds:
the philosophic life and the political life, and of thes~ two the philosophic
life is immensely superior. According to Christianity, the life of faith
is the best kind of life and it need not require very much in the way
of philosophy or even of theology. I do not have to exhort you to live
the life of faith. It is given you to do so. Nor do I expect most of you
to devote your lives to theology or the philosophizing that accompanies theology. But I would hope that your life in Christ would be a life
in which you continue, in a way made available to you by this college,
to be concerned with the profound theological questions and the profound answers, and the questions raised by those answers. Political life
you can hardly avoid. At the present moment, one wonders whether
the noble attempt of the founders of our republic to solve the problems
of government by the institutions of government will come to grief.
The founders well knew that the problems of government cannot be
solved merely by the institutions of government. Government of the
people and by the people will be government for the people only if the
people are educated in the way in which this college has sought to edu-
�SMITH
53
cate you, the way of righteousness and truth. We do not expect America or the nations together to become by human means the kingdom
of God. But that does not relieve us of our duty to order our own lives
and to do what we can, however small, to make human life for all men
on this planet not only possible but worthwhile. Our political hope,
whether for America or for the nations of the earth, may be~ as maybe
political hope always is~a hope against hope. We have a sure and certain hope expressed in the prayer given us by Christ our Lord when
He bids us to pray to God our Father that His kingdom come.
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�How Liberty Won
the Sweet Sixteen
From The '!hies of the liberty Renaissance
Ken Colston
To The Not Overcareful Reader of These Tales
There are those who maintain that the entire story was a countrybred New Journalist's confabulation, that Clyde Trample, by profession editor-and-typesetter-in-chief of the tiny Northern Kentucky Chronicle, quirky amateur historian and acerb wit by disposition, made it up
out of whole cloth, sending the boxed results to a half-dozen renegade
presses simultaneously, his area weekly having recently come into a
workhouse Macintosh word-processor and two letter-quality printers.
Skeptics point out that there's no such town in northern Kentucky as
Liberty, that the Interstate 64 doesn't even have an extension, that no
governor in Kentucky ever wore hair even with the tops of his ears,
never did, never will, and that Louisville high-school basketball teams
don't compete in the Twelfth or Thirteenth Regions, neither one.
Clyde will reply with eye-rolling smugness that of course in order
to protect his newspaper from unseemly and costly litigation he had
Ken Colston is the Director of Residence at St. John's College, Annapolis. The Tales
ofthe Liberty Renaissance was originally written for the Writing Seminars at the Johns
Hopkins University. Published here are the framing preface and the first part of the
first of the novel's six tales.
55
�56
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
to change the names of certain key personages and of all the critical
locales, but that everything in the book happened as written, give or
take a few colorizing details, and that he can prove it or kick your ass
over it, your choice.
Then some ill-read nitpicking yokel will ask why if the names
is changed does Clyde keep his just as his mother-haw! haw!-give
it to him on the day he was born.
Whereupon Clyde will grip. his Mont Blanc Diplomat like a
Barlow knife and retort, "Hasn't any of you narrow-eyed incest-begot
stump-hilljacks ever heard of playful self-reference?"
How Liberty Won the Sweet Sixteen
It all started with the men who cooked up the United States
Supreme Court, but it is better to pursue a shorter thread.
The Kentucky part of it started long enough ago for memory to
be slightly imperfect when the Fabulous 89th Congress voted money
to the Commonwealth Department of Highways to connect Interstates
64, 71, and 75. The new extension would run right past Liberty, render
the buzzard-dropped burg equidistant from Louisville, Covington, and
Lexington, and pull it into the enlightened lap of the Great Society.
They were even going to build two rest areas, one north and one south
of town.
So excited were some Libertines that you would have thought
that Ford and General Motors had broken ground for assembly plants.
Jacob Range Taylor had to hire three pretty chain-smoking saleswomen
to handle all the calls in his real-estate office, a move that galled the
Backwards-Dunking Baptists. When the news broke in the Liberal, readers accused Editor Clyde Trample of being in cahoots with Jacob Range.
The feed-capped bench jockeys who sat and spat under the catalpa trees
by the courthouse in July humidity or in their pickup trucks during January rain had their suspicions:
"Clyde's made the whole thang up."
"Jacob Range has put his place up for sale. Wants a million dollars. Hit's got to be a lie."
"Better not be. Ape Collins has bought apiece of land off Taylor
for a truck stop."
"I know one thang: if the road comes, a bunch of dern niggers'll
come with it. This town ain't never amounted to nothing."
That was a lie, for Liberty had had its day in the sun-in fact,
had had several. Almost two centuries before, Erasmus Lee Jefferson,
a second cousin of our beloved Thomas, had nourished high hopes for
�COLSTON
57
his Utopian settlement along Quick Creek, a branch off the Kentucky
River. Erasmus had hit the Territory Trail with a wagonload of curious odds-and-ends: nineteen children by his first four wives, Diderot's
and D' Alembert's Encyclopedie, a swivel chair badly in need of an oiling, a telescope with a cracked lens, a rabid fifth wife, two long-rifle
boxes of sugar-cane stems packed in mud, and a map of Caintuckee
that was off by nearly ten degrees of latitude. Erasmus was determined
first to cultivate Saccharum officinarum and then he'd think up some
perfect society worthy of his dreamed Caribbean wealth. In the beginning, he was lucky. The February of his arrival was April-like, and
his wife's rabies cleared up and left her wickedly ambitious. She planted right away. The growing season was hot and muggy, and the first
frost wasn't until December. The harvest was beyond all hopes. Then
a fleet of Cincinnati keelboats took a wrong turn off the Ohio River
and ran aground in Erasmus's back yard just as his wife was wondering what to do with the bumper crop. The captain believed that he'd
never steer back on course without unloading some of the scrawny and
useless passengers, and Erasmus's wife, Gladys Ruth, believed that the
crop would rot on the banks like washed-up cattails unless white slave
labor turned the presses. So the two entrepreneurs made a swap, a barrel of raw syrup in exchange for each man, a half-barrel for each woman. That is how most of the clans arrived-the Armstrongs, Robinsons,
Henrys, Colstons, Cobs, and Taylors. The captain was so impressed
with Gladys Ruth that he dubbed the still unnamed landing Little New
Orleans and sold nonnotarized stocks on it in Louisville, St. Louis, and
Natchez. By Christmas the town boasted a trading post, a hardware
store, a bank that issued its own currency, a schoolhouse with alphabet
horns in Attic Greek, but no church.
That Easter, after putting away a pint of young rum, Erasmus
screwed up his courage and took on Gladys Ruth. He gathered together
the family's newly acquired white slaves, carved them off twenty acres
apiece of his huge claim, and set them free. "We couldn't have kept
them anyways," he shrugged to Gladys Ruth. "For this knobby terrain, like that of ancient Attica, will not admit of bondage. The future
is Liberty.'' Gladys Ruth posted three of her stepsons around the sugar
presses.
Thus, the new town had a name, but Erasmus wouldn't register
it with the Post Office until he decided upon the kind of society he wanted. He took his time because he didn't want to blow it. Our age of mere
perpetuation forgets too easily the enormous responsibility borne by
the founders, who knew that one false step and destiny might never
recover. If they read the rivers wrong, prosperity would harbor elsewhere; if they made no place for the arts, their garden crofts would
�58
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
soon be pig sties; if they didn't strike the right balance between freedom and control, their descendants would live in chaos or in chains.
It was quite a burden, and it gave old Erasmus pause. There was so
much choice; Liberty could be anything he wanted: a theocracy, as in
Massachusetts; a corporation, as at Jamestown; a haven of religious
tolerance, as in Pennsylvania; a republic of small farmers, as cousin
Thomas dreamed about; even a communistic conglomeration of phalanxes, as some of Tom Paine's friends advocated. The kinds of societies were as numerous in those heady days as the brands of soda in these
humble times. Erasmus put off his decision, and the Kentucky Postmaster in the young state capital refused to deliver the mail without
a toponym in the books. Petty-minded bureaucrats, too, can trace their
ancestry.
Erasmus brought up the matter with his hard young wife. ''I fear
lest Government retard the People, Gladys Ruth,'' he told her that May,
when, owing to the mild winter, the mosquitoes were already as big
as hummingbirds and so full with blood that they lay on the grass like
foundered cows.
"So the hell with gov'ment," Gladys Ruth exclaimed. "Just sign
that 'air form from Frankfort so's we can get the 'skeeter netting Momma's sent us.''
"Hot damn!" Erasmus cried. "That's enough to make
Robespierre look like a Tory. Fiat sic. "
And sick it was. Word soon went around that the gobblers and
knobs north of Lexington and south of Cincinnati were a lawless territory, and those sawed-off hills and scrub clearings and swampy valleys filled up fast with Klinkenbeards and Harrisons. In those days, if
justice wasn't local, it didn't exist: no higher authority gave a damn
about some crackpot settlement on the edge of the Shawnees' stomping
ground. Before long, the town was so dark and bloody that the Indians
shied away. One night, the corpulent head of the Klinkenbeards disappeared, and a few days later a rummed-up Harrison bragged that his
brothers had diced him and tossed him into a spicy burgoo. A feud was
on. They gut shot each other's women and children, beheaded each
other's old men, and spoke disrespectfully to each other's coon dogs.
Under pressure from his Baptist constituency, who were embarrassed
by the bad name Liberty was giving the whole state, the Governor dispatched up the militia. They got scared and mutinied just above Quick
Creek, beyond which they had heard that even Georgians feared to go
without a Klinkenbeard or Harrison escort.
Human decency went by the boards. The Henrys and Boyds
walked around naked. The McGoffins staffed a whorehouse with
midgets, livestock, and the hearing-impaired. Apparently getting wind
�COLSTON
59
of this pleasure dome, some dubious emigres who claimed to have
shamed the licentious court of Louis Fifteenth showed up with their
Jesuit confessors in a rickety carrosse. They introduced love aids made
of precious metals and ostrich feathers and offered the patent rights to
anyone-man, woman, or animal-who could show the ennuye Dauphin something new. This supposed royal heir was so obese that he
couldn't close his right eye and had to have an effeminate attendant
moisten it every five minutes with salt water. The contest was on, and
after three days a big Floyd woman and her jack mule won. In no time
at all, gobblers-and-knobs smiths were selling their erotic wares to hucksters bound for the Louisiana Purchase. To this day, one of these contraptions shows up every now and then at a Liberty garage sale. One
rare find is called a cat tweezers, from chatouilleuse, and it still grips
like a professional bowler and cuddles like a collie puppy. Those old
boys were craftsmen.
Young Liberty was as experimental as a freshman dormitory at
a prestigious university, and custom was razed like a country church
by a tornado. The Taylors ate breakfast at sunset; the Jeffersons used
Bible paper as fire tinder; the McDarmint girls refused to give in to
their daddies. Nothing passed on authority. One forward-looking Jefferson boy decided that cooking was a superfluity. He began eating his
pork raw and wound up trading ten acres of prime bottomland to an
Armstrong witch for a worm charm. Another concluded that, Newton
notwithstanding, a wheel and an inclined plane created rather than saved
work. His warehouse went bankrupt, and late in life he found a negative sign in the wrong place. In those revolutionary years, if they thought
of it, they tried it. Some daring Robinson women taught a dozen black
bears to dance. This was a huge success until one night a wild-eyed
high-stepper went into heat and mauled a strongly cologned stringer
from a Louisville tabloid. These folies ursines went out of business,
and the furry chorus girls were ground up into meat patties. Erasmus
Jefferson proclaimed his desire to teach every boy and girl in the gobblers and knobs to do percentages and the brightest to read Greek, and
he was the only laughing-stock.
So it is when the world is new but the people in it have been
around: no traditions, no obstacles. Liberty's frrst promoters found that
they could bill the town anything they wanted. The keelboat captain
called it Little New Orleans, and Erasmus came up with Kentucky
Athens. An Austrian Egyptologist of the first water, enticed by Erasmus's spurious find of Shawnee pictographs bearing striking resemblances to those recently discovered hieroglyphics, proclaimed this
sugar-cane town the Luxor of the West, never minding that Liberty's
would-be namesake was plunked smack in the middle of the desert. The
�60
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
French Jesuits who rode with the obese Dauphin sent back word to Rome
that they had come upon the Sodom and Gomorrha of the New World.
In rushed a tough Spanish comparu'a de Jesus recently reinstated by Pius
IV and ready to prove their mettle in spiritual reform. They hitched
a ride with a one-armed Harrison teamster, who talked ethics with them:
"Personally, I don't care what kind of fucking a man does so long's
he keeps it in the family." He drove his mule up a steep knob, where
his relatives were butchering for a burgoo. The Black Robes took one
look at the ceremony and turned north to work with the Shawnees, where
Satan had not gotten such a foothold. The Jesuitical allusion held,
however, and old men and women high up on Quick Creek still can
be heard saying that they were born in "Solomon and Gonorrhea."
Erasmus surveyed his anarchic Utopia and wondered where he
had gone wrong. He didn't like what he saw, but he asked himself where
one should draw the line. Cannibalism was not his cup of tea, but de
gustibus non disputandum est. The Dionysian carrying on broke his
heart. His dream of writing the definitive rebuttal to the Federalist Papers
dried up; Gladys Ruth infected him with the pox; he walked bald and
shivering through the muddy streets, talking in Greek to the hogs and
hounds. When a vision rots, the dreamer's mind goes bad with it.
The next fall, the weather's pendulum swung back like a swing
seat pumped by a hyperactive kid. A heavy snow piled in on All Saints'
Day, a foot dropping in four hours. Erasmus looked at his map and
ran out into the snow in his long underwear.
"Those pox-spreading land speculators!" he shouted.
Gladys Ruth went tromping through the drifts barefoot, wielding a cane sickle. "There ain't enough survived the cold," she declared,
"to soak a sugar tit." That night she left town with the banker, blizzard or no blizzard, and everybody with any sense or ambition followed
them, which explains why Liberty would remain poor and overcrowded for more than a century.
From boom to bust in three years: this foreshortened frontier story
was a miniature of the land of sudden sweeping change. As soon as
the snow melted, the remaining Libertines got religion. It was called
the Quick Creek Great Awakening of 1813. Abraham P.S. Cob, a
harelipped charismatic who had a way with the damned and dispossessed, picked on Erasmus Lee Jefferson in a sermon that lasted for
the entire week-long slow thaw. That babbling beanpole, P.S. whined,
was an atheist, a heliocentric, a Jacobin, a polyglot, and a Bachelor
of Arts. He burned the Bible, worked on the Sabbath, and advocated
vaccination. Moreover, like other Godless men such as Voltaire and
Franklin, he himself suffered from the pox. No wonder the Almighty
went so far as to blow in on a Catholic holiday.
�COLSTON
61
P.S. played to an outdoor crowd warmed by bonfires of burning
sugar barrels on the banks of Quick Creek. On the seventh day of P .S.'s
homily, his shivering congregation took fever. They shaked and quaked,
quook and shook, and then they headed for Quick Creek with Erasmus, dunking him backwards, nine-hundred-and-sixty-nine times-a
backwoods allusion to long-lived Methusaleh-and a Revolutionary War
sawbones said that his heart probably stopped on the hundredth immersion. After this ritualistic purification, they jumped in themselves, all
but the Klinkenbeards and Harrisons, which must have disappointed
the crawdads. Then they stormed over to the schoolhouse with flaming
oak boards, burned that last and best hope for mankind to the ground,
and urinated on the ashes.
They raised a log church on that very spot. It collapsed three
times that winter and killed six people, but was raised anew each time
with increased faith. After the first collapse, the Harrisons and Klinkenbeards headed for the briars and overhangs. P .S. joined forces with
some Robinson and Armstrong elders, and together they made Liberty's
first laws: against cannibalism, bestiality, bundling, hatless women,
Sabbath-breaking, public defecation, atheism, polygamy, snuff, chin
whiskers, earrings, whist, spirits, and the French language. The Gallic
influence got the blame for the late iniquity. Night rides against
homesteaders with names such as Le Jenne and Bomarshay were not
uncommon. Despite the heroic efforts of three Jefferson first-born males,
Liberty would not get another school until the twentieth century, and
that one would not have been built without a mysterious order from
Frankfort and a squadron of Army military police.
The obscure little village oscillated between boom and bust
throughout its !50-plus years. On the eve of Fort Sumter, a Cob discovered a rich saltpeter vein near Quick Creek. Within a month, three
gunpowder plants went up. After the Battle of Manassas, however, where
four kegs mysteriously blew up as if sparked by spontaneous combustion, Abraham Lincoln banned the purchase of all supplies from unreliable Gobblers-and-Knobs Explosives. In the 1880's, the Southern
Railroad put through a section of track connecting with the CovingtonLexington line in hopes of stimulating regional logging. The project
turned out to be only so much worthless steel and labor, for timber companies soon learned that the local white oak and scrub pine was full
of termite holes even when green and became dry and splintery when
seasoned. The last bringer of hope was Liberty Pike, started in the New
Deal and intended to be an alternative route for U.S. 25. Then mercurial Mars (to mix mythology) dealt Liberty another cruel blow on the
day that lives in infamy. With the country's resources devoted to the
national interest, all work on Liberty Pike was immediately stopped,
�62
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
and it wasn't resumed until after Potsdam, when less generous Fair Dealers saw fit merely to connect the Freedom Highway, as it was known,
to U.S. 25 via winding back roads maintained by poor counties. For
the last thirty years, the county seat of Cob County had been at least
two hours away from the three great cities of the Commonwealth Golden
Triangle.
Cut off for so long from the world, Liberty was unto itself. Even
in the mid-1960's, Bill Ed Tuck, the barber, used hand clippers. Pap
Henry, the druggist, sold two gallons of enema refills a week; Ape Collins, owner of the Pure Oil gas station and a six-footer with a sevenfoot arm span, packed standard transmissions with sawdust; Rudy Smoot,
the grocer, operated a milk truck; Doc Puckett, the chiropractor, wrote
prescriptions without having a medical degree; most of the Harrisons
and Klinkenbeards owned stills. For beer, the best bet was bootleg,
since Cob County was dry, or Wilma Harrison's First/Last Chance on
the edge of wet contiguous Crackenham County. But this new expressway promised to bring Liberty up-to-date, and fast.
That was how the story of the founding was told in an obscure
historical journal by the ambitious wife of an archaeologist whom the
Commonwealth sent down to dig around before the extension construction began. With the reluctant help of the Backwards Dunking Local
Missionaries, she interviewed the courthouse bench jockeys, the patients at the old folks' home in Ararat, and the regulars at the First/Last
Chance. The journal was eager to increase its circulation and jazzed
up the wife's prose and invented a few corroborating facts without substantially changing the thesis. When the article was published, Brenda
Mane Armstrong, aspiring School Board member and head of the Local
Missionaries, was livid. She seized the tapes she was storing for the
wife in the church basement and spearheaded an angry but unsuccessful protest on ecological grounds against the archaeologist's digs out
where the wife was told had been the Territory Trail.
"You're tearing up nature and everythang," Brenda Mane said.
The archaeologist looked for weeks and never found a sign of
the Trail, although he did delve into an Eastern Woodland midden, from
which he scraped out a buffalo pelvis. Determined to fish out some
pioneer remains, he explored along Quick Creek, but found nothing
more interesting than two ordinary fossils, as common as dirt, and they
were borderline at that.
"I can't understand it," he told his wife. "I haven't come across
anything more than seventy-five years old-not a square-head nail, a
threadless bolt, or a piece of cast iron. This town has nothing beneath
the surface."
�COLSTON
63
"Are you calling me a liar?" His wife got huffy. "I've seen copies
of the newspaper from the Civil War."
The issue was never resolved, and it destroyed their marriage.
The bench jockeys got a big kick out of it.
The wife may have been referring to yellowed issues of the
Liberal, for Clyde Trample still used antique type, spelled "public"
with a final k, spurned headlines and photographs, and wrote columnlength paragraphs. He ran excerpts from her article on the back page
to get Brenda Mane's goat and did a profile on the new governor, who
sported a Paul McCartney haircut and drove a Jaguar.
So even before the first bulldozers were heard, Liberty made ready
for the extension. The Cob County Commissioners took bids on a sewer
system. C. Williamson Robinson, known as the Incest Defender, began reading up on personal injury law. The Dairy Queen put in a whole
new line of ice-ball flavors. Morgana Tuck, Billy Ed's wife, made him
buy a neck vacuum. She had blamed the unfulfilled promise of Liberty
Pike on her husband's failure to go electric.
"This time," she said, "we're not going to let a major highway
connecting us to the throb and beat of the nation get away from us.''
She herself built up a beehive hair-do on her head just as she had seen
on a short woman in Cincinnati. Unfortunately it collapsed on her one
day when she was buying Rainbow Bread at Rudy Smoot's. Delph
Henry, Pap's smart-mouthed boy, saw it cave in on one side and said,
"Quick, Ma, let's git out of here before !hey's a swarm!"
And even before the first dust clouds billowed, the local
churches-queer little sects that had been cut off from low Protestantism for better than a century-voiced their opinions. The Unlimited
Adventists hailed it as yet another Coming. The Grape Juice Christians
said it was the beginning of the end to regional temperance. The Squawking Methodists railed that it was going to be a freeway for the Antichrist.
But the Backwards Dunking Baptists, who proudly claimed to be the
first Baptists to practice immersion in the revealed manner before all
the others climbed on the bandwagon, were the biggest church in Cob
County and their attitude counted most.
"We withhold all judgment," Reverend Isa Dale said, "for a
later date in the future down the road 'cause there is some good thangs
to be said for progriss."
It was Frank Collins, Ape's trouble-maker of a son, who saw
the first signs of the highway. He was on the truck-stop site, standing
on the cab of an asphalt truck looking through binoculars.
"Here they come, Daddy," Frank shouted. "Bulldozers and
cement trucks and a Negro road crew."
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Ape threw down his asphalt rake and cussed Frank down from
the cab. "Don't let me ever hear you call them Negroes again, boy,"
he said, snatching away the binoculars so violently that Frank's head
snapped back. He mounted the cab and took a look for himself. "Them's
niggers, sure enough.''
Yes, it was true: the government was actually paying them money
to stand around with spades over their shoulders. A few operated the
big bulldozers, and one was even a foreman, giving orders to a white
crew. It was hard to take, sort of like watching old athletes sit the bench
while young bloods gained applause. The bench jockeys jabbered about
it:
"I ain't never going to drive on no road built by niggers."
"You reckon they'll be driving on it?"
"Shore. It don't go now heres but to nigger cities."
"Can niggers drive?"
''I seen one driving a Mercury the other day. It was a automatic.''
But that they vowed never to drive on the extension didn't keep
them from watching it being built. During the day, they walked from
the courthouse down to sit among the honey locusts for a close look
at the devastation. It had the magnitude of a disaster movie: dynamite
exploded hills from the ground up, like earthquakes; bulldozers razed
bushes and woods, like floods. Trees lay stretched out and helpless like
bombed soldiers. Deer and rabbits ran recklessly about as if fleeing
a forest fire.
Pretty soon, dairy farmers who had long since let their cows go
dry got two hundred dollars an acre and free barbwire for their wildonioned and yellow-clovered pastures, through which the blazed area
ran, glinting and straight like a zipper. Taking a detour only around
the horse farms near Lexington, it swerved otherwise for nothing, relentless, wide, and cold-eyed, like a convoy of tanks through a forest. "Kiss
my ass,'' exclaimed one bench jockey sitting on a lawn chair, ''if that
ain't going to be a road!"
Day by day, the Negro highway workers inched closer and closer
to Liberty. They drove to the job site six to an Oldsmobile; they fished
and hunted crawdads on their lunch hours; they got within two miles
of the white women. Boss Dunn said he saw a whole gang of them corning out of the woods behind his trailer, each carrying a possum by the
tail. Any day now he expected to see them talking to somebody he knew.
Finally, it happened, one day when the temperature reached a
hundred and the road crew was within walking distance of Market Street.
The Negro foreman tightened his belt a notch and headed straight for
town. By the time he passed the bench jockeys, he had drawn a following of nine boys who thought he was either a space man or a profes-
�COLSTON
65
sional boxer. If he didn't change direction, he would run smack into
Pap Henry's drug store and soda fountain. It was scandalous enough
to make the bench jockeys stand up.
The foreman was brilliant with sweat, and most of the gathered
crowd had never seen a Negro. In fact, they didn't know you weren't
supposed to use that word anymore. Of course, neither Pap Henry's
nor anything else in Liberty had ever been segregated, and, since the
last black in town was a telephone lineman who set foot on earth only
for lunch and coffee breaks, they weren't real sure about unwritten laws
concerning the mingling of the races. Nevertheless, they .had the feeling that this young fellow who shone like Sidney. Poi tier was going to
attempt something reckless and forbidden.
He did. He bought the boys some candy. "Give me a bag of suckers for these childerns," the foreman said inside Pap's.
The boys defied their daddies by accepting, plunking the suckers into jaws packed with chewing tobacco.
Then the foreman walked over to the fountain, and the cashier,
Lilian Waters, forgot to push in on her drawer. She had rung up ten
thousand dollars. Delph Henry got scared and ran into the back room
to fetch Pap. The customers stood close by so as to see which stool
they would have to avoid sitting on forevermore.
Well, he pissed off everybody by not sitting down. ''I's hot and
dripping everwhar," he explained.
Lilian forced a denture smile for a few seconds and then huffed,
"Well, we get by with the fan."
While the foreman eyed the menu above the ceramic-and-steel
milkshake mixers, the customers were taking their time looking over
the Epsom Salts and enemas. Finally, Pap Henry emerged from the
back room, twitching his neck as if to scare off flies.
"Root-beer float," the foreman said. Sheriff Boone was standing in the doorway by then, and he distinctly noticed that the foreman
forgot to say please. The Sheriff was ready to go to work, for there
must have been a dozen voters in there.
Pap's neck twitched some more, and then he picked up the ice
cream scoop with a flourish. "Hit's on the house," he announced. "I
was just fixing to send out some flyers. Until that 'air road is finished,
everthang on the menu's ten per-cent off for you and the rest of your
crew." Pap was a horse trader, and that was a smart move, for the
Dairy Whip was a quarter-mile closer to the ·extension, and he had been
looking for a chance to run it out of business for a long time.
*
��I \\
.,
I
�Two Translations
of La Fontaine
La Cigale et la fourmi
La Cigale, ayant chante
Tout l'Ete,
Se trouva fort depourvue
Quand Ia bise fut venue.
Pas un seul petit morceau
De mouche ou de vermisseau.
Elle alia crier famine
Chez Ia Fourmi sa voisine,
La priant de lui preter
Quelque grain pour subsister
Jusqu'a Ia saison nouvelle.
Je vous ~aierai, lui dit-elle,
Avant !'Out, foi d'animal,
Interet et principal.
La Fourmi n'est pas pretense;
C' est hi son moindre ctefaut.
'Que faisiez-vous au temps chaud?
Dit-elle cette emprunteuse.
-Nuit et jour tout venant
Je chantais, ne vous cteplaise.
- Vous chantiez? j' en suis fort aise.
Eh bien! dansez maintenant.'
a
a
La Fontaine, Fables, I,
1.
66
�LA FONTAINE
67
The Cicada and the Ant
The cicada, having sung her song
All summer long,
Was left deprived
When the north wind arrived:
Not a bit of worm laid by,
Nor bite of fly.
To her neighbor the ant
She went to chant
Her complaint of starvation
And borrow a ration
Of grain
Till summer came round again.
'I'll pay you back with interest before
Next fall,' she swore
Upon her
Insect's honor.
The ant was not a lender
(Heaven defend her
From such an accusation!)
She asked the beggar 'What did you do
When the days were warm and the sky was blue?'
'Night and day throughout the summer
I sang my song to every comer.'
The ant: 'I'm sure your singing was entrancing:
Now try dancing. '
E.Z.
�68
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Le Corbeau et le renard
Maitre Corbeau, sur un arbre perche,
Tenait en son bee un fromage.
'
' '
Maitre Renard, par I' odeur alleche,
Lui tint ii peu pres ee langage:
Et bonjour, Monsieur du Corbeau.
Que vous etes joli! que vous me semblez beau!
Sans mentir, si votre ramage
Se rapporte ii votre plumage,
Vous etes le Phenix des hotes de ees bois.
A ees mots, le Corbeau ne se sent pas de joie;
Et pour montrer sa belle voix,
II ouvre un large bee, laisse tomber sa proie.
Le Renard s'en saisit, et dit: Mon bon Monsieur,
Apprenez que tout flatteur
Vit aux ctepens de eelui qui I' eeoute.
Cette le9on vaut bien un fromage, sans doute.
Le Corbeau honteux et eonfus
Jura, mais un peu tard, qu'on ne l'y prendrait plus.
1,11.
�LA FONTAINE
69
The Crow and the Fox
Sir Crow was perching in a tree
Holding in his beak a brie.
Sir Fox, attracted by the cheese,
Spoke words like these:
'Such handsome plumage! Such a sleek veneer!
If your trilling
Is half so thrilling
How sweetly you must sing! Please do so:
Of all the woodland warblers, let me hear
The Caruso.'
The victim has no choice:
He must show off his voice.
He opens his great beak and drops the cheese.
Seizing the prize, the fox observes: 'Mon cher,
Here is a lesson worth a camembert:
Every flatterer
Lives on the income of his flatteries.'
The crow, ashamed and shaken, swore that he
Never again would be a flatteree.
E.Z.
����Book Review
Allan Bloom:
The Closing of the American Mind*
Eva Brann
I
Here is a book which compels the question whether we should
be glad of its existence. My answer is that we should be thrice glad,
glad once that it was written, and glad that, having been produced, it
found such favor with the public. The bulk of this review will address
itself to the reservations which prompt the question in the first instance.
Of the two reasons for rejoicing in its success-it is at the date of this
writing in first place on the best-seller list-one is somewhat sly and
the other quite straightforward. First, Mr. Bloom's book is the jeremiad of liberal education; but a Jeremiah eagerly heard, a prophet honored
in his own land, is a prophet more than half refuted. As for the plain
pleasure, it is simply that the book will do some concrete good.
Some good, evidenced in small incremental improvements: the
ear of a foundation here, a modest program there. Mr. Bloom himself
has no illusions about a great systemic reprise of liberal education (380).
An indication of the practical impossibility that the requisite cohesion
should ever come back, is in the concurrent success of E. D. Hirsch's
book, Cultural Literacy, in which is advocated a return to what used
to be called "general information" (now defined descriptively as acquaintance with a list of some 3800 terms), while the one solution Mr.
Eva Brann is a Tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. Shy is the author of Paradoxes
of Education in a Republic (University of Chicago, 1970). This review was written
in July, 1987.
*New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987
71
�72
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Bloom finally offers-to be sure, with many cautionary contortionsnamely the reading of Great Books (344), is disavowed in Hirsch's
preface. In truth, the thought of our whole vast establishment suddenly
converted to liberal learning is somehow appalling, like the image of
a continent-sized wheel of fine, ripe cheese. The factor of scale seems
to me serious and of the essence. Communities of liberal learning require small size and spontaneous beginnings; the unanimity which ensouls and maintains them becomes oppressive and mechanical when
hugely magnified and centrally mandated.
In fact, it is strange to me that Mr. Bloom fixed on the universities as the possible loci for the learning whose loss he mourns, when
surely our three thousand or so small colleges are its more likely home.
The glory of the modern university has properly been not in contemplative reflection and aporetic conversation but in cumulative research
and brilliant breakthroughs. And I will pit my experience in a score
of more or less obscure little schools against his among a thousand
university students: In these places student souls are still capable of grand
longings, books are read with receptive naivete, and religion is not debased to the frisson of' 'the sacred.'' Small places are our internal educational frontier, and the spirit lives in the sticks.
With respect to the effective influence the book might exert (as
opposed to the passing waves it superimposes on the roiled ocean of
opinion), there is something to be regretted in Mr. Bloom's policy of
presenting himself as a voice crying in a wilderness; for in fact the wilderness has quite a few cultivated clearings. He speaks namelessly of his
teachers and not at all of the institutional foci of resistance to the rot
he exposes. His likely motives are most reasonable: not to be set aside
because of sectarian associations, and, by suppressing the names of his
allies and predecessors, to win the right of keeping the targets of his
contempt anonymous. Consequently this irate tract manages to preserve
a certain American civility. Nonetheless, the price is that general readers will have to discover for themselves the addresses of the contemporary sources and places where effective resistance is carried on, such
as St. John's College itself.*
*Some of these fellow-fighters in the battle against the soul-unstaying piffle-terms, those
relaxants of shape and significance, which are the real, or at least the most interesting,
butt of the book, such as creativity, self, culture, life-style, and communication, are
hearteningly easy to find. For example, there are Judith Martin's vastly popular ''Miss
Manners" books, which, under the guise of pronouncing on etiquette, often ironicize
our linguistic mores; thus Miss Manners bids us to "make a special effort to learn
to stop communicating with one another, so that we can have some conversation."
Here is no inconsiderable ally!
�BRANN
73
One word more on the reception of the book. Quite a few people are obscurely enraged by it and express that aversion-just as Mr.
Bloom indeed predicts-by means of certain schematic terms, such as
racism, elitism, and nostalgia-mongering, that are currently used to
impute as sin unpopular though perfectly defensible opinions. It should
not be considered a sin for Mr. Bloom to observe regretfully the more
than occasional self-segregation of black students in the universities.
Again, if one really wished to show him wrong, one would not
angrily call him an elitist-silly term-but, by refraining, prove that
democracies can indeed contain even their contraries. On "Firing Line"
in May of this year Mr. Bloom respectfully but skeptically characterized the views of Midge Deeter (who is, incidentally, one of his predecessors in worrying about America's young) as "serious populism." For
my part, I subscribe to this sort of populism, which precisely disavows
the entity called "the People" because of the conviction that people
one by one have in them, besides sound sense, the roots of reflection;
thus they occupy places in a continuum with the deepest philosophers
and are capable of participating to some degree in a common liberal
education.
This proposition is what Mr. Bloom evidently disbelieves. He
thinks that philosophy, the highest pursuit, is not for everybody. I think
he is wrong, democratic or undemocratic aside. (I do not want to concede either to him or to his opponents that his own opinions are truly
any more incompatible with strong democratic sentiments than many
other things one needs to believe along with one's civic creed. There
is an argument which in its amplitude would have brought even Mr.
Bloom into the democratic fold had he cared to use it: pluralism.)
To begin with, his view of aristocracy has a stylized, unreal air.
He seems to think that the honor-seeking aristocratic type, the magnanimous lover of the beautiful and the useless, is dominant in real-life
aristocracies, just as he must think the vain, sycophantic, utilitarian,
democratic type is pervasive in democracies (250). From what I read
and hear, "the beautiful" for aristocrats has usually meant-and still
means-mostly horseflesh, and if Mr. Bloom were not first run through
by his aristocrat's sword for impugning his stud as useless, he would
soon find himself dying of boredom from the nobleman's conversation.
To be sure, Squire Western is more lovable than the aesthetic snob Mr.
Bloom unwittingly delineates. These aristocrats, who, Mr. Bloom himself is careful to state, are far from being philosophers, are said by him
to be likely to admire philosophers for their uselessness (250). To my
knowledge they used to require them to work for their places at the
bottom of the table as pedagogues and secretaries. But the main point
is that a careless opposition has confused the issue here. The non-
�74
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
utilitarian is not the useless but it is that which is beyond both the useful and the useless, and in particular it is what makes all usefulness
possible. Talk of the uselessness of philosophy obscures its universal
needfUlness.
As for the actual citizens of a democracy, Mr. Bloom writes as
though in this country no businessman had ever written sophisticated
yet beautiful poetry or had ever composed advanced yet lovingly American music, no backwoodsman had ever achieved incomparable yet popular grandeur, no sailor had ever told an enormous moral myth which
was also an account of the whaling industry. Mr. Bloom draws from
his anti-populist views one simple rule for the university: It should not
concern itself with providing its students with the democratic experiences
they cannot escape in democratic society, but it must provide those they
cannot have there (256). It should be a safe-house for aristocracy. This
injunction seems to politicize and turn into paradox a true pedagogical
precept, namely that colleges and universities should provide no "lifeexperiences" at all but should attend to book-learning and the other
theoretical pursuits which are their proper business. Whatever is done
in an American school cannot help but come out as a democratic experience, not least the free and direct discussion of Great Books. For
it involves the democratic presumption that a cat may look at a king.
Europeans tend to find this typically American and somewhat comical.
I have heard the charge of nostalgia-mongering with respect to
what seems to me Mr. Bloom's very restrained rehabilitation of the
fifties. To be sure, I don't quite believe his claim that these were the
great days of the American universities. As I recall it, they were the
very years when professors anticipated Mr. Bloom in bemoaning the
apathy and lack of public commitment on the part of their students, the
years whose prosperous philistinism retarded my Americanization by
a decade. But his praise of the fifties is in any case only the prelude
to the damning of the sixties, the anathema of the book, which Mr.
Bloom hates with verve enough to energize every chapter. This autobiographical impulse is patent to everyone. Not that one would blame
him. What happened at Cornell, what the faculty seems to have permitted itself by way of moral indeterminacy, might well inflict a trauma never to be forgotten. The only saving grace of the episode, which
so blessedly distinguishes it from the case of the German universities
under the Nazis, is that the people of this democracy never made common cause with the professors.
This is the moment to say a word about Mr. Bloom's writing.
As The Closing is, of necessity, something of a magpie book intellectually, so in style it has a sort of mongrel eloquence: literately turned
phrases suddenly develop colloquial cadences, the prose is inspissated
�BRANN
75
with metaphor, and the exposition is torrential. It aroused in me a sense
of sympathetic recognition. This is a style formed under the pressure
of the most pervasive sort of anxiety there is. For most human misfortunes, from physical pain to miscarried love, there is local relief and
the prospect of recovery, but the fear for the spirit of one's country
is an incessant taint upon the enjoyment of life. Mr. Bloom's country
is the America of the Universities, and the anxious patriotism which
steals the serenity from his style does his sentiments honor.
II
To pass from the circumstantial to the substantive: Is this a good
book?
People regularly refer to it as brilliant. So it is, but brilliance
belongs to the demi-monde of intellectual virtues. It would be silly to
regret the flamboyance which is winning it its audience; at the same
time it would be wrong not to register, for the record, certain substantial doubts.
Let me begin this way: I would not recommend the book to students, not because it will offend their sensibilities-it can do them nothing
but good to be forced to defend themselves articulately-but because
it is a book not only of generational pulse-taking but also of intellectual
history. I would not wish our ·students to get their intellectual history
from this book (I shall shortly argue that it is a little too coarse-grained
even of its kind)-or indeed from any book. To my mind, the notion
that the intellect might have a history, that thought might develop a direction over the generations, should come to students as a late and suspect
insight, long after each individual work of thought has been given its
a-historical due.
The Closing of the American Mind is, I am implying, a historicist enterprise or, more fairly, next cousin to it. Since historicism, the
notion that the temporal place of a text determines its significance more
than does the author's conscious intention and that history through its
movements is a real agent, is Mr. Bloom's bete nair, this is no small
charge. But there is no getting around the fact that the book continually
places and positions great names evaluatively from the outside in-of
internal philosophical substance it contains very little. Similarly it persistently sums the spirit of the times and seeks its genealogy in intellectual movements. For example, he says that the university as we know
it is the product of the Enlightenment (250), a typical historicist summation in which the tree vanishes into the forest. Indeed, some of his
judgments are simply distance effects (as are most historicist conclusions), which dissolve under a close inspection. A crucial example is
�76
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the claim that nowadays "all the students are egalitarian meritocrats"
(90). If that were true, and a group held a belief without exception,
one would indeed be driven, willy-nilly to the thought of a domination
by a supra-individual spirit, that is, a congenital psychic infection by
history. In fact it is probably false. In my experience there are always
some students who are acutely if reticently proud of the advantages accruing from the right sex, religion, and social status, while those who
do believe that "each individual should be allowed to develop his special and unequal talents" without reference to those factors might, I
put it to Mr. Bloom, not just generationally believe it but also individually think it; it is certainly what I think.
The title itself is revealing. It is, to be sure, not Mr. Bloom's
choice. He wanted the euphonious and accurate title "Souls Without
Longing" (the French title is "L'Ame desannee''). But he condoned
"The Closing of the American Mind." The "Closing" part is fine:
one of the most convincing chapters is the early one in which he shows
how openness corrupted, which becomes the lazily tolerant path ofleast
resistance, forecloses passionate doubting, and how the springboard of
learning is vigorous prejudice. But "the American Mind" is debased
Hegelianism, and a scandal. Americans do, happily, still have certain
areas of consensus; nonetheless, they have more than one mind among
them.
It is utterly clear to me that Mr. Bloom does not mean what his
words say, but it is odd that he is willing himself to supply the example
of that soul-slackening disconnection of thought from utterance that he
so spiritedly attacks. In fact this permissiveness exacts its price at the
end, when he makes the judgment without which the book would be
pointless: "Philosophy is still possible" (307), even, presumably, in
America. His philosophy of history (and the project of the book really
requires one) is simply too diffuse to support this optimism after all
the gloom: he has obscured the only basis upon which the possible can,
according to Aristotle, ever become actual, namely prior actuality. In
short, "still" is the stumbling block here.
Perhaps what is missing rather than a philosophy of intellectual
history is its antithesis, a theory of opinion-holding, particularly an explanation of how and with what effect people say non-thoughts and become attached to terms of low thought-content. I hold to the axiom,
which must seem culpably cheerful to Mr. Bloom, that shallow opinions are mostly shallowly rooted. Therefore I cannot share his passionate sadness at the deficient eros, the spiritual detumescence (136), of
the American student soul. Though somewhat masked by the gormless
language of the "sensitive, caring and non-possessive relationship,"
lustful, hurtful, exclusive love goes gloriously on.
�BRANN
77
But whether it does or no, there is something not quite consistent in this mourning over the de-compression of the soul. Mr. Bloom
describes with wicked verve the fatal invasion of the limpid American
mind by the dark knowledge of the German refugees. He must know
what a crucial role adolescent intensity played in shaping both these
Europeans and their persecutors. I think that when Americans trivialize the continental depth (!57) they so eagerly absorb, they are often
very sensibly-and not altogether unwittingly-counteracting their own
intellectual prurience. And so, when the young cluelessly acclimatize
Heideggerian Gelassenheit as "staying loose" (or so Mr. Bloom pretends to believe), it may not be such a tragedy: at least from staying
loose there is a possible road to reason.
My doubts so far have really concerned the nature of generalization as practiced in this book, but my final set of complaints concerns its quality. The text seems to be stuffed with truth that is not the
whole truth and not nothing but the truth. Of course it is very hard to
hit all the small nails squarely on the head with so large a mallet, yet
there are fine and there are coarse ways of epitomizing spheres of thought
and trends of opinion. Mr. Bloom's often anonymous and torrential mode
of presentation makes it hard to tell whether the trouble is with his accuracy or his perspective. Moreover, he sometimes seems to present
an anonymous modern opinion as though it had but to come in contact
with the air to self-destruct, while his great moderns, Rousseau and
Nietzsche, seem somehow to merit awed admiration for setting us on
the road we are condemned for following. Mr. Bloom's relation especially to Rousseau is the mystery of mysteries to me. One of the excellences of his exposition is the continual pointing to Rousseau not just
as the uncannily accurate analyst but as the brilliantly effective originator of the corruption-prone side of modernity. (The book neglects
to its detriment the complementary side, the reverence-producing splendor of modern science and mathematics). But then why is Mr. Bloom
not on record as being at least as repelled as he is fascinated by this
"inverse Socrates" (298)?
For Socrates is the pervasive hero of the book-Socrates the
anomalous man, that is, not Socrates the conductor of fairly comprehensible conversations, or the contemplator of communicable truth. This
curtailed Socrates comes before the American public brusquely defining the task of philosophy as learning how to die; from this picture it
takes but a few steps to reach the conclusion that there is an incomposable quarrel between the philosophers and most of mankind (277 -8).
Mr. Bloom manages to turn Socratic philosophizing into an utter arcanum simply through by-passing its substance. I think that when Socrates
is brought on the scene he should appear as practicing the life he thought
�78
THE STJOHN'S REVIEW
worth living.
Indeed, the fact that actual philosophy is kept at one remove in
this book, that it is a tract on the love of the love of wisdom, is responsible for a certain skewing in the analysis of contemporary ills. Let me
give one of many examples I could cite.
That "the self is the modern substitute for the soul" (173) is an
indispensible insight in the analysis of modernity. But in the section
devoted to it Mr. Bloom simply suppresses reference to "subjectivity,"
the philosophical term through which are to be reached the deep and
not ignoble motives for the substitution: to be utterly unfooled, to confront nature as its knower, to be freely good. Consequently contemporary talk of the self and its discovery is deprived of the respectable
strain that, it seems to me, still somehow resonates in the most debased
chatter. Our "three-hundred-year-long identity crisis" is, for all its latterday indignities, the unavoidable working out of a brave and compelling choice: We are essentially neither ensouled instantiations of an eternal species, nor creatures whose souls are made by God, but ungrounded
spontaneous individual subjects. The function of philosophy should be
not to shame us for it, but to re-dignify our dilemmas.
I want to end with the chapter on music, a chapter that is close
to Mr. Bloom's heart, and that he mistakenly thinks is unregarded. In
fact, young readers turn to it first and rage at it, thereby confirming
his observation that rock is their love. It is, to be sure, in a book that
insists that the best is for the few, somewhat inconsistent to discount
the lovers of classical music because they are fewer than one in ten,
but the main point, so truly observed, is that the adherence to rock is
universal. (I have never heard anyone young speak against it.) I do not
quite believe that rock "has one appeal only, a barbaric appeal, to sexual desire" (73). I am a sporadic watcher of MTV and know that what
the visualizations pick up in the music is its weirdness, whininess, bizarrerie, meanness, and scariness-in sum, a whole vocabulary of extrasexual excruciation, which is often ironically and even wittily exploited. The appeal is not so hard to understand; it is its universality and
depth that remains a mystery.
For Mr. Bloom's explanation does not quite reach the love aroused
by this, or any, music. For him, following, as he claims, Plato and
Nietzsche, music is the "barbarous expression of the soul," the soul's
primitive, pre-rational speech, pure passion. I take it as read that he
knows his Republic, but where in it did he find this theory? His own
translation corrects the impression given by earlier versions that the
musical modes express the passions (Rep. 398 e 1). According to Socrates
they rather shape them. Moreover, the music must follow the words,
which it couldn't do if it had no close relation to reason. (Indeed it was
�79
BRANN
Socrates' Pythagorean friends who propagated the great tradition or
music as qualitative mathematics.) Some musical modes are more soulrelaxing than others, but these latter, the bracing ones, are the most
potent instruments that the community possesses for forming the soul
into grace amenable to reason. It follows fhat there is nothing truly primitive or pre-rational even about the most orgiastic music, and that when
a sect succumbs to Wagner or a generation to rock, the explanation
cannot start from raw passion, but must begin with corrupt reason. Mr.
Bloom has succumbed to the prime error of those dark Germans, which
is to think that the soul of a rational animal somewhere harbors a naturepreserve of pure primitive passions.
III
To conclude. The Closing of the American Mind is not only an
opportune summation of decades of critique, but it is also among the
early tappings of a turning tide. For the tide is turning, though not to
float a happy and harmonious new liberal learning, but to ground us
in a sad new abstinence. It has very suddenly come home to us that
the world is full of dangers just where we sought our pleasures: spending, sex, substances, sound, even sunshine. We will be drawn in upon
ourselves, we will have to take new thought, and in these straits liberal
literacy, the attentive reading of good books, may eventually play a
modest role as something of a saving grace.
Because of Mr. Bloom this thought may come a little sooner to
a somewhat larger number of people. Moreover, since it comes embedded in a critique of our current condition that is wholly passionate and
largely true, there will be a more immediate effect: Some readers of
the Closing of the American Mind are bound to experience a re-opening
of their minds to the all-but-foreclosed understandings behind our
present. That will be its success beyond celebrity.
�JACOB KLEIN
Lectures and Essays
CONTENTS
1986
393 pages, hardcover, $22.50
The World of Physics and the "Natural" World 0 On a
Sixteenth-Century Algebraist 0 The Concept of Number
in Greek Mathematics and Philosophy 0 Modern Rationalism 0 Phenomenology and the History of Science 0
The Copernican Revolution 0 The Problem of Freedom
0 History and the Liberal Arts 0 The Problem and
the Art of Writing 0 The Idea of Liberal Education 0
Aristotle, an Introduction 0 Leibniz, an Introduction
0 On the Nature of Nature 0 On Dante's Mount of
Purgation 0 On Liberal Education 0 The Myth of
Virgil's Aeneid 0 A Note on Plato's Parmenides 0 On
Precision D About Plato's Philebus 0 Plato's Jon 0
Speech, Its Strength and Its Weaknesses 0 Plato's Phaedo
TO ORDER: Send a check for $22.50 plus $1 for postage and handling to ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE
BOOKSTORE, P.O. Box 1671, Annapolis, MD 21404. (Maryland residents add $1.13 state sales tax.)
�
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Zuckerman, Elliott
Ruhm von Oppen, Beate
Stickney, Cary
Van Doren, John
Williamson, Robert B.
Lavery, John
Sachs, Joe
Allanbrook, Douglas
Allanbrook, Wye Jamison
Brann, Eva T. H.
Smith, J. Winfree
Colston, Ken
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The St. John's Review
Volume XXXVIII, number two (1988-2)
Editor
Elliott Zuckerman
Editorial Board
Eva Brann
Beale Ruhm von Oppen
Cary Stickney
John Van Doren
Robert B. Williamson
The St. John's Review is published thrice yearly by the Office of the Dean, St.
John's College, Annapolis; William Dyal, President; Thomas Slakey, Dean. For
those not on the distribution list, subscriptions are $12.00 yearly. Unsolicited essays,
stories, poems, and reasoned letters are welcome. Address correspondence to the
Review, St. John's College, Annapolis, MD 21404. Back issues are available, at $4.00
per issue, from the St. John's College Bookstore.
© 1988 St. John's College. All rights reserved; reproduction in whole or in part
without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
Composition
Fishergate
Printing
The St. John's College Print Shop
��Contents
LECTURES
I . . . . . . . Fictional Selves and Ghosts: St. Augustine's
Confessions
Howard Zeiderman
21 ....... Human Being, Beast and God: The Place
of Human Happiness According to
Aristotle and Some Twentieth-Century
Philosophers
Deborah Achtenberg
49 . . . . . . . Dead Leaves: Illustrations of
the Genealogy of the Epic Poem
Jonathan TUck
OCCASIONAL SPEECH
75 . . . . . . . Commencement Address
Curtis Wilson
VERSE
82 . . . . . . . Two Poems
Carolyn Wade Loring
84 . . . . . . . Another Fable of La Fontaine
Elliott Zuckerman
BOOK REVIEW
87 . . . . . . . Thomas Flanagan: The Tenants of Time
Eva Brann
Sketches of McDowell Hall by Emily Kutter.
��Fictional Selves and Ghosts:
St. Augustine's Confessions
Howard Zeiderman
In Book VI of the Confessions, Augustine describes an incident that he
observed in Northern Italy. At that time, Augustine was still a professor
of Rhetoric. He was in love with words; he was not yet a lover of the Word.
The incident occurred in Milan. He had travelled there in order to hear
the man purported to be the greatest speaker alive. That man was Ambrose, the Archbishop. Ambrose was a very busy man, who was almost
constantly surrounded by people. It was during one of his rare moments
of solitude that Augustine observed him. Here is Augustine's description:
For very short periods of time, when he was alone, he was either refreshing
his body with food or his mind with reading. When he was reading, his eyes
went over the pages and his heart looked over the sense, but his voice and
tongue were resting.
This picture of a tired man reading alone is not unusual for us. We
might well wonder why it is even mentioned. Is it to show that the great
Ambrose is like the rest of us- tired, somewhat harassed, and in need of
solitude? No. Augustine does not see the similarity. He sees differenceand it startles him. He cannot understand why the bishop, though alone,
is not reading aloud. He puzzles over the sight for the next fifteen lines,
but cannot come up with a convincing explanation. In the end he must
Howard Zeiderman is a Tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis. This lecture was
delivered at the Annapolis campus in January, 1988.
1
�2
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
resort to the holiness of Ambrose. As Augustine says: Whatever his reason
for acting in this way, it would certainly be a good one.
This passage about Augustine's incredulity at Ambrose's reading silently
startles me. What should I make of it? I feel that, although I understand
the words, I am missing something. And a careful re-reading of the passage
doesn't bring me any closer to the sense. Such a passage- and each text
that we read at St. John's contains many of them-does not immediately
occasion my approval or disapproval, my agreement or disagreement.
Usually, it is so far from helping me understand something that I feel as
if I understand nothing. Eventually I must move on to more familiar
ground, but the passage stays with me. It is like the ghost of a text. And
like a legitimate ghost, it haunts me. It is haunting because, through it,
a remote, dead world momentarily becomes visible.
Let me try to explain what is so troubling for me about this passage.
Reading is a fairly complicated activity. When I read, I try to understand.
And I succeed when I am being thoughtful about the meaning of words.
Thinking and understanding are private activities. They occur ultimately
in a place I call "inside myself." So I tend to think of serious reading as
an inside activity as well. Of course there are special circumstances in which
we read aloud, either with others or alone. People read aloud when they
are learning to read, or when they are sharing with others what they've
previously read. Sometimes we do in fact read aloud what we have never
read before, but then, frequently, we lose track of the passage, and have
to back-track for a silent re-reading. And there are remarkable passages,
like Augustine's description of Ambrose, which we read aloud to understand what, on a previous silent reading, we had not understood.
Now in this passage about Ambrose, Augustine is startled by the very
opposite of what would startle me. In order to make sense out of the
passage, I would like to claim that reading aloud plays the same role for
him that silent reading plays for me. But I can't do that. To do so would
be to turn what is inside and private-what I think of as reading-into
what is outside and public. Where would I find the place I called "inside
myself'? And what would happen to the thing I call myself? What on earth
could Augustine mean by the words "myself' and "me"? Our "selves" don't
seem to have the same boundaries.
The same difficulties arise if, instead of actually re-writing the text,
I simply interpret the reading aloud that Augustine and Ambrose usually
did while alone, as a form of what we do when we read aloud. However,
this won't work either, because all of the forms that I have described are
modifications and variations of "reading-as-1-know-it" -that is, variations
of silent reading. We cannot strip from what we know as reading aloud
�3
ZEIDERMAN
the circumstances of its particularity and dependence, and then take what
results as a general case.
You're probably beginning to feel lost. As these questions open out,
I too begin to feel lost. In fact, I begin to lose myself. The categories that
are implicated in these questions- reading, understanding, thinking,
physical, meaning, sharing, inside, outside, public, and private- are not
just peripheral to what I am. They are the crucial items in terms of which
I define myself. When those categories become fluid, who and what I am
becomes fluid.
What can one do in such a state? One can, of course, retreat from such
a passage to recover oneself and one's sanity. But there is a kind of arrogance in retreating back into myself untried. Or one can push forward
to lose oneself completely in madness and absurdity. This is the path of
despair, where nothing, least of all myself, has meaning. It is at just these
moments, when facing this choice, that I need others. What I can not do
alone and yet must do- precisely because I am haunted- I may be able
to do with others.
I hope this exploration has given you a sense of a relation between us
as readers and a certain kind of passage. Such passages are to be found
in every work we read here. They assert something which is not just wrong,
or unusual, or distasteful, but, rather, uncanny. This kind of uncanniness
I have called "haunting." And this characteristic does not only apply to
passages. Entire texts can haunt. In fact every text we read here can haunt.
I will explore this characteristic through the work which haunts me mostthe Confessions. It is this work, too, which is my favorite of the books
we read here, and the one that I judge to be the greatest. Since these are
more common ways of describing books, we will look at these approaches
in order to find out how a book haunts.
••*
There are many accounts of the greatness of the texts we read. Some
of these focus on the style or beauty of the work; others focus on the content and depth. Dante is a good example of the former, Descartes of the
latter. Described differently, these two categories may be called rhetoric
and poetry for style and beauty, and philosophy for content. A much more
serious characterization of greatness breaks through the perspective of the
two categories just mentioned. This third type of characterization shows
the remarkably intimate connection between the how and the what. Examples of this sort of work are Platonic dialogues, and Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind. These two are obvious candidates for the third approach,
�4
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
which looks at style and content, the poetry and the philosophy, at the
same time. This approach is, as I said, the most serious. I believe that all
the works we read here, not just the Dialogues and the Phenomenology,
satisfy it. In any case, one consideration is common to each of these three
approaches: by calling a book great-with respect to its form, its content,
or both of these combined-we are intending to describe the book itself,
and not ourselves. The search for a suitable definition and characterization has objectivity as its goal.
At the other end of the spectrum is the subjective approach to a text.
This, of course, has more to do with us as individuals than with the text.
Each of the works is loved by some, hated by others. We frequently admit
to our friends, though not in a seminar, that one or another book is our
favorite. This occurs with friends because usually our friends are interested
in our likes and dislikes, without demanding "proof." And in their company, I may feel encouraged to try to reveal my concerns, affections, or
disaffections. That is, in talking about my "favorite" book, I may reveal
important things about myself, not about the text.
So the characterization "great book" speaks ostensibly about the book,
and the characterization "favorite book" speaks primarily about me. Since,
in my judgment, the Confessions is the greatest program book, and since
it is also my favorite program book, I will use it to illustrate these two
categories. Yet neither of these two categories is what I mean by a "haunting text." That characterization is a description that is equally about me
and a text. How a text haunts may be made clearer by pointed contrast
to the other two categories. And here again the Confessions will illustrate
what I mean, because it is the book which haunts me most. In fact, the
Confessions is most haunting, and raises the question of haunting texts
to starkest visibility, perhaps because in it Augustine himself is haunted.
•••
The Confessions is probably the easiest work on the list to misread,
and the way we misread it is predictable. There is nothing more common
in our world than writing autobiographies. Everyone in this room has probably written at least one, even if only as a part of an application requesting
an autobiographical essay. And it is very hard not to read the Confessions
as autobiographical. Yet, insofar as we do so, it becomes difficult to see
in what way the Confessions is great. Though we, here and in the rest of
the world, expect application essays to be autobiographical, we do not expect seminar essays, lectures, and important books to be autobiographical.
The autobiography is not viewed as an activity, or a part of one's on-going
�ZEIDERMAN
5
life; it is viewed usually as the record of one's activity, composed at a distance from oneself.
A bit of history may be useful here, not, as we often rightly fear, to
dismiss a work, but rather to help us avoid dismissing a work by misconstruing it. The Story of My Life by Cellini, and the Confessions by Rousseau,
both written more than a thousand years after Augustine, define our notion of autobiography. These works help set the stage in the eighteenth
century for the emergence of the form of writing which both attracts and
repels us. There are very many examples of such autobiography to choose
from- and yet none of them is on our reading list. And when one reads
Augustine's Confessions as an example of this category that was, in many
respects, created by Rousseau-in other words, as autobiography-then
its place on our list seems suspect. Of course, we might then include Augustine's Corifessions not because of its merits but because other texts that
we consider great require this particular work. In other words, the Confessions is considered great by other writers, whom we consider great. A
few of these writers are Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, Dante, Chaucer, Luther,
Montaigne, Descartes, Rousseau, Hegel, Kirkegaard, and Wittgenstein. So
we include it too. Faced with our own uneasiness about the greatness of
a work, we sometimes allow this kind of evidence to count. However, this
kind of approach can be dangerous, if we grow complacent, and put the
book on our list only for the sake of reading another work. But if we regard
the evidence of those other great thinkers as an incentive to exploration,
then we put the book on the list because it presents a task. The task would
be a hard and probing kind of questioning about ourselves and about those
other thinkers, though still not necessarily about the book in question.
It could lead to investigating how we and those we consider great are different on fundamental matters of judgment or thought. And this investigation, though not the same as what a haunting text makes possible, is
nonetheless similar to it.
Let us take another step to see how the greatness of the Corifessions
may be viewed more from the inside than from the outside. Let us take
three approaches to the text which we can initially describe as the perspectives of Dante, Descartes, and Hegel. These three were on the list of those
who were in awe of Augustine,· and their concerns may help direct our attention to aspects of the work that viewing it as autobiography makes
suspect- if not impossible. In another rough characterization of these three
approaches, Dante may stand for poetry, Descartes may stand for philosophy, and Hegel stands for the attempted reconciliation of the other two.
This third characterization, Hegel's perspective, may be obscure. However,
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
6
if we remember that in Plato's dialogues philosophy aspires to being, while
poetry is enmeshed in becoming, Plato's "ancient feud" between philosophy
and poetry may be understood as the feud between being and becoming.
St. John's seniors can inform their Jess knowing friends that in Hegel's
Phenomenology of Mind the two realms of being and becoming become
so intimately involved with one another that they are no longer two realms.
***
We will look at the poet's perspective first. Virgil appears as Dante's
guide in the Inferno, and much of the Divine Comedy involves the relations between Virgil's poetry and Dante's own. Virgil does not appear as
a character in the Confessions. His Aeneid, however, does. Augustine states
that when he was young, reading the Aeneid was a source of pleasure, and
reciting it was a source of glory. As an older man, he views his youthful
devotion to the poem as a waste of his time and talents. Yet in spite of
what he claims was a waste of time, he acknowledges that he also learned
to read and write from this effort. The question arises whether this boy
who grew up in and around Carthage and who, like Aeneas, finally found
his home in Rome, was able to turn his childhood Jove for the Aeneid into
something fertile and memorable in his adult life. I will mention only a
few parallels with the Aeneid to show the extent to which Virgil's fiction
echoes in Augustine's account.
In the Aeneid, Aeneas meets Dido in Book I. So too in the first book
of the Confessions Augustine meets Didn, as Virgil's character. In Book
II Aeneas moves in and out of Carthage in his narrative to Dido; Augustine
at the same time moves in and out of Carthage spatially. In Book III Aeneas
finally finishes his account of his arrival on Dido's shore. As he speaks
and Dido listens, she is increasingly captivated by his words and falls in
love with him through his account. So too in Book III Augustine finally
brings his wanderings to a pause in Carthage; like Dido, he too falls in
Jove. And he says that the object of his Jove is the idea or the account of Jove.
In Book IV of the Aeneid we read of the seduction in the grove, and
of Aeneas' reawakened desire to go to second Troy-Rome, though he only
knows of it indirectly. In order to leave Carthage he must deceive Dido;
she despairs and dies by her own hand. In Book IV of the Confessions
we read that Augustine too has moved on to seduction. He writes:
So for the space of nine years [in Carthage] I lived a life in which I was
seduced and seducing, deceived and deceiving, the prey of various desires.
�ZEIDERMAN
7
And later in Book IV Augustine, too, is moved by the rumor of Rome:
Why was it, Lord my God, that I decided to dedicate this book to Hiereus
who was an orator at Rome? I had never seen the man but had come to love
him because of this very great reputation.
It is at this point that Augustine's desire to go to Rome emerges. Both he
and Aeneas set out on their journeys in Book V. In Book VI, when Aeneas
is in the underworld viewing shadows, Augustine is struggling to break the
bonds of the Manicheans. That is, while Aeneas is seeing spirits without
their bodies, Augustine is grappling with the idea of spiritual substance.
These new ideas seem as insubstantial to Augustine as the shades of Hades
seem to Aeneas. And as in Hades Aeneas is both alive and dead, so too
Augustine in Book VI says:
My life in you I kept on putting off from one day to the next, but I did not
put off the death that daily I was dying in myself.
Aeneas leaves the underworld of shadow at the end of Book VI, but it
takes Augustine many more pages to be freed.
The Aeneid plays a role in the Confessions, but the Confessions are
not merely a duplication of a previous book. The Aeneid had twelve books,
the Cotifessions thirteen, and in many cases-crucial ones-the characters
and incidents of the Aeneid are displaced in the Confessions. The most
startling transformation is that of the story of Dido's abandonment, lament, and death. In Book V of the Confessions, it is Augustine's mother
who takes on the role of Dido, and it is there- not Book IV as in the
Aeneid- that he leaves her weeping in Carthage and that he acknowledges
the lie he told her. And both of these kinds of changes are the same. The
increase in the number of books and the displacement of incidents occurs
because there is another book which is also woven into Augustine's text.
That book is, of course, Genesis. The last books of the Confessions is
Augustine's treatment of Genesis, but again, a careful reading will show
that Genesis pervades the entire work. For instance, when Augustine
describes his mother in Carthage crying over his departure to Rome, he
speaks using the language of Genesis:
So she wept and cried aloud showing in herself the heritage of Eve.
Having begun to look at the Confessions in this way, we see that it could
not conceivably be an autobiography. The events are artfully recounted,
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
8
following patterns provided by the Aeneid and glosses provided by Genesis.
And although the end of Book IX seems to mark the end of the domination by the Aeneid and the beginning of the movement toward Genesis,
there is in fact at each moment an interplay between the two texts. The
Aeneid supplies the external circumstances of the account, the outer facts,
and Genesis fills what is internal. Now the Confessions begins to take on
the shape of a fiction, or even a poem- in Latin or Greek, something made.
We could continue in this way, admiring the subtlety of composition and
the attention to detail in this beautiful piece of rhetoric. At the end of it,
we could be vindicated in not viewing it as autobiography. We might then
feel inclined to include the Confessions on the reading list as a work great
in itself, not just as a work admired by those whom we take as great.
***
This little account was a sample of the lecture you might have heard
on the Confessions as a great poem. If we now adopt the perspective of
Descartes, we can both take what we've seen further and also see the Confessions from yet another angle. This perspective would have us focus on
the role of philosophy. Philosophy appears prominently in three books of
the Confessions. These are, first, Book VII, and then Books X and XL
In Book VII, where Augustine has just entered his final struggle with the
Manicheans, he discovers books of philosophy. Reading them is what first
leads him to the possibility of immaterial substance, not just as the negation of matter, or as a shadow in Hades, but •.s something positive and
distinct: as soul. Yet even the notion of soul is treated as merely theoretical.
At this time, both the books and their ideas are represented as things interesting but external. And in Book VII Augustine keeps his distance from
these books for another reason. He realizes there is one thing he could
not learn from them. He could not learn humility. In Book X philosophy
reappears, no longer as a study but as a way of life. Philosophy is now
Augustine's own activity. And the living philosophy effects a movement
similar to, but greater than, the movement effected by the reading of the
books. The activity of philosophy leads Augustine from the outside to the
inside. He begins to investigate his own soul, to search for traces of his
being.
The activity of philosophy in Books X and XI marks the transition
from the narrative of external circumstances, patterned on the Aeneid, to
the investigation into spiritual considerations, as seen in the treatment of
Genesis. So we see that for Augustine philosophy plays the role of the inbetween. It is the in-between of inside and outside, of flesh and spirit. The
�ZEIDERMAN
9
role of philosophy for Augustine- as the movement from outside to
inside- dictates its form. For, of all our faculties, it is not reason nor imagination nor sensation that first presents itself as taking the outside into the
inside. Rather, it is memory. And memory becomes the focus of Augustine's
investigation, which in turn opens the question of past, present, and future.
This focus on time in Book X sets the stage for the treatment of how to
construe the account of beginning-that is, Genesis-in Books XII and
XIII. The activity of philosophy in the Corifessions thus plays a role which
is the re-enactment of the role that his passive dependence on the books
of the Platonists played in Book VII.
Such would be the sketch of another lecture on the Corifessions as a
great book. This time the concern was with the content of the work itself
rather than with the way the work echoes other great works. And the
content-philosophy-is not in conflict with the poetry but has a definite
relation with it. For now, looking back on his use of the Aeneid, we can
see that Augustine, like Virgil, created a memory, or a kind of story. Poetry
has set the stage for philosophy and the philosophical pursuit of Book
X. What poetry presented, through books, for a passive audience,
philosophy makes one's own, through activity.
•••
I have presented two sketches for lectures on the greatness of the Confessions; the first took greatness to be something in the style or poetry;
the second took it to be something in the content or philosophy. These
two sketches together form a prelude for yet a third lecture, which takes
the third approach to greatness. It would begin with the status of the
reader- how should the reader read the Confessions? Is the reader passive,
as Augustine was in the Aeneid section, or active, as he was in the
philosophical exploration of memory and time? It is this aspect which probably most interested Hegel. It is his Phenomenology of Mind, of all the
books we read, that most requires the reader to supply, in response to one
section of the text, the transition to the next. The role of the reader of
the Confessions is comparable, though as different as the Hegelian dialectic is from sin. An example may bring out the course a reader undertakes
in the Confessions.
At the end of Book II, Augustine describes an incident which no reader
of the text ever forgets. When he was a boy, Augustine and a few friends
stole some pears from a neighbor's tree. The fruit- unlike that fated fruit
in the Garden-was neither pleasing to the eye nor good to eat. Indeed,
the boys threw the pears away. When he asks himself why he did this,
�10
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Augustine's only answer is that he did it for the sake of doing wrongthat he loved sin for its own sake. The whole description is so vivid that
the incident becomes a kind of drama for the reader. The reader witnesses
the wrongdoing. Thus the reader plays the role of spectator. He observes
a scene in which Augustine, and not himself, plays a part.
This in fact sets the stage for the next scene of the Confessions. At
the opening of Book Ill, when Augustine is a student in Carthage, he himself becomes enmeshed in being a spectator. He attends the theater, revelling in the grief, sadness, and joy that he witnessed there. He remarks again
and again that these spectacles are external and utterly remote from him,
displayed for him insofar as he is their witness. But was not this the reader's
relation to the story about the pears? What has happened here is that
Augustine has prepared a place for the reader, and then occupied that place
himself within the text.
There must be some distance between the author of a text and the
readers of that text. However, Augustine, by writing about himself, makes
that separation between reader and text as extreme as possible. And yet
we have just seen how Augustine, in making the reader play the part of
spectator, has started to diminish that very distance. Elsewhere in the text,
the reader adopts other roles -listener, judge, critic, admirer. At each step,
the separation between external reader and the text diminishes. This distance
vanishes completely at the end of Book IX. This is also exactly the place
that marks the culmination of the external circumstances supplied by
Virgil's Aeneid. There, at the death of Monica, Augustine's mother, Augustine's Dido, he prays. (How unlike Aeneas!)
And so by means of these Confessions of mine, I pray that my mother may
have her last request of me still more richly answered in the prayers of many
others besides myself.
In other words, Augustine invites the reader to join with him in prayer,
to do the very thing that Augustine is doing. The distance between Augustine and the reader, between Augustine and me, or between me and not-
me, dissolves if we join him in the activity of prayer.
Again, at the very same place, at the end of Book IX, Augustine leaves
the account of his external circumstances and goes on to philosophical
activity. And what is the topic of that activity? Memory. Memory- we all
have it, although what Augustine remembers is different from what I
remember, or from what you remember. And even within each memory,
the me and the not-me differ, since each of us is a different thing from
the content of our memory. The tension between reader and text, between
�ZEIDERMAN
11
me and Augustine, between me and not-me has been brought into the text
itself here at the end of Book IX. And that tension moves on into Book
XI and the treatment of time. The distinction between me and not-me
culminates in the placing of the self in time: now there is a difference between the me-l-was and the me-l-will-be.
And why is the distinction between what I am (or have been or will
be) and what I am not so very important? It is important because it is
the distinction between my soul and my sin. For Augustine, the soul is who
he truly is, and the sin, although in some way his, is what he is not. With
the treatment of time, we and Augustine finally face, in its clearest form,
the inheritance of the eating of the first fruit. For Adam and Eve, looking
for godhead, found sin, death, and time. Augustine invites us to pray with
him at his mother's death. If we join him in prayer at the end of Book
IX, and through that initial breaking of the barriers of self are able to
reach the question of time, then we are ready, at Book XII, to enter the
book of Genesis.
Thus the reader moves from passive to active. He was merely a passive
spectator at first, when he watched the drama of Augustine's life. If he
responds to the invitation to pray, then he becomes active. But the core
of that activity is precisely the difference he has just gone through- the
difference between action and passion, what I do and what happens to
me, or, in other words, between the me and the not-me.
The account you have just heard takes the previous accounts into a
new mode. For the poetry or fiction that became a stage for philosophy
is now so entwined with it that both the how and the what, and the text
and the reader, are revealed as temporary categories. Yet, though this account is about the reader, it does not essentially touch us. It is not about
us as individuals, but about us as the readers of this particular text. In
other words, this is still a lecture about the Confessions as a great book.
And in all such lectures, the audience, like Augustine and the reader in
the first nine books, is passive. The lecturer, who has spent time making
himself passively dependent on a book in studying it, reveals some of its
subtleties, and invites the listeners to undertake a similar relation. And
although a listener may leave the lecture and go on to study the text with
others, the effort suggested by the lecturer remains an individual and
solitary one.
So in all of these sketched lectures, the greatness of the book has been
the concern. The approaches that I have associated with Dante, Descartes,
and Hegel, do not involve me-as-an-individual, because their focus has
been the text itself. It has been with something which is not me.
•••
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
The other end of the spectrum from looking at the Confessions as a
great book is viewing it as my favorite book. Such a perspective is not
primarily focused on Augustine but on myself. When I view the Confessions as my favorite book, I don't stand on the ground of the text. Instead,
I consider the text on my own ground and as dependent on my activities.
And, although considering the book's greatness necessitated avoiding reading it as autobiography, considering the book as my favorite book is intimately connected with autobiography. In fact, it involves me in giving an
autobiographical account of myself. I do not have to surge into the story
of my life. But I do have to give an account-as one does with friends-of
what the Confessions has meant to me as an individual. It has meant many
things- the most suitable of which to address in a lecture has to do with
my life and thought, and the works of two modern philosophers: Wittgenstein and Heidegger.
Both these writers are from our world, a world where "reading" means
"reading silently." One or the other of them absorbs and influences many
of our contemporaries. Their work makes them as different as two thinkers
can be, and yet they display two significant similarities. For both, their
work falls into an earlier and later stage, the latter stage being an explicit
denial or rejection of the former, like Augustine's in the Confessions; and
both wished to end philosophy. Please don't misunderstand when I say
they wished to end philosophy. That does not mean they wished to end
thought, or seriousness, or responsibility. Rather they felt that philosophy
as a separate and autonomous activity, which they both associated with
Descartes, made one thoughtless, frivolous, and irresponsible.
These two were never casual about philosophy. At one time, there was
nothing more important, or more natural, for them to do. They did not
criticize philosophy from the outside; they were "insiders." Yet, in spite of
heroic efforts to end philosophy, they each failed- not just once, but twice!
My own thought has gravitated around their efforts because I agree with
them- I feel their desire and I feel their failure. And like them, I don't
feel it from the outside. Considering the One and the Many, being and
non-being, categories, language, and truth, was more important, and more
natural, than anything else for me. In fact, at one time it was life's breath.
Yet at times one recognizes that what comes naturally- one's gifts, one's
abilities, even one's breath itself-causes one to suffocate.
Though I had been drawn to Wittgenstein and Heidegger before that
crisis, my shortness of breath involved me with their work more and more
intimately. They were a kind of artificial respirator through which I could
consider my own task and theirs. If I scrutinized their work, I might be
able to avoid their failure. In those days I was like a chess player studying
the games of past grand masters, or like a pathologist doing an autopsy
�13
ZEIDERMAN
on a victim of the disease I myself was suffering from. However, the more
I thought about what they had attempted and failed, the more I realized
it was not their lack of cleverness and intelligence that was responsible.
In fact, quite the opposite. It was precisely their intelligence and cleverness
which caused for each not only one failure, but two. They failed because
they were geniuses and because their proposed audience was an elite group
of thinkers who could fathom the issue and comprehend certain works.
The result was not the end of philosophy at all. Instead, there was an increase of technical and arcane talk. And, because Wittgenstein and Heidegger were "canonized" as new philosophers, they gave rise to a grotesque
hagiography, developed and carried on by their own disciples, who should
have known better
The more I studied them, the more I agreed with them on their diagnosis
of the ailment. But even more pervasive than they supposed, the disease,
philosophy, appeared. Those infected were not just readers of certain books,
or practitioners of a certain philosophical school of thinking. The diseased
were not just the intellectual inheritors of Descartes, but in fact everyone
who lived in a Cartesian world-which is just a shorthand for the modern
world in which we all perform every act and gesture of our lives.
It was at this moment that I remembered the Confessions. Was not
Augustine similar to Heidegger and Wittgenstein? Was not he himself
burdened with his own gifts and was not he as skilled at technical rhetoric
and philosophy as anyone? He felt, as acutely as anyone, the desire for
philosophy and the hunger both for truth and for his own discovery of
that truth. And did he not only face these horrors but succeed in resolving
them in a work that was for everyone, not merely professors and intellectual technicians? And wasn't Augustine's indictment of philosophy similar
to my sense of why Heidegger and Wittgenstein failed? For their greatness
prevented them from seeing beyond their greatness. Augustine recoiled from
philosophy because it could never teach him humility.
It was because of these concerns and thoughts that I was drawn to the
Confessions. In my own concerns and confusions, I needed an ally and
a friend. And I didn't turn to the Confessions because he had achieved
what I was attempting. His concern and mine differ. Unlike Augustine,
the name I heard with my mother's milk was not Christ's. I was not a Christian and the task and need I felt were mine, not Christian. So I didn't read
him to learn "how-he-did-it." I read the Confessions as the struggles of
someone similar to but yet quite different from myself. In short, I read
it as autobiography, and it is as autobiography that it has been my favorite
book.
***
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
We have now looked at two ways of reading the Confessions-as a great
work and as my favorite work. As a great work I read him as a scholar
would, bringing to bear a knowledge of other books he uses, the responses
of other writers to his work, and what, for lack of a better word, I must
call history. It is because I am familiar witb the genesis of what we call
autobiography, that I realize that reading the Confessions as autobiography
would be remarkably anachronistic. Once I hold that tendency in check,
the book opens up, and I can become in some sense passive as I learn from
it. On the other hand, when I read the Confessions as my favorite book,
I read it quite differently. Then I read out of my own activity and I read
it precisely the way I guarded against before.
In the first case I read him out of knowledge, in the second case out
of need. Although both these ways of reading may involve other people,
they are primarily solitary. When I speak about the greatness of the Confessions, I'm telling you something. I may depend on the work of others
and even prompt you to find aspects of the work I had missed or gotten
wrong. I could, therefore, in telling you, also gain something in return.
But our relation to each other is essentially solitary. In sharing with you
remarks about the Confessions as my favorite book, we again can become
useful to one another. Your need may be similar to mine, and you too may
decide to turn to the Confessions. But again my reading the Confessions
was private and silent- just like the kind of reading Ambrose did one time
in Milan. Both of these silent ways of reading are important, even though
they are so different from one another. In fact from the perspective of one
kind of approach, the other is suspect. From the vantage point of my need
when I read Augustine as my favorite book, the greatness of the Confessions seems sterile, a mere diversion. From the perspective of my studies
of Angustine, reading the work for encouragement and consolation seems
undisciplined and self-indulgent. Yet, as I said, both approaches are important and even necessary.
The third approach to a text, where we are haunted by a text, overlaps
with these two familiar approaches and yet differs importantly from them.
In the third approach to the text we may start by reading the words silently
and privately, but we must go beyond this to reading publicly. What I mean
by public reading is an essentially cooperative activity. In this approach,
not only do we depend on one another, but knowledge and need are also
no longer held apart. They too merge toward one another. This occurs when
the Confessions begins to haunt us. Need stops being my particular need,
but it is rather a need we all feel, and the relevant knowledge is precisely
what we all lack. It is in this context that we no longer read as solitary
�ZEIDERMAN
15
explorers or solitary sufferers; au individual reads as preparation for what
reading makes necessary- a conversation.
In reading the Corifessions as a great book, I withheld viewing it as
an autobiography. In reading it as my favorite book, I read it as I would
read such a work written by one of our contemporaries. My expectation
in seeing such a work is that it is autobiographical and I read it as such.
Though I said both readings had a kind of legitimacy, nonetheless a tension and conflict exists within me between these readings. For is it or is
it not autobiography? Well, in one sense it is clear that it isn't. Yet it isn't
just not-autobiography. Our normal expectation on reading the Confessions, and the label it often carries on its book jacket, aren't just misplaced.
To view it without keeping in mind that a man Augustine wrote about his
life-and therefore that it is autobiography-would be to fathom its greatness but lose the life of the text. But imagine such a work being published
today. It might gain a few readers and perhaps even a sympathetic review
or two. But on the whole it would be viewed as silly, or pretentious, or
even irresponsible and absurd. It is a text that could not be written now,
in our present. It is a past text, but clearly it is not a dead text-nor is
it a text that is truly alive. The text is an in-between text-not entirely dead
nor entirely alive. It is a ghost.
I need to describe more clearly what such a ghost text is and how it
haunts. The Confessions haunts because its greatness- some aspects of
which l mentioned- seems incompatible with its form as autobiography.
Insofar as we penetrate the scope and intricacy of the work, the expectation of a roughly factual account of someone's past life becomes increasingly problematic. And as the work begins to look fictional, its truth
becomes suspect. Fictionalization, whether intentional or accidental, will
earn our criticism because fact and fiction have to do with truth and nottruth. The evidence, however, from the earlier part of this lecture, is that
Augustine did indeed shape his story in a way that we would call fictionalizing. If he is replacing fiction for fact, is he truthful? The answer seems
obviously to be no. But suppose that fact and fiction are different for
Augustine than for us- that truth is different for him than for us. By this
I don't mean that he holds truths different from the ones we hold, but
rather that he means something other than what we mean by the word
truth. What a strange suggestion- and yet it has already come up earlier
in this lecture. For to ask about what one means by truth will involve what
one means by self. And then, if a self is different, then the thing which
a self writes- an autobiography- will be different from any autobiographical essay or text we have ever read or written before. I think that this suggestion is right-that truth means something strange for Augustine. But
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THE ST JOHN'S REVIEW
though I say this, and though I can explain why I say this, I don't understand what it means.
Augustine reaches a conclusion about truth in his discussion of Genesis.
In pondering the meaning of its first line- In the beginning God created
heaven and earth- he considers various possibilities. In the end, he presents
his opinion: every truth any reader knows is contained in the first line of
Genesis. In trying to understand this startling suggestion, I come up with
analogies. Is the first line of Genesis like a mathematical axiom of such
power that in itself it contains all other truths? Or is it like a painting,
which presents to each viewer a personal and legitimate vision? Both of
these options are, however, implausible. They make more sense to us than
they would to Augustine. Perhaps to probe the meaning of the first line
one needs charity, or love, without which, says Paul, one's words are like
the clanging of a bell. This looks more promising. Love or Charity turns
sound into meaning and, one could say, into truth. But if charity gives
meaning to utterable things, and makes them true, then it seems that all
utterances would mean the same truth. As I say these words, you may feel
we have returned to Paul's clanging bell. Without having resolved this riddle
about the first line of Genesis, let me go on to another one. Augustine
states that if his task had been to write such a book, he would have wanted
to write it as Moses did. Is it possible that he did this very thing in writing
the Confessions?
Let us think about what we mean by confession. Usually confession
involves an acknowledgment of a past action, and a resolution with respect
to the future. Confession is a bridge, an inbetween like the ghost text, and,
as philosophy was for Augustine, between the past and the future. The
security of that bridge depends on the commitment of the confessor. Only
time can reveal that commitment. When the confession is made to another
person, then that person must risk entering into the confessor's future.
When the confession is made to God, there can be no secrets between the
confessor and God. In such a case, however, those outside the confession
know of it only what the confessor then chooses to make public.
With this much to guide us, can we say whether the Confessions are
addressed to us or to God? Augustine speaks often, and passionately, to
God, referring to him as "You." And, although it occurs less often, he does
speak both directly and indirectly to the readers. So the answer seems to
be that the Confessions are addressed both to us and to God. Now God
can certainly hear this confession and judge or forgive Augustine. But can
we? Were we his contemporaries, we would be able to forgive Augustine
some personal offense. But of course we are not his contemporaries; our
forgiveness would be irrelevant to him. But can we even presume to forgive
�ZEIDERMAN
17
him? For what? His recorded offenses are against God, not against us.
To say this another way, only God can judge or forgive. So although
Augustine is in part writing for us, he cannot be confessing to us. By con-
fessing to God in our presence, Augustine affords us the opportunity to
listen neither in judgment nor in forgiveness. What is the alternative to
listening in judgment or with forgiveness. It is to listen charitably.
Now remember what Augustine said about Genesis- that he would have
liked to have written a book like that. Somehow, for Augustine, Genesis
was written through or in charity. Somehow Moses was able to write such
a book. Augustine could not presume to reproduce this effort. But he has
been able to produce a text which can really be read only with charity.
If it is read without charity, the Confessions becomes the mere clanging
of a bell. We can try to disguise the clanging by reading it as a great book,
or as our favorite book. It is when we read it with charity that each of
its lines -like the first line of Genesis- becomes all of the truths we know.
It is when we read with charity that the differences between me and notme, between my truths and your truths, vanish.
***
Do you really understand what I'm saying about the Confessions? It's
hard for me to see how, because I don't. And it's not from ignorance or
lack of effort that we don't understand. If you feel that my words shimmer before you, tempting you, yet eluding your grasp, then you feel what
I feel. You are in the presence of a ghost, as I am. The Confessions are
a ghost which haunts. The Corifessions succeed at the task that Augustine
set for himself, or that was set for him. But what such a task is and how
it was fulfilled remains deeply impenetrable. And we do not penetrate it
by learning yet another ingenious aspect of the text, which might emerge
from reading still more carefully. For when a text begins to haunt, the locus
of attention is not the text, as it is when the text is a great book, nor
ourselves, as it is when the book is one I love or hate. In other words, we
are neither passive nor active. Rather, the locus of attention is what I can
best describe as what is in between us and the text- the gap between our
deepest expectations and those of the text.
Becoming clearer about this haunting in-between cannot be a solitary
activity. I need others- but not for their information or insights and not
for encouragement. That is, I need others neither as scholars nor as friends.
At this stage, I need others to help me see something about myself. To use
their help, and to offer help to them, my private and solitary reading must
give way to public reading. Our public reading, a modern reflection of the
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
sort of reading Augustine expected of Ambrose, is conversation. Our understanding of the Confessions as a great book or as my favorite book may
be enhanced by conversation; our facing it as a haunting text is absolutely
dependent on conversation.
A ghost text has two interrelated functions. It elicits the most salient
categories of our world. It also affords us the opportunity to think through
those deepest habits that have thoughtlessly determined our lives. So a ghost
text brings to the surface the true ghosts. These reside not in texts but in
ourselves. They are the haunting accretions of our past, our educations,
our social, economic, and political environments. It is in the presence of
the ghost text that these other ghosts come forth. To confront one means
to confront them all.
And so what do these considerations have to do with our activity here?
Great books are, as I once read on an envelope, great teachers. Great books,
as the story goes, are written by great minds- great thinkers- and understanding these books involves understanding these minds. But that requires
understanding the languages in which they wrote as well as understanding
the other works that they produced. In other words, this effort is scholarship. Some of us are better, some are worse at it. If our communal task
is scholarship, then our activities here are doomed to failure. For we read
only parts of books, in a variety of translations, and make the effort to
speak with one another about them in the strange format we call the
"seminar."
Another approach to the reading of great books is to read them because
they raise timeless concerns- the issues which have troubled or absorbed
humanity. Among these concerns we will find some that are of particular
importance to each of us. But if this is our approach, it is hard to grasp
why we read our particular texts to raise these issues. There are hundreds
of textbooks which have been written precisely to raise these timeless concerns. There, these concerns are called the problem of free-will, the problem of meaning, the problem of justice. And the result of this attitude is
what one would anticipate. Our texts would evaporate. Problems and issues
require solutions or stances. The result is an argument or debate among
those animated by a particular issue, with others who are unmoved having
nothing much to say. The text would become either loved or despised, depending on whether one agrees or disagrees with Plato's politics or St. Paul's
theology.
These two ways of reading are like those intermediate parts of Plato's
divided line where opinion and understanding are highlighted. Reading
for greatness belongs to the part of the line where understanding resides;
reading for the timeless issues belongs to the part where opinion resides.
�ZEIDERMAN
19
There is a next step in Plato where one struggles to move beyond hypotheses.
What I am describing also forces us to leave the realms of personal opinion
and scholarly understanding in order to face our most invisible assumptions and have the courage to explore them.
The relation to texts which I am calling haunting can make this possible.
The tension between my sense of meaning, language, truth, fiction, fact,
and life, and Augustine's in the Confessions, first forces me to attend to
what is so pervasive in me as to have been invisible. Because my sense of
these terms constitutes my world, the Confessions seem otherwordly, or
ghostly. So some translation is necessary. Yet it does not matter that these
texts are read in various translations, because the true effort of translating
begins once the ground opens between me and the text. It is also all right
that we read parts of works. For we are reading not authors or books, but
what I call texts. Authors and their corpuses- intact entities- give an artificial appearance of life. The temptation is very great to enter into them
and to substitute them for ourselves.
In this task of confronting a haunting text, each of us is essential.
Though ghosts are hard to see, they, like everything we see, may be seen
from different perspectives. What haunts me will overlap with but will not
be identical with what haunts you. And if I make that attempt to confront
these ghosts, and to exorcise them, then I will need your help. If you are
making that attempt, you will need mine. Descartes, making the effort
without help, so lost his sense of perspective that he looked for certainty
to hold onto, conflating it with knowledge.
So I need your certainties to risk exploring what has become uncertain
for me. I need your uncertainties to help reveal to me the fabric of my
own beliefs. The problems we face are not timeless and universal. They
are absolutely timely, because they are yours and mine. And the text is essential because without it thought is not sufficiently decisive- neither sufficiently radical nor sufficiently conservative. In my example, I would have
circled endlessly around questions of meaning, truth, and their relation
to thought. Only by allowing the Corifessions to haunt me am I enabled,
however dimly, to sense the possibility that these questions may concern
not thought but rather will, and might be answered not by my words but
by something that I need the entirely unphilosophical humility to hear.
These are disturbing prospects, which I have few notions how even to explore. As bare possibilities, they shatter my pride but in the same moment
hold open possibilities that my despair has foreclosed. The proper way to
address such matters can be neither monologue nor argument, even if at
times we do speak in those ways. Rather, speech must be confessional. Yet
one is not confessing for oneself alone nor for something that one has
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
done. Confession is the acknowledgment of a chasm between us and the
ghost-like text, and it is the commencement of the exploration of the ghosts
in us- those beliefs and opinions that we have inherited and that invisibly
chart the courses of our thoughts, our desires, and our lives. It is when
a text haunts us that we are both ready for and in need of conversation.
Every text we read here is such a haunting text. You can see that if you
ask yourself whether any of them could be written now. The answer probably is that more or less they all could. Insofar as they could be written
now, they are great or our favorites. Insofar as they could not be, they are
ghosts. Haunting texts afford us the opportunity to make visible these most
salient and elusive aspects of ourselves. Yet within this realm of exploration and change, these texts also can be great books, and we can love some
and recoil from others. In fact, the same work can be all of these. Everything
that I have said tonight I have in some measure learned from Augustine.
These remarks are Augustinian. That I am here to attempt this task, I owe
to the role the Confessions has occupied in my life as my favorite book.
Yet what I have learned and gained from them takes its true measure from
my response to those ghosts which this and other ghostly texts revealed
in me. And ultimately the ghostly and otherworldly quality of the text
makes me recoil from it. That recoiling also makes the Confessions one
of my least favorite texts. For though I learn from Augustine's ability and
subtlety, feel encouraged and comforted by the similarity of our purposes,
and see myself for the first time through our differences from him, ultimately I recoil because his world and his God are not mine.
�Human Being, Beast and God:
The Place of Human Happiness
According to Aristotle
and Some Twentieth-Century
Philosophers
Deborah Achtenberg
1
Early in the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle distinguishes human beings
both from plants and from the other animals. Later, he distinguishes us
from the god. How are we different? And, why are these differences important? We are different from plants and non-human animals, not to mention the simple bodies, because, unli!(e them, we can act. Fire must go up
and stones must go down; plants must move by nature to their end; the
other animals must follow their passions. We human beings, to the contrary, can act: we are more flexible; we are not bound by our feelings or
by our end; we move towards what we take to be good. We are different
from the god because, unlike the god's actions, ours is not guaranteed of
success but must, if it is to succeed, be in accord with something outside
ourselves. 1 That something Aristotle calls ntelos" or "end." He also calls
it "nature," "the mean," or "the good." We are in between, then, beings
which have a limit (a constitutive limit or telos) without having action,
Deborah Achtenberg is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Nevada-Reno. This lecture was delivered at St. John's College, Annapolis, in
February, 1988.
21
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
and the one being which has action without limitation: the god is a te/os
without having one; the god's aim, like ours, is for the good; but, unlike
us, the god's every aim meets its mark.
These differences are important because, according to Aristotle,
something's good is its completion and completions of things different in
kind are themselves different. Happiness is the human good, according
to Aristotle. Therefore our happiness will be what completes beings of our
kind, not what completes plants, the other animals, or the god. Human
beings, he says, are distinguished by reason- or logos-based action; every
action is aimed at something believed to be good; but our beliefs may be
false or the relevant ones may fail to inform our passions. The good, then,
is the completion of this our defining function or activity (ergon); it is
the completion, or, we might say, full development, of both intellect and
feeling so that intellect hits the truth and informs feeling. Such developed
intellect and feeling is called virtue. The good according to Aristotle is a
life of activities in accordance with virtue; it is, in other words, a life in
which developed capacities for intellect and feeling flourish.
Recognition that the human good is relative to the human kind is important, then, because it enables us to avoid two common mistakes: on
the one hand, the supposition that we are less than we are and, on the
other, the supposition that we are more. For we tend to reduce ourselves
to the level of plants and the other animals and, at the other extreme, to
raise ourselves to the level of a god; sometimes we give up action and content ourselves with the feeling of the moment, whatever it may be, and
other times we believe our action, just because we choose it, is good. We
give in to our fear, for example, because it is painful to overcome it; or,
we convince ourselves that what we fear should be feared even when the
evidence shows otherwise. We turn in a co-worker we envy, for another
example; then we forget our envy and convince ourselves that it was
righteousness instead.
Contrary to our suppositions, however, we are not the same as the other
animals nor as the god; we can neither cease to follow some logos, nor
in general act successfully without following a logos well. We get angry,
for example, when we think we have been slighted; but our belief may be
false, and if it is, then the anger will disrupt a friendship. We eat, for another
example, because we believe that to do so is pleasant or nourishing, but
if that belief is false- because, say, we've eaten too much- we will suffer
discomfort or pain. Our anger is not like the instinctive spiritedness of
a wolf;' instead, it results from a belief. Our eating is not like the natural
movement of plants, which must send their roots down into the soil and
their leaves up towards the sun; it is governed, instead, by a belief- the
�ACHTENBERG
23
belief that the food in front of us is pleasant or nourishing. Our actions
are, whether we think so or not, governed by reason (logos); they are not
mere motions; nor are they without external limitation and guide. We do
not move by nature or by instinct (pathos) to the good; instead, we move
towards what we think is good.
For these reasons, human happiness- the full development of our
species-given capacity for intellect and feeling-is not easy. For full development of intellect and feeling is not by nature; instead, it is an accomplishment (ergon).' Nor, however, is it against our nature. Aristotle is neither
a romantic nor a Victorian. He is in between those who would have us
follow our every feeling, and those who would have us act against themthose who would say "if it feels good, do it" and those who would say
"if it feels good, don't do it." For we do not attain happiness by nature,
nor do we attain it by thwarting our nature. Instead, we attain it by developing our nature, and when we develop it sufficiently, what feels good and
what is good are one and the same. This is freedom. 4 For freedom is not
doing what you want, unless what you want and what benefits you are
one and the same. Nor is freedom lack of limitation; instead, it is awareness
of beneficial limitation and accord with it. Such a state, however, is rare.
For the acquisition of first-stage development of our species-given capacity for intellect-informed passion and action- that is, the acquisition of
virtue-is not easy: anyone, for example, can get angry; but to get angry
at the needed time, to the needed extent, at the needed person, and so forth,
is an ergon- an accomplishment, a piece of work. 5
But we don't want to work. Instead, we want to be at work. We don't
want to try, but to do; we don't want to attempt, but to achieve our aim.
What we want, in Aristotle's terms, is energeia or entelecheia, where
energeia means activity or being-at-work and entelecheia means completeness, being-at-end or full development. Unlike plants and the other animals,
we can act; that is, we can both devise and follow plans to achieve full
development; unlike the god, however, our action need not achieve full
development, for our plans sometimes are bad, and sometimes, though
good, do not inform our passions and thus motivate our aims. Human
beings can act, but our action is not "by itself." It succeeds only if it is
in accordance with something else, specificially if it is in accord with virtue. Compared to human beings, then, plants and the other animals are
passive; they cannot act, but can only move. Compared to the god, however,
we are passive. The god is the only being whose action is in no way responsive; it is "by itself'' activity. Our action is in part responsive; it is activity
in accordance with virtue.
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THE ST JOHN'S REVIEW
What, however, is activity in accordance with virtue responsive to? In
general, virtue, whether it be the virtue of a plant, an animal, or a human
being, whether it be a virtue of the body or of the soul, is developed capacity. Simple capacity is the capacity to experience feelings or engage in
actions of a certain kind; developed capacity, or virtue, is the disposition
to experience feelings of that kind or engage in actions of that kind only
when they are beneficial or enabling, and not when they are harmful or
destructive. 6 Virtue, in other words, is the disposition for the good- a
disposition to experience feelings and engage in actions which are beneficial
or enabling and not those which are harmful or destructive.'
Human virtue-virtue of character at any rate-is, according to Aristotle, a disposition to choose the mean. Speaking about the mean,
therefore, must be a manner of speaking about the good. For all virtues
are dispositions for the good. The mean is an analogy taken from
mathematics. If ten is too much and two is too little then six is the mean.
Aristotle is not, however, attempting to rnathematize human affairs. In-
stead, he is using a mathematical analogy in the realm of the qualitative.
He does so also in the Metaphysics: telos, Aristotle's fundamental discovery,
is a qualitative intensifier. To be good is not to be of a certain quality or
kind; instead, it is to be a complete or fulfilled one of a kind, or, simply,
to be complete: a lyre-player and a good lyre-player are not different in
kind, nor are a kitten and a cat.
In the non-mathematical realm of feelings and action, regarding, for
example, courage, recklessness is the excess, cowardice the defect, and
courage the mean. Consider a particular action, such as rushing ahead
in battle. To rush ahead when rushing ahead will lead to disaster is the
excess; the one who does this is reckless. To refrain from rushing ahead
when rushing ahead would lead to victory is the defect; the one who does
this is cowardly. Both to rush ahead when appropriate and to refrain from
rushing ahead when refraining is appropriate is to achieve the mean; the
one who does this is courageous. Consider also a feeling, such as confidence. To feel confident when confidence is harmful- about a rash plan
of attack, for example-is the excess; the one who does this is reckless.
To lack confidence when confidence is enabling- about a well thought out
plan of attack, for example- is the defect; the one who does this is a
coward. Both to feel confidence when appropriate and lack it when its lack
is appropriate is the mean; the one who does this is courageous. It is this,
that is, virtue, which Aristotle calls an accomplishment or piece of work
(ergon): not simply to rush ahead nor simply to retreat, since any normal
person has the capacity to do either, but to rush ahead or retreat when
needed, as needed, where needed, as the logos directs for the sake of the
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beautiful; not simply to feel confidence nor simply lack it, but to feel confidence or lack it when either is what is needed for the end at hand. The
human being with virtue, then, is disposed to choose the mean; that is,
to experience certain feelings and engage in certain actions only when,
where, and as they are needed. The needed is what is needed for a certain
end; it is whatever is instrumental to or constitutive of it. 8 The needed is
the same as the good.
Choice, too, makes reference to the good. We are different from beasts
and from the god because we can choose and thus act on our choice.
Choice, according to Aristotle, is not mere desire; instead, it is desire which
has been informed by deliberation; if not prevented, it issues in action.
Choice distinguishes us from beasts, as well as from children, in this way:
they simply act on their desires, while we can choose; that is, we can act
on deliberation-informed desires. Deliberation is a kind of thought
(dianoia); specifically, to deliberate is to reflect on which action or state
of affairs is conducive to one of our ends; 9 it presupposes phron"i!sis or
practical wisdom, the perception of some action or state of affairs as one
of our ends. (For example, through phronesis we discover that studying
with a certain person is conducive to wisdom, for we judge this person
to be imaginative and able to stimulate our imagination; then we deliberate
about the means needed to be able to study with him- housing, food,
employment, and so forth)." Since the good, according to Aristotle, is
end- that is, completion, fulfillment, or full development- choice makes
reference to the good. 1b choose is to desire and, if not prevented, do, what
one takes to be good.
Now we have seen that all the important elements of Aristotle's definition of human virtue make reference to telos or the good; for a disposition is a developed capacity, that is, a capacity for the good; choice is not
just desire but deliberation-informed desire, and to deliberate is to see particulars as conducive to an end; deliberation presupposes practical wisdom,
that is, the perception of some action or state of affairs as an end; and
the mean is just that feeling or lack of feeling, just that action or abstention from action, which is needed by some end. All of this is important
because human happiness, that is, the human good, is the full development of this specifically human, not animalic or divine, virtue: neither
beasts nor the god have deliberation or practical wisdom. Human virtue
is developed human capacity; human happiness is a life in which human
virtues flower or flourish; it is a life of activities in accordance with human
virtue.
Consider, then, the place of human happiness. It is in between that
of the beasts and that of the god. We can consider it by considering
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
pleasure. For, importantly, Aristotle's definition of pleasure and his definition of happiness are fundamentally the same." Pleasure, according to
Aristotle, is unimpeded activity of a disposition in accordance with nature.
Since it is unimpeded, it, like happiness, requires virtue. But virtue, though
it is in accordance with nature, is not simply by nature. Instead, it requires
instruction and habituation over the course of a life. Hence, as I've said,
it is not easy.
Keep in mind that the god, according to Aristotle in the Metaphysics,
has the pleasure all the time which we can share only some of the time.
Now we can see why: because the god's activity always has its end, while
our activity attains its end only if it is done in accordance with virtue.
Sometimes it is done in accordance with virtue, but much of the time it
is not. Often we make an effort, but our effort is impeded. Often we try,
but do not do. We try to run the marathon, but our feet get in the way.
We try to play the lyre, but our fingers get in the way. We try to do a
mathematical proof, but instead hit a dead end, when our current stage
of mathematical capacity reaches its limit, or, instead, when we find
ourselves reflecting on the rumbling of our stomach, or about someone
we love, or, worse, someone we hate. Successful activity- energeia- is not
by nature. It is a piece of work, an accomplishment, an ergon. Or, at least,
acquiring the developed capacity and necessary conditions for its exercise
is a piece of work. Once those have been acquired, the actual exercise of
virtue is not work- it is being-at-work, or energeia. Then we don't try, but
do. Then, for a short period of time, our every aim meets its mark. Our
feet are where they are needed when they are needed. Our fingers hit the
right note at the right time. We think, and actually engage the required
object. Then our activity seems, and in a sense is, effortless. For then we
are acting in accord with our developed skills or intellectual capacities.
Virtue of character (ethike aret{j) is required as well, so that our loves and
hates, our fears and desires and wishes, do not get in the way- do not impede us- and, in addition, so that we see, and thus desire, what the situation calls for.
In addition, intellectual virtue and virtue of character require instruction and habituation- instruction for the intellect and habituation for
character- and these require that we are raised in an appropriate city: one
with sufficient land for food, with sufficient trade for necessary goods,
with the right size for easy governance, with an appropriate balance between the rich and the poor to prevent faction, with an appropriate regime
for us to utilize the character of the people, with a sufficient military to
avoid war or win it and so to remain as much as possible at peace, with
the right aims to develop our human capacities. All of these are the condi-
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tions of our happiness- of our full self-development, both of yours and
mine, both in Aristotle's time and, as I think at any rate, in ours. 12
Of course, these conditions do not always come about, and even if they
do come about largely, they do not come about completely. Societies are
not perfect; they develop some people's capacities, while leaving the
capacities of others fallow. Even if they do develop your capacities, your
capacities are not limitless. Some are easy to develop; others are much
harder; and the development is preceded by its lack. Pleasure, since it requires virtue, is not easy; instead, it is an accomplishment (ergon).
It is because pleasure" is not easy that we tend to confuse ours with
that of the beasts and with the pleasure accompanying the functions we
share with plants. For these are easier than the pleasures intrinsic to
developed, that is, virtuous, activity. For example, we confuse bodily
pleasure with pleasure entire since it is intense and therefore easy. Bodily
pleasures, of course, are good, but bodily pleasure is the better part of
pleasure only for the other animals. So, too, it is because of the difficulty
of acquiring the pleasure intrinsic to virtuous activity that we seek extrinsic ones, the ones Aristotle calls superficial ornaments. 14 Each virtuous
or unimpeded activity has its own intrinsic pleasure; but activities are very
often left incomplete or unfinished, when we don't have the time or the
resources or the capacity. This is displeasing, frustrating, or even painful;
frustrated activities lack their intrinsic, or natural, pleasure. Then we find
relief in bodily pleasure, since it is easy, and expels our pain. Or we seek
extrinsic pleasures, like excess food or drink, or, for us, television or movies
or video games, since our ordinary activities cannot find their completion.
We are not gods. Our activities often miss their mark. So we seek the
pleasures we share with the other animals, or the pleasure we get from the
activities we and the other animals share with the plants, the vegetative
activities related to growth and procreation, or whatever is largely passive;
we drink something, stuff ourselves, turn on the VCR, and get close; we,
as we say, "veg out." And all of this is because human happiness is in
between- in between that of the beasts and that of the god; in between
non-action and action which is at every moment successful. We can act,
but our action, to be successful, must be responsive, responsive in just the
right way to the object of our action. When we do the needed act, at the
needed time, in the needed place, in the needed amount, and with the
needed aim, then we succeed. When we do so, then we are free, since we
are not impeded on any side, and we are pleased and happy; but to be
able to do so, as we have seen, is a serious, and difficult, accomplishment.
***
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
We are led back, then, to Aristotle's notion of end or telos. Telos means
end or goal, completion, fulfillment, or full development. It is one of the
four causes, the four answers to the question why, discussed in the
Metaphysics. It is Aristotle's fundamental discovery. There is efficient cause,
or the source of motion; material cause, or the out of which; formal cause
or what he calls by the unusual phrase the "what was being"; and final
cause-telos-or the "for the sake of which."
How shall we understand te/os? We can see how necessary it is to
understand it, if we are to understand what we have done so far, since each
of the parts of Aristotle's definition of virtue presupposes it. By te/os,
Aristotle means, I propose, constitutive limit. As the edges of a table not
only limit the table, but constitute it, so virtue not only limits our activity,
but allows it to be, fully, what it is. Tete are contrasted to limits that are
not constitutive, but destructive or disabling: split the table with an ax and
the new limits will not constitute, but destroy, the table; engage the enemy
recklessly and you will not engage the enemy at all, but be defeated by
him. Limits differ; not all limits are destructive or harmful; others are
beneficial. Those which constitute an action or thing are beneficial; they
are its tete.
Consider, for further illustration, an example from a skill, namely, playing the lyre. Is putting your finger on the string constitutive of lyre-playing?
Sometimes it is, and sometimes it is not. Sometimes pressing the string
is lyre-playing; other times, it makes noise. In running, sometimes leaning
forward will enable you to run -will be a constituent of running-and other
times it will cause you to fall. Sometimes speeding up will enable you to
run and other times slowing down will do so. When you fall, you cease
to run, so in that case, leaning back or speeding up, leaning forward or
slowing down, is not constitutive of, but destructive of, running. When
it is the cause of continued running, it is not only that, but also a constituent of running; it is part of the tetos. Or, put another way, then it is
a constituent of what it is to be running.
This latter phrase shows the connection between form and end in Aristotle's metaphysics, and explains why he uses the unusual coinage, the "what
was being" (to ti en einat), as a substitute for form. The "was," here, is
an imperfect, and commentators disagree on just how to take it. They agree,
however, that it refers to repeated action. I propose that the "what was
being" means what something was being all along. When you leaned forward and fell, your intent or aim was not to fall, but was to lean forward
and run. Leaning forward was intended to be running; but, sadly, or
sometimes comically, it was not. When you leaned back and ran, your intent was fulfilled or completed; your leaning back was running all along;
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it was a constituent of running; running is what leaning back, along with
the other movements made, was being."
Another way to understand telos is as the completion or development
of potential. Virtue, for example, is first-stage development of potential.
When I have, for example, the intellectual virtue Aristotle calls "science"
or episteme, the capacity to demonstrate or give arguments through the
study of logic or analytics, I have developed my latent capacity to demonstrate. The second, or more complete, development of that potential is to
activate that developed potential, that is, to demonstrate. The progression
is capacity, developed capacity or virtue, activity. But this way of understanding telos is just another example of the first way. That is, it is another
example of telos as what constitutes something or as what enables it to
be what it was being, all along, in potential. Acquisition of virtue, Aristotle says in the Physics and De Anima, is not alteration. It is not to become
different or to change kind, though it may involve this. Instead, it is to
develop or complete the kind that something already is.
Telos, then, is not a kind. To talk about telos or completion is not to
distinguish things into kinds or categories, but to distinguish potential from
development within kinds or across them." Tete, in fact, may be very different in kind, as we can see from the example of courage, where the telos
in one case may be to run forward, and in another case to run around,
and in another to retreat. Just as in playing the lyre the telos may sometimes
be to depress the string and other times to release it, so on the battlefield
courage may sometimes require running forward, and other times running
back. Telos, then, is relative- not, as we would say, subjective, but relative
to the context and to kind." As Aristotle puts it, completions of things
different in kind are themselves different.
Since good, according to Aristotle, means te/os, good, too, according
to him, is relative-again, not subjective, but relative to context and to
kind. The Ethics is about the human good and so, as we've seen, it is relative
to the defining human kind or activity (ergon). Moreover, as previously
stated, it is easy for us to misidentify our good with that of plants and
beasts or with that of the god. We might think that the good life is the
life of pleasure, as Aristotle points out in Nicomachean Ethics 1.5. But
that is not the good life for us- not, of course, that pleasure is not good;
pleasures are good, Aristotle says, and the best life and the most pleasant
life are one and the same. But the life of pleasure, by which he means the
life guided by desire alone, is not our good; for our desires do not always
guide us toward what's needed. As our good is not the same as that of
plants or the other animals, so, as we've seen, it is not the same as the
god's. For the god's only good is himself; while the good for us, until we've
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
achieved it, is outside ourself. The god is always complete, while we are
not. We can constrast the beasts, human beings, and the god in this way:
the beasts have a te/os or constitutive limit, but cannot act, since they lack
choice; the god has (or is) activity, but has no telos or constitutive limit,
since the god is at every moment already complete; and human beings are
in between. We have both action and a telos: we are neither as fixed as
the other animals, nor as free as the god; we can act, but our action, in
order to be successful, must be the realization of a constitutive limit.
2
So far I have described Aristotle's account of the place of human happiness in between that of the beasts and that of the god and shown how
that account rests on his metaphysics- on his understanding of human
nature and its full development, and on full development, or te/os, in
general, as the guide and constitutive limit of our aims. I find Aristotle's
account largely persuasive; I do not find the standard objections to it
decisive. As may have been evident to you, however, I have not described
Aristotle's account as he would describe it. Instead, my account of Aristotle
has a point of view. I see Aristotle's ethics from the standpoint of the difficulty of happiness- the difficulty of achieving a life in which developed
capacities for reason-informed passion and action flourish. Specifically,
I see it from the standpoint of the difficulty of achieving this kind of happiness in modern individualist society, a society in which the various con-
ditions which together are required for a fulfilled human life are compartmentalized, and we are thus prevented from attaining our aims-work is
separated from family, politics from business, study from religion and
psychology, and so forth. In addition, I speak from a standpoint which
might be called liberal, or even left, since it begins with the assumption
of the equal importance of full development for all" and with the belief
in the capacity of the group to raise each of its members to a higher level,
their desires to claims of justice," and their capacities to a higher level
of development or virtue. 20
In the twentieth century, two philosophers have gone back to Aristotle's conception of the place of human happiness, the political philosopher
Leo Strauss and the moral philosopher Alasdair Macintyre. Of these two,
Strauss's point of view is closer to that of Aristotle and Macintyre's is closer
to the one which I have expressed, while Strauss recognizes, as I do, the
importance of a metaphysical basis for an Aristotelian account and
Macintyre does not. In what follows, I will give a brief sketch of each one's
return to Aristotelian ethics and, in so doing, begin to make the case for
a return like my own, to a liberal, but metaphysical Aristotelian ethics.
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In "An Epilogue" (1962), Strauss argues, against then contemporary
political science, for the Aristotelian belief in the irreducibility of human
nature. Man, he says, is a being sui generis, not reducible to any other kind.
Contemporary political science reduces man- to a being without latitude;
to a being for whom every stimulus is a value. But man is not such a being. Instead, man is a being distinguished from every other known being
because it posits values. A desire does not make the desired thing a man's
value; for a man may fight his desire or, if overpowered by his desire, he
may blame himself. This shows that the desire does not make something
his value; only choice does this, where choice is not the choice of means
to pregiven ends, but the choice of ends- the positing of ends, or, rather,
the positing of values." By reducing man, Strauss says, the new political
science strengthens the worst proclivities of democracy. "By teaching the
equality of all values, by denying that there are things which are intrinsically high and others which are intrinsically low as well as by denying
that there is an essential difference between men and brutes, it unwittingly
contributes to the victory of the gutter."" These are stirring words. They
are addressed to that within us that seeks something noble, to the ineradicable desire for the high, and they speak about what happens to that
desire and to us when man is reduced to less than he is.
In "Philosophy as Rigorous Science and Political Philosophy" (1969),
Strauss addresses the same problem, this time not in political science but
in contemporary philosophy. He divides then contemporary philosophy
into its two still predominant groups, despite name changes and changes
in views: the positivists and the existentialists, where positivism is the belief
that only scientific knowledge is genuine knowledge and existentialism the
belief that all principles of knowledge and action are historical (where by
"principle" he means "ground" or "basis"). Though these two schools seem
quite different, Strauss points out, they are united by their common rejection of political philosophy. Each rejects the knowability of the good,
positivists because the good cannot be known scientifically, existentialists
because even science is just one form among many of viewing the world,
all equally groundless, all of equal value. The positivists, then, like the new
political scientists discussed in "An Epilogue," would make us less than
we are, for their rejection of the good implies the impossibility of choice.
The existentialists make us more than we are, for though they accept the
importance of choice and action and believe that human beings posit values,
they believe such values cannot be known- that they are the result, instead,
of groundless human choice or of historical fate. Existentialism arises,
Strauss says, out of a desire for a code to live by when the ideals of wisdom
and of rigorous science are separated; that is, when our desire for the good
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
is accompanied by the belief that the good cannot be known. Heidegger
is the existentialist Strauss has in mind; he is the center, Strauss says, not
part of the flabby periphery, of the existentialist movement."
As a young man, years earlier, Strauss had already noted this difficulty
in Heidegger's teachings- the problem which arises when the ineradicable
desire for the high is severed from metaphysical or theological ground.
Heidegger, he sensed, "spoke of something of the utmost importance to
man as man."24 He aimed at something important or serious, we might
say. Nonetheless, "What I could not stomach was his moral teaching, for
despite his disclaimer, he had such a teaching. The key term is resoluteness
without any indication as to what are the proper objects of resoluteness."25
It was this moral teaching, Strauss says, which led Heidegger later to side
with the Nazis.
Strauss saw the same difficulty in the teachings of the political philosopher, Carl Schmitt, in the thirties." Schmitt opposes the neutrality of
the modern state, with its low goals (humanitarian-pacifist morality,
comfort-guided economics, or non-controversial technology). In its place
he puts the affirmation of what he calls "the political as such," understood
as the division of human beings into fighting groups-friend-foe groups
always ready to fight. Against neutralist modernity, neutral because
humanitarian and pacifist in character, Schmitt poses the non-neutrality
of the fighting group which, because its members are ready to risk death,
is not neutral, but affirms.
Strauss notes two difficulties with Schmitt's affirmation of non-neutral
politics. First, it is as neutral as the liberalism it opposes. He calls it "liberalism preceded by a minus-sign,''27 or the "affirmation of fighting as such,
regardless of the object of fighting":"
Whereas the liberal respects and tolerates all "honestly held" convictions,
so long as these respect the legal order or acknowledge the sanctity of peace,
whoever affirms the political as such, respects and tolerates all "serious" convictions, in other words, all decisions leading up to the real possibility of war. 29
Second, Strauss notes that Schmitt's affirmation of the political, that
is of fighting, as such, is not consistent, since sometimes he affirms it not
as such, but on the basis of the moral, where morality is understood not
as humanitarian-pacifist but as affirmation of the serious over against the
reduction of life to mere entertainment, to a life, as Strauss characterizes
it, in which man has forgotten what counts.'" Still, though, Strauss says,
even this affirmation of the moral remains neutral. For Schmitt does not
answer the question, what are the proper objects of fighting, or, more
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generally, the question, what is right. That is, Schmitt rejects the neutralization of human beings, but puts groundless affirmation in its place.
To find an answer to the question what is right or good, to the question what is the proper object of our resoluteness, of our ineradicable desire
for the high, Strauss turns to the pre-modern- to the classical philosophy
especially of Plato and Aristotle and also to the Bible; to Athens, as he
calls it, and to Jerusalem, each offering an object for our aims, though
one is found through reason and the other not through reason but through
revelation." According to both, man is justified when he is in accord with
something outside himself: justice is compliance with the natural order
according to classical philosophy; righteousness is obedience to the divinely
established order according to Bibilical religion.
Strauss turns back to these because he believes that what is needed cannot be found in modernity. For, according to him, modernity is united in
its progressive rejection of value. It is, therefore, characterized by its progressive abandonment of that the positioning of which distinguishes human
beings from the other animals. Modernity has, according to Strauss, three
waves: a first wave which, I suggest, we can identify with the first mistake
pointed out by Aristotle, the reduction of the irreducible human kind to
the status of plants and non-human animals; a third wave, which can be
identified with the second mistake pointed out by Aristotle, the error of
raising ourselves to the level of gods; and a transitional second stage, containing elements of both. The first stage he identifies variously with Hobbes
or Machiavelli and the rise of modern science; the second with Rousseau;
and the third with Nietzsche. Machiavelli turns us away from the "ought"
to the "is"; that is, from how one ought to live, to how one does live;
Rousseau identifies the "ought" and the "is," since, according to him, there
is no appeal from the existent general will to some principle or ground
beyond and constitutive of it; and Nietzsche abandons the "is" for the
"ought," or at least for value, since, according to him, all truths are values
and all values are created- not discovered, but created.
Modern science, like Machiavelli, is part of the first-wave move away
from value; for it, too, is founded ou the rejection of the classical belief
in natural ends: ends towards which we and all other beings are directed;
ends specific to each specifically different nature, ours being determined
by our rational and social nature. These ends give all beings, including
human beings, a place within the whole. Man has a place in an order he
did not originate; he has power, but his power is limited; he cannot overcome the limitations of his own nature. 32 Modern science leaves us with
a mechanistic science of nature, thus rendering the question of human ends
always a problem.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
The philosophy of late modernity is no better; for it results in historicism. Hegelian historicism suggests that history is in its final decline,
so it cannot provide the objects to guide our aims. Non-Hegelian historicism
provides us with two choices, a universalist historicism represented by
Marx's vision of a mobile, not deeply rooted, world society dedicated to
the full development of everyone, and a particularist historicism represented
by Nietzsche's anti-egalitarian vision of the man of specialization who is
subject to harsh limitation, against the man who follows goal after goal,
in aimless "full development." The former is the liberal ideal Schmitt rightly
rejected. The latter is akin to the ideal which Schmitt proposed and Strauss
rejected. The one is universalist and peaceful; the other is particularist and
warlike. Each, as we've seen, is neutral, and so cannot provide us with proper
objects. We could be stronger about the particularist ideal and say that
its desire for the high, severed from metaphysical or theological ground,
easily becomes the rule of muscle, or blood, or land. Strauss did have this
in mind about Heidegger, whose unguided resoluteness, according to him,
led directly to his siding with the Nazis in 1933, as I have mentioned before.
Whether the same could be said of Schmitt's affirmation of the serious
understood as warlike and particularist and his becoming a Nazi, I do not
know.
What's needed, then, is a principle or basis on which to judge- between
particular and universal, war and peace. Plato gives us an example of this
in the Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito. The principle- the proper object
of our aims- is the good, understood as wisdom, or human wisdom, and
the apparent means to it, namely, philosophy or dialogue. Socrates does
not commit the injustice of allowing Crito to steal him out of prison. Why
not? Not out of obedience to Athens simply because it is his own. We know
from the Apology that Socrates would disobey Athens in one case, namely,
if he was forbidden by the city to philosophize. Not because Athens is
simply just, that is, in accord with a universal principle, as we know it is
not from the conviction and sentencing of Socrates. Instead, because
Athens, though imperfect, is not wholly bad, but comes close to justiceSocrates was raised and educated in Athens, and allowed to philosophize
for many years. The Crito and Euthyphro remind us that Socrates stands
between affirmation of the particular and of the universal. Crito affirms
the particular- his friendship group, of which Socrates is a member- and
cannot see a more universal entity, Athens and its laws, as the proper object of his affirmation. Thus Socrates must personalize the laws- make
them more particular-to motivate Crito's obedience. Euthyphro, on the
other hand, affirms the universal. In the name of piety he is prosecuting
his father for allowing a killer to die in a ditch. A workman killed a
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workman and Euthyphro's father left him too long in a ditch, where he
died. There seems something inhuman about Euthyphro's unconcern about
the particular-his unconcern about his father-apparently for the sake
of a universal principle, justice. Crito can only help his friends and harm
his enemies; Euthyphro, apparently, stands by a principle no matter who
is hurt. Socrates stands in between: he helps Athens, his own, not simply
because it is his own, but because it is in many important respects, though
not in all respects, good. Awareness of the good, then, not only provides
a basis for judgment; it also is not "absolutist" but allows for ambiguity.
The things around us, as Socrates says in the Republic, tumble about between being and not being, in this case between being and not being just.
According to Aristotle, too, the good provides a basis on which to
judge- to judge regimes or forms of govermnent and to decide between
war and peace. Just regimes are distinguished from unjust ones not, as
we might say, by the consent of the governed, but by rulers who rule not
for their own but the common good, where the good is understood by him,
as we've seen, as a life in which developed capacities of intellect and
character flourish. Without an understanding of a substantive human good
we are left with affirmation of limitation as such or the claim that all limitation is dominance, that is, that all limitation is to be opposed; but opposition to norms ought to be for the sake of something; it ought to be for
the sake of norms which can lead to human development, to constitutive,
not harmful or destructive, norms.
The good also provides a basis for deciding between war and peace:
war is not for its own sake; it is not the end. We would call a man a murderer
who made enemies of his friends for the sake of war, Aristotle says in the
Ethics. Instead, war is for the sake of peace. Peace, too, is not the end,
however; it is itself guided by another criterion, namely, the good life,
understood, again, as a life in which developed human capacities flower."
3
What I have sketched here is Strauss's account of the two schools of
contemporary philosophy, divided by their estimation of human action,
but united by their rejection of the good and by their common origin in
the progressive rejection of the good by modern philosophy and science.
The rejection has three waves: the first turns from the "ought" to the "is";
the second identifies them; and the third replaces the "is" with the "ought"
or at least with value. The result is historicism of two sorts, one affirming
the universal and peace; the other the particular and war. What's needed,
instead, is a principle or ground for deciding between these, the principle
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which Biblical religion called god and pre-modern philosophers called the
good.
Strauss's writings are an invaluable series of reflections on this modern
trend along with interpretations of the ancient writings which counter it.
His writings have not until recently been much considered by American
professional philosophers, however. There are a number of reasons for this
neglect. I suppose a principal one is simply that Strauss's philosophical
origins are in Continental Europe rather than Britain. American philosophy,
as a discipline, has been and still is principally Anglo-American in content and style, despite its current interest in themes which derive principally from Nietzsche. A second reason is Strauss's perceived political
conservatism. 34
It is right, I believe, to call Strauss a "conservative," but important to
see what that might mean. His is not the extreme conservatism which affirms the particular as such (whether it be race, land, or tradition) or war
for its own sake. His comments on Carl Schmitt demonstrate this, as does
his invocation of the distinction between the ancestral and the good." Instead, he is conservative in his recognition of the need for something to
guide or limit the ineradicable human desire for something high- for the
serious, as he puts it when speaking about Schmitt; for a code to live by,
as he puts it when talking about existentialism; for objects for our
resoluteness, as he puts it when speaking about his early reaction to
Heidegger. It is the fact that this desire, unguided, is dangerous that leads
Strauss to associate what I have called "accord with something outside
ourselves"- the accord with virtue and thus with telos which is required
according to Aristotle for happiness- with the high or noble. Recall that
it was Heidegger's moral teaching-unguided resoluteness-which according to Strauss led him to side with the Nazis. Philosophy, Strauss says,
though privately extreme, must be publicly moderate." This is one part
of Strauss's conservatism.
Another is his thoroughgoing privileging of rank. For a random example, consider this passage from "An Epilogue": the new political science
"must begin to learn to look with sympathy at the obstacles to it if it wishes
to win the sympathy of the best men of the coming generation- those
youths who possess the intellectual and the moral qualities which prevent
men from simply following authorities, to say nothing of fashions.""
Strauss's students extend this privileging. Allan Bloom, in his recent book
on the crisis in American education, The Closing of the American Mind·
How Higher Education has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls
of Today's Students, is not reticent in stating that the students he has drawn
his conclusions about are those who are both talented and well-off. "A
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word about my 'sample' in this study," he says. "It consists of thousands
of students of comparatively high intelligence, materially and spiritually
free to do pretty much what they want with the few years of college they
are privileged to have-in short, the kind of young persons who populate
the twenty or thirty best universities."" The privileging of rank is another
part of Strauss's conservatism.
Recently, however, Alasdair Macintyre, his origins not in phenomenology and existentialsm but in what he calls analytical philosophy, and
his aim not to provide proper objects for the ineradicable desire for the
high but to find a pluralist account of happiness as unity, has, like Strauss,
called for a return to Aristotle. In After Virtue (1981; second ed. 1984),
Macintyre calls for a return to an Aristotelian ethics to rescue us from
the twin evils of end-neutral emotivism on the one hand, and Aristotle's
"metaphysical biology'' on the other." The similarities between these two
different accounts of our current impasse and its origins in the Enlightenment are worth noting.
Macintyre, like Strauss, believes that the West is currently in a dangerous
state, comparable to the period of the decline of the Roman empire into
the Dark Ages. 40 Strauss calls our current state a "crisis": Western man
no longer knows what he wants, Strauss says; for he has lost his faith that
he can know what is right and wrong, good and bad." Macintyre calls
our situation a state of "grave disorder in the language of morality": "we
have-very largely, if not entirely-," he says, "lost our comprehension,
both theoretical and practical, of morality."" He labels that disorder with
the name "emotivism," where by "emotivism" he means the doctrine that
all value judgments, and more specifically all moral judgments, are nothing
but assertions of personal preference or feeling." We live, Macintyre states,
in a specifically emotivist culture. For people now think, talk, and act as
if emotivism were true;" that is, they live, talk, and act as if value judgments
were mere expressions of personal preference. The result of this is that contemporary moral debate is interminable, each side shrilly shouting its moral
claims as if they were transpersonally true, while in fact basing them on
nothing more than personal preference. Thus arguments about war and
peace, abortion and choice, social welfare and capitalist freedom, go on
interminably, without any prospect of resolution.
In addition, emotivism results in a specifically emotivist self, a bifurcated self, divided into two value-neutral parts: one, the organizational self
of bureaucratic man, in whose activities ends are taken for granted and
the means to ends are manipulated; and another, the personal self of private
human beings, for whom values are central, but purely a matter of arbitrary
choice. The emotivist self results from two beliefs, the belief that actions
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are not value-guided but reducible to mere behavior, and the belief that
roles and traditions are not definitive of who someone is, but mere matters of arbitrary choice. These two beliefs should remind us of beast and
god: the managerial self on the one hand, and the expressive self on the
other.
Like Strauss, Macintyre points out that neither school of contemporary
philosophy can get us out of our predicament. Neither, he says, could even
diagnose it. For analytical philosophers and phenomenologists, though
divided by differences in vocabulary and style, are united in their dedication to description over evaluation, the former to description of language,
the latter to description of structures of consciousness." As the analytical
phllosopher C. L. Stevenson claimed that value judgments like "Thls is
good" simply mean "I approve of this; do so as well,"46 so the existentialist
philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre argued that claims to rational morality were
nothing but the exercise of bad faith by those who were unable to tolerate
the recognition that their own choices were the sole source of moral judgment, and the existentialist phllosopher Nietzsche claimed that would-be
objective moral judgments were just the mask worn by those whose willto-power was too weak for them to assert themselves with archaic and
aristocratic grandeur." Like Strauss, Macintyre sees this existentialist alternative to analytical philosophy as dangerous: the Sartrean existentialist as
well as Nietzsche's Obermensch "belong," he says, "in the pages of a philosophical bestiary rather than in serious discussion."48
Like Strauss, Macintyre finds the origins of our current predicament
in the collapse of the two principal teachings of the pre-modern West: the
rational ethics of Aristotle and the theological ethics of divine law. The
moral scheme of these two teachlngs dominated the European middle ages
from the twelfth century onwards, according to Macintyre. The scheme
has three parts: man-as-he-happens-to-be; man-as-he-could-be-if-herealized-his-le/os; and the precepts of rational ethics for moving from one
to the other. This moral scheme, however, presupposes a number of views
which have been rejected since the Enlightenment: it presupposes an account of potentiality/actuality, of the essence of man as a rational animal,
and of the human telos. For virtues are those developed capacities which
enable us to move from our mere potential to the realization of our essential nature. The precepts of rational ethics are, in other words, teleological,
instructing us on how to move from potency to act, from our potential
to our nature or telos.
Unfortunately, theological ethics has the same scheme: man-as-hehappens-to-be; man-as-he-could-be-if-he-realized-hls-le/os; and the precepts
which enable us to move from one to the other. The scheme is the same,
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though the precepts are expressions not of teleology but of divinely ordained law. On both accounts, the third element in this scheme-the
precepts-are lost. For Protestantism and Jansenist Catholicism unite with
seventeenth-century philosophy and science in the claim that reason cannot comprehend essences or transitions from potency to act.
Like Strauss, Macintyre sees the Enlightenment rejection of teleology
as progressive, starting with the early Enlightenment's "mechanistic account
of human action"" and ending with Nietzsche's claim that my morality
is only what my will creates:" we must create new tables of what is good,
Nietzsche says; we "want to become those we are-human beings who are
new, unique, incomparable, who give themselves laws, who create themselves."" It is not hard to see that these two phases, like the first and third
waves of modernity described by Strauss, are the two mistakes pointed out
by Aristotle, one of supposing that we are less than we are, the other of
supposing we are more. For the mechanistic account of human action consists in the belief that human action can be explained wholly in terms of
antecedent, mechanistic causes, and not at all in terms of the end which
we set for ourselves; while Nietzsche claims not only that we set our own
ends, but that in doing so we make those ends good. Mechanists claim
we cannot act, but instead are pushed; while Nietzsche claims our action
is its own justification. One identifies us, if not with the beasts, at least
with mechanism; the other identifies us with the gods. Like Strauss,
however, Macintyre's claim is not that Nietzsche is wrong or that he is
trivial. Instead they both agree that his diagnosis of the ultimate result
of modernity is both apt and profound; it is his prescription which they
reject. They both agree that modern philosophy is, through and through,
incapable of giving ground for value judgments, but deny that this means
we ought to or can create our own values. Instead, each sees Nietzsche's
critique as a critique not of ethics, politics, or rationality itself, but of the
modern understanding of ethics, politics, and rationality." Each thus calls
for a return to pre-modern philosophy, Strauss to (among others) Aristotle,
Macintyre not to Aristotle, but to an Aristotelian ethics.
To do so, Macintyre gives his own Aristotelian account of a virtue. A
virtue, according to him, is a quality whose exercise enables us to achieve
the goods which are internal to complex forms of human activity." He
calls such activities "practices": a practice, according to him, is a coherent
and complex, socially established, cooperative human activity; arts,
sciences, and games are practices, as are politics and the making and sustaining of family life." A virtue, then, is a quality which makes it possible
to attain the goods internal to complex forms of human activity. For example, a chess player who lacks the virtue honesty may win at the game
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of chess by cheating; he thus will achieve a good external to chess, prestige,
for example, or status, or money; he will not, however, insofar as he cheats,
achieve the goods intrinsic to chess: he will not in fact have played a good
game of chess; nor will he have extended his chess-playing skills, nor attained the enjoyment intrinsic to the game of chess itself- its competitive
intensity, for example.
Macintyre's definition of a virtue is, arguably, Aristotelian. According
to Aristotle, a virtue is a disposition to choose the mean, where the mean,
as I have described it, is just what is required for the end in question, and
so could be understood to be what Macintyre has called an intrinsic good.
In addition, the virtuous man, according to Aristotle, does what is needed
or appropriate not out of compulsion or simply from habit, but because
he desires it for its own sake: the courageous man does what is needed,
when needed, and as needed, not for the sake of money, nor simply because
he is angry, but "for the sake of the beautiful," that is, for its own sake.
This is what distinguishes the one who has virtue from the one who merely
has continence: in the virtuous man, desires and beliefs are in harmony,
and the virtuous action is without conflict or regrets; the continent man,
to the contrary, does what he believes is appropriate, but must overcome
a contrary desire in order to do so.
The difficulty, however, is that Macintyre's account provides no way
to distinguish between one who overcomes fears and dangers in battle in
order to enjoy, for example, war for its own sake, and one who does so
in order to defeat a tyrant. Remember that according to Aristotle we would
call the one who would make enemies of his friends for the sake of war
a murderer. His point is that one who fights war not for the sake, ultimately,
of the flowering of human virtue, but for the sake of the enjoyment of
war itself, is not virtuous but vicious. As I have shown earlier, it is the
end, the telos, which, ultimately for Aristotle, determines which capacities
are virtues and which vices: capacities for the good are virtues; those for
what is bad are vices.
Macintyre's account of the end or telos of our virtues is curiously empty.
The good life, according to him, is a unified life- the life of a unified self,
one not bifurcated into the mechanized actions of an end-neutral manager
on the one hand and the expressive life of one who arbitrarily chooses roles
on the other. Instead, it is a life unified by a narrative which connects the
individual's behavior both to his or her intentions and to larger, communal
settings and roles. Action, on this account, is not mechanistic, but guided
by what the actor takes to be his or her end; nor is action wholly selfdetermined; instead, it gets its intelligibility and its identity from the larger
community and tradition of which it is a part.
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Which ends, however, and which community traditions, ought we to
use to organize the narrative of our life, and which ones ought we to avoid?
There Macintyre is silent. But there lies the difference between being happy
and being miserable, between tyranny and just rule, between justified and
unjustified war. For the ends we set, and the traditions we follow and roles
we fill, can lead to full human development, or away from it. Macintyre,
on this point, devolves into a groundless pluralism. There are different
norms which we might pursue, he points out; sometimes, he states, these
different norms may be incommensurable; each makes sense only in its
own context. "The good life for man," he states, "is a life spent in seeking
for the good life for man.'"'
According to Aristotle, however, every action and choice aims at
something believed to be good; aiming at what one takes to be good is
not the distinguishing characteristic of virtuous actions as opposed to
vicious ones; instead, it is aiming at what in fact is good which distinguishes
them. It is in order to help us improve our aim that Aristotle writes the
Ethics itself. His listeners know what is beneath us- the life of slaves or
beasts- and are aiming at the high; they are the aspiring gentlemen of the
day. But, their aims need guidance. Macintyre's positive account, then,
fails, or at least needs to be much further worked out. For, though it allows
that there is distinction between human action and mechanical causation,
it does not give us a guide for our action, and thus becomes a version of
the mistake which he imputes to Nietzsche. Macintyre states the alternatives
in ethics starkly: Nietzsche or Aristotle. It is not clear that his own account describes the alternative which he prefers, however; for intrinsic good
without a guiding aim-energeia without a telos-is not Aristotle at all,
but is Nietzsche.
Macintyre finds himself in this impasse because he rejects Aristotle's
account of human happiness and substitutes for it his own. He does so
for one principal reason: because he rejects what he calls Aristotle's
"metaphysical biology," that is, because he, like the Enlightenment
philosophers he mentions, rejects teleology. As stated earlier, however, I
do not think these objections to Aristotle's ethics are successful. First,
though Aristotle's account does rest on his biology, it does not rest on the
part most commonly, and I think rightly, rejected: it does not rest on the
belief that living beings move by nature towards their end. The ethics
presupposes that human beings have an end; but it denies that we move
by nature towards it: virtue and happiness, according to Aristotle, are not
by nature, as I mentioned before; every action is aimed at something believed to be good, but our beliefs may be false or may fail to inform our
passions.
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Second, though Aristotle's account of human happiness does rest on
his metaphysics, specifically on his account of potentiality and completion (dynamis and entelecheia), this part of his metaphysics is arguably
true: it is arguably adequate to the phenomena- to the distinction between,
for example, a blind person and a sighted person with his eyes shut; moreover, the fact that it is puzzling-and I think that it is-does not argue
against its truth, unless someone can show that the real cannot be puzzling.
Third, I deny that Aristotle's account of human happiness- specifically,
his account of the human ergon and its telos-makes human beings more
fixed than they actually are." Aristotle's account of the human ergon, instead of making human beings more fixed than they actually are, locates
the source of our evident versatility: we need not follow our passions, for
example, but may act against them, or even alter our tendency to have them;
the other animals must follow their passions; we, however, can act. 57
Macintyre's Aristotelianism arises not out of reflections on the dangers
of the unguided desire for the high, but on the need to overcome the
fragmented quality of modern life. A virtue, on his account, is a human
disposition which makes a unified life possible. His account is, still, however,
liberal: he wants an Aristotelian ethics which is pluralist rather than exclusive; one which does not claim "institutional hegemony"; one which is
applicable to people who live in different societies and follow different
codes. In this, however, he has gone too far; for, since the good is relative,
it is not vagueness about the good, but the good itself, that is, te/os, which
provides the needed diversity.
Conclusion
We are left, then, with two contemporary Aristotelianisms, one conservative and metaphysical, the other liberal and anti-metaphysical. The
latter is problematic since it falls into one of the two alternatives it was
devised to avoid: it leaves us pursuing arbitrary aims. The former is not
problematic, but partial: accord can be identified with the high, but it can
also be identified with wholeness or unity. Which is the American problem, the uncontrolled desire for the high or the fragmentation of desire,
the tyrant or the "as-if' personality, Alcibiades or Gary Hart? The answer,
I suppose, is both. The two accounts also differ in origin and in aim.
Strauss's origins are in phenomenology and existentialism and in reflections on Nazism and other right-wing teachings; his aim is to find a plausible and efficacious aim for the ineradicable human desire for the high.
Macintyre's origins are in analytical philosophy and in reflections on the
increasing fragmentation of contemporary life; his aim is to find a historical
and pluralist account of happiness as unity.
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Macintyre's anti-metaphysical Aristotelianism is not an isolated case.
As philosophers turn increasingly towards the continent, whether to Nietzsche or to Heidegger, their interpretations and revivals of Aristotle do so
too. It began perhaps with Hannab Arendt's attempt, in the fifties, to found
an Aristotelian account of action on natality rather than entelechy (that
is, on our capacity to begin something new rather than on human nature
and its te/os); it continues with Martha Nussbaum's attempt, in the eighties,
to interpret Aristotle's ethics as grounded not in metaphysics or nature,
but in ordinary language; it continues in the current attempts by AngloAmerican interpreters of Aristotle, Timothy Roche and Alfonso GomezLobo, for example, to show that the Nicomachean Ethics does not have
a metaphysical foundation; and, as I've stated, it continues in Macintyre's
ongoing attempt to found his Aristotelian ethics on narrative structure
rather than metaphysical ground.
For those who, like myself, associate themselves both with Aristotle
and with liberalism- that is, both with Aristotle and with the pursuit of
progress and change- these two types of Aristotelian ethics cry out for
a third: for a liberal, but metaphysical, Aristotelianism, the outlines of
which I have only begun to sketch out. It would, first, be an ethics dedicated
to the same goal as Aristotle's: happiness understood as the full development of our species-given capacities for intellect and feeling. It would
presuppose, however, the equal importance of full development for all; this
could perhaps be justified on moral grounds, as it is by William Galston
in Justice and the Human Good, or on practical grounds, as a means of
engendering public spiritedness in the liberal state. It would see the prudent pursuit of this goal- full development for all- as its ground, that
is, as the principle on the basis of which to judge between beneficial and
harmful change. It would recognize, as Aristotle does, self-government,
not big government, as a constituent of, and not just a means to, such
full development, and community as its condition- as Aristotle recognized
the city as its condition in his time- since the liberal state remains largely
neutral about the human good, with state being separate from church, from
economics, and, largely, from culture. It would recognize as well the ambiguous relationship of the liberal state and capitalist economy to such
communities, that the state and economy often destroy communities rather
than sustaining them, by pandering to our desires for passive pleasure on
the one hand and immortality on the other, to our consumer desires and
to our proliferating attempts to overcome death. It would privilege neither
the downtrodden, as much of the American left does, nor the talented,
as does Strauss. It would recognize the capacity of the community to raise
the level of each of its members, their desires to claims of justice and their
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44
capacities to higher levels of virtue or development; the community, in other
words, would be that particular body, intermediate between state and
family, as Michael Sandel has said, through which our particular capacities,
desires, and needs are raised to the level of the universal, without ever losing their rootedness in the particular: our capacities developed to the extent of their human potential, our desires and needs fulfilled in accordance
with our common hnman nature. It would be a liberalism that would not
deny, in its search for wholeness through community, the need for daring
and risk, but would recognize that risk taken on and for oneself or one's
group can be ennobling, as Michael Walzer has said in his discussions of
the self-management of dangerous businesses." And it would be a teaching
about happiness which could animate a sound pluralism- a pluralism based
not on subjective whim, but on the relativity of good to context and to
character; what is required to develop human capacities varies from place
to place and person to person: sometimes we need to toughen up, other
times to loosen up; sometimes to control our impulses, other times to
discover them; sometimes we need a kick in the rear, sometimes a help
up; sometimes we need sports, sometimes to learn parenting; sometimes
we need great books, sometimes we need therapy; sometimes we need
poliiical participation, sometimes communion with God. The origin of
this Aristotelian ethics would be in American philosophy and reflections
on the fragmented, not to say narcissistic, American self; its aim would
be to identify accord not just with the high bnt also with wholeness. It
is an account that I hope to detail further in the future.
Notes
I.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Our own end is only outside when we have not achieved it.
Nicomachean Ethics 3.8.
Nicomachean Ethics 2.9.
See Politics 1 on slavery. The slave lacks choice; it is lacking that which
makes him a slave.
Nicomachean Ethics 2.9.
Metaphysics 9.1; Physics 7.3.
Nicomachean Ethics 1.5. I distinguish here so-called final and instrumental good or bad: the beneficial and harmful are final (that is,
intrinsic); the enabling and destructive are instrumental.
Again, instrumental and final good, where final means constitutive,
as I argue below.
Nicomachean Ethics 3.3 1112b; 6.9 1142b.
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10. Nicomachean Ethics 6.8 1142a; 6.9 1142b.
II. Pleasure is unimpeded activity of a disposition in accordance with
nature (energeia tes kata physin hexei5s, anti de tou aistheten anempodiston). (This is Aristotle's first definition, Nicomachean Ethics 7.12
1153al4. The second does not conflict with it. 10.4 1174b3l.) Happiness
is activity in accordance with virtue. Virtue is a disposition in accor-
dance with nature (kata physin). So activity in accordance with it is
unimpeded. Therefore, happiness is unimpeded activity of a natural
disposition, specifically, of the disposition to choose the mean or to
hit the truth.
12. The city (polis) does not, and cannot, exist here today. So, some other
condition is necessary for full development, as I state below.
13. And thus happiness.
14. "Superficial ornament" is interpretive. Aristotle says pleasure "hosper
periaptou tinos" (1.8 l099al6). Ross translates this, "pleasure as a sort
of adventitious charm." Irwin translates it pleasure "as some sort of
ornament."
15. That this implies that each of these movements, by being together with
the others, is more than itself- is raised to a higher level of
development- is a reason for beginning to think that Athens and
Jerusalem -that is, hierarchy and equality-are not as separate as they
sometimes seem. Each "low" motion, by being together with the others,
is raised to a higher level.
16. Metaphysics 9.1.
17. For example, running forward is the telos relative to one battle, but
not to another; it is a context-relative good. For another example, intellectual instruction is a good relative to a human being, but not to
a beast or to the god; it is a good relative to kind. There are, also,
I maintain, goods relative to differing character or psychology: some
people need competition; others need cooperation.
18. For this, see William Galston's full development principle in ''Equality of Opportunity and Liberal Theory," in Justice and Equality, Here
and Now (Cornell, 1986), p. 92.
19. See Hanna Pitkin's reference to Joseph Thssman in "Justice: On
Relating Private and Public," Political Theory, August 1981, p. 347.
20. Currently, though, the American left privileges the downtrodden.
Hence, in that sense, my standpoint is liberal, not left, since it privileges
neither the downtrodden nor the talented, as I say below. It includes
some elements from the left, though, specifically, the left suspicion
of the relation between capital and human development.
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21. Leo Strauss, "An Epilogue," in Liberalism, Ancient and Modern, p.
221 (reprinted from Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics, ed.
Herbert J. Storing, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962).
22. "An Epilogue," p. 222.
23. "Philosophy as Rigorous Science ... ," p. 30.
24. "A Giving of Accounts: Jacob Klein and Leo Strauss," The College
(St. John's College), April 1970, p. 3.
25. "A Giving of Accounts," p. 3.
26. "Comments on The Concept of the Political by Carl Schmitt," (1932),
reprinted in Spinoza's Critique of Religion (Schocken, 1982).
27. P. 350.
28. P. 350.
29. P. 350.
30. P. 346.
31. I think it is possible to defend certain principles found in the Bible
without resorting to revelation. As mentioned in a previous note, each
first-stage potential is raised to a higher-stage potential by being
together with other first-stage potentials. This is often true among people: the group can raise its members to a higher level.
32. Leo Strauss, "The Three Waves of Modernity," in Political Philosophy:
Six Essays by Leo Strauss (Bobbs-Merrill, 1975), pp. 85, 87.
33. Nicomachean Ethics 1177b.
34. "The real issue is Strauss's ruthless determination to use these old books
to 'moderate' that idealistic longing for justice, at home and abroad,
which grew in the puppies of America during the years when Strauss
was teaching and writing." M. F. Burnyeat, "Sphinx Without a Secret"
(New York Review of Books, May 30, 1985), p. 36.
35. The City and Man (University of Chicago, 1964); Preface, Liberalism,
Ancient and Modern (Basic Books, 1964).
36. "A Giving of Accounts," p. 4.
37. P. 204.
38. The Closing of the American Mind (Simon and Schuster, 1987), p. 22.
39. Alasdair Macintyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame, 1981; seconded., 1984).
40. Strauss, "An Epilogue." Macintyre, After Virtue, p. 263.
41. "The Three Waves of Modernity," p. 81.
42. P. 2.
43. Pp. 11-12.
44. P. 22.
45. P. 2.
46. P. 12.
47. P. 22.
�ACHTENBERG
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
47
P. 22; p. 113.
P. 84.
P. 114.
P. 114, quoting Nietzsche, The Gay Science, section 335, p. 266.
After Virtue, pp. 22, 114; "The Three Waves of Modernity," p. 98.
P. 191; see also pp. 219, 223.
Pp. 187-188.
P. 219.
As has been argued by, for example, Hannah Arendt in The Human
Condition (University of Chicago, 1958) and by Bernard Suits in
"Aristotle on the Function of Man: Fallacies, Heresies and other Entertainments" (Canadian Journal ofPhilosophy 4, September 1974), p. 23.
57. See my argument in support of this in "On the Metaphysical Presuppositions of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics," forthcoming, Journal
of Value Inquiry, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague.
58. Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (Basic Books, 1983).
��Dead Leaves:
Illustrations of the Genealogy
of the Epic Poem
Jonathan Tuck
Poems, like people, have parents-and grandparents-and a whole remote
ancestry of other poems to which they owe their own begetting. Though
poets may try to set themselves up as a second deity, creating from
nothingness with perfect power and freedom, still the poems they make
bear ancestral markings and acknowledge their indebtedness. Each spring
growth of foliage seems to remake the whole world anew; but each leaf
is of a kind-a larger family-and also has more particular origins. The
leaves fall and die, but not before they transmit something of themselves
to their offspring. So too the leaves of a book, pages traced vein-like with
lines of verse, take part in this cycle of begetting. Poems, too, can die to
the world, although not exactly as leaves or people do. Some poets claim
to have made the most permanent of objects, more enduring than bronze
or monuments of stone, exempt from the ravages of time. Such claims are
typically written in dead languages; or in any case they must have for us
a quaint, antique sound. We know better: Words are winged, and if in their
flight they fall on barren soil, nothing dies as fast. Their only chance for
survival, for immortality, lies in their power to propagate.
***
Jonathan Thck is a Thtor at St. John's College, Annapolis. This lecture was delivered
at the Annapolis campus in April, 1988.
49
�50
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
In the Homeric No-man's Land, the space between the two armies, the
Achaian hero Diomedes, son of Tydeus, meets Glaukos of Lycia, a Trojan
ally. Diomedes has just gotten away with assaulting two of the immortal
gods, despite a rebuke from Apollo; but now he grows cautious. He is not
willing to join battle with another divinity, he says, so he prudently inquires about Glaukos' identity and origins. Both the question and the caution that prompts it are surprising to us: Diomedes has been busily
slaughtering scores of others for some time now without any such scruple
or ceremony. In his aristeia, his finest hour on the battlefield, he has shown
a strength that transcends human limitations, and it is the desire to defeat
those limitations that makes men fight at all- so that their glory may be
a song for men to come. Yet now, oddly, Diomedes feels hemmed in by
his mortality. His strange moment of pensiveness in the midst of the battle
prompts his question to Glaukos, and the answer at first shows the same
mood of quiescence:
"Tu&€.i&n J.u:;y<i9u).ts, 'til\ y~::vsftv Epssivstc;;
otTtnsp q>UA.Arov yevsr}, 'tOiTJ oe Kat Uv&pOOv.
q>UAAU '" ~uiv ,. UVE~O<; xa~6.St<; ):BEt, ana M e· u).n
'tTJA.s96roaa qnlst, Eapoc; 0 • E:myiyvs-rat ffip11·
ffi<; &.voprov YEVEij 1\ ~·v !pUEt 1\ s· U1t0A~yEt.
ei &' &9EA.stc; Kat 'tCll1ta Oa:tlJ.lEVUt, O<pp' EU stBUc;
itJJ.E'tEpnv ysvsitv, noA.A.ol OE IJ.tv liv&psc; icraow·
"Great son of l)rdeus, why ask of my generation?
Like to the generation of leaves is that of men.
The leaves are dashed to the ground by the wind, but then the wood
Burgeoning brings forth others, and the time of spring returns.
So with the generations of men: One blossoms, another dies.
Yet if you wish even so to ask and learn the facts
About my family stock, it is known by many men ... "
-Iliad VI. 145-151
Glaukos too seems to be oddly conscious of human insignificance. In
his simile of the leaves, the chiastic order of presentation suggests a difference of emphasis between the life story of the leaves and that of men.
The leaves are first dashed to the ground, but then the wood brings forth
more. New life here follows death; while in the one line devoted to human
affairs the generations of men first bloom and then die. Syntactically the
word &.no).Tjyet gives the line a kind of abruption, since it here lacks its
more usual complementary genitive or participle. In sound, however, it drifts
away into a kind of dying fall, with the repetition of the long 'ay' sound
�TUCK
51
in ft li'unoA.ljyBI. The tone is melancholy and detached. We might even
suspect Glaukos of being afraid of Diomedes and resigned to his own imminent death; certainly he has good reason to be, given what we have seen
of Diomedes' prowess. But the sentiment conveyed by the similitude of the
leaves goes beyond either bitterness or quiescence: It has a kind of noble,
philosophic serenity that makes the passage seem detachable from its context. In a sixteenth-century edition of the poem there might be a little picture of a hand in the margin, with an index finger pointing out the portable sententia. There is a grandeur-in-misery here in being able to be aware
of such things; like Pascal's thinking reed Glaukos seems to be finding his
dignity in self-knowledge. So the shift is especially jarring to us when in
the next line Glaukos says in effect: "But if you really want to know, my
family has a proud history." And then he is off into an exciting account
of the noble feats of his grandfather Bellerophon.
In like manner, we the audience are emotionally whiplashed by the
peculiar ending of the episode. Diomedes announces in tones of delight
that he and Glaukos are ~svot, guest-friends, by virtue of their forbears'
friendly relationship, and he proposes a separate peace: He and Glaukos
will each find other men to kill; with each other they will exchange armor
in token of comradeship. The two men clasp hands, and we share in their
gladness. Here in the midst of the welter of warlike, self-aggrandizing appetites is an island of sublime, heroic good will. Here past friendships mean
more than present frenzy. But we are sadly jolted by the author's last words
in recounting the episode:
But Zeus son of Kronos stole Glaukos' wits away,
for he exchanged with Diomedes his armor
of gold for bronze, for nine oxen's worth a hundred!
(VI. 234-6)
So much for the timeless claims of guest-friendship. Just like Glaukos when
he proceeds to recite his genealogy, Diomedes returns abruptly to the selfassertive world of present needs and desires.
Perhaps we can better understand the back-and-forth movement of this
episode by returning to the image of the leaves and asking the following
odd question: Why does Homer choose to compare men in their generations to leaves specifically? One immediate answer is that he is putting
in .the mouth of Glaukos something very like a pun: to qn)A.A.ov (with an
acute accent and two lambdas) meaning "leaf" is very similar in sound
to to q>ii:\.ov (with a circumflex accent and one lambda) meaning "tribe,
�52
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
race, stock, a group of people with a common origin." From this latter
word comes our Latinate English "phylum," used in biological classification. The word for "leaf" seems to come from the ancient word q>A&ro, "to
teem with abundance," while the word for "tribe" is descended from q>Uro,
"to bring forth, produce, beget, generate." It is hard to doubt that the two
roots are related, if not united, somewhere in their Indo-European past
So Glaukos seems to say jokingly, "Son of Tydeus, why do you ask me
about my yevel\, my family stock? The family stocks of men (<pilA.a) are
dashed to the ground by the wind ... "Only now, in listening, do we realize
that the other word, <puA.A.a, was meant.
But apart from its wit, the connection is very apt. We need not ask
of a man's individual lineage, for men are as multitudinous and as faceless
as leaves on the trees. Yet Glaukos does go on, proudly, to give his
genealogy; men, like leaves, may be many but they are not all the same:
They come in kinds, preserving important distinctions. This opposition
of multitude to orderly variation is shown in another Homeric use of the
pun on <puUa, in Book II of the Iliad. Nestor publicly advises
Agamemnon:
"Marshal your men by tribes [<PUA.a.], by clans, Agamemnon,
oe
so that clan may help clan, and tribe help tribe [Q>GA.a
qnlA.ot<;].
If you do this, and if the Achaians obey you,
you'll know then which of your leaders and men is a coward,
and which is worthy, each group fighting as a unit."
(II. 362-6)
In this passage the word <pilA.a is used three times in the space of two lines,
giving it a memorable emphasis. Nestor's advice is taken, and a bare hundred lines later we hear this:
They stood in the flowering meadow of Scamander,
countless, as leaves and flowers blooming in season.
(II. 467-8)
And later in the same book of the poem, the goddess Iris, disguised as
Priam's son Polites, has this to say to the Thojan assembly:
"Indeed, I have gone many times into manly battle,
but never yet saw such a host, so many.
For they look most like leaves, or the sands of the sea,
as they come to the plain to fight against our city."
(II. 798-801)
�53
TUCK
Thus in a short space we see these two near-homophonic words used to
balance off the faceless multitude of the Achaian forces, like leaves of the
forest, as seen from without, against the orderly distinction in their arrangement by clans, as seen from within.
The simile of the leaves carries within it another pair of opposed, yet
complementary qualities. Glaukos' speech to Diomedes seems to invoke
the cyclical recurrence of the leaves from one spring season to the next.
If we ignore distinctions among individual leaves or generations of them,
it would seem that the generality of leaves is immortal, at least in Diotima's
sense of immortality through successive begettings and substitutions (Symposium 208 a). Yet leaves as individuals are proverbially light and fragile,
playthings of the wind, and nothing can be more final than their individual
death, as Achilles reminds us:
"But this I say, and swear a great oath to it:
By this staff, which will sprout no leaves or shoots
ever again, since it left its stump in the hills,
nor bloom anew, for the bronze blade has stripped it
of leaves and bark, and now the Achaians' sons
bear it in hand as judges while they uphold
the laws ordained by Zeus ... "
(I. 233-9)
When we look at the leaves from the outside, ignoring their several particularities, they seem to go on forever. In choosing to look from the outside, we gain a kind of god-like detachment, but we lose the urgent immediacy, the specialness of a particular set of leaves- the cutting of the
tree up in the mountains, the cruel stripping of the bronze blade. So too
if we look at the lives of human beings in the largest spatial and temporal
context, all single human destinies merge into the continuing story of the
race. Thus we can seem to cheat our mortality, but the eternal life we gain
is a kind of living death; in becoming part of an anonymous multitude
we lose what is specifically valuable in human life. We become vegetables,
machines for eating and begetting. So we must seem to the gods, as we
learn from another of Homer's uses of the emblem of the leaves. In Book
XXI of the Iliad, Apollo answers Poseidon's challenge thus:
"Earthshaker, you would say that I was senseless
if I were to fight with you for the sake of mortals,
those wretched ones, who now like leaves are full
of blooming life, feeding upon earth's fruits,
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
54
but then droop into death. So let us now
quickly leave off our fight; let them decide it."
(XXI. 462-7)
If on the other hand we emphasize a different aspect of the leaves, their
individual fragility and the finality of their passing, we are led inward, into
an autumnal landscape of pathos and regret. So too in the story of humanity, a focus on the particular identities and valuable uniqueness of single
people goes along with an awareness of their inevitable doom. This is the
view we call "tragic"- and in daring to look in this way we assert our own
dignity, our capacity for heroism and self-knowledge. As Glaukos returns
to recount his own particular lineage, as Diomedes returns to the world
of private appetites, war, and thievery, so throughout the Iliad we return
constantly to the pathos of the concrete. In this poem it is the death of
the leaves that is finally the more important. Think in contrast of the
Odyssey, with its emphasis on what endures and is reborn, with its great
image of the bed rooted in the olive tree.
But the power of the simile of the leaves is that it holds in unresolved
counterpoise both views of human experience. Socrates claims that the same
man can write both tragedy and comedy; I claim that Homer is here, with
a kind of perspectivism, writing both at the same time. In its generality,
the simile seems to move above the level of the poem's battlefield narrative,
making us cast our eyes forward and backward in a grand synoptic gesture
of inclusion. But the inclusiveness would not be complete if we lost the
particular diachronic context from which the simile arises. It is this inclusiveness that characterizes the poems we call "epics." Though the human
stories epics tell are fixed at a particular point in history, no human story
of any consequence can be complete unless it is located in the larger world
of space and time that the gods inhabit. Spatially epics go up to heaven
and down into the underworld; temporally they go forward and backward,
even to the beginning and end of human history. Yet they retain a constant
rootedness, a grounding in the singularity of the human actions they tell;
hence the tradition that epics begin and even end in the "middle of things."
Furthermore, they have sometimes been thought of as constituting an encyclopedia of all human wisdom, a compendium of all the !ores and knowbows of different trades and callings, not to mention ethical teachings,
cosmologies, and religious revelation. (This view of the epic poem as a
repository of all knowledge helps us to understand Plato's treatment of
the poets in the Ion and the Republic.) In the most extreme case, a poem
like the Aeneid could be used for divination- the book opened blindly
�55
TUCK
and a finger pointing to a randomly chosen passage. The text so chosen
would foretell the future or give practical advice, as many believed in the
Middle Ages. It is hardly possible to imagine such a practice applied to
the texts of the great lyric or dramatic poems. The sheer size and scope
of the epic itself, as well as that of the subjects it takes for its province,
invite us to treat it as an inspired utterance or sacred book- perhaps even
as a domain coterminous with Nature itself. So the writing of an epic is
an act of enormous audacity, because such a poem aspires to swallow up
all possible experience and hold it in the fixity of a human artifice. It is
the binding of Proteus, or to vary the metaphor, it is a kind of rival Creation. And yet these leaves too must die.
•••
A new generation of leaves, descended from these Homeric ancestors,
springs forth in Book VI of the Aeneid. Aeneas and the Sibyl see the ghostly
images of the dead, gathered at the shore of the infernal river:
hue omnis turba ad ripas effusa ruebat,
matres atque viri defunctaque corpora vita
magnanimum heroum, pueri innuptaeque puellae,
impositique rogis iuvenes ante ora parentum:
quam multa in silvis autumni frigore primo
lapsa cadunt folia, aut ad terram gurgite ab alto
quam multae glomerantur aves, ubi frigidus annus
trans pontum fugat et terris immittit apricis.
stabant orantes primi transmittere cursum,
tendebantque manus ripae ulterioris amore.
Here a whole crowd came streaming to the banks,
mothers and men, the forms with life all spent
of great-souled heroes, boys and girls unmarried,
youths put on pyres before their parents' eyes:
As many as in the woods, in fall's first cold
leaves drop, or landward from the raging deep
as many birds gather, when the season's frost
drives them across the sea to sunny lands.
They all stood praying to be first across,
and stretched out hands in love of the farther shore.
(VI. 305-14)
The leaves occupy only a line and a half, and the movement of the verse
dramatically whirls them away into the following companion simile of the
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
56
birds. This is the effect of the striking elision of the last syllable of the
Latin word for "leaves," folia, after two short syllables with light, voiceless
consonants at the beginning of the word:
-UU-
UU
-UU-U
Lapsa cadunt folia, aut ad terram gurgite ab alto.
'-'
Although the phrase ad terram- "to the ground" or "toward land"-belongs
formally to the second simile, it serves metrically here as the destination
of the leaves' swift motion. In this brief picture we feel powerfully the
ephemeral lightness of the leaves, pathetically helpless against the driving
wind of Virgil's hexameters.
The passage is impressive enough in itself, drawing as it does upon
Virgil's pictorial use of rhythm. But I want to claim much more: The specific
power of the passage comes from our consciousness of the allusion to its
Homeric antecedent in Iliad VI. At this point, remembering the well-marked
dualities in Homer's treatment of the leaves, we expect a second view of
them, returning in the spring after the wind has dashed them to the ground.
Of course we don't get it, and our expectations are powerfully frustrated.
But our continued awareness of Homer's leaves leads us further, to meditate
upon the reasons for this departure from the precedent. In the first place,
Glaukos spoke as he stood in the upper world, on a field of men living
or dying; the Virgilian leaves, however, are compared to the shades of
humans already dead. By setting his adaptation of the leaf-simile in the
underworld, Virgil reminds us of his own spirituality, a spooky otherworldliness in marked contrast with Homer's rootedness in the natural
rhythms of this world. Secondly, we realize that the Homeric completion
of the simile in the more upbeat view of the leaves' renewal does have its
own surrogate here in Virgil's recension of it: The birds, in Virgil's second
simile, are a sort of phantom stand-in for the returning leaves of spring.
Superficially the point of similarity seems to be only the multitude of
fallen leaves or of birds gathering on the ground: We had not thought death
had undone so many. Of course there is a pictorial similarity too: The birds
are leaf-like in appearance, tossed and buffeted by the wintry winds as they
flutter to the ground. But these birds are also gathering for a new flight,
a migration across the water into the sunny warmth of their winter home,
probably in North Africa. In this respect they refer us back to the souls
of the dead, waiting to cross the Styx. But the crucial point, distinguishing
them from the leaves, is that these same birds will presumably return northward with the following spring- not a new generation, as with Homer's
leaves, but these birds themselves. It seems clear that we are being referred
�TUCK
57
forward as well, to Anchises' Pythagorean account of the transmigration
and re-embodiment of souls, later in Aeneid VI. The sunny lands of the
south recall the blessed, luminous groves in Elysium, where some fortunate
souls are sent after they "hang suspended in the empty winds" or "purge
their crimes in the vast flood of the sea" (VI. 740-1, where gurgite vasto
is a verbal echo of gurgite ab alto in line 310 of our passage). Virgil seems
to be suggesting, in specific, self-conscious contradistinction to Horner,
that a kind of personal immortality is possible, even if only for a few: not
a derived "immortality" through the survival of one's offspring, but an
enduring self, preserving one's identity and abiding in the land of the blest.
This happy prospect might lighten our prevailing view of the human landscape of labor, mutability, and death; but the few who are to enjoy it must
meet very stringent (and very Roman) ethical standands. The melancholy
longing felt by the others, the fallen leaves, is what Virgil returns to at the
end of our passage, with the sound effects of the justly famous line:
tendebantque manus ripae ulterioris amore.
So far I've been arguing that Virgil's revision of the leaf-simile works
in a kind of counterpoint with our memory of its Homeric source. There
is even a reminiscence of Homer in Virgil's use of rhythm. I have already
described how the elision at the end of the word folia hurries us from the
dying leaves to the second simile of the birds. Let's look again at the movement of Homer's line:
-
u
u
qn\l.l.a <11.
~ev
,.
u Uju Uliivs~o<; xa~ciot<;
uu II-
u
u
- -
xtst, iil.l.a M S'ul.11
1"TJAB86roaa cpUet.
The shortening of the diphthong, long by nature, at the end of the word
?(Est is a metrical effect known as "epic correption." Here, atypically, the
correption occurs at a bucolic diaeresis- a pause after the fourth whole
foot of the line. We would like to linger at such a marked break in this
breathless-sounding, conspicuously dactylic line, but the shortening of ?(ESt
snatches us up and hurries us along, with marked enjambment, into the
next generation of the leaves. The rhythmic force of this device is exactly
analogous to that of Virgil's elision; and it comes at the analogous moment in the development of the similitude. Our feeling both of the correspondence between the two passages, and of the differences, is thereby
sharpened.
Perhaps I should apologise for dwelling on such small details in these
�58
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Greek and Latin texts. I wanted to illustrate the degree of intimate familiarity that Virgil must have had with Homer's poem, and that he also expects
from the ideal reader of his own revisionist version. We all know about
the large-scale structural ways in which the Aeneid subsumes both the Iliad
and the Odyssey: There are the references to the first lines of both Homeric
poems in Virgil's first line; there are the plot parallels with the Odyssey
in Aeneid I-VI and with the Iliad in VII-XII; there are the close resemblances
of certain characters (Turnus, for instance, to Achilles sometimes, and other
times to Hector). But such detailed imitation, allusion, and pointed variation as I have tried to show go much further: They amount to a constant
pressure, or presence of the older author in the newer. Virgil- surely one
of the most self-conscious poets who ever lived- cannot help but acknowledge his indebtedness to his master; at the same time, by varying the allusion he shows his authenticity and independence. To be writing an epic
at all means to be working in a certain tradition, to be a "son of Homer"
and to admit it. In one sense this admission also grants Homer's implicit
claim to have created a second world in the vastness of his artifice. Pope
made this point memorably in writing of Virgil:
When first young Maro, in his boundless Mind
A work t'outlast Immortal Rome design'd,
Perhaps he seemed above the Critick's Law,
And but from Nature's Fountains scorned to draw:
But when t'examine ev'ry Part he came,
Nature and Homer were, he found, the same.
(Essay on Criticism, 130-5)
But if this should be the last word, then epic would be a Titan that devours
its own children. How can Virgil or anyone else write a second epic with
similar aspirations of inclusiveness? A truly successful epic would exhaust
the conditions for the writing of another such poem. The very power of
Homer's original epic forces Virgil at once to include it and to depart from
it, to struggle against his own roots.
The particular qualities of epic poems make it especially hard to write
in a tradition, and make unavoidable the rivalry between any single epic
poet and his predecessors. I have already mentioned the cosmic inclusiveness
of epic, its encyclopedic quality that seeks to leave no subject matter remaining for any successor. Though epic poems try to embody the whole
of human experience and human history, each one does so from a particular point of view. For epics tend to be "national," to recast history in
terms of the destiny of a particular nation or culture. So to acknowledge
one's epic predecessor is to participate in a rivalry of cultures- Rome ver-
�TUCK
59
sus Greece, say, or Christian versus Pagan. Even more problematically, the
poet is not a mere mouthpiece for one historical or nationalistic worldview. It is true that such a view speaks through him; he is a prophet, speaking for another as the word implies, and the "Muse" is an image of the
cosmic providence that seeks, through epic poets, to make itself known
to humanity. But the poet is also engaged in a heroic act of self-assertion,
in daring to take up the task of writing such a work, and as a prophet
of his own Muse he speaks for himself. So the family drama of poetic influence, the Oedipal conflict of the poet with his own forbears, is sharpened
and magnified by the special demands of the epic tradition.
For Virgil, the solution to this predicament is to incorporate or subsume Homer into his own poetic universe. (It is thus that I can speak of
the presence of Homer within the text of Virgil.) His allusion to Homer's
leaf-simile, for example, summons up all the specific affect of the passage
in Iliad VI, where the leaves are made into a powerfully ambiguous emblem
both of the pathos of mortal finitude and of the ways in which the cyclical
self-perpetuation of nature transcends that finitude. Virgil, I say, invokes
all this; and then by subtly varying it, he goes beyond it, projecting this
dual perspective on the natural world into a new dialectic with the realm
of the supernatural. So his poem implicitly claims that it contains and
supersedes the parent poem. Homer's epic inclusiveness aspired to the
swallowing-up of the whole natural world. The Aeneid shares this aspiration but adds to it: In addition to swallowing the primary world of nature,
Virgil claims to have swallowed up the secondary "world" of Horner's poem.
Thus in the theogony of the epic poem, each newly-generated Titan swallows its parents.
I have said that by its nature epic locates present human actions in a
larger historical context; this "epic present" is emphatically the intersec-
tion of past and future. But the heroic act of writing an epic must itself
be located in a similar temporal context, with poetic predecessors and successors arranged in a providential order that sets off the magnitude of the
present poem. Virgil's poetic self-consciousness brings a second, selfreferential story into his narrative: Behind the drama and great labor of
the building of Rome there is the drama and the great labor of the building
of the Aeneid. Each of these two great actions comes from a Greek precedent which it acknowledges, incorporates, and seeks to transcend. Each
action also seeks to project itself indefinitely into the future: The perpetual
glory of the Roman imperium is to be accompanied by the everlasting fame
of Virgil's poem.
But Virgil is sufficiently aware of the necessary mutability of human
affairs to entertain a melancholy scepticism about the staying power, both
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
of the empire and of the poem. He expresses his concern about his own
poem's posterity by another use of the image of the leaves. In Book III,
Helenus prophesies to his kinsman Aeneas about the arrival in Italy:
"Arrived there, when you reach the city of Cumae,
the sacred lakes and whispering woods of Avernus,
you'll find the frenzied seer in her deep cave
who sings the fates, and notes them down on leaves.
The songs the lady writes, she puts in order,
leaf upon leaf, and shuts them in the cavern.
There they remain untouched and in their places.
But when a gentle breeze blows in the door,
the hinges turn, the delicate leaves are scattered;
then as they flutter through the cave, she never
cares to replace them or remake her songs.
Unhelped by Sibyl, vistors hate her halls."
(Ill. 441-452)
For this reason, when Aeneas comes in Book VI to consult the Sibyl he
begs her to sing her prophecies herself, rather than entrusting them to the
leaves and making them whirling playthings of the swift winds. He promises to build a temple to Phoebus and Trivia, where a shrine will be set
apart to preserve the Sibyl's written prophecies, with priests as caretakers.
The possessed prophetess, the Sibyl, is here a stand-in for Virgil himself.
Like her, he is divinely inspired; and he is our guide into the underworld
just as she is for Aeneas. That there is a relationship between the Sibyl
and the figure of the poet is also suggested by a verbal correspondence:
In her prophecy the Sibyl says
bella, horrida bella,
et Thybrim multo spumantem sanguine cerno.
war, savage war
I see ahead, and Tiber foaming blood.
(VI. 86-7)
In Book VII, speaking in his own voice in the new invocation to the Muse,
Virgil says
tu vatem, tu, diva, mone. dicam horrida bella,
dicam acies, actosque animis in funera reges.
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Oh goddess, guide your seer! I shall sing savage war,
battle-lines, and kings by courage driven to death.
(VII. 41-2)
Here the word vales, "seer" or "prophet," which has been repeatedly used
to refer to the Sibyl, is applied to Virgil himself in his capacity of epic
poet, and he puts into his own mouth an echo of her own phrase horrida
bella, "savage wars." And as Virgil is in some sense the Sibyl, he wonders
if his prophetic poem will in the end, like her writings, become a "plaything
of the winds." The written word is treacherous, and perhaps any such attempt to arrest the flux of experience in the fixity of human artifice is
doomed. Perhaps, as he himself has subsumed and superseded Homer,
some new poet will come and swallow up Virgil's poem too. Th be thus
superseded is not annihilation, but it is a very ambiguous kind of poetic
immortality.
It may be that the golden bough itself serves in part as an emblem for
the contradictions in Virgil's view of his poetic posterity: The bough is
artificial, yet a kind of second nature. It has the durability of metal; yet
it can be plucked and then grows again of itself. To the person chosen to
receive it, it serves as a ticket of admission to the realm that contains the
past, the future, and the ultimate mysteries of human destiny. Yet we
remember that it yielded itself only reluctantly even to the hand of Aeneas;
and if it chooses to deny itself to you, no violence can harvest its riches.
It flashes an eerie glint of gold in the shadowy woods, near the jaws of
foul-smelling Avernus; and its metal leaves give off a tinny rattle against
the wind.
***
The dictionary tells us that it was only in late antiquity that the Latin
word folium, "leaf," was first used to refer to a sheet of paper or page
of a book. As far as I know, the connection between the leaves of the forest
and the human artifice of poetry is first made explicitly by the poet Horace,
a friend of Virgil, in the critical treatise known as the Ars Poetica:
Ut silvae foliis pronos mutantur in annos,
prima cadunt, ita verborum vetas interit aetas,
et iuvenum ritu florent modo nata vigentque.
Debemur morti nos nostraque, sive receptus
terra Neptunus classes Aquilonibus arcet
regis opus, sterilisve diu palus aptaque remis
vicinas urbes alit et grave sentit aratrum;
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seu cursum mutavit iniquum frugibus arnnis,
doctus iter melius: mortalia facta peribunt,
nedum sermonum stet bonos et gratia vivax.
When at the year's end forests change their leaves,
The oldest fall first; so with the generations of words:
The former die, the newer bloom like boys.
For we and all things ours are owed to death:
The harbors that we build (a royal task!);
The barren marshes, then a place for boats,
Now drained for plowing, feeding farms nearby;
The dams that bend the river's angry course
And save the crops-These mortal works shall die,
Nor shall the grace and glory of discourse live.
(Ars Poetica 60-69)
But though this connection had been made, and though Virgil's Sibyl wrote
her prophecies on leaves, the word itself probably did not have for Virgil
the witty self-reference that its linguistic development, and the predominance of written culture, later made possible. For Dante, the closeness of
the related Italian wordsfoglia, "leaf of a tree," andfoglio, "page in a book,"
makes explicit the doubleness of the drama of the leaves. In the primary
world of nature, leaves die and others succeed them; in the second, rival
nature that is the world of epic poems, what is said to happen out in the
woods can also be referred to the successive generations of pages of verse.
So Dante's use of the image of the leaves is even more explicitly selfreferring, and Dante's poem is even more self-conscious than its predeces-
sors about its context in literary history. It is appropriate, then, that the
family drama of Dante's relation to his poetic father, Virgil, is internalized and made explicit within the poem's narrative: Both "Dante" and
"Virgil" are characters in a poem written by the first man and pervasively
influenced by the second. And their relationship as Dante depicts it certainly reflects the intense ambivalence he feels toward his great forerunner. Virgil is the powerful and beloved guide; but his guidance is fallible
and limited in scope- his pupil will go farther than Virgil can take him.
And the most powerful indicator of all is that Virgil finally is a damned
soul, one of those who have" lost the good of the intellect." As a denizen
of Hell he is made to assist in an extended revisionist reworking of his own
Book VI. Whenever a Virgilian passage lies allusively behind, or within
Dante's text, the implied claim is that Virgil had an inkling, partial at best,
of the authoritative version we get from the younger poet. The movement
is from shadowy types to truth: Virgil went forth into the night, holding
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a lamp behind him to aid his successors. Dante sees more and knows better,
and so now does Virgil- but too late.
It is in this emotionally charged atmosphere that we see, in the third
canto of Inferno, a new generation of the leaves that first grew and died
by the River Scamander, on the fields of Troy. Virgil the guide and Dante
the pilgrim have come to the banks of the Acheron, where Charon, the
steersman of the livid marsh, transports across the water the souls of the
damned:
Come d'autunno si levan le foglie
l'una appresso dell'altra, fin che '1 ramo
vede alia terra tutte le sue spoglie,
similmente il mal seme d'Adamo
gittansi di quel lito ad una ad una,
per cenni come augel per suo richiarno.
Cosi sen vanno su per l'onda bruna
e avanti che sien di 18. discese,
anche di qua nuova schiera s'auna.
As in the fall the leaves are taken away
Each followed by the next, until the bough
Sees on the ground all its despoilments lie,
In that same way the evil seed of Adam
Hurl themselves from the shoreline, one by one
At signals, like a bird called by its lure.
Thus they embark over the dusky waves,
And even before they land on the other side,
Again on this side a new crowd is gathered.
(III. 112-120)
Dante leaves no doubt that he is alluding to the Virgilian passage we
have just examined. The simile comes at the analogous point in the
narrative- an encounter with Charon, a passage over an infernal river into
the underworld. Even the second simile of the birds is included: "At signals,
like a bird called by its lure." But having drawn Virgil's text into his own
poem, Dante proceeds to transform it by a skillful reallocation of emphasis.
The extended treatment of the leaves dwells on the consequence, the result
of their fall: "The bough/Sees on the ground all its despoilments lie." Our
first thought is a kind of pity for the tree that has suffered the plundering
of its spoils. Virgil gave us the pathos and vulnerability of the leaves
themselves, but Dante is here speaking of their source, the tree which is
now denuded. Still, the two passages both seem to be portraying passive
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victims of the force of another. So we are puzzled and disquieted at the
way Dante's version continues:
In that same way the evil seed of Adam
Hurl themselves from the shoreline ...
The violent contrast between si levan, "are taken away," and gittansi, "hurl
themselves," heightened by the reflexive form of both, makes us doubt the
aptness of the simile. Onr perplexity is increased when we notice a hidden
wit in the use of si levan: Levarsi can mean "to raise or lift oneself up"
as well as "to be taken away." In anticipation of the moral significance
of verticality in the poem, "lifting up" is set in polar opposition to "casting
down." Dante is implying that leaf-like souls, unlike Virgil's passive victims, fall by their own choice in an act of deliberate violence.
It is thus fitting that onr sympathy is diverted, in Dante's version, from
the leaves themselves to the bough of the denuded tree. What is this tree?
We probably think first of the forest of the suicides in Canto XIII of Inferno, where both Pier della Vigna and an anonymous Florentine suicide,
now turned into a bush, fit the picture of the bereaved plant, deprived of
its foliage, staring at the ground. There too the immediate reaction, both
ours and the pilgrim's, is pity. But the word spoglie, "despoilments," is used
in that canto to refer to the bodies the suicides have cast off by their own
act. Along with the pilgrim we must learn the hard lesson that recnrs
throughout the Inferno: The justice of God often does not easily accord
with onr immediate passions of pity and love. Our wills must be shaped
anew. The suicides have offered violence to more than themselves, and we
must look farther to find the tree from which the damned souls, the leaves,
have torn themselves.
In the thirty-second canto of Purgatorio, Dante and Statius are following the great pageant of revelation, including the triumphal car drawn by
the Griffin, symbol of the incarnate Christ:
So, passing through the lofty forest, bare
Through fault of her that trusted in the serpent,
The song of an angel kept our steps in time.
As far as in three shots, perhaps, an arrow
Loosed from the bow would fly, so far had we
Moved on our way, when Beatrice descended.
Then from them all I heard a murmur: "Adam";
And they formed a ring around a tree, despoiled
Of leaves and other foliage in each branch.
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Its living tresses widen all the more
As the tree goes higher; even by the Indians
In their great woods, its height would be admired.
"Blessed are you, Griffin, since with your beak
You pluck not from this tree so sweet to taste;
For later on the belly wrenches from it."
Thus circling around the mighty tree
The others shouted; and the animal twice-born
Cried: "So the seed of all just men is saved."
(XXXII. 31-48)
The Griffin goes on to renew the tree laid bare by the fault of Adam. We
can see that the epithet if mal seme d'Adamo, "the evil seed of Adam,"
in our original passage, was not lightly chosen. These leaves are not
generalized symbols of the condition of mortality; they are particular
reminders of the human act that originated that condition. The emphasis
on "seed" in Jriferno III (Cf. III. 104-5), reinforced by sound effectssimz1mente il mal seme d'Adamo-here finds justification. Though the evil
seeds ironically bear no fruit, cast on the barren ground of hell, the good
seed of Adam is Christ, the first fruits and the seed of all righteousness,
repairing the damage wrought by Adam's fall. By his act the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil is transformed into the great tree that is an
epithet for Heaven in Paradiso XVIII:
l'albero che vive della cima
e frutta sempre e mai non perde foglia.
the tree that lives from its top
and always bears fruit, never losing its leaves.
(XVIII. 29-30)
It seems that we have accounted for Dante's adding to his Virgilian
source the detail of the tree contemplating its own despoliation. In so doing he turns the falling of the leaves into a typological image of the fall
of humanity, and of all nature. Through Christ's saving act, however, the
leaves as well as the fruit are restored to the tree, and so the integrity of
the restored tree is a kind of image of the Incarnation, the marriage of
the human and the divine. These things are known to a Christian through
the revelation of Holy Scripture; but Virgil as a Pagan has had no access
to scripture, and thus he has departed by the time Dante and Statius see
the tree's antitype in the pageant at the end of Purgatorio. Dante the poet's
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revision of the simile from Aeneid VI shows both the rhetorical power and
the spiritual limitations of the older poem.
Another image of this transformation is Dante's use of Virgil's birds.
We remember that in the Aeneid the birds seemed almost as passive as
the leaves: "the season's frost/ Drives them across the sea." The difference
was that the death of the leaves was utterly final and definitive, while the
flight of the birds left open the possibility of a cyclical return. Dante takes
Virgil's migrating birds and reduces them to one hunting bird, probably
a falcon returning to the falconer's lure. Here is a conspicuous revision
of Virgil, for whom the points of similarity between leaves and birds were
multitude and helpless passivity. Dante's bird is only one, and its passage
is a willed act of obedience to a command. Whose command? Virgil himself
is made to tell us, in his capacity as guide, in Purgatory. Look up, he tells
Dante the pilgrim,
"Turn your eyes to the falcon's lure, whirled round
By the Eternal King, with his mighty spheres."
Then like the falcon, who looks first below
Then turns to his master's call, straining ahead
From craving for the food that draws him thither,
Just so was I.
(Purgatorio XIX. 62-67;
Cf. Purg. XIV. 145-7)
When a soul ordained to bliss or to damnation proceeds to its eventual
resting place, it resembles the falcon heeding the command of the
falconer-that is, God. But unlike the migratory birds of the Aeneid, this
falcon is on a one-way journey, propelled by its own will either for good
or for evil. The damned souls which hurl themselves from the shoreline
are following their appetites into hell, just as the more blessed falcon of
Dante's comparison in Purgatory strains ahead toward the Lord's supper.
Dante's version of the simile implicitly condemns the melancholy quietism
of Virgil, who makes Anchises say quisque suos patimur manis, "Each of
us endures his shadowy doom." Even the damned souls in the Comedia
hurl themselves forward, instead of stretching out their arms in ineffectual longing.
As Virgil revised Homer, Dante revises Virgil. In each case filial piety
toward a literary parent causes the imitation; but in each case the imitated
model is subverted by implicit criticism. By subsuming the source into his
own poem, assimilating it into even small details of the allusive passages
in the text, the succeeding poet suggests the incompleteness of the origina~
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now fleshed out by his own still more inclusive epic vision. Virgil's revisionism is sometimes ambivalent: He seems to feel a kind of nostalgia for
the simpler, more naturalistic view of history that he finds in Homer's
poems, but he knows he lives too late to indulge in it. There has been a
tragic fall from naive archaic heroism into the necessity of a political art.
The greater self-conscious artificiality of Virgil's poem is in part an implied celebration of purposive human artifice in the building of Rome, but
also in part an expression of Virgil's regretful awareness of the human costs
of the great enterprise. As we have seen, Virgil's ambivalence emerges in
his prospective view of his own poem's posterity. In casting himself as the
Sibyl, he appropriates to himself the authority and lasting power of divine
inspiration; but in the image of the scattering of Sibyl's leaves he expresses
his worry that the inclusiveness and integrity of his poem will be compromised with the passage of time. Virgil knows that when a poem is subjected to the kind of systematic and intimate textual revision that he himself
performed upon Homer's work, it suffers a kind of diaspora, a tearing
and scattering of the unified imaginative vision of its creator-poet, wind
in the Sibyl's cave. In this Virgil was a true prophet, as we recognize when
we consider his treatment in the Commedia.
In contrast, Dante shows greater confidence in his power to subsume
his predecessor and to preempt any that might come after him. To some
extent this confidence results from his own self-assertive personality; but
it is also the confidence of the Christian humanist that his creed is the
true, valuable, and permanent interpretation of the partial truths of the
ancients. In the measure that Heaven is the True City, "that Rome of which
Christ is a Roman" (Purg. XXXII. 102) which includes, fulfills, and
transcends the Rome that Aeneas labored to build, so the journey chronicled
by Dante is the true Aeneid. All human descents into the underworld are
types of Christ's descent to harrow Hell. All human journeys to beatitude
are types of his resurrection and ascension. Thus a literal truth- the truest
of all truths, for Dante- is incarnated into the ostensible fiction of the
narrative of the Commedia. Dante the pilgrim instantiates Christ by dying and rising with him, as the poem's chronological scheme makes clear.
(Dante descends into Hell on Good Friday of the year 1300 and emerges
on Easter Sunday. See Inferno I. 36f., XXXIV. 68, 112f., and especially
XXI 112-14.) In the same way Dante the poet claims to provide a kind
of incarnation in literary history analogous to Christ's incarnation in real
human history. In the complete interpenetration of Dante's mythos and
his subject, the word made flesh is made word again, as an organizing principle for experience; and then by the powerful immediacy with which it
is made present for us, it is made flesh once again. Christ the Logos is
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here allegorically a ratio, a master relationship between the human soul
and divinity that is replicated in a kind of continuing proportion by Dante
the pilgrim, by Dante the poet in his retelling, and by us, the readers. The
unity and incorruptibility of Christ himself serve as a kind of guarantee
of the integrity and incorruptibility of Dante's poem. We see this with extraordinary power at the end of the Commedia, where the unity of the
creation is imaged as the cohesion of a book of pages bound together:
0 abbondante grazia and' io presunsi
ficcar lo visa per Ia luce etterna,
tanto che Ia veduta vi consunsi!
Nel suo profondo vidi che s'intema,
legato con amore in un volume,
ci6 che per 1\miverso si squaderna:
sustanze e accidenti e lor costume
quasi conflati insiemt; per tal modo
che ciO ch' i' dico e un semplice lume.
La forma universal di questa nodo
credo ch' i' vidi, perche pili di largo,
dicendo questa, mi sento ch' i godo.
Un punta solo m•e maggior letargo
che venticinque secoli all' impresa
che
fe Nettuno ammirar l'ombra d'Argo.
0 grace abounding, from which I took heart
To fix my gaze upon the eternal light
So long that I spent all my seeing there!
Within its depth I saw that there was gathered
Bound up by love into a single volume
The scattered pages of the universe:
Substances, accidents and their relations,
As if together fused, in such a way
That what I tell of is a simple light.
The universal form of this complex
I think I saw, because now even more
In telling it, I feel my joy increase.
One instant is to me more Lethe-like
Than twenty-five centuries of oblivion
For Neptune, marvelling at the Argo's shadow.
(Paradiso XXXIII. 82-96)
In the phrase "bound up by love into a single volume," the world volume
is used wittily to mean both a book and anything turned-like a sphere,
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for example. The word is used in this second sense repeatedly in Paradiso
(XXIII. 112, XXVI. 119, XXVIII. 14). But the most important preceding
use of volume comes in Inferno I, where Dante also pairs it with amore,
"love."
"Or se' tu quel Virgilio e quella fonte
che spandi di parlar si largo fiume?"
rispuos' io lui con vergognosa fronte.
"0 delli altri poeti onore e lume,
vagliami '1 lungo studio e' 1 grande amore
che m'ha fatto cercar lo tuo volume.
Th se' lo mio maestro e 'l mio autore;
tu se' solo colui da cu' io tolsi
lo bello stilo che m'ha fatto onore ... "
"Are you that Virgil, then, that famous spring
from which pours forth so great a stream of speech?"
I answered him with shame upon my face.
"0 light and honor of all other bards,
Let the great zeal and love avail me now
That long have made me search throughout your volume.
You are my master, my original;
And you alone are he from whom I took
The style whose beauty brings me honor too."
(1. 79-87)
The honorific word volume, applied first to Virgil's work, refers to the
epic inclusiveness that allows him to involve and encompass so vast a world
within his poem. But its last use in Dante's poem, framing the Commedia
at the other end, as it were, shows how much larger a claim he makes for
his own volume. The time-honored image of the "Book of the World" is
here adapted to two purposes: It expresses the sense of integrity and oneness
that Dante the pilgrim perceived in all of creation, with the power of the
vision vouchsafed to him in the highest of the heavens; but it also selfreferentially implies the power of Dante's poem to convey this same sense,
though mediated by language, to his audience. The encyclopedic claims
of epic are made literal.
But at the end of the passage there is a sudden reversal:
One instant is to me more Lethe-like
Than twenty-five centuries of oblivion
For Neptune, marvelling at the Argo's shadow.
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The all-inclusive power of epic has also been internalized and made contingent on the visionary power and articulateness of the poet. If his capacity
for beatitude proves to be fleeting, as is the common case for living human
beings, his volume will be in effect squadernato- scattered in single pages
throughout the universe. Remarkably, however, by locating himself and his
own failure of vision within the narrative, Dante asserts the scope and
lasting power of the vision that he admittedly fails to depict or even evoke
in a lasting way. Unlike Virgil, whose survival and fame seemed to depend
on the continuance of an earthly empire, Dante links his own poem to
the eternal actuality and truth of God's empire. That he is not able to convey it directly somehow guarantees that it is there. This rhetorical strategy
accounts for the great paradox of the last canto of the Commedia: that
in the most successful evocation of divine presence in any work of literature,
the inexpressible is expressed precisely through a failure to express it. Thus
when Dante appropriates Virgil's image of the Sibylline leaves, it has a
quietude and sweetness remote from Virgil's disturbing melancholy. Dante
is here revising and subsuming not only Virgil's poem but his own:
Qual e colui che somn'iando vede
che dopa il sogno la passione impressa
rimane, e l'altro alia mente non riede,
cotal son io, che quasi tutta cessa
mia visione, ed ancor mi distilla
nel cor il dolce che nacque da essa.
Cosi Ia neve al sol si disigilla;
cosi al vento nelle foglie levi
si perdea Ia sentenza di Sibilla.
As is the man who, in his dreaming, sees
And then, the dream past, still its imprinted power
Remains, but all the rest from him is gone,
So too am I now: Almost all the vision
Falls off from me apace; yet there distills
Within my heart the sweetness born of it.
Thus in the sun the snow unseals itself;
Thus in the wind, among the delicate leaves,
The prophecies of Sibyl went astray.
(Paradiso XXXIII. 58-66)
•••
Skipping over three hundred fifty years and some notable episodes in
this family history, we come to a new death of leaves, newly reborn, in
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Milton's Paradise Lost. Satan, cast into hell, rears himself up from the burning lake and struggles massively to the shore.
Nathless he so endur'd, till on the Beach
Of that inflamed Sea, he stood and calld
His Legions, Angel Forms, who lay intranst
Thick as Autumnal Leaves that strow the Brooks
In Va/lombrosa, where th' Etrurian shades
High overarcht imbowr; or scatterd sedge
Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armd
Hath vext the Red-Sea Coast, whose waves orethrew
Busiris and his Memphian Chivalrie,
While with perfidious hatred they persu'd
The Sojourners of Goshen, who beheld
From the safe shore thir floating Carcasses
And Brok'n Chariot Wheels. So thick bestrown
Abject and lost lay these, covering the Flood,
Under amazement of thir hideous change.
(I. 299-3!3)
I have time only to sketch in the most compressed and cryptic way how
Milton receives and transforms this legacy of the simile of the leaves. Like
Homer he locates the passage generally in a context of huge, heroic battlefield conflict. Like Virgil he compares the leaves in their multitude to the
number of the fallen. Like Dante he gives us the final sight of the leaves
on the ground, in the fallenness of a Christian Hell. And there are numerous
other particular points of allusion as well, to these authors and others,
like the epic poet Tasso, the Biblical narrator of Exodus, and most especially
the prophet Isaiah:
And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled
together as a scroll: and all their host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off
from the vine, and as a falling fig from a fig tree.
(Is. 34:4)
The richness, the plenitude of this catalogue of allusion testifies to the
inclusiveness of Milton's encyclopedic epic. Yet the sheer range of the field
surveyed, the number of sources invoked, is dizzying to us: The leaves of
these preceding volumes lie as thick as those in Vallombrosa, and we surveying them are like the fallen angels, amazed at the wild declension of images and the change from one to another. The passage becomes a kind
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of labyrinth, as the pun on "amazement" suggests. What are the sources
of our difficulties? Perhaps we can enumerate some.
First, the different sources alluded to are made to work against each
other. Let me give two examples. Vallornbrosa, a pretty rural convent outside of Florence, seems to provide a concrete, naturalistic, this-worldly location for the fallen leaves. That suggests that the simile will be faithful in
spirit to Horner's practice of constrasting the violent scenes of his narrative with incongruously peaceful vignettes of country life. But the place
Vallornbrosa is chosen for the particular reason that its name is significant: It means "Shady Valley," the Valley of the Shadow of Death, an
allegorical landscape like Dante's. Our satisfaction at recognizing this wordplay does not last long. At the end of the line, "Etrurian shades" adumbrates, if l may use that word, the presence of the Etruscan or pre-Roman
ghosts of the Aeneid, in whose underworld there is also a valles umbrosa.
The lineation gives us time to be confused; then the enjarnbed remnant
of the clause makes us realize that the word "shades" refers not to ghosts,
but rnetonyrnically to trees. We are back in the placid natural landscape
again.
A second example: Our awareness of the presence of Virgil and Dante
within and behind Milton's text conditions us to think of spirits waiting
on the near side of a body of water, preparing to cross over. It is on the
hither shore that both Aeneas and Dante the pilgrim stand, contemplating
the numberless dead. But here the simile of Pharoah's chariots ("Busiris
and his Mernphian Chivalrie") chasing the fleeing Israelites (''the Sojourners
of Goshen") leaves us with no firm place to stand: At first we are with
Pharoah, pursuing from the near shore; then, by the magic of a subordinate clause, our perspective shifts to the farther shore and we are with
the Hebrews, looking back. But what we are looking at is the wreck of
Pharoah's army, now not on either shore but scattered in or on the water,
like the fallen angels. The shift from one invoked source to another enforces on us abrupt dislocations in space and time.
Another source of difficulty for us comes from the unique temporal
setting of Milton's story. As his poem goes on to show, the fall of Satan
and the rebel angels helps to cause the fall of humanity and of all of terrestrial nature. Such phenomena as the change of seasons, the corning of
storms, the death of leaves or of any other living thing- all these result
from and instantiate the first corning of death that Milton depicts. It is
thus incongruous for him to use these later, more familiar phenomena in
similes: Th do so is to compare a thing with itself, or a subset of itself,
as if I were to say, "The earth's rotation on its axis is as regular as the
alternation of night and day." As Wallace Stevens once remarked, identity
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is the vanishing point of resemblance. Milton's implicit claim is that the
primary truths of human history, told in his poem, are more intelligible
in themselves than any poetic comparison could make them. At worst,
poetic comparison will mislead us, like the inappropriately tranquil scene
of Vallombrosa. In trying to reduce the subject to the narrow limits of our
fallen human comprehension, poetry causes us to make mortal errors again
and again. The sheer difficulty, the deception and complexity of Milton's
verse are often attempts to make us aware of this repeated process. Even
at best, any statement of likeness would be redundant, strictly speaking.
The originating status of Milton's subject matter is so all-encompassing
that no comparison can be found which is not absorbed into the thing
compared to. Hence no epic simile in the ordinary sense is possible: If the
normal action of the similes is to include other realms of experience in
an epic narrative, here we find that all of those realms are already
automatically included. And so are we, the beholders. The poem cannot
offer us a god-like or privileged place to stand, from which we can contemplate in detachment the unity and comprehensiveness of creation. It
is our very fallenness, our implication in the events narrated, that causes
our difficulties in reading.
Milton's poem thus conspires rhetorically against itself, but only after
disposing of its precursors. We saw Virgil rewriting Homer and Dante
rewriting Virgil; but for Milton there is no single epic forerunner, no fatherly
master-poet to whom he is irretrievably indebted and whose precedent he
must overcome. In place of an intricate counterpointing of two texts, we
get from Milton an all-out assault on what he portrays as a monolithic
tradition of epic poetry. As he claims in the invocation at the start of Book
IX, all conventional heroic narrative is intrisically inferior to the story that
he alone is trying to tell. But he too, of course, is fallen, dependent on
the inspiration of a heavenly muse. His greatest source of information and
also of difficulty is Holy Scripture itself. A revisionist treatment of Genesis
can only dramatize its own futility, and that of all human poetic artifice.
As I've claimed, other epics try to swallow up their predecessors and
preempt their successors. Milton's more radical project is to chop down
the whole family tree, and his own branch with it.
It is somewhat alarming to reflect that he may well have succeeded.
Many literary historians consider Paradise Lost to be the last true epic poem
in Western literature. I do not know whether this is true; if it is not, I am
similarly puzzled by the question of who the legitimate heirs are, in the
generations that follow. But the succession we have seen suggests at least
a direction: inward, away from the narrative representation of physical experience. As the tradition goes on, more of the poem's essential content
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consists, not in its self-containedness as a text, but in its interaction with
its own past and future, The burden of the successor poet is to inherit the
tradition and make it new, to use an intimate familiarity with the work
of another as the new material for a radically originating act. Perhaps this
process can be a paradigm for you and me, not writers of epics but readers
of them. We too must remake the poems we read, approaching them with
qualified piety and then dismembering them, assimilating them into
ourselves. They are the true and valid sources of our self-making, lenses
through which we view the whole of things, tokens of admission not only
into other worlds but into our deep selves, the underworld in which we
learn our destiny. If we don't appropriate what we find in these pages, making them ours by wrenching them out of their own place and time, then
they are dead leaves indeed. But if they find new life in us- if our re-vision
of these received texts becomes a new mode of vision, ours and yet not
ours alone-then we too might be able to see the whole world as one place,
bound up by love into a single volume, for as long as the vision lasts.
Note: Given the nature of my argument, it seems indispensable for me to
acknowledge at least a few of my own literary debts. Anyone who has read the
work of Northrop Frye and Harold Bloom will recognize how deeply and pervasively this essay has been influenced by them. There are brief treatments of the
topos of the leaves in C. M. Bowra's From Virgil to Milton and John Hollander's
The Figure of Echo. I have consciously borrowed several points from R. G. Austin
in my treatment of Virgil. My reading of Dante owes much to Erich Auerbach,
E. R. Curtius, and Charles Singleton; my reading of Milton, to Stanley Fish.
All the translations, however, are my own.
�Commencement Address
Curtis Wilson
Members of the graduating class:
It is an honor to be asked to speak to you on your Commencement
Day. A recent book bears the title How to Survive Education. I haven't
read it, and do not know how it's done; but you've done it, and we con-
gratulate you. I myself, who came here forty years ago next August, have
not quite made it through: I have still the junior and senior language
tutorials to do.
The St. John's program does a lot of stretching and spreading thin.
If a sheet of plastic is stretched to its tensile limit, it is likely that a hole
will open in it here or there. In trying to cover as much as we do, we are
quixotic. Quixoticism has been our keynote from the beginning.
Fifty-one years ago Scott Buchanan and Stringfellow Barr brought forth
on this campus a New Program, dedicated to the proposition that liberal
education is possible. The enemy was the elective system, introduced by
Charles Eliot in his inaugural address as president of Harvard in 1869,
and since then adopted in colleges and universities generally. Before Eliot,
the curricula were all-required, but- and this was Eliot's objection- they
had failed to incorporate the modern natural sciences. Year by year the
natural sciences were transforming the world and our picture of it. Eliot,
by licensing the natural sciences as elective possibilities, aimed to broaden,
deepen, and invigorate education. One consequence, a good one, was that
the universities became nurturers of natural science. Another was that
Curtis Wilson, Thtor and twice Dean of St. John's College, Annapolis, reached
retirement this year. He delivered this address to the graduating seniors in Annapolis
on May 22, 1988.
75
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THE ST JOHN'S REVIEW
liberal education lost its sense of identity and direction. Adding to the muddle were the new social sciences, so-called. College education became a
grab-bag of choices ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Barr and Buchanan set out to do the impossible. We were all, students
and tutors, to become autodidacts, tackling the reading of a veritable
Everest of books. The books were to be chosen for their classic quality,
for being first-rate. The great works of mathematics and natural science
would be included, starting with Euclid and continuing through Newton,
Maxwell, and so on. We would become literate in the classics of the scientific tradition, as well as in the classics of literature and philosophy. In
my one leisurely conversation with Buchanan, in 1965, he wanted to know
how we were getting on with Maxwell and Josiah Willard Gibbs. Gibbs,
if you haven't heard his name before, was a nineteenth-century American,
one of the great physicists. I had to confess that we hadn't managed to
cram Gibbs's works on thermodynamics and statistical mechanics into the
program.
This program that Barr and Buchanan conceived was accused of being Epimethean, medieval, backward-looking. In fact, it was as Promethean
as all get-out. Like John Dewey, Buchanan came from Vermont, and like
him mixed Yankee pragmatism with a visionary dream of what this country could be. He expected the college's new program to become the seedbed of an American Renaissance.
As for the natural sciences, he had the idea of a hands-on approach.
He saw the laboratory as the distinctively modern institution for the acquisition of knowledge; and so he dubbed one whole part of the program
"the laboratory." At different times he considered organizing it round
medicine, or the airplane engine. A good carpenter himself, he wanted the
students to get handy with hammer and saw, plane and drill. And in the
laboratory, both intellect and manual technique were to be brought to bear.
All this was to be done in a marvelously original, eclectic way. For
organizing principles, Buchanan turned to medieval tradition. He had the
library collection reorganized under the rubrics of the seven liberal arts,
so that physics, for instance, came under music. What a librarian's
headache! Buchanan was aiming to tweak all our complacencies.
Of those heady times, which were before I arrived, I have gathered intimations from here and there. One of the earlier tutors told me how, in
the autumn of his first year, his senior math students- all male, of
course-took him to a local pub, sat him down with a beer, and commanded him to stop considering himself responsible for their education.
They were responsible; if they needed help, they would ask for it.
In the middle of the academic year in which I arrived, 1948-49, Jacob
�WILSON
77
Klein became dean of the College; he was to remain so till 1958. It was
a time of consolidation. A new president, Richard Weigle, proceeded to
put the College on a tenable financial basis. Coeducation was introduced,
a step, it was hoped, in the direction of civility. The faculty, weary of more
chaos than it was comfortable with, became more insistent that students
acquire something more like ordinary competence. As the dean put it, the
glories of fifth-century Athens must now be succeeded by the more
pedestrian achievements of an Alexandrian age. The obbligato of social
revolutionary fervor dropped to a whisper.
From my first decade here what has remained most clearly in memory
are the dean's opening lectures. Huffing, clearing his throat, Jacob Klein
would begin by speaking of the trepidation he felt, in attempting to formulate our task. All knowledge, he would be telling us, was our province,
and to keep the wholeness of it in mind was enormously difficult. For it
was ever our tendency to make ourselves comfortable by limiting the view.
He would speak of the babble and unexamined jargon of everyday
speech. Are we not prisoners to it? In Plato's simile of the cave, we must
somehow be freed of our chains and turn round, looking away from the
shadows to what causes them. Surely there is something right about this
image of education, whatever the mystery or confusion concerning the rest
of the story, the Sun and the upper regions and the fourth part of the
divided line. But what was mainly being impressed on the hearers of those
lectures was a simple idea and a sobering one: the thought that to take
account of the wholeness of things is difficult and demanding.
Of these lectures the one that I remember best was Jacob Klein's final
lecture as dean, delivered in September, 1957. The text has not survived,
but the title was "The Delphic Oracle and the Liberal Arts." It dealt with
the ambiguity of the injunction "Know Thyself."
One meaning is this: Know that you aren't god. Know that you are a
finite, mortal being, dependent on your fellow human beings, prone to error, prone to hybris, the error of overstepping your boundaries. The lesson
to draw is modesty, sobriety, circumspection, a sense for our equality with
our fellows. Th a student this could mean: doing the homework, learning
the paradigms. To a scholar it could mean: getting the footnotes right.
The other meaning rested on the recognition that everything is connected with everything. From the farthest reaches of the cosmos to the
depths of the human psyche, nothing is simply isolatable, so as to be fully
understandable by itself alone. Hence, to know myself, I must know
everything. The quest for self-knowledge is thus inherently incompletable.
But the oracle, under this interpretation, enjoins it.
In what I have been recounting, there is an aspect I do not want you
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
to miss. We at this college are a bunch of crazy autodidacts, holding madly
onto two horns of a dilemma. If you did not quite know what you were
getting into when you first came here, surely the truth has dawned on you
by now.
In the last thirty years the program has not changed in essentials. Some
things we do better. But I myself, conniving with others, have helped add
to the madness, in seeing to it that we get to Maxwell's equations, relativity, and quantum theory. Mature physicists admit to having been discombobulated in their first encounter with these theories. To get them to seem
familiar, the only way is to trace and retrace the routes that have led to
such odd consequences: undulations where there is nothing to undulate,
events strictly correlated yet separated in space, with no message passing
in between, and so on. Imagination has been instrumental in leading to
each such result, but the result transcends and contradicts the imagination. As J.B.S. Haldane put it, the world is not only queerer than we have
imagined, it is queerer than we can imagine. My discomfort over what we
fail to do would be greater if you had not met, at least briefly, with this
encouragement and rebuff to our analogizing.
What I have said is no excuse for remediable faults in the program.
As to what could be improved, I have ideas, and so do some of my colleagues, but our ideas are not all the same. But the main point I have been
making is that the program here is an unfinishable affair.
The remaining words I have for you are by way of homily. To your stack
of books, you must now add what Descartes called the great book of the
world. The image is not in every way apt, but it is preferable to thinking
of the world as an unalterable harsh mechanism, to which you are required
to adjust your misfitting shapes. A book can be read, and that, as you
know, is an active, formative process. 'Ity observing the world; there is much
that is thus to be learnt. But the stance of the altogether detached observer
that Descartes projects of himself is probably neither possible nor really
desirable. A better simile for you is that of organic adaptation. You must
adapt to the world; and, in ways that, to begin with, may not seem as important as they are, the world will have to adapt to you.
For four years you have been discussing works of literature and philosophy, writing essays, analyzing plays and poems and arguments. These exercises have developed in you a number of skills that should be prized:
the habit of listening carefully, of being attentive to a question and seeking out its sharp edge; the habit of readiness to enter into another person's thoughts, and to assume a new intellectual posture in response to
new facts or ideas. Here and there, by bits and pieces, these habits should
prove transferable from one context to another.
�WILSON
79
For God's sake, don't say, as one graduate put it on a resume a few
years ago, that at St. John's you learned to think. These hyperboles will
harm you. There is no point in merely astonishing strangers with our
strangeness.
Mind that some of our patterns here are all-too-easily turned into
caricature. We inculcate the respect for great books, tbe taking seriously
of the texts we read, as possibly revealing truth. A good habit. Works about
our authors we eschew, telling you that these should not be your authorities,
that you should think for yourselves. A good pedagogical ploy. But it does
not mean that a biography of Cervantes, say, might not reveal something
important about the book begun in the prison of Seville; or that the composition of Shakespeare's audience might not have something important
to do with the composition of his plays and the wondrous mix of the high
and the low that he achieves. Our authors were creatures of flesh and blood,
and their works, in many cases, were prompted by the paradox of real-life
situations. They were not always merely chatting with one another.
We tutors, who are paid, I guess, to defend all these books, are not
to be imitated in all our sophistries. Not everything in the books we defend is defensible. Kant gets from the first to the second Critique by leap
rather than logic. Newton fails in Book I to prove satisfactorily a crucial
proposition on which Book III depends. Not every failure of logic in the
Platonic dialogues is necessarily to be explained away by reference to the
mythos of the dialogue.
Graduates, I gather, tend to become nostalgic for St. John's-style conversations. Well, you can have them again, and better, in new circumstances,
when you have completed more homework. You will need friends, of course,
and to cultivate friends is difficult in this age of endless mobility and of
work-days that stretch on into the night. Don't fail to cultivate friends.
There are conversations waiting out there to take place. It may not be very
easy to find where and when they can occur. Tentatively, you can begin
to take a bit of initiative.
You must find your own footing, your point of vantage and vision,
freed at last from both the comfort and the annoyance of pedagogical
authority. After having been stretched in so many directions, you must begin
to assess, and reassess, where your own redefined center of gravity may
be, and where your powers can take you, and what you can discover.
I wish that we at the College had managed to give more attention to
heuristic. The word comes from a Greek verb. Archimedes used its firstperson singular perfect as he leapt from the bath, on making his great
discovery. To discover is indeed a perfect thing, in the sense that it brings
elements together, makes a new whole. How do you go about making
discoveries?
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
There are no very particular rules. In general you need to be asking
a question, focussing on it, wrestling with it. You have to have the bravura
to suppose that the parts of the answer can come together for you. You
have to have faith in your powers. The evidence for there being something
we could call unconscious thinking seems to me very strong, A manifold
of processes must go into the recognition of a face or any other gestalt,
but it seems to come instantaneously. So with the "Aha!" experience of
discovery.
In discovery there is a kind of interweaving of the old and the new,
the Epimethean and the Promethean, the traditional and the innovative.
In learning anything, we learn it less well before we learn it better. Our
ignorance frequently consists in knowing what is not so or not quite so.
Discovery is the finding of the new or the different within the matrix of
what is already present, whether in latent memory or conscious thought.
There is no point in merely clinging to what is past. What you learned
and forgot can come back after years to haunt you, or to fill in the gap
in an uncompleted gestalt. As Buchanan put it, we learn to swim in winter,
and to ice-skate in summer. You must have faith in possibility and in what
is hidden within yourselves. The quest must be to find the question and
to persist in the questioning.
In a book about Chinese brush-and-ink painting, I found some precepts
that are eminently applicable to discovering. Here they are:
Follow tradition in basic design.
For powerful brushwork, there must be ch'i or spirit. The brush should
be handled with spontaneity.
Be original, even to the point of eccentricity, but without disregarding
the li of things (li means principles or laws or essences).
Learn from the masters but avoid their faults.
Now I am supposing- is this a mere academic's dream?- that such rules
are not applicable only to mathematical discovery or originality in painting. The questions to which heuristic is applicable need not be high-falutin
or esoteric. With a bit of good will and heuristic, with patience and pluck,
you might be able to transform the daily routines in schoolroom or office,
or the community for some miles around. Oh, if you must, save the world,
or write another great book! But I have thought it wiser to wish you a
simpler destiny, neither tragic nor comic, but similar to the one that
Odysseus chose at the end of the Republic.
I think I have about finished. Oh yes! do read and re-read some of
Montaigne, when you get the chance.
Such is my homily for you today; it is from the heart. May you fare well,
�-:___ - - -
/
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Two Poems
Going Down the Mountain
The journey down the mountain
Leaves us silent, intent on stepping,
Mule-like and heavily laden,
On the cobbled stream bed that serves as road.
Wind-blown aspens shake and splatter
Gold on the dark mountains- so Zeus
Brought grief to the high-towered girl
In such a glittering shower.
Divine conceptions are just the thing
To bring the whole weeping weight of our
Humanness upon and between us.
We pan where the water still runs,
Recovering what we carry: gold,
Hid in the murk of the ancient clay.
Carolyn Wade Loring, an alumna of St. John's College, Annapolis, taught in the
College in 1987-88.
�83
LORING
To Ella, who died March 16, 1973
The mountains in evening don't keep their distance,
But approach and recede, as if a tired
And heavily breathing animal
Drew one after another its aching breaths,
Until another day's labor was done,
And sleep fell over the whole.
Rain also, beaten by wind
Through the ravaged stonework of our wall,
Pools and sinks and spills down one stone face
To another, and to the gray earth below
Where a lilac, tended three years now,
Chooses, without conviction, to live.
Grandmother: your ironic eyes,
Paler and bluer than water-reflected sky,
Saw all and wondered. Why now,
After fifteen years of grieving,
Is your face as close as the mountains,
Where many animals, in secret, become earth?
Carolyn Wade Loring
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
La Chauve-souris et les deux belettes*
Une Chauve-souris donna tete baissee
Dans un nid de Belette; et sit6t qu'elle y fut,
L'autre, envers les souris de longtemps courroucee,
Pour Ia devorer accourut.
Quai! vous osez, dit-elle, a mes yeux vous produire,
Aprf:s que votre race a t§.che de me nuire!
N'@tes-vous pas Souris? Parlez sans fiction.
Oui, vous l'@tes, ou bien je ne suis pas Belette.
- Pardonnez-moi, dit la pauvrette,
Ce n'est pas rna profession.
Moi, Souris! Des mechants vous ont dit ces nouvelles.
Gr§.ce a l'Auteur de l'Univers,
Je suis Oiseau: voyez mes ailes:
Vive Ia gent qui fend les airs!
Sa raison plut, et sembla bonne.
Elle fait si bien qu'on lui donne
Liberte de se retirer.
Deux jours aprf:s, notre 6tourdie
Aveuglement va se fourrer
Chez un autre Belette aux Oiseaux ennemie.
La voilA derechef en danger de sa vie.
La Dame du logis avec son long museau
S'en allait Ia croquer en qualite d'Oiseau,
Quand elle protesta qu'on lui faisait outrage:
Moi, pour telle passer? Vous n'y regardez pas.
Qui fait l'Oiseau? c'est le plumage.
Je suis Souris: vivent les Rats!
Jupiter confonde les Chats!
Par cette adroite repartie
Elle sauva deux fois sa vie.
Plusieurs se sont trouves qui d'echarpe changeants
Aux danger, ainsi qu'elle, ont souvent fait Ia figue.
Le Sage dit, selon les gens:
Vive le Roi, vive Ia Ligue.
* The Fables of La Fontaine, Book II, fable v. Fables i and ii of Book I, with English i
versions, appeared in the previous issue.
�85
LA FONTAINE-ZUCKERMAN
The Bat and the Two Weasels
A bat rushed headlong into a weasel's nest.
She was not a welcome guest.
The weasel, who for the longest time
Had hated mice, sprang to attack. 'You dare,'
She said, 'set foot inside this house
After your sort have been so hard on me?
Speak without lying: are you not a mouse?
Oh you're a mouse all right, or I'm
No weasel.' 'Pardon me,'
Replied the bat, 'but that's not what I am.
What, me a mouse? I wonder where
You can have heard
Anything so absurd.
Thanks to the author of the universe
I am a bird.
Look at my wings: Long live the race
Of those who cleave the air!'
She reasoned so persuasively
She was set free.
'IWo days later,
Our heedless bat
Barges in blindly at
Another weasel's, an abominator
Of birds. Again her life's in danger:
Mistress Muzzle was just about
Th crush the avian stranger,
When she indignantly cried out:
'What do you take me for?
A bird? But you're
Not looking carefully. What makes a bird?
It is the plumage. I'm
A mouse: Long live the rats!
Let Jupiter confound all cats!'
Thus for a second time
The bat kept death away
With repartay.
People there are who, like the flittermouse,
When threatened know what party to espouse.
As circumstances change, it's wise
To choose which attribute to emphasize.
E.Z.
�-
\~
/
�Book Review
Thomas Flanagan:
The Tenants of Time*
Eva Brann
Here is a book that lives up to its captivating title. For its perspective on
human events is that from which time is most apt to seem like a place,
and a place- here Ireland- seem like a temporal being. It is the perspective of history. It is from the point of view of history that we live "in" our
fixed century as in a dwelling and in our changing nation as in a stream.
Like many good things, the title does double or even triple duty: One of
the deep themes of the book is the tenancy of land, the acute catastrophe
of eviction for the peasantry and the more muted melancholy of sellingup for the landlords. Finally, there is that personal passage of time, that
strange conjunction of public times passing and private days waning, when
the termination of our lease on life is in sight: The title is taken from- or
worked into- a reflection by the most reflective character in the book, the
schoolmaster Hugh McMahon, who says in the very center of the text:
We are all tenants of Time, and whatever it is that reminds us, that thing
we will convict as a murderer, like the messenger bringing bad tidings (428).
Master McMahon hates the testimonials of time's passing, and consequently he himself refuses to testify. Though the kindest of men, he gently
Eva Brann is a Thtor at St. John's College, Annapolis.
* New York:
Dutton, 1988
87
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
and quite informatively stymies the young historian with whose appearance
the book opens. For Hugh himself is not a historian such as would put
the stamp of by-gone on the object of his research, but he is rather an
antiquarian who tries against hope to prevent the Gaelic tongue from passing into history-though he himself had once drilled it out of his pupils.
It is as a reflection on history that I want to recommend The Tenants
of Time to the St. John's community. For a deep doubt concerning the
doability and leachability of history is, as it were, the negative foundation
of our program of study. So we are left to come to extracurricular grips
with the potent impossibility of this discipline. This book, which is at once
about the delusory living, the shifting remembrance, and the abortive
writing of history, might have been made for the likes of us.
Before getting to the thought-provoking gist of this novel-history, let
me say something about how it reads. The novels which best typify their
genre are long and historical. Think of War and Peace and Remembrance
of Things Past. The two, bulk and history, are connected. It is, after all,
the business of narrative prose fiction, as opposed to poetry and drama,
to follow out the setting and circumstances of the precipitating events and
characters in indefinitely ramifying detail until the fiction has been
seamlessly implicated in a public world, the world whose scale is too encompassing to be a fiction. In The Tenants of Time this interweaving is
done to perfection. The historical figures, such as Parnell and Gladstone,
consort so comfortably with the fictional participants that one is pleased
to find them not distinguished by so much as an asterisk in the appended
list of characters. This novel, which is both long (over 800 pages) and
historical, indeed reads in certain respects just like history: It is muted and
intricate, many-faceted, and replete with the sort of scene-setting detail
that only primary research can turn up. It is, even, at first, a little tedious,
as good history often is, with the absorbing tedium of a tale levelly
developed, without the compact actions, the crises, that are the stock-intrade of drama. I think in all the forty-one chapters I received a shock
just once; others may find up to three surprises. This levelling of the
dramatic niveau is carefully devised. Every critical event is anticipated,
"prevented," as the Bible used so aptly to say, approached obliquely by
hints or glancing announcements. Novels are long partly so that readers
may inhabit them during a span of real time not utterly incommensurate
with that of the novelistic events. To make that time seem very long and
yet to make the reader never wish to emerge- that is the quintessential
novelistic art. This book was as hard to take leave of as it took long to read.
But whereas from one perspective we are being drawn into a fabric of
accurately researched detail with its numerous interwoven threads, its clues
�BRANN
89
and knots, from another it is the characters of the novel who start to come
out as people. They begin as alien silhouettes outside the compass of our
care and end up having captured our affection. They are Irishmen, recall,
and each chapter is assigned to one or more of them (and once to a woman)
to report their doings or to record their voices. The latter is most delicately
done. They all sound different and yet, with the sparest use of dialect, just
with an occasional idiomatic turn, they all sound Irish- which is the more
remarkable since this novel was written by an American. My particular
point here, though, is that if the book is devoted to history, the chapters
belong to the people. That turns out to be the crux of this enterprise.
From Homer on, literary works have often been reflexive, that is to
say, about themselves (as the Odyssey is about the telling of the odyssey).
It is only an illusion of recent frequency that makes us think of this mode
as modern. So it is not especially striking for this historical novel to be
about the writing of history. What is remarkable is how reflectively it is
done.
The situation is that in the first chapter-the year is 1904-a rather
prissily conscientious young historian called Prentiss turns up in the town
of Kilpeder in County Cork, to do research toward a book on the abortive
local Fenian rebellion of 1867. In the last chapter he gives up the project
as impossible and takes up the law instead. At the same moment the novel
about the same incident has, of course, come to completion, and what is
it but the desired history? Inference: When history turns out to be impossible, the novel may do its work.
That this upshot is not frivolous appears in the course of the final conversation, when Prentiss lets off a rehearsed epigram. It is aimed at the
converse proposal of certain German historians, to the effect that history
is merely a narrative fiction:
A taste for fiction has always seemed to me the unfailing mark of an imaginative deficiency (816).
This mingy witticism has a small truth in it: A person of perfect imaginative
repleteness could probably find complete satisfaction in such real-world
fragments as make themselves available. But it is evident that the author
of the epigram believes neither with the Germans that historians are a
species of novelist, nor, as Prentiss pretends, that novelists are historians
manques- both rather light-minded notions- but something more subtle,
namely that novelists come to a consummation just when conscientious
historians give up.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
To appreciate this claim one must ask why, actually, Prentiss does give
up. It is because he finds himself stymied from both sides. On the one
hand, this supposedly compact tale of a temporally and spatially local event
keeps going, as a German idiom so nicely puts it, "from the hundredth
to the thousandth." The ramifications of discoverable fact run wild. On
the other hand, some sources who know won't tell, and what is worse, those
who do tell, generously and intimately, won't tell all, leaving Prentiss with
some all-too-well-formed enigmas, both intimate and public. He is too
much of a historian and too little of a novelist to invent the truth. So he
falls between the stools of too much and too little knowledge, as will, it
is implied, any historian who takes the judgment-seat. The novelist has
the advantage in both realms: He penetrates his characters' privacies, not
because they are his, but because he trusts himself to know what it is like
to be a young man in J(i!peder, because he can see the paradigm in the
person and give individual shape to the specimen. But he also paints the
larger picture more successfully, for where the honest historian is obliged
to seek a pattern-in-chief- Prentiss is all for patterns- the novelist can
represent the oscillations of perspective as the ultimate truth. For example, as their particular messy little uprising of '67 recedes for the four
Kilpeder leaders personally- recedes more and more into nostalgic inconsequences and into shame-faced irritation with its balladistic glorificationthe Fenian rebellion as a whole begins to hang like an ever-darker incubus
over the great historical event of their maturity, the Parnellian Land War.
(In fact the author makes sure that it reaches even into the reader's present,
for he unobtrusively presents the imprisoned Fenians as a pattern for the
LR.A.: The former shivered naked in their blankets rather than wear the
Queen's convict-uniforms, and the same "blanket protest" has been recently
employed by the latter.) And that complex of dampings and reverberations
rings truer than would any assessment on the historical level.
Perhaps it is this licence to write history from the bottom up, or better,
from the inside out, that allows the novelist to consummate his labors, to
achieve a whole, when the wise historian will accept defeat. For whereas
history, having no natural being, becomes amorphous under very close
scrutiny, characters under the novelist's pointed attention gain "a local
habitation and a name." Flanagan's four Kilpeder men are a memorable
set, real friends as much in their untimely distances as in their long-breathed
loyalties. There is Tully, the infinitely charming play-boy, the felicitously
and also fatefully unconforming son of the local "gombeen" man, the
money-lender and merchant prince in whose interest the noble land war
against the aristocracy finally turns out to have been fought. There is his
cousin, Delaney, the heir-apparent in spirit of the Tully ambitions, carried
�BRANN
91
high by his shrewd, fierce energy and brought down by a whole-hearted
passion which exactly parallels that of his hero Parnell. Then there is the
above-mentioned schoolmaster and his remote relative, Ned Nolan, the accredited Fenian commander of the uprising, who turns terrorist. Ned is
a dark, God-forsaken, pure-hearted man whom the others love, and who,
it finally appears, loves them- with fatal results.
What the novelist as historian does particularly well is to build up
through his individual people, somehow, by hook or by crook, an impression of a whole people. Perhaps the Irish are a people whose nature specially
requires slow narrative development, for it is revealed in antitheses: lo-
quacious and inarticulate, soaked in spirits but delicate about its rituals,
strong for brotherhood and ready for fratricide, in turn fanatically renitent and ever ready to turn informer.
Now, one might ask, what is Ireland to us or we to Ireland that we
should steep ourselves in its nature and its history? Well, as I have urged,
The Tenants of Time is almost as much a book about history as of history,
and therein lies its special interest for us. But isn't it also true that any
people that is genuinely what it is (as some are not) can capture our
sympathy- and this one, lovable and damned, more than most? Moreover
there are at present some forty million Irish-Americans: Irish history has
spilled over into American history. The book itself has America as a kind
of resonating background: Like the present-day I.R.A., the Fenians are
partly financed from here, and they are officered by veterans of the
American Civil War. Thus Ned, sergeant of the G.A.R., captain of the
I.R.B., and, finally, retired terrorist, dreams of a little house on the Hudson. America is the place where the Irish, like most of us, have come for
refuge, be it in the notorious "coffin ships" during the potato famine or
by frigates sent to rescue failed rebels. It therefore makes sense that an
American should produce a novel of Ireland, the more so because America
is to history what Athens once was to tragedy: the chosen place of resolutions. It is both moving and right that an attempt to understand Irish history
should be made on the other side of the Atlantic, that ocean whose winds
carry the mists that make Ireland green, and on the note of whose name
the book fitly closes.
��
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Zuckerman, Elliott
Ruhm von Oppen, Beate
Stickney, Cary
Van Doren, John
Williamson, Robert B.
Sachs, Joe
Achtenberg, Deborah
Brann, Eva T. H.
Zeiderman, Howard
Tuck, Johnathan
Wilson, Curtis
Loring, Carolyn Wade
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The St. John's Review
Volume XXXVIII, number three (1988-89/3)
Editor
Elliott Zuckerman
Editorial Board
Eva Brann
Beale Ruhm von Oppen
Cary Stickney
John Van Doren
Robert B. Williamson
Subscriptions Assistant
Ninda Letaw
The St. John's Review is published three times a year by the Office of the Dean,
St. John's College, Annapolis; William Dyal, President; Thomas Slakey, Dean. For
those not on the distribution list, subscriptions are $12.00 per year. Unsolicited
essays, stories, poems, and reasoned letters are welcome. Address correspondence
to the Review, St. John's College, Annapolis, MD 21404. Back issues are available,
at $4.00 per issue,- from the St. John's College Bookstore.
© 1989
St. John's College. All rights reserved; reproduction in whole or in part
without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
Composition
Fishergate, Inc.
Printing
The St. John's College Print Shop
��Contents
ESSAYS
I . . . . . . . The Fields of Light
Peter D. Pesic
17 . . . . . . . Brilliancies Involving Equilateral Triangles
Samuel S. Kut!er
STORIES
45 ....... Autopsy
Melinda Rooney
55 . . . . . . . Petrella's Blood
Leo Pickens
VERSE
63
Three Poems
Robert J. Levy
REVIEW ARTICLES
67 . . . . . . . The Analytic Art of Viete
Richard Ferrier
75 . . . . . . . The English War and Peace:
Paul Scott's Raj Quartet
Eva Brann
Diagrams by Emily Kutter
��The Fields of Light
Peter D. Pesic
Socrates: Then just take a look round and make sure that none of the
uninitiate overhears us. I mean by the uninitiate the people who believe that
nothing is real save what they can grasp with their hands and do not admit
that actions or processes or anything invisible can count as real.
Theaetetus: They sound like a very hard and repellent sort of people.
Socrates: It is true, they are remarkably crude.
Plato, Theaetetus (155e)
Those who reflect on physics often express a certain dismay at what seems
the aridity of the "new science" that began with Descartes's project of a
mechanical understanding of Nature. Granted that its results are imposing and powerful, the question remains: What is interesting about it? Here
interest bears its original economic sense, as when capital yields interest.
In this usage the Latiu interesse signifies the emergence of new and different accrual to the initial deposit of an idea. It denotes something novel,
even surprising, proceeding from given premises. This essay will try to show
how the attempt to describe Nature solely in terms of palpable matter leads,
through its own inner development, to a new understanding that transcends
matter. To put it tersely, matter is not material. It calls forth a new mode
of being, the field, which ultimately eclipses matter itself.
The question concerning the nature of light reveals this shift with particular clarity and was in many ways also the ground for its occurrence.
Peter PeSiC is a Tutor and Musician-in-Residence at St. John's College, Santa Fe.
This essay is based on a lecture delivered at the Santa Fe campus in April, 1984.
It is dedicated to the memory of the author's father, Paul PeSiC (1912-1988).
�2
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Lucretius can stand here as an exponent of the initial thrust of these accounts. Following Epicurus, Lucretius suggests that an object sends out
films of atoms which detach themselves from its outer surface and float
outwards.' Some of them, quite by accident, encounter the eye and give
rise to the visual image. Others, impinging upon ears or nose, give rise to
sounds or smells. This account may be contrasted with the hypothesis Plato
entertains that the eye itself sends out rays whose encounter with the object constitute vision. 2 The activity of the eye in Plato's account is essential. For Lucretius the eye is a passive receptor that converts the impinging
atoms into the visible sensation. Thus he explains vision in terms of traveling
material substances.
His account is in many ways similar to the account Newton offers much
later in his Opticks. However, for Newton the light is not simply atoms
from the surface of the body that enter the eye. He speculates that the
rays of light are "very small bodies emitted from shining substances."' The
light is distinguished from the shining substance that emits it. As Newton
writes:
The changing of Bodies into Light, and Light in Bodies, is very conformable to the Course of Nature, which seems delighted with Transmutations .
. . . Eggs grow from insensible Magnitudes, and change into Animals, Tadpoles into Frogs, and Worms into Flies . ... And among such various and
strange Transmutations, why may not Nature change Bodies into Light, and
Light into Bodies? 4
It is noteworthy that Newton chooses these organic images of transformation in describing the behavior of light rays, themselves composed of inorganic bodies regulated by mathematical principle.
A crucial similarity to Lucretius nonetheless remains: Light is "very
small Bodies" traveling until they impinge upon the eye, which. is a material
structure also. Many powerful conclusions flow from this approach. Color,
for Newton, results from the different sizes of the light particles. Refraction results from the acceleration of these particles as they move from air
into glass or water. A comprehensive account is formed that seems to encompass all known optical phenomena. Yet, as Newton admits, the only
sure account is really a mathematical description of the phenomena which
leaves largely unknown the underlying physical reality, just because he will
"feign no hypotheses" concerning the forces he describes in the theorems.
In his Queries, however, Newton suggests that particles of light will now
most readily account for the theorems he proved earlier when speaking
of rays of light. These rays are mathematical entities which he had discussed
�PESIC
3
as such without needing to specify their nature. For Newton, there is a
difference between the assurance with which he speaks of the mathematical
properties of the rays and the diffidence with which he speculates that the
rays are composed of particles.
But, as Newton starts to speak of the manner in which glass or water
affects the rays so as to cause the appearance of refraction, he remarks
that these substances "act upon the Rays of Light at a distance ... and
this Action and Re-Action at a distance very much resembles an attractive
Force between Bodies."5 He makes similar assertions elsewhere that the
force of gravity also and perhaps all forces between bodies seem to act
at a distance. That is, one body can affect another, distant body in a manner that simply depends on the distance between them. For Newton, it
would go too far, at this stage at least, to assert that such a force must
necessarily travel somehow between the bodies. Mathematically, it seems
to act at a distance, and we should not then "feign the hypothesis" that
such action at a distance then implies transmission of the force passing
in some describable way through the space intervening between the two
bodies.
So in his public writings Newton felt that describing gravitation or the
action of glass upon a light ray as action at a distance was all he could
do with full circumspection. But privately Newton felt the necessity to go
further. In a celebrated letter to Bentley he wrote that
it is inconceivable that inanimate brute matter should, without the mediation of something else, which is not material, operate upon and affect other
matter without mutual contact, as it must do if gravitation, in the sense of
Epicurus, be essential and inherent in it. ... That gravity should be innate,
inherent and essential to matter, so that one body can act upon another at
a distance, through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else, by
and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to
another, is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe no man who has in
philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it. 6
In some of his Optical Queries Newton tried to account for gravitation
in terms of the pressure of some medium, but much of this work he left
unpublished because, as Maclaurin wrote, "he found he was not able, from
experiment and observation, to give a satisfactory account of this medium,
and the manner of its operation in producing the chief phenomena of
nature." 7 So for NeWton, at least, the attempt to advance the Lucretian
notion that light is simply a stream of small bodies led to the need for
some sort of mediation of the forces acting between bodies. Newton felt
�4
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
that such mediation required some sort of medium, and that medium
baffled him.
In reaching this impasse, Newton considered and rejected the suggestion of Huygens that presumed the existence of a universal medium or
aether, and described light as waves traveling through this medium, much
as water waves represent a state of vibration which passes through the
medium of water.' Huygens imagined the space between bodies as packed
with small, hard particles of equal size. When a body began emitting light
at some point, he considered that these ether particles would transmit a
shove much as a pool table packed with billiard balls would transmit an
impulse imparted to some ball at the edge of the table.
But Newton replied:
A dense Fluid can be of no use for explaining the Phaenomena of Nature,
the Motions of the Planets and Comets being better explained without it.
It serves only to disturb and retard the Motions of those great Bodies, and
make the Frame of Nature languish ... so there is no evidence for its Existence, and therefore it ought to be rejected. 9
Such a dense medium is for Newton the prime example of a "feigned
hypothesis," as he terms it, which turns from the appearance of empty space
to the daring and questionable supposition of an invisible and dense
ethereal medium pervading space. Thus for Newton the notion that rays
of light are "very small Bodies emitted from shining Substances" 10 is vastly
preferable.
Though he rejects the dense medium he felt was necessary for Huygens's
theory, Newton nonetheless did not hesitate to argue for a "much subtiler
Medium than Air, which after the Air was drawn out remained in the
Vacuum." 11 He argues that this subtle, rarefied medium would give way
before the passing planets and not disturb their orbits, and its varying density would explain the refraction of light and the transmission of heat. All
this seems less paradoxical when Newton asserts that his ethereal medium
is not like that of Huygens, "which fills all Space adequately without leaving any Pores, and by consequence is much denser than Quick-Silver or
Gold." 12 The resistance of Newton's ether would be inconsiderable, he
argues, because it is so rarified. There are void spaces between the ether
particles which permit Newton's ether to be more or less r~refied or compressed. Those void spaces allow his ether to slide around the planets
without hindering them, whereas Huygens's picture fills space with particles densely packed with no space between them.
Thus one comes to see that Newton's ether is not in his eyes a feigned
�5
hypothesis, because it seems to him unavoidable in explaining the refraction of light and yet does not impede the motion of bodies. But that leaves
him in the quandary about how forces act between the particles of material
bodies. For Huygens, bodies act by direct contact, and not at all at a
distance. For Newton, it would seem that, finally, bodies can only act at
a distance, since he does still require the empty spaces between bodies. But,
as Newton himself admitted in the letter we cited earlier, such a notion
of action at a distance is disturbing and mysterious. To quote him again,
"It is inconceivable that inanimate brute matter should, without the mediation of something else, which is not material, operate upon and affect other
matter without mutual contact .... " These words, "the mediation of
something else, which is not material," are thrown into even higher relief.
Newton seems to understand that this mediation is not simply by means
of a material medium. That is, if for instance we consider that two bodies
exert forces on each other by sending little particles out, we are still left
with the problem of how these little particles act, by direct contact, or at
a distance. So there is no escape from our problem of how bodies exert
forces on each other simply in postulating even smaller particles that
somehow accomplish this mediation. Eventually, we must face the question: action at a distance or direct contact?
Huygens's notion of direct contact would seem satisfying except for
Newton's objections and the further problem of the unyielding hardness
of the particles that is required. For imagine two bodies coming into contact. If they are not absolutely rigid and hard, there is a certain delay from
the moment of first contact and the resulting recoil. That implies a certain mediation of the directness of contact. Even worse, when is the exact
moment of contact? The edges of the bodies would have to be perfectly
sharp and square for one to be able, even in the imagination, to assign
a true moment of contact, rather than a certain interval during which they
contact each other and interact. Perhaps our problem would disappear if
we were to treat each body as a Euclidean point, much as Newton teaches
us to do in the Principia." But it is very disturbing to think that the force
only springs into existence in the moment of contact, when the two points
coincide. For if two points coincide, they are really not two points, but
one point. And how can one point exert a force on itself? Or what sufficient reason would give the magnitude of such a force, exerted by a dimensionless body at no distance? On the other hand, if the tWo points do not
coincide, our supposition of force as direct contact would say they cannot
exert any force on each other! As if this were not difficult enough, our
picture of material bodies as points, which we required in order to speak
exactly of contact between bodies, is really a mathematical representation
�6
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
only, as Newton says. The bodies we are familiar with are irregular and
rough and hence couldn't simply be treated as points, even if the argument about points would have worked! Another way of putting this is that
even if I envision a body as composed of point-like atoms, those points
could never touch.
I am left with the strange and disquieting conclusion that no material
bodies have ever touched, in the sense that I cannot find the moment of
contact even if I picture the bodies as points or composed of points. Perhaps
difficulties such as these moved Newton to speak of action at a distance,
since no simple hypothesis of action by contact will do. Yet it was the inscrutability of action at a distance that made him speak of "the mediation
of something else, which is not material .... " 14 This mediation offers a
reasonable escape from our dilemma. If action by contact is fallacious,
then the mediator cannot be material but must be "something else." This
leads to the conclusion that the natural philosophy of matter cannot remain complete without invoking a mediation that is not material. So matter must point beyond itself.
The full implications of such a statement must rest on inquiry into what
we mean by "matter." The rough sensual description of matter as something
weighty, and able to be touched, seen, and smelled, obviously begs the question, since we must refer to organs of sensation or measurement which
are themselves material. By speaking of it in terms of interactions between
material objects and material measuring instruments we still beg the question of matter (by itself, in itself). In a celebrated passage, Newton writes
that
All these things being consider'd, it seems probable to me, that God in the
Beginning formed Matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, movable Particles ... and that these primitive Particles being Solids, are incomparably
harder than any porous Bodies compounded of them; even so very hard,
as never to wear or break in pieces; no ordinary Power being able to divide
what God himself made one in the first Creation.~~
What these particles are, or are made of, would seem almost an inadmissible
question, if they are to be the primitive, most basic constituents. Yet if they
are not simple points and have some size, we surely must entertain the question of what forces between the points of these atoms make them so extraordinarily hard. The atom seems to dissolve into a constellation of immaterial forces. Even were the atom utterly dimensionless and point -like,
we would have the pregnantly absurd situation of matter, which presumably
occupies space, occupying no space at all! And if the atom is extended
�7
in space, we can still speak of the distance between certain points within
the atom, or the forces between these points. But we have just shown that
there can be no matter simply at a point. If we cannot say that there is
matter at any point, where then is it?
Our problem reflects an ambivalence in Newton's own thought between
the material, physical world and the mathematical principles, which speak
of forces that are not material but mathematical entities. In this mathematical view mass itself is a pure magnitude and not palpable stuff. In
speaking of hard particles Newton means, I suppose, to return to the world
of experimental appearance from the world of mathematical principles.
Even though he wishes to show that the mathematical principles guide and
describe the observed motion of bodies perfectly, yet the language and
rhetoric of mathematics jar against that of "stuff' and matter. It was Kant's
insight at this point to say that what we can know of matter is force and
only force. To attempt to speak of matter in itself, beyond the character
of the forces experienced, is to ask to know something beyond our capacity. Kant goes on to argue that an absolute and empty space through which
Newton's action at a distance might act is "nothing at all belonging to the
existence of things." 16 These powerful observations were to a great degree
ignored by practicing scientists of the time, though it must be said that
Kant's teaching of the primacy of forces in natural philosophy had an immense influence through the German Naturphi/osophie. I would suggest
that the heart of field theory, and even of relativity and quantum theory,
lies implicit and foreshadowed in Kant's deep insights. Indeed, I do not
think that modern natural philosophy has yet by any means exhausted the
depths he pointed out.
Let me turn from Kant and return to Newton's thought that it does
make sense to speak of "solid, massy, hard, inpenetrable particles." What
is it that makes us so sure that "brute inanimate matter," as Newton calls
it, really must be part of our conception of the world? We seem to pay
respect to our sensations and give them credit, as it were, by referring them
to a thing, matter, which is the true source of smells, tastes, and sights.
But our argument has led us to see the solid mass of matter dissolve into
a web of interacting forces. Why do we continue to speak simply of matter? Perhaps because it would seem like an insult to our senses if we denied
them an external source and origin.
Nevertheless, even with the greatest enthusiasm for a notion of matter
and of primitive particles such as Newton had, we have been led to consider a maze of forces as the key to the behavior of matter, as if mattereven if we should cling to this notion- were finally at the disposal of the
forces and wholly guided by them. Whether we begin with streams of light
�8
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
particles, as Newton does, or with an undulating medium, the mystery of
light is contained in that non-material mediation which is the actuality
of the reception of the hypothetical light particles or of the hypothetical
wave. Finally, there is always a gap across which a leap, an act of mediation, must occur.
It is here that Aristotle helps, in a way that shows that the interweaving of these themes is not merely historical but even more richly complex.
I present it here intentionally out of chronological order to stress the
timelessness of the insight. In De Anima Aristotle has much to say about
vision that speaks eloquently to the point we have reached in our inquiry.
Light, he says, is "the activity [energeia] of the transparent in that [it is]
transparent.m 7 He, too, understood that it is in the transparent, seemingly
empty, gap that the true nature of light lies. Light is "neither fire, nor in
general any body, nor an emanation from any body (for in that case it
would be a body of some kind), but the presence of fire or something of
such kind in the transparent." 18 He goes on to explain that, since in his
view there are no void, empty spaces, there is no space for another body
to enter in. So light cannot simply be a body, for it would have to be at
the same place as other bodies (the air, for instance) at the same time.
Rather, light is energeia, a word closely related to work and activity, and
is the particular activity of the transparent medium he calls metaxu, literally
the "in-between." It is not this metaxu that is light, but rather light is a
kind of activity or energization which is perhaps best expressed by the way
Aristotle speaks of energeia elsewhere throughout his works. One gets the
sense of maturity, of coming to full bloom, of a process or an organism
coming into its full estate. Aristotle also observes that "matter is relative
to some thing," signifying that matter exists in a state of relation to form
and purpose." He does not consider that it exists apart from these larger
relations.
In the case of light, Aristotle speaks of a state of being energized and
active which applies to this transparency between seer and object. This
energization of the in-between zone seems to tally with the sort of "nonmaterial mediation" Newton was groping for. Yet there are many divergences
also: Newton's light particles travel in a void, while Aristotle's light is the
energization of a region replete with substance, not void anywhere. In that
respect Aristotle seems much closer to Huygens's picture of a dense medium
through which vibrations pass. So Aristotle's view emerges as an immensely
suggestive synthesis, before the fact, of Newton's play of forces (which he
might understand as a sort of energeia) and Huygens's vibrating medium.
This constellation of accounts seems in want of further development,
and indeed it is Newton who finds the crucial issue. In criticizing Huygens
�PESIC
9
he remarks that if light were wavelike motion propagated through a fluid
medium, like water waves, it would necessarily follow that light should not
simply travel in straight lines but rather bend around obstacles just as water
waves do. As he puts it,
The Waves on the Surface of stagnating Water, passing by the sides of a broad
Obstacle which stops part of them, bend afterwards and dilate themselves
gradually into the quiet Water behind the Obstacle. The Waves, Pulses or
Vibrations of the Air, wherein Sounds consist, bend manifestly, though not
so much as the Waves of Water. For a Bell or a Cannon may be heard beyond
a Hill which intercepts the sight of the sounding Body, and Sounds are propagated as readily through crooked Pipes as through straight ones. But Light
is never known to follow crooked Passages nor to bend into the Shadow.
For the fix'd Stars by the Interposition of any of the Planets cease to be seen/0
This would seem a critical problem, since Huygens also admitted that light
seems to travel in straight lines, and he had to resort to rather tortuous
and unconvincing arguments to make his light waves not seem to do just
what Newton argued they might do. Thomas Young first observed
phenomena that indicated that light does not simply travel in straight lines
but indeed bends around obstacles just as Newton said that it would do
if it were a wave. This seemed to be the moment of triumph for Huygens's
notion of a vibrating medium, and of disgrace for the Newtonian picture
of light as a particle. In the century following Young's first experiments,
the great drama of the elaboration of the theories of electricity and
magnetism unfolded, led by Faraday and Maxwell, leading to a notion of
light as a wave composed of electric and magnetic fields.
What are these fields? In them may be the reappearance of Aristotle's
notion of energeia, its phoenix-like rebirth after centuries in which Aristotle's physical thought was usually said to be simply wrong, dead, and
useless. This may be an example of how the process of thought does not
unfold simply historically, the later views a product of what preceded them.
Aristotle grapsed an essential facet of the problem of light in a way one
appreciates more fully after reading Newton, Huygens, and Maxwell.
The term field in this sense was in essence created by Maxwell, but it
emerges from Michael Faraday's earlier discussions of what he called lines
of force. The nuance is, I think, crucial and reveals much about Faraday
and Maxwell. The son of a blacksmith, and himself a bookbinder's apprentice, Faraday became a laboratory technician at the Royal Institution
in London. Through many years of reading and ceaseless experimentation,
he became a great luminary of European science.
He hated the term "physicist," which had only recently (1830) been
�10
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
coined by Whewell, and wished to be, and to be called, a philosopher, an
"unmathematical philosopher"21 to boot, quite uneducated mathematically
and separated from the great tradition of mathematical physics that Newton
inaugurated with his Principia. Faraday wrote no treatise as Newton and
Maxwell did, but left instead his episodic Experimental Researches and
his Diary. As Thomas Simpson has written, these works were
not theory, but a vast weaving and unweaving of suspected powers, a process of continual discovery and identification, a great, highly unified for-
mulary for the production and classification of effects .... [He] is the great
'discoverer'; the paradigm for Faraday is Odysseus rather than Euclid: in a
sense he, too, travels from land to land, reporting wonders, guided by legend
and myth, rumor or divine love. For Odysseus, the dominant desire is to
see men's cities and to know their minds, and to gather all this together in
the return to Ithaca. For Faraday, it is to investigate all the powers of nature
and to unveil them as esssentially one in the lecture hall on Albemarle Street. 22
Faraday was the most practical of men and intensely attentive to the vivid
detail of experimental phenomena. He was a true virtuoso of experiment,
insightful and indefatigable, and endlessly inventive. He grew up with notions of electricity and magnetism as palpable and ponderable stuff. Yet
this immensely practical and clear-sighted man gradually convinced himself
that the true seat of electric and magnetic effects is the space surrounding
electrified or magnetized bodies, whether that space be filled with some
noticeable substance like air or seemingly empty.
Strange, is it not, for such a man to pass from the palpable bodies he
sees before him to consider instead the impalpable, empty space between?
Yet it was many experiments that led him thither, perhaps the most pregnant being one of the simplest. Consider a magnet upon which have been
sprinkled iron filings. These filings seem to align as if to outline invisible
lines that characterize the magnetic force. The presence of the filings makes
the force visible. Does it not seem inescapable, thought Faraday, that these
same lines of magnetic force are present even before the filings have been
introduced? Many other considerations, particularly the characteristic
curvatures of the lines, moved Faraday to speak of the lines as "physically
real."23
Further, he felt persuaded that there was no need to speak of electric
or magnetic fluids or substances, that these lines of force were the real,
the essential seat of electric and magnetic phenomena. He writes that "as
magnets may be looked upon as the habitations of bundles of lines of force,
they probably show us the tendencies of the physical lines of force where
they occur in the space around."24
�11
Faraday seemed happiest with a vision in which his physical lines of
force arch through space, without even ether, invisible yet physical. His
friend Maxwell, in an admiring letter, describes this vision: "You seem to
see the lines of force curving around obstacles and driving plump at conductors, and swerving towards certain directions in crystals, and carrying
with them everywhere the same amount of attractive power ...."25 In many
parts of his great Treatise, Maxwell frankly admits his debt to Faraday,
making us feel that he had indeed realized Faraday's vision in a
mathematical way that Faraday himself could not have achieved." In his
letter to Faraday, Maxwell goes on to say that
you are the first person in whom the idea of bodies acting at a distance by
throwing the surrounding medium into a state of constraint has arisen, as
a principle to be actually believed in. We have had streams of hooks and
eyes flying around magnets ... ; but nothing is clearer than your description of all sources of forces keeping up a state of energy in all that surrounds
them ... . 27
Even this frank praise reveals something about the two men. Faraday's lines
of force become, for Maxwell, the "state of constraint of the surrounding
medium," which he feels has a mathematical form and which he calls a
field. Those physical, yet immaterial, lines of force Maxwell understands
as states of a medium and the fields are the states of polarization of that
medium.
Though Maxwell describes himself as translating Faraday's ideas into
a mathematical form, the differences between the two men are extremely
interesting. Writing to the great theorist Ampere, Faraday himself remarks
that
I am unfortunate in a want of mathematical knowledge and the power of
entering with facility into abstract reasoning; I am obliged to feel my way
by facts closely placed together so that it often happens I am left behind
in the progress of a branch of science, not merely from the want of attention, but from the incapability I lie under of following it, notwithstanding
all my exertions . ... I fancy the habit I got into of attending too closely
to experiment has somewhat fettered my power of reasoning, and chains me
down; and I cannot help, now and then, comparing myself to a timid ignorant navigator who, though he might boldly and safely steer across a bay or
an ocean by the aid of a compass which in its action and. principles is infallible, is afraid to leave sight of the shore because he understands not the
power of the instrument that is to guide him. 28
Faraday wrote to Maxwell, "I was at first almost frightened when I saw
�12
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
such mathematical force made to bear upon the subject, and then wondered
to see that the subject stood it so well.m 9 There is gentle irony here, as
well as respect for the power of the mathematical symbols Maxwell was
forging. Also, Faraday maintains a certain pride in the integrity of his own
progress, even as he self-deprecatingly calls himself a "labourer." He knew
the value of his labors, or at least felt serenely confident that posterity
would sift the gold from the dross. Yet there is also the note of a wistful
Moses, who sees the promised land from afar and recognizes that he will
not himself enter into the fullness of it.
In the case of Faraday and Maxwell, the promised land was the fields
of light. It was left for Maxwell, through the power of his mathematical
symbols, to discern in exact mathematical detail how light might be the
coupled undulations of electric and magnetic fields, how moving a charged
body sends a wave down their lines of force, a wave we can perceive as
light. Yet I must emphasize that, in his own way, without mathematics,
Faraday found these fields of light. He says that "the view which I am bold
to put forth considers, therefore, radiation as a high species of vibration
in the lines of force which are known to connect particles.... It endeavors
to dismiss the ether, but not the vibration."30 It seems to me that this
discovery may be more wonderful than Maxwell's mathematical deduction and translation, in the way that one admires the pioneer explorer even
more than the settlers that follow him. But there are excellences in both
men that should be savored. Together they saw how the field leaps free
of its source and can travel through boundless space.
Maxwell followed Faraday also on a further flight of speculation. If
indeed these lines of force flex far from any body and if their state of tension is the true seat of the electromagnetic interactions, perhaps the notion of electric charge as a sort of fluid or simple material substance should
be abandoned. The true actuality of electricity, magnetism, and light lies
in the mediating fields; matter and charge dwindle and disappear from
sight. At first Maxwell tried to think of "empty space" as filled in imagination with gears and idle wheels, an elaborate mechanical structure that
helped guide his understanding as he wrought his equations." Though he
cherished his gears and wheels, when he came to write his Treatise he
omitted all mention of them, now relying on the finished mathematical
structure. Maxwell continued to believe that there might be a physical ether
of which the fields were states of vibration, even though he ceased describing it in simple mechanical terms. Here the practical Faraday is more
visionary still, for Faraday understood the lines of force as themselves sufficient, without any need for an ether to give them substance and habitation. The lines of force, the fields as Maxwell thought of them, are all that
�13
is. The great project of the purely material and even mechanical understanding of Nature has demanded these immaterial mediators which at
last have eclipsed matter.
It does seem very odd simply to discard matter in favor of ghostly fields.
Here it is helpful to think of music. Victor Zuckerkandl has written that
"music is movement of tones in dynamic fields." 32 Music is indeed in no
single note, but rather it is in the web of interrelationships that can be aptly
termed a field. That is, the music is also between the notes. There is no
silence in the sense of a void, utterly blank. The silence that precedes a
piece of music is part of it, as one realizes when watching the different
silent gestures a conductor uses to give the up-beat that precedes the sounds.
I suppose here is Aristotle's insight regarding the absence of utter physical
nothingness in the world, of sheer emptiness. If we take either Faraday's
or Maxwell's account, there is not nothingness anywhere, for the field is
there. Aristotle has shown us how energeia must emerge from a prior state
of preparation, of dynamis, and not from nothing. The contemporary
quantum theory of fields has argued, in extending Maxwell's mathematical
theory, that sheer emptiness is self-contradictory." This agrees deeply with
Aristotle and gives the sense that the seemingly empty space, the silence,
is the heart of activity, of music.
At times this vital silence is brought before us with particular intensity. The silences of a great work of art are the seat of its mysterious power
and deserve our closest attention. Let me give you an example. Schubert,
in his next-to-last piano sonata, in A major (0.959), concludes with a rondo
based on a theme he had written when he was twenty, and which also
became the song "Irn Friihling." Here is the theme as he first presents it
at the beginning of the rondo (measures 1-16):
RONDO.
�THE ST JOHN'S REVIEW
14
Here is how Schubert shows us this theme at the end of the movement,
after many variations and vicissitudes (measures 328-347):
11•-t+-
I
~
~
L
~·
-==~
'
dlm.
'
"' ""
-~
r
~
:>........
t
~~~
I
··r
~~q-r.
.
,.....,...,.,
I
I
"flo
T~<~
T
-
The silences form a final revelation of the inner life of the theme. In each
silence something immense happens. We are plunged into the field of force
that is the music, when the music stops-as it would seem-and yet evidently does not stop. It is like that when we look at the light which only
exists in and by virtue of the so-called "empty space." Our experience, then,
is a field.
�15
Randomly bumping particles and mechanisms do not hold much prospect of touching the sort of beings we are, but speaking of fields is more
like us. A field is most of all a state of inter-relationship which has an
inner integrity. In grasping such connections, the human mind shows its
affinity with the field.
Perhaps in closing we should recall Einstein's first encounter with an
object suspended in a field- a simple magnetic compass which his father
gave him at four or five years of age.
That this needle behaved in such a determined way did not at all fit into
the nature of events, which could find a place in the unconscious world of
concepts (effect connected with direct "touch"). I can still remember-or at
least believe that I can remember- that this experience made a deep and
lasting impression upon me. Something deeply hidden had to be behind
things. 34
Recalling this in later life, he also remembered how he "trembled and grew
cold."
Notes
I. Lucretius, De Rerum Natura IV, 42 ff.
2. Plato, Theaetetus 156d.
3. Isaac Newton, Opticks (New York: Dover, 1979), p. 370. This and most
of the following passages can also be found in Peter PesiC (ed.), Junior
Laboratory Manual (Santa Fe: St. John's College, 1986), 2 vols.
4. Newton, Opticks, pp. 374-75.
5. Ibid. pp. 370-71.
6. Isaac Newton, Principia (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1962), val. 2, p. 634.
7. Cited by Maxwell in W. D. Niven (ed.), The Scientific Papers of James
Clerk Maxwell (New York: Dover, 1965), val. 2, p. 316.
8. See Christiaan Huygens, Treatise on Light, in Great Books of the
Western World (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952), val. 34, pp.
553-75.
9. Newton, Opticks, p. 368.
10. Ibid., p. 370
11. Ibid., p. 349.
12. Ibid., p. 352.
13. Newton, Principia, val. I, pp. 19 ff.
14. Ibid., val. 2, p. 634.
�16
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
15. Newton, Opticks, p. 400.
16. I. Kant, Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1985), p. 132. See L. Pearce Williams, The Origins of Field
Theory (Langham: University Press of America, 1980), pp. 32-43. I
have continued this inquiry in a forthcoming essay "The Principle of
Identicality and the Foundations of Quantum Theory."
17. Aristotle, De Anima 418b 9-10.
18. Ibid., 418b 14-17.
19. Physics, II, 194b 9.
20. Newton, Opticks, pp. 362-63.
21. See the valuable essay by Thomas K. Simpson, "Maxwell's Treatise
and the Restoration of the Cosmos," in The Great Ideas Today,
(Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1986), p. 226.
22. Ibid, p. 227.
23. Faraday, "On the Physical Lines of Magnetic Force," included with
his Experimental Researches in Electricity in Great Books of the
Western World (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952), vol. 45, pp.
816-19.
24. Faraday Experimental Researches in Electricity (New York: Dover,
1965), vol. 3, pp. 435-36.
25. L. Pearce Williams (ed.), The Selected Correspondence of Michael
Faraday (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), vol. 2, p. 882.
26. See, for instance, J. C. Maxwell, A Treatise on Electricity and
Magnetism (New York: Dover, 1954), §528.
27. Faraday, Correspondence, vol. 2, p. 882.
28. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 134.
29. Ibid., vol. 2, p. 864.
30. Faraday, "Thoughts on Ray Vibrations," in his Experimental Researches
in Chemistry and Physics (London: Taylor and Frapcis, 1859), p. 370
(reprinted identically by Culture et Civilisation, Bruxelles, 1967).
31. See his writings on the theory of molecular vortices to be found in
Maxwell's Scientific Papers, vol. 1, pp. 451-88.
32. Victor Zuckerkandl, The Sense of Music (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), p. 37.
33. See, for example, P.A.M. Dirac, Quantum Mechanics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1958 [4th edition]), pp. 306-10. I have also addressed this matter in a forthcoming essay, "Virtuality and the Paradox
of the Vacuum."
34. See Einstein's "Autobiographical Notes," in P. A. Schilpp (ed.), Albert
Einstein, Philosopher-Scientist (New York: Harper and Row, 1959),
p. 9.
�Brilliancies Involving
Equilateral Triangles
Samuel S. Kutler
In the very first proposition of the Elements, Euclid constructs an equilateral triangle. Among the theorems that I know about involving equilateral triangles, the most brilliant are presented here. Although none of them
appears in the works of Euclid, every one of them, I am convinced, would
have delighted him. Most of the books listed in the bibliography are referred
to in this article. They present beautiful mathematics that does not require
many preliminaries.
I. Odom's Golden Section Theorem
When I wanted to construct a golden section on a simple plane figure,
the finest example known to me before 1988 was the regular pentagon,
where the diagonals, AD and CE of figure I, cut each other in golden sections at the point K (Elements XIII.8). In the early 1980s George Odom
found an even simpler and more elegant way to produce a golden section.
Odom's theorem appeared as an elementary problem in The American
Mathematical Monthly' in 1983. Since I do not always read or even skim
through the Monthly any more, I would not have known about Odom's
theorem at all if it hadn't been for David Fowler, who refers to the theorem
both in an article in Ancient Philosophy', where I first saw the construe-
Samuel Kutler is a Thtor at St. John's College, Annapolis.
17
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
18
B
c
A
K
E
D
FIGURE 1. Diameters AD and CE cut each other at Kin golden sections.
tion, and in his book entitled The Mathematics of Plato's Academy. Here
is a statement of Odom's theorem exactly as it appeared as problem E3007:
Let A and B be the midpoints of sides EF and ED of an equilateral triangle
DEF. Extend AB to meet the circumcircle (of DEF) at C. Show that B divides
AC according to the golden section.
Although no figure was published to accompany the problem, figure 2 is
included here to illustrate Odom's theorem and to facilitate attempts by
readers to find their own proofs. Both the solution that was published in
the Monthly' in 1986, and another that is equally simple, appear at the
end of this section.
Let us recall the definition of a golden section under one of its two
other names. In the Elements, Euclid calls it a line cut in extreme and mean
ratio and defines a straight line to be cut in such a ratio when
as the whole line is to the greater segment, so is the greater to the less. [VI,
def. 2]
Even before Euclid begins his treatment of ratio and proportion, he makes
use of a line so divided to construct a regular pentagon. Consequently,
he must give an equivalent ratio-free formulation:
To cut a given straight line so that the rectangle contained by the whole and
one of the segments is equal to the square on the remaining segment. [II.ll]
�19
KUTLER
F
FIGURE
2~
~------Cyo
Odom's theorem: B divides AC according to the golden section.
The thirteenth and final book of the Elements concludes with the construction of the regular solids inscribed in spheres and the proof that "no
other figure, besides the said five figures [pyramid, octahedron, cube,
icosahedron, and dodecahedron] can be constructed which is contained
by equilateral and equiangular figures equal to each other." The first six
theorems of that book involve a line cut in extreme and mean ratio. In
the analysis of these solids the golden ratio appears frequently. For example Euclid concludes his proposition 17 on the construction of the
decagon with the insight that "when the side of the cube is cut in extreme
and mean ratio, the greater segment is the side of the dodecahedron."
Another name for the golden section was given in the early sixteenth
century. Fra Luca Pacioli published a book in Venice in 1509 (reprinted
Milan 1956) on the golden section, with drawings by Leonardo da Vinci.
Pacioli coins a name for what will later be called the golden section. It
appears in his title: De Divina Proportione. Dan Pedoe quotes Johannes
Kepler, who, in his own w'ritings, adopts the name divine proportion, and
writes about it (and Elements I.47) that
Geometry has two great treasures: one is the theorem of Pythagoras: the
other the division of a line into extreme and mean rati.o.
In the second half of the twentieth century, H. E. Huntley adopts the name
for his book: The Divine Proportion. Just as George Odom later finds
the golden section using the circumscribed circle of an equilateral triangle,
�20
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Huntley finds it in an inscribed circle of an almost-equilateral triangle (see
figure 3, in which there is a doubled 3,4,5 triangle; that is to say, a 6,5,5
triangle).
Finally, the name golden section itself seems not to have been used until
the 1830s in the second edition of a textbook by Martin Ohm. Professor
R. Herz-Fischler, who published a history of the golden section' in 1987,
speculates that rather than coining the term himself, Martin Ohm is citing
a name that had recently come into current usage.
D
K
FIGURE 3. A golden section in a doubled 3-4-5 triangle.
BED is a right triangle with sides BE : ED : : 3 : 4.
Extend BE to F so that EF=BE, and join FD.
Let the bisector of angle B meet DE at K. Then K is the center
of the inscribed circle to triangle BDF.
Inscribe circle GEH in triangle BDF, and let BK meet that circle
at both C and A.
DK : KE : : BD : BE [VI.3], so that the diameter of the
circle= BE.
The square on BE=the rectangle AB, BC [111.36]; that is,
AB : BE : : BE : BC; but BE is equal to the diameter AC, so that
AB : AC : : AC : BC, and AB is cut in a golden section at C.
�KUTLER
21
Enough about names! When I saw Odom's theorem, I could no more
get it out of my head than I can do so with certain tunes. At first I thought
it was because this most important ratio of all was constructed with the
very first figure that Euclid constructs: the equilateral triangle. Furthermore, nothing else was needed but a circumscribed circle and a straight
line constructed through any two midpoints and continued, on one side
or the other, until it reaches the circle. As Fowler put it in his article, "[this]
surely must be its simplest construction." It took me days to realize that
something else was bothering me. Theorems as simple and delightful as
the one by George Odom are not what mathematicians are interested in
these days; such discoveries are made in antiquity or its renaissance. Maybe
I could find out how George Odom hit upon his construction. David Fowler
left a clue in a footnote of his article:
I first heard of this construction in correspondence with H. S. M. Coxeter;
who was inquiring if anybody had come across it before. Coxeter had received
it in a letter from George Odom.
For me at least, Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter is the world's leading
geometer. I was reluctant to bother him with my questions, but my curiosity
overcame my reluctance, and I telephoned Professor Coxeter, whom I had
met in 1972. What follows is an approximation of part of the telephone
conversation:
SSK: Is George Odom a mathematician? HSMC: No, he is an artist
with an amateur's interest in mathematics. SSK: Did he have a proof for
his construction? HSMC: Yes, but not as elegant as the published one. SSK:
Do you know how he discovered his theorem? HSMC: Yes, he was studying the icosahedron in my book Regular Polytopes. SSK: Do you think
that perhaps one of the ancient Greek mathematicians had discovered
Odom's theorem? HSMC: (Knowingly) No, I don't think so.
Since our conversation, I believe that I have figured out why Professor
Coxeter seemed to be certain that this theorem was unknown until the 1980s:
The construction is so simple and beautiful that it would have been shown
from one friend to another, been written down many times, and survived.
Now, as I promised, I will present two proofs. The first is printed below
figure 4. I have supplied the steps, since Jan van de Craats of the
Netherlands submitted it as a "proof without words" and it was so published
in the Monthly in the Aug.-Sept. issue in 1986. The second one, with figure
5, is an even shorter proof; it was submitted by David Fowler and others.
It makes splendid use of Euclid's crossed chord theorem (111.35).
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
22
FIGURE 4. The proof of Odom's theorem by Jan van de Craats:
For the proof, modify figure 2 by continuing CA to the circle at
G and construct GE.
Angles GEB and BCD are equal, since they stand on equal circumferences. So are angles EGB and BDC.
Then triangles GBE and BDC are equiangular and hence
similar:
GB: EB:: BD: BC, but GB=AC, EB=AB, and BD=AB; so that
AC : AB : : AB : BC, and AC is cut in a golden section at B.
I myself found a three-circle construction of a golden section on Saturday, November 12, 1988. This theorem, which is illustrated in figure 6a,
is both inspired by and derived from Odom's theorem:
Let there be three concentric circles. The radius of the middle circle is double
that of the inner and half that of the outer circle. From any point on the
inner circle draw a tangent line that makes a chord AC on the middle circle,
and extend this chord from the point C until it reaches the point B on the
outer circle. Then AC is cut in a golden section at B.
Because of this discovery, I no longer believe David Fowler's assertion that
George Odom's construction is the simplest possible. For the three-circle
construction seems to me to be a bit simpler even than Odom's. Except
for the line that is cut in a golden section, it consists entirely of circles.
Furthermore, rather than the six golden sections that can be constructed
on Odom's diagram, there is no end to the number that can be constructed
�23
KUTLER
E
F
D
FIGURE 5. The proof of Odom's theorem by the crossed-chord theorem:
Rectangle GB, BC=rectangle EB, BD [111.35], which implies that
GB: EB:: BD: BC; but GB=AC, EB=AB, and BD=AB, so that
AC : AB : : AB : BC, and AC is cut in a golden section at B.
A
FIGURE 6a. The three-circle theorem.
The three circles are concentric.
The middle circle has double the radius of the inner circle
and half the radius of the outer circle.
AC touches the inner circle at H.
AC is cut in a golden section at B.
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
24
on these circles. If one considers a sequence of circles in the plane, all con-
centric, each of which has a radius double that of the one immediately
within it, then a tangent can be drawn to any one of the circles and golden
sections can be imagined to appear on this diagram smaller, or larger, than
any given size.
Neither Odom's theorem nor mine begins with a line that is to be cut
in a golden section, but figures 6b and 6c and their accompanying explanations show how these theorems lead one to such a construction. Perhaps
this construction is published for the first time here.
~
12oo·
A·~c
FIGURE 6b. To cut a given line in a golden section.
Construct angle CAD=30°, and angle ACD=a. Let a be the
angle whose sine is 114 {see figure 6c). Construct angle
ADB=120°.
Then B cuts AC in a golden section.
FIGURE 6c. To construct angle a for figure 6b.
Construct a circle with a given line LM as its diameter.
Let LN = \l.i LM, and construct a circle with LN as radius.
Let P be one of the points where the circles intersect.
Join PM. Then angle LMP= a, an angle whose sine= \l.i.
�25
KUTLER
II. Morley's Theorem
It is impossible to trisect the sixty-degree angle of an equilateral triangle
with straight lines and circles, or, to use the language of instruments, with
straightedge and compass. Trisectors of an angle can be constructed,
however, with the use of conic sections. On page 356 of Geometrical Investigations by John Pottage, he constructs a regular three-pointed star
from the trisectors (see figure 7), and he asks his readers to show "that
the star covers exactly two-fifths of the area of the triangle." Although Pottage does not mention the intersections DEF of the trisectors that are adjacent to each side of the triangle, they are indicated on figure 7. Because
of the symmetry of the original equilateral triangle, it is to be expected
that the three points DEF themselves form the vertices of a new, centered,
inverted, equilateral triangle.
Next let us consider (see figure 8) a triangle for which each of the angles
can be trisected with straightedge and compass: an isosceles right triangle.
A
FIGURE 7. A three-pointed star made from the trisectors of angles A, B,
and C.
The area of the star is two-fifths that of the triangle.
D, E, and F are the vertices of an equilateral triangle.
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
26
A
FIGURE 8. The trisectors of the angles of the right triangle ABC meet at
points D, E, and F, which appear to be the vertices of an equilateral triangle.
Again we expect the trisectors to meet with their intersections forming the
vertices of an inverted triangle, perhaps another isosceles right triangle.
But figure 8 does not exhibit a right triangle. To the eye, it too seems to
be equilateral.
Finally, figure 9 is a representation of the same kind of trisected figure
now for a scalene triangle. Even here, the triangle DEF seems to be equilateral! As in the case of Odom's theorem, no one seems to have investigated
such a configuration before the last hundred years. This time the discovery
occurs at the very beginning of this century. Let us quote from the
Biographical Notes' about Frank Morley, a President of the American
Mathematical Society in 1919 and 1920:
By about 1900 the following result due to Prof. Morley was well known to
Cambridge mathematicians and others: "if the angles of any triangle be
trisected, the triangle, formed by the meets of pairs of trisectors, each pair
being adjacent to the same side, is equilateral." The first reference to it as
"Morley's theorem," a term now in general use. seems to have been ... in 1914.
In 1924, Frank Morley revealed how he found his theorem. Just as George
Odom found his construction that takes place all in one plane while he
was reflecting on a more complicated configuration, a solid figure; so did
Morley find his elegant theorem that involves nothing but straight lines
by considering a more complicated situation in which a higher order curve,
a cardioid (see figure 10), touches the sides of a triangle. In 1909 the first
�27
KUTLER
FIGURE 9. The trisectors of scalene triangle ABC meet at points D, E, and
F, which again appear to be the vertices of an equilateral
triangle.
The proof accompanying figure 11 determines the lines HF and
KE.
elementary proofs were published in response to a challenge in the Educational Times. None of these proofs is quick, for it seems necessary to
calculate the sizes of many angles. The proof that accompanies figure 11
is a ghostly one, by H. D. Grossman', in which the top part of the figure
is never drawn and only comes into being at the last step of the proof.
The motivation for this proof can be seen in figure 9, where each of the
trisectors is extended. The whole effort is to determine lines HF and KE
of that figure and to determine that they are the trisectors of the invisible
summit angle.
What is the next step to take after considering Morley's theorem?
Perhaps this: On page 98 of Mathematical Gems, Ross Honsberger asks
his readers to
show that Morley's theorem holds also in the case of the trisection of the
exterior angles of a triangle. He has a solution on pages 163 and 164.
�28
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
FIGURE 10. A Cardioid.
From any point X on the circle ABC, let A be the center and
AX the radius of another circle. The cardioid is the envelope
to these circles. The point X is called the cusp. Frank Morley
discovered the theorem that bears his name by considering
how a cardioid touches the sides of a triangle.
FIGURE 11. H. D. Grossman's ghostly figure for Morley's theorem.
�KUTLER
29
Proof of Morley's theorem:
1. BC is the base of the triangle for which we shall prove Morley's
theorem. The base angles are 3b and 3c. A is the invisible vertex at
the summit, and the angle is 3a.
2. Let BF and BD trisect angle B, and let CE and CD trisect angle C.
3. Let BF and CE meet at S.
4. Construct angles SDF and SDE each equal to 30".
5. D is the center of the inscribed circle of triangle SBC. Therefore OS
bisects angle BSC.
6. Triangles FDS and EDS are congruent. FD =DE, and triangle FED is
equilateral.
7. Angle EDC=60"+b, and angle FDB=60"+c.
8. Angle FDT=60" -b, and angle EDR=60" -c.
9. Construct angle DFH=60"-b, and angle DEK=60"-c.
10. Angle HFB=60"-c=a+b.
11. By Euclid's fifth postulate HF meets BT, at an angle=(a+b)-b=a.
Similarly, EK meets CR at angle a.
The proof will be complete when it is demonstrated that the straight lines BT,
H F, KE, and CR meet in a single point, which must be the vertex A otthe triangle.
12. Draw FK, which bisects angle EKD.
13. By Euclid's fifth postulate, EK meets BT, and it meets it at angle a, and
F is the center of the inscribed circle of the triangle with sides BT, BK,
and KE. The bisector of the summit angle of that triangle divides the
summit angle into two angles each equal to a; therefore it must either
be parallel to HF or coincide with HF. And it must coincide with HF
because F is the center of the inscribed circle, and that is where the
angle bisectors of the triangle meet.
14. Similarly, in the triangle with sides FH, HC, and CR, the bisector of the
summit angle coincides with EK.
15. Thus the undrawn angle at A is trisected by FH and EK, and the trisectors adjacent to each side of the triangle meet at points D, E, and F,
which are the vertices of an equilateral triangle.
�30
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
III. Viviani's Theorem
On page 22 of Mathematical Gems, Ross Honsberger does not consider
Viviani's Theorem to be one of the outstanding theorems involving equilateral triangles. It is a mere "easy property" to serve his needs later. To
use his own image of a gem, I believe that this theorem is a gem when
it is placed in the proper setting, but Ross Honsberger did not choose to
do so. I attempt to remedy that omission here. Much of the beauty of
Viviani's theorem will be lost if it is even stated at the beginning of the
discussion. It depends on a surprise. Let us delay our formulation of
Viviani's theorem and pose a problem of finding a minimum.
For any point in or on the boundary of a triangle, construct the perpendiculars to the triangle's sides. For which point is the sum of these perpendiculars a minimum?
To frame a conjecture for this problem, consider a scalene triangle as in
figure 12, where calculations have been made at several points showing
the sum of the distances to the sides. When we look at the calculations
A (30, 60)
6o~
1
62.1
.
t
64.5
'"'-
6~.7
64.1
66.6
.8
66.2
68.6
""''6~0~
71.1
7~.3"
""'
z: ::: ::: :~: ;:~ ::~ :~·:~~
.
/00
65.0 67.5
~
70.0
J.........__ _ _ • _ _ _ _ _ . _ -
B
(0, 0)
72.4
7'!:_il_2L3___ 1~1
8_~,1__ 84.6
87.o
89.4
c
(100, 0)
FIGURE 12. The minimum sum of the distances of perpendiculars to the
sides of triangle ABC seems to be at the vertex of the
greatest angle A.
�31
KUTLER
given on that figure, a reasonable claim is that the minimum lies at the
corner of the triangle with the largest augle. In that corner two of the three
perpendiculars are unnecessary, and certainly the point at the largest corner is closer to its opposite side than is the case at either of the other corners. We shall prove at the end of this section that this conjecture is correct. But first, it is easy to build on the conjecture for an isosceles triangle
in which the equal base angles are each larger than the summit angle, by
claiming that either of the vertices at the base serves as a minimum. This
claim is also correct. Finally, consider an equilateral triangle. It seems clear
that there are three minimum points- namely, at the three corners or
vertices- but it is not clear. Unlike the other claims, this one is false! The
search for a minimum here is misguided. Instead Viviani's theorem holds:
For any point in or on the boundary of an equilateral triangle, the sum of
the perpendiculars to the sides of the triangle is always equal to the height
of the triangle.
The beauty of this theorem, then, depends, at least in part, on its surprising character. A proof of Viviani's theorem is given accompanying figure
13. It depends on a theorem that is not in the Elements, and could not
B
c
FIGURE 13. Viviani's theorem.
Triangle ABC=triangles APB, BPC, and CPA.
y,BC•AF= Y2AB•PR+ v,BC•PS+ y,cA•PT.
But both AB and CA are equal to BC, so that
y,BC•AF= \I,BC•PR+ \I,BC•PS+ Y,BC•PT.
Therefore AF=PR+PS+PT.
�32
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
A
FIGURE 14. The sum of the perpendiculars is a minimum at the vertex
with the largest angle A.
Triangle ABC=triangles APB, BPC, and CPA.
V2BC•AF= V2AB•PR+ V,BC•PS+ V2CA•PT.
But BC>AB, and BC>CA.
Therefore V2BC•AF < V2BC•PR+ v,BC•PS+ v,BC•PT
and AF<PR+PS+PT.
be there, that the area of a triangle equals half the base times the height.
Readers are encouraged to construct a proof in the manner of Euclid.
To conclude this section, accompanying figure 14 is the proof that I
promised to give, that for scalene triangles the minimum point for the sum
of the perpendiculars is at the vertex of the largest angle. (This is problem
17 in Maxima and Minima Without Calculus by I. Niven, who gives this
solution on pages 279 and 280.)
IV. Napoleon's Theorem
In Ross Honsberger's chapter on Equilateral Triangles on page 34 of
Mathematical Gems, we read:
Historically, the following theorem is known as Napoleon's theorem, although
it is very doubtful that Napoleon was well enough versed in geometry to
have discovered and proved it himself.
Whatever its origin, Napoleon's theorem is wonderful:
Consider any triangle with equilateral triangles drawn outward on each of
the three sides, as in figure 15. Napoleon's theorem states that the centers
of these three triangles are themselves the vertices of an equilateral triangle.
�KUTLER
33
FIGURE 15. Napoleon's theorem.
The points K, L, and M are the centers of three equilateral
triangles drawn outwardly on triangle ABC. To prove that K, L,
and M are the vertices of an equilateral triangle.
What is perhaps surprising here is that no matter now unequal the sides
of the original triangles, a perfect equilateral triangle will still be formed.
The advantage of placing equilateral triangles on the sides is that there
is no need to worry about which center we have in mind: the center of
gravity, the center of the inscribed circle, the center of the circumscribed
circle, the orthocenter (where the three heights meet), or some more exotic
center. The extreme symmetry of the equilateral triangle guarantees that
all of these centers merge into a single point: the center.
An excellent setting for Napoleon's theorem is another minimum problem that was posed by Fermat to Torricelli:
Find a point in an acute-angled triangle so that the sum of the distances
to the three corners is a minimum (see figure 16).
This problem is now called the airport problem:
Where should we build an airport so that the sum of the distances to three
cities is a minimum?
In figure 17, we have added a construction to figure 16 in which triangle
ACN is rotated 60 degrees about point A to position AED. Moreover, we
have joined points C and D as well as Nand E with straight lines. In that
process, two equilateral triangles have been constructed: AEN and ADC.
Consequently, the sum that we wish to minimize, BN + CN +AN, can be
replaced by the equal path BN + NE +ED. In the same figure 17, the letter
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
34
c
----"'B
FIGURE 16. Fermat's problem (the airport problem).
In an acute-angled triangle find the Fermat point F such that
the sum FA+FB+FC is a minimum. The point N is a nonFermat point, since there are smaller sums than
NA+NB+NC.
c
FIGURE 17. A path is found equal in length to BN+NA+NC.
Rotate triangle ACN 60° about A. Connect CD and NE.
Triangles ACD and AEN are equilateral.
Since NA=NE and NC=ED, we have BN+NA+NC equal to
path BN+NE+ED.
This path will be a minimum when the three segments BN,
NE, and ED lie in a straight line. Such a path is drawn in
figure 18.
�35
KUTLER
N stands for a Non-Fermat point because the path is not a minimum. The
excellence of this method of proof is that we shall know at once when we
have F, a Fermat point, as in figure 18, for the path will be minimized when
F is chosen so that BF, FE, and ED all1ie in one straight line. Underneath
figure 18 is a calculation that shows that the Fermat point is the one in
the triangle that makes all three angles AFB, BFC, and CFA equal to 120
degrees. Figure 19 shows the first of two constructions that enable us to
locate the Fermat point. Because the opposite angles ADC and AFC of
quadrilateral AFCD sum to two right angles, the circle about equilateral
triangle ABC passes through the Fermat point F. Thus we have the first
of our two constructions for F:
To find the Fermat point for any acute-angled triangle ABC, construct an
equilateral triangle outwardly on one of the sides AC. Then the Fermat point
is the intersection inside the triangle of the circumcircle of triangle ABC and
the straight line BD.
There is another construction for the Fermat point illustrated in figure 20.
Here we have equilateral triangles ADC, AOB, and BHC constructed outwardly on each side of the triangle. For the same reason that the Fermat
c
D
FIGURE 18. The Fermat point F solves the airport problem.
The three angles at Fare each equal to 120":
Angle AFB=180"-angle AFE=120".
Angle AFC=angle AED=180"-angle AFE=120".
Therefore angle CFB must also be equal to 120".
�36
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
FIGURE 19. First construction of a Fermat point.
By 111.22 the opposite angles of the undrawn quadrilateral
ADCF are equal to 180°. Angle ADC=60°, so that angle
CFA= 120°. Consequently F satisfies both conditions for a
Fermat point: F lies on BD, and angle AFC= 120°.
point lies on BD, it will also lie on AH and CO. Not only do we have this
second construction for a Fermat point, but we are also all set up for
Napoleon's theorem, in which we must show that the centers of the three
equilateral triangles are necessarily the vertices of an equilateral triangle.
Consider the circles about the two upper equilateral triangles in Figure
21. CF is a chord of both circles. By the first proposition of Book III of
the Elements, the perpendicular bisector of CF must pass through the
centers K and L. Similarly, in figure 22 the perpendicular bisector of AF
passes through K and M, and of BF through L and M. Since the three
chords FC, FA, and FB make angles of 120 degrees with each other, a simple calculation shows that the angles of triangle KLM are each equal to
60 degrees. This is enough to determine that triangle KLM is equilateral,
and our proof of Napoleon's theorem is complete.
I close this section with two questions:
1. Is Napoleon's theorem still true if the triangles are drawn inwardly?
2. On any triangle draw similar triangles outwardly on the three sides.
For which kind of center for the triangles will the three centers form the
vertices of a triangle that is similar to the other three?
�37
KUTLER
H
c
D
FIGURE 20. Second construction of a Fermat point.
Just as the Fermat point must lie on BD, it must also lie on
both AH and CO. Than we can construct the Fermat point as
the intersection of any two, or all three, of the lines BD, AH,
and CO.
F
\
I
\;
FIGURE 21. The beginning of a proof of Napoleon's theorem.
Again F is the Fermat point. By 111.1, the perpendicular bisectorto the chord CF must pass through the center's K and L of
both circles.
�38
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
FIGURE 22. Conclusion of Napoleon's theorem.
By 111.22, the angles at K, L, and M must each be equal to
60", and triangle KLM is equilateral.
V. Triangles of Maximum Area
As an appetizer:
For all triangles inscribed in a given circle, which has the greatest area?
The delightful method of solving this problem that is presented here comes
from pages 19 and 20 of The Enjoyment of Mathematics by Rademacher
and Toeplitz:
This proof comes in two parts. We show that of two triangles inscribed
in a circle
I. An equilateral triangle has a greater area than any triangle that has
only one side equal to an equilateral triangle.
2. A triangle with one side equal to an equilateral triangle has a greater
area than a triangle with none equal to an equilateral triangle.
Let triangle ABC be inscribed in a circle with one side AC equal to an
inscribed equilateral triangle oriented with AC as its horizontal basefigure 23. If an equilateral triangle AHC is inscribed on the same base,
�KUTLER
39
FIGURE 23. The area of an inscribed equilateral triangle is greater than
any other inscribed triangle on the same base.
then as everyone knows the equilateral triangle will rise to the highest point
H of the circle, and since of two triangles on the same base, the one with
the greater height has the greater area, the equilateral triangle has a greater
area than the scalene triangle with one arc equal to 120 degrees.
The proof will be complete when it is shown that of inscribed triangles,
the triangle with one side equal to an equilateral triangle is always greater
than one with no sides equal to an equilateral triangle. Such a triangle must
have at least one side-say AB-cutting off less than a third of the circumference, and at least one side-say·BC-greater than a third of the
circumference; it does not matter whether the third arc is greater or less
than 120 degrees. Place AC as the horizontal base, as in figure 24. Now,
let arc CB*=AB, so that triangle ACB* can be considered the mirror image of triangle CAB about the vertical diameter. Finally, if AH is the side
of an inscribed equilateral triangle, then, since AH is greater than AB and
less than AB*, H must lie in the arc BB* across the top of the circle, and
H will be higher than Band B*. This means that the triangle AHC, which
is taller and on the same base, is necessarily of greater area than ABC.
Consequently, any triangle with one side cutting off one-third of the circumference of the circle has a greater area than a triangle that does not
have such a side, and the proof is complete.
The last theorem was the appetizer. Here is the main course:
Of all triangles with the same perimeter, the equilateral triangle has the
greatest area.
�40
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
FIGURE 24. Triangle AHC, which has one side AH equal to that of an inscribed equilateral triangle, is greater than triangle ABC,
which has no such side. Triangle AB•c is the mirror image of
triangle ABC when the vertical line through the center serves
as the mirror.
I know an algebraic proof of this theorem that I learned from pages 47
and 48 of Maxima and Minima Without Calculus by Niven. While away
from my library in the snmmer of 1988, I was able to devise a two-part
proof that seems to me rather elegant. When I returned to my books, I
learned that Ivan Niven himself suggested the first part of the proof that
I had found:
1. On a given base and for a given perimeter, the isosceles triangle has the
greatest area.
As in figure 25, let ST be the base, and let ST+ TU +US be the given
perimeter. Then the locus of all triangles on the base ST lies on an ellipse.
Moreoever, the point U* where the triangle is isosceles is located at the
highest point of the ellipse. Thus the first part is clear: Again, since the
area of a triangle is equal to half the base times the height, the isosceles
triangle has a greater area than any triangle on the same base with sides
that equal its sides in length.
2. To show how the equilateral triangle dominates in size any isosceles
triangle with the same perimeter, let us take an example that presents a
�41
KUTLER
FIGURE 25. The semi-ellipse is the locus of all points U such that SU + UT
is constant and greater that ST.
The isosceles triangle SU 'T has a greater area than that of
any other triangle inscribed in the semi-ellipse.
method that will work for every triangle. Begin with a scalene triangle with
sides of length {7, 10, 5}. From the last theorem this triangle has a smaller
area than the triangle {6, 10, 6}. The trick now is to let the base be 6 rather
than 10, and so we write the same triangle {10, 6, 6}. Then the same averaging method of finding a new isosceles triangle on this base yields the triangle
with larger area: {8, 6, 8}. Notice how the triangles are becoming closer
in shape to an equilateral triangle. The next steps yield {7, 8, 7}, the next
{7.5, 7, 7.5}, and so on in infinitum. As Isaac Newton would say, this sequence of triangles of ever-increasing area is ultimately equal, or is equal
in the limit, to the equilateral triangle. All that is needed to make the proof
rigorous-but I will not do so here-is to show that the ever-increasing
sequence of triangles differs from its limit, the equilateral triangle, by less
than any pre-assigned difference D.
I was very pleased with my discovery, and I wondered if anyone had
ever followed the same line of reasoning. I found it all carefully worked
out in Nicholas Kazarinoffs excellent book called Geometric Inequalities.
Following his presentation, on page 41, which he attributes to Simon
Lhuilier, Kazarinoff presents what he calls a "clever geometric construction ... due to Jacob Steiner [that) neatly avoided the method of successive approximations employed by Lhuilier." However, Lhuilier's method
is charming, and is in fact a fine theorem with which to teach the theory
of limits.
The next question
For all plane figures with a given perimeter, which one contains the greatest
area?
is addressed as the sole subject matter in chapter 22 of The Enjoyment
of Mathematics by Rademacher and Toeplitz.
�42
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
VI. Concluding Remark
In an involved connected account- Euclid's Elements or Newton's
Principia- a large measure of the beauty that one finds comes from the
more or less systematic presentation. I have tried to illustrate in this article that there is another kind of beauty that one can appreciate: particular
theorems that, in order to delight, need not be presented in a long chain
of argumentation. No doubt any of the sections here can be extended, and
I have made some suggestions about how to continue beyond what is
presented here. My claim is, however, that these theorems and proofs can
be appreciated just as they stand. Each is a good in itself. In the bibliography given below such goods abound.
VII. Footnotes
I. Vol. 90, p. 482.
2. Vol. VII (1987), pp. 201-10.
3. Vol. 93, p. 572.
4. A Mathematical History of Division in Extreme and Mean Ratio (Waterloo, Ont.: Laurier).
5. R. C. Archibald: A Semicentennial History of the American Mathematical Society, Vol. I (Menasha, WI: The Collegiate Press, 1938).
6. The American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 50 (1943), p. 552.
VIII. Bibliography
Coxeter, H. S. M. Introduction to Geometry. 2d ed. New York: Wiley, 1969.
__ and Greitzer, S. L. Geometry Revisited, New Mathematical Library,
No. 19. New York: Random House, 1967.
Courant, R., and Robbins, H. R. What is Mathematics? New York: Oxford, 1941.
Davis, P. J. and Hersh, R. The Mathematical Experience. Boston: Birkhauser, 1981.
Fowler, D. H. The Mathematics of Plato's Academy. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1987.
Honsberger, R. Ingenuity in Mathematics. New Mathematical Library, no.
23. New York: Random House, 1970.
__. Mathematical Gems. Washington, D.C.: Mathematical Association
of America, 1973.
__. Mathematical Gems II. Washington, D.C.: Mathematical Association of America, 1976.
�KUTLER
43
Kazarinoff, N. D. Geometrical Inequalities. New Mathematical Library,
no. 4. New York: Random House, 1961.
Niven, I. Maxima and Minima Without Calculus. Washington, D.C.:
Mathematical Association of America, 1981.
Pedoe, D. Geometry and the Liberal Arts. New York: St. Martin's, 1976.
Polya, G. Mathematics and Plausible Reasoning. Princeton: Princeton
Univ. Press, 1954.
Rademacher, H. and Toeplitz, 0. The Enjoyment of Mathematics. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1957.
Pottage, J. Geometrical Investigations. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1983.
Steinhaus, H. Mathematical Snapshots. 3d ed. New York: Oxford, 1969.
��Autopsy
Melinda Rooney
The first time Lucy went to see her father take a horse apart it was near
Halloween. She'd been asking to go for weeks. She was sitting on
newspapers in the middle of the kitchen with a pumpkin between her legs,
scrubbing it with water and a stiff brush. He came in and swung a chair
around and sat on it backwards. She looked up at him. When he didn't
say anything she looked back down and picked up a black magic marker
and drew a wobbly line around the pumpkin's stem for the knife to follow.
"Lucy?"
"What." She didn't look up. The long blade of the butcher knife
squeaked in the pumpkin.
"Do you want to come watch tomorrow while I post a horse?"
She looked up, leaving the knife standing handle-up in the pumpkin.
"Really?"
"I'm asking you if you want to come with me. It'll be a whole morning, a Saturday. Do you really want to give up a whole Saturday morning?"
"Yeah," Lucy said. There was a silence.
"How come?" her father said.
"I don't know," Lucy said. "To see what you do. I never get to see what
you do." I want to see a dead thing, Lucy thought.
"Well, okay. You'll have to be up early in the morning. I need to be
there by six-thirty."
"Okay."
Melinda Rooney, a graduate of St. John's College, Annapolis, is currently living
in Chicago, where she studies creative writing and teaches composition at the Univer~
sity of Illinois.
45
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
46
"Are you supposed to be using that knife in here all by yourself?"
"Yeah."
"Lucy?"
"What?"
"You really want to go," he said.
She looked down and pulled the knife handle back with her finger then
released it and watched it vibrate, embedded in the pumpkin. "Yeah," Lucy
said. "I want to see."
"It's not very pleasant," he said.
"I know," she said, grabbing the stem of the pumpkin and pulling the
top off. She held it above the newspapers, pulp and seeds hanging like sticky
hair, then dropped it and stuck her hand in the hole and closed it in a
slippery fist of thready pulp. Warm air rose from it.
"I know," she said again, leaning down and speaking into the pumpkin. Her voice had a thick echo. "I just want to see how you do it."
"Okay," her father said. He stood suddenly and said "Be careful with
that," and walked away.
When Lucy was ready for bed her mother sat her on the edge of the
bed and looked at her forehead and said "Now stay out of your father's
way tomorrow. This is his job. He doesn't have time for all your questions
the way he does when he's at home." She finally looked her directly in the
eyes. "All right?"
Lucy nodded.
"All right," she continued. "Just save them all up for when you get home,
and he can answer them then. All right?"
"Okay."
"0 kay," said her mother. "All right," she said again, leaning stiffly over
to kiss her.
Lucy arranged her stuffed animals around her body in a tight embrace.
There was a plush tiger that had belonged to her dead aunt, fixed in a
lying-down position with a pink nose and plastic whiskers like fishing line.
There was a hinged bear, stiff and stuffed with straw, with prickly fur and
a roar box that mooed when you tilted him. There was a St. Bernard with
patchy fur and one shredding cardboard eye. Lucy had seen him lying by
the side of the road and made her mother stop the car so she could run
back to get him. He'd been lying on his back, one ear thrown out above
his head. His coat was clogged with gravel and old rain. He was clean now,
but he still smelled like road. There was a grey felt snake six feet long,
�ROONEY
47
When Lucy was sleepy she would feel the bed jump and wiggle, then
settle into a rising and falling like it was travelling across water and her
animals would sway and murmur with the movement and then it was the
next morning but tonight she wasn't sleepy. The bed sat still as a stone
and her animals were stiff and silent.
Lucy did everything her father did. She followed him everywhere. When
he plowed a garden she had marigold seeds in styrofoam cups on her
windowsill, or beans, sprouting in little white curves. When he started
writing books she'd begged for a toy typewriter. She'd sit on the toilet seat
and watch him shave, then once took a razor blade from its waxy white
paper and drew it across her cheek, laying it so neatly open it took almost
five seconds to start bleeding.
Lucy's father was sad the way Lucy was sometimes sad, the way she
was sad at night. It was worst when animals died. And animals died a lot
where they lived, in a country house on a high-speed road. He would sit
in a chair and stare in front of him when kittens died, or dogs, or the little
ducks or birds Lucy brought horne and fed sugar water from soaked QTips. They always died and he would sit and watch them and he would
tell Lucy it was nature and that was the way things lived and died but once
their eyes dropped closed or their heads sagged against torn-up towels in
their cardboard boxes he would have to leave the room and he could barely
speak for days.
The first time this happened that Lucy really noticed it was when one
of their cats had a kitten that was brain damaged and it cried from the
time it carne out of her mother to the moment she died, almost a day later.
The mother didn't know what to do. She would curl herself around it then
jump up and walk away. Lucy's father put the whole litter into the wagon
of his tractor and sat with them, drinking cold coffee. All the kitten could
do was lie still and cry. He sat with them for an afternoon and when she
finally died he took her out back in the palm of his hand and buried her.
He dug the grave with a spoon. He carne into the kitchen and sat Lucy
down at the table and explained how her brain hadn't got put together
the right way and so she had died. "Nature takes care of things like this,"
he said, "and death is sort of a relief," and he got up and left the room.
He carne horne one day and told Lucy's mother he'd found a horse that
had been struck by lightning in a field and Lucy went upstairs and made
beds for her animals out of shoeboxes and lined them up like hospital cots.
�48
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
She asked her father later what he did with the horse and tried to imagine
its insides. He had to be all black like the inside of a bag of charcoal, his
blood hard and red like clay. He said they'd cut it open to make sure that's
how it died. That was when she started wanting to see an autopsy.
Lucy woke up in the cold dark and saw her father sitting in a little chair
by the window.
"Is it time to go?" Neither Lucy nor her animals had moved in her sleep.
"Almost," he said, looking out the window.
"What time is it?"
"Quarter to five."
"It's still dark," Lucy said.
"I know."
There was a noise in the air. Her father stood up and pushed the chair
under its little desk. It was a wooden desk with a white metal top scattered
with plastic letter magnets. Lucy hardly ever played with it anymore because
she couldn't fit under it without lifting it off the floor with her knees.
Her father looked at her, startled. "What?" he said.
"I didn't say anything."
'
"Oh. I'm sorry. I'm tired."
"Oh."
"We have to leave in about a half-hour," he said, standing up and· walking to the bedroom door. "So up."
They had to walk a long way to the garage. Dull white frost sat in the
grass and Lucy wore her father's sweater, tears standing in her eyes from
the early cold. It hung to her knees. She bunched the sleeves in both fists
and smelled her father all around her. There were buckets and a length
of hose in the bed of the truck and the floor of the cab was covered with
fine gravel from other men's boots. Thick heat filled the cab as they drove
and Lucy started to talk.
"What's wrong with this horse?"
"A nervous system thing. Convulsions."
"Oh." There was a pause. "Can't you fix it?"
"Not really. I'm not even sure we'll be able to see anything once we open
it up. This only shows up in tissue samples."
"What only shows up?"
"The problem. What's wrong."
"Germs?"
"Yeah," her father said, "Well, sort of."
"How can you find little germs in all that horse?"
"Microscopes."
�ROONEY
49
The sun was up. Lucy remembered a movie her father had in the home
movies box that was a filly running around a paddock with men circling
around her. She had a funny, jerky run and her legs would fly out at odd
angles and her head would toss back as though she were on strings. When
she stood still she looked fine but she could never stand completely still.
They were almost to the lab when Lucy said "How can you fix what's
wrong if you have to kill him to find out what's wrong?"
There was a long silence as they pulled through a humming metal gate.
"So that maybe we'll be able to fix it next time," he said, pulling around
a curve and letting the wheel slide through his fingers.
"Oh," Lucy said.
The building with the autopsy room in it was at the end of a long asphalt
drive spotted with flattened dung and wet hay. Four men were huddled
together in front of giant motor-driven doors. The doors were latched shut
and bound with a thick chain like the doors to a big freezer. Lucy's father
jumped out of the truck and half-ran, half-walked over to the men and
they talked quietly, their words puffs in the cold air. Mist rose from the
grass. The men turned and walked off in different directions and Lucy's
father came back to the truck and opened the door.
"Okay, hop out," he said and she slid down from the high seat. He
kicked arcs in the gravel as he thought a minute.
"Okay," he finally said. "I'll take you in and get you settled. It'll be
a few minutes before you see me. I have to get dressed and talk to these
fellows and get everything set. Will you be okay for a few minutes by
yourself?" Lucy nodded, suddenly frightened.
"You can't touch anything," he said. They walked over to the giant doors
and he unlocked the chain lock with a silver key and pushed a button.
Somewhere a motor jumped and sighed and the doors rattled open on their
greasy tracks. He walked Lucy over to a long counter at the other side of
the room where he lifted her up so that she was sitting next to a deep sink
with a thin curving faucet.
"I'll be back in a minute. I'm going to go find you something to play
with," he said, and disappeared through a door. Its square glass window
had a wire net running through it.
The room was all gray cement and stainless steel; the floor had a silver
drain in it for hosing away mess and the counter Lucy sat on was lined
with glass jars of old white twisted guts soaking in formaldehyde. There
was a table with an electric saw in it for cutting bone.
There was a rusty hook hanging from a chain in the ceiling, and a steel
�50
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
table with a groove down the middle. Lucy looked down at her feet, stuck
the toe of her sneaker into a drawer handle and tried to pull it open but
it was locked. There was a long yellow bone behind the faucet handles.
Lucy's father came back through the door with both hands full. He
stopped at the counter and lined up what he'd brought. The best were
syringes, minus needles, wrapped in thick plastic.
"You can play with these in the sink if you don't splash too much,"
he said, handing them to her. There were a few glass slides with little pink
explosions of stained tissue and a magnifying glass with a heavy black
handle. There were three or four heavy silver cylinders that her father said
were cow magnets. He told her they put the magnets in cow stomachs and
they would collect little metal things like nails or staples they picked up
as they grazed so their stomachs wouldn't get cut.
"Do you think this will keep you occupied for awhile?"
"Yeah, definitely."
"Okay, I'm going to get dressed. I'll be back in a couple of minutes."
Lucy sat on the counter, banging her heels against the metal drawers.
She picked up a cow magnet and walked around the room, touching it
to metal things and pulling it off again. She went back to the sink and
ran it half full of water and grew absorbed with the syringes, drawing water
into the narrow plastic barrels and shooting it against the side of the sink.
It made a ringing sound.
When Lucy turned around there were three men in the room who were
looking at her, startled.
"My dad's getting dressed," she said. They were wearing baggy green
clothes and paper slippers over their shoes that looked like the white paper
frills on Thanksgiving turkeys. Her father came in dressed in the same way
except he wore black rubber boots with thick red soles. Lucy emptied the
sink then jumped to the counter and hooked her toe in a drawer pull. Her
father sharpened a knife.
The big freezer doors slid open again and two men in green with parkas
on walked in with a white horse who jerked and wobbled like a mechanical
toy. Even as she stood still some part of her was moving, twitching the
wrong way and she stamped as Lucy's father walked to her carrying a
syringe. Lucy thought suddenly of a toy she'd taken from her dentist's treasure chest years before- a hinged donkey that collapsed when you pushed
a button under its little stand- and her father pinched a fold of skin at
the base of the horse's neck and slid the needle in and after only a few
seconds she sank to her knees and died on the tile floor, as though she'd
�ROONEY
51
suddenly been overcome by sleep. He stepped back and away as she
stretched out on her side.
Lucy's hands sat cold in her lap while the giant iron hook was lowered
from the ceiling and two men bound the mare's legs together with rope.
They hooked the loop in the rope over the hanging hook and a motor
whined loudly as the hook rose again, pulling her up and off the ground.
The hook followed a track in the ceiling over to the big steel table and
they lowered the horse onto it, her back fitting neatly into the groove.
They released her legs and unwound the rope and a man came in with
a hose and sprayed down the floor. Her white head hung upside down off
the end of the table and her tail brushed the floor, its ends dampening.
Lucy's father stood so she couldn't see his hands but by the way his back
tensed she knew he was cutting her open and there was a sound like wet
fabric tearing. Steam rose from her body and she spilled apart on the table
and onto the floor.
The guts smelled like wet cardboard boxes and were more colors than
Lucy had expected- green, blue, yellow. Her father slid most of the horse
out onto the floor like he was digging through a pile of laundry. No one
was talking. She looked again at the electric saw:Jhe words "Butcher Boy"
were spelled out in red and silver letters opposite the thick blade.
"Dad?" Lucy said, sliding off the counter and standing with both hands
fixed in drawer pulls. She stepped forward but her hands stayed cold and
locked on the handles.
"Dad?" She felt a thick pain under one eyebrow where she'd fallen once
and hit the corner of a table. "Can I see what you're doing?"
With blood on them she could suddenly see how white and thick his
arms were and when he turned to face her she saw a gash of brown blood
by his ear and under one eye. His mouth was fixed in a line when he said
"What, Lucy," and she suddenly remembered when she'd gone with her
mother to see him play ice hockey once and he had been standing in a
little net cage wearing a white plastic mask and her mother had pointed
and said, "Look! There's your father!" and she'd looked at the mask with
its slanted black holes and screamed "That's not my father!" and a man
on the bleacher in front of her jumped and tossed his popcorn in a yellow
shower. She'd screamed until her mother picked her up and carried her
to the car. She'd fallen asleep on the cold seat and refused to go into the
house all night.
"Lucy," he said now. "What." She felt the drawer pulls making ridges
in her hands.
�52
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
"You have blood on your face," she said.
He looked at her.
"I want to go back to
t~e
car," she said.
"Lucy," he said, "I'm busy. Sit down." He turned back to the guts.
"Dad!" she shouted.
"Hey, John, I'll take her back to the car," one of the men said.
"No," he said, "just . . . "He fixed the knife handle up in the horse's
belly. He turned to Lucy.
. "Lucy,'~ he s~id. "Sit down. You carne tCi see this. Now sit down."
They stared at each other for a long minute that smelled of blood and
formaldehyde and some dead, rotting thing. Then· she jumped back on
the counter and held a cow magnet until it grew hot in her hand and her
eyes had cleared and her father had emptied the horse.
When it was over he walked out of the room and the men hosed what
was left down the drain or out the door to an open dumpster. All that
was left of the horse was a white shell, the ribs standing stiffly like hands
reaching up, waiting to be given something.
Lucy slid off the counter and looked at the slides with the magnifying
glass, then looked up to see one of the men standing next to her. He had
black hair cut so short the skin of his head looked blue and his arms were
raw with harsh soap and goosebumps. He had black plastic glasses on with
a string attached and he offered Lucy a piece of gum.
"You okay?" he said.
"Thanks."
He opened his mouth to say something, then paused, cleared his throat,
and looked away before he finally said "What do you think of all this?"
"I don't know. It's okay. It's interesting." Her voice shook.
He looked at her for a moment. He walked away, then stopped and
turned around. "Do you want me to take you in to see your dad?" Lucy
looked at him for a long minute, backed against the counter.
"I guess," she said, not moving. "Or I could just wait for him here."
"Come on," he said, walking back over to her and reaching out his hand.
"I'll take you to him."
She went reluctantly, feeling the pull of the man's arm in her shoulder.
He took her through a heavy wood door into a room full of lockers and
loud talking and cigarette smoke. Her father was at a sink, soaping his
hands and scrubbing between his fingers with a little brush. He looked
over at her. She sat down on a bench and the man who'd brought her in
walked away without a sound. They stared at each other.
�ROONEY
53
"What do you have in your mouth?" he finally said.
"Gum." She paused. "That man gave it to me. He thought I was scared."
There was a silence.
"Give me one more minute," he said, and rinsed his hands and arms
and disappeared into the lockers. He came out a few minutes later in his
regular clothes. He didn't even pause in front of her but only said "Ready?"
and took her wrist and walked back out into the autopsy room. He walked
to the counter and gathered. up the syringes and. magnets and gave Lucy
the slides to carry. The man' who'd given lier'the gum was coiling up the
hose.
·-'""'·· ...· _,
.. - . .
Lucy's father smoked a cigarette and the ash grew long ·and dropped
off as he drove.
"Well?" he finally said.
"What?"
"What do you think?"
"I'm not sure."
"Was it what you expected?"
"I'm not sure."
"We couldn't see a thing," he said, rolling the window down an inch
and thumbing the glowing butt out the window. "We'll have to wait for
the tissue samples."
"Oh." Lucy looked out the window.
"Do you want to know what I found?"
"I thought you said you couldn't see anything."
There was a long silence. "Well, we won't know for sure until the tissue
comes back," he said, almost to himself, then, his voice higher and a little
afraid, "It's, it's kind of like when you carve your pumpkins, and you find
one strange seed in the middle of all the regular ones. You know what I
mean?"
"I guess."
It was quiet the rest of the way home. Right before they pulled into
the driveway he slowed down, as though he were going to pull over, and
looked at her. "Lucy?"
She moved suddenly back against the door, feeling the arm rest in her
back as he pulled the truck onto the shoulder and stopped. She saw his
face change and he reached out to her and took the back of her neck gently
in his warm hand.
"Oh, Lucy," he said, his voice small.
"What?"
�54
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
There was a long silence. He sighed and took a knot of her hair in his
hand and forced brightness into his voice.
"Don't you ... don't you want to ask me any questions?" His thumb
was rough over the pain in her eyebrow. He smoothed it over and over.
Lucy said "No, not really," because she couldn't think of anything else
to say. Her chest was full of hurt.
He sighed and said "Okay. Maybe some other time then, right?" He
pulled the truck into the driveway in a whisper of gravel. "Okay?"
She looked at him for a long moment and he looked at her and she
just said "Yeah, okay" and got out of the truck and walked into the house.
�Petrella's Blood
.......-
Leo Pickens
Zia Pina sat at the hearth stirring beans boiling in a pot over the fire when
Bob finally came downstairs for breakfast.
"Sleepyhead!"
"Easy," Bob said. "I'm on vacation."
"Did you sleep well?" Zia Pina asked. "You weren't too cold?"
"No."
"Sure?" She regarded her distant cousin carefully.
"I'm sure," he said.
She frowned. "Tonight we will give you another blanket."
Zia Pina rose slowly. The old widow was barely five feet tall, but so
fat that she needed a small stool to sit at the dinner table. She could then
push her bulk underneath the table top and reach her food. "What legs,"
she muttered. "What legs. The spirit still works fine. It's just these legs
that don't." She opened a cupboard and took down a coffee pot.
Bob took the pot from her hands. "Sit down," he told her. "In America,
men know how to make coffee. Understand?"
Zia Pina hesitated, puzzled. "No!''. she said finally.
She grabbed the coffee pot, and as she did so Salvatore entered the
kitchen. He was tall, thin, and worn. Still handsome, his close-clipped
mustache gave him a certain dignity, even though his clothes were dirty
and ill-fitting, and his shoes, without laces, had holes at the seams.
"My God! What are you doing?" he asked Zia Pina. "Why are you
fighting with our guest?"
Leo Pickens, a graduate of St. John's College, Annapolis, is Director of Athletics
at the college.
55
�56
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
"I'm making the young man some coffee. What's it to you?"
Salvatore put an arm around her shoulder. He drew back her black
scarf. "Look," he said to Bob, and he pulled gently at her hair. "Look at
this old woman. It's snowed in her hair!"
"Ahhh ... " Zia Pina lifted a thick arm and cuffed him.
"This old woman never dies! I'd give a million lire to anyone who could
kill her. But it's impossible. She'll outlast us all!"
Zia Pina's heavy body shook with laughter. A ridge of gum appeared
where her upper teeth once were. "What kind of nephew says such things?"
she said. "What kind of nephew?"
"So you think you can make him some coffee?"
"But of
course~"---
"But you don't know how to make coffee."
"Madonna," she said. "You think that because I'm old I can't do
anything?"
"Well," Salvatore said, grinning, "old bones do make the best soup."
After his breakfast, Bob followed Salvatore outside. The morning was
cool and softly radiant. Pasquale, Salvatore's brother-in-law, sat on a low
table next to a fire burning under a barrel of water. He was sharpening
a pair of long knives. Pasquale was small and stooped, with sunken cheeks.
Bits of tobacco from his handrolled cigarettes clung to the corners of his
mouth. Old as he appeared, Pasquale's movements were still spry and
unlabored.
Pasquale greeted Bob with something he could not understand. Pasquale's accent was thicker than that of the others. Bob looked to Salvatore
for help.
"Pasquale," Salvatore explained, "says you are just like all Americans."
"How's that?"
"Because you sleep late."
Bob laughed. "Where did you learn this?"
Pasquale's face contorted. "Huh?" The old man had as hard a time
with Bob's textbook Italian as Bob did with Pasquale's dialect. Salvatore
translated for him.
"He says this isn't true."
"But it is true," Pasquale insisted.
"And how do you know?" Salvatore asked.
"I just know," Pasquale said.
"Ah!" Salvatore slapped Pasquale on the back of his head, and pushed
his beret down onto his nose. Salvatore winked at Bob and held a finger
to his temple. "This man is crazy."
�PICKENS
57
"I know," Pasquale repeated. He adjusted his beret and continued to
tend to his knives. "I just know."
Salvatore checked the water in the barrel and then picked up the length
of rope lying on the table. The three of them set off through a stony field
planted with artichokes and olive trees. A spur of the nearby mountains
was crowned by a village of white rock and faded rose-tiled roofs. Snow
still topped the mountain's highest peak, Petrella. Ever since he was child,
the mountain had loomed large in Bob's imagination. His father told stories
of his childhood during the war, when his family, driven from their village,
lived for a time in one of the hollows below the crest. During the bombing
of Monte Cassino, his father climbed to the top of Petrella to watch the
Allied bombardment of the monastery. The war had been a carnival for
the boy, and the endless night of bombing, a spectacular shower of
fireworks, never to be forgotten. To return to Italy and climb Petrella again
was an undying wish of his father's. Smoke now curled upwards at the
mountain's foot, where farmers were burning weeds and bramble that grew
along the edges of their land.
"What a stink!" Pasquale announced when the men reached the sty.
The pig was an enormous gelder, its belly, cnest, and haunches caked
with mud. It sniffed at their legs through the fence. Bob could feel the
animal's warm breath through his jeans.
"Does he have a name?" he asked.
"Name?" asked Salvatore.
"A name," Bob repeated slowly. "Does he have a name?"
Salvatore shrugged. "Pig," he said. "We call this pig."
"You have pigs in America?" Pasquale wanted to know.
"Many pigs," Bob said. "More than in Italy."
The Italians looked at each other with genuine surprise.
"Really?" asked Pasquale.
Bob nodded.
Salvatore entered the pen, his feet sinking into the muck of straw and
excrement. Getting on his knees, he slipped a noose around one of the
pig's front legs, then passed the free end of the rope to Pasquale. Pasquale
and Bob pulled while Salvatore pushed, his knees set heavily into the pig's
flanks. The pig grunted deeply and fought them in the mud. Slowly, the
men muscled the pig toward the gate. When the pig's head smacked violently
against the door jamb, it suddenly squealed, and the noise echoed through
the valley. The pig struggled against them harder than before, but the three
of them finally shoved the animal out of its pen. The pig grew calm, eagerly
nosing the artichokes on either side of the path as Pasquale led it slowly
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
58
with the rope. Salvatore lightly jabbed at the pig's flanks every now and
then with the fallen branch of an olive tree.
"Have you ever done this before?" Salvatore asked.
"No," Bob said, "but- I thought you hit it on the head first."
"Before the war, in the time of Mussolini, we did it like that. Then we
could not kill our own pigs. We had to take them to a butcher and the
meat would be given to everybody. So we did it at night and hit the pig
on the head because then it wouldn't make noise when you cut its throat."
Salvatore stopped and turned around. He pointed at the mountain with
. the olive branch. "On the other side of Petrella is Monte Cassino."
"I know," Bob said.
"Po rca miseria!" Salvatore cursed, and he began to teli.Bob of an incident during the war, when the front stretched from Formia on the coast,
through the nearby village of Ansonia, to Monte Cassino. Ausonia was
used as a German command post by General Kesselring. The people's farms
were destroyed by the continual Allied bombing. Bob nodded. Salvatore's
description matched what his father had told him. There was hardly a thing
to eat, Bob knew. Snow was carried down from Petrella for water.
One day, the Germans garrisoned in Ansonia were sent out to round
up all the people in the countryside. They were to be sent to a concentration camp in Rome. Salvatore was a boy at the time, and his family, along
with several other families, including Bob's father's, had made shelter
together in a stable. This was where the German soldier found them. As
they were leaving, the German spotted Bob's father returning to the stable
through the field with a Polish deserter. The German took aim and told
them to halt. Bob's father immediately dropped behind a pile of rocks.
The Pole froze. The soldier threatened to shoot the Pole if he did not find
the boy at once. Zia Pina, then a stout matron in her prime, began pleading
with the German. She suddenly grabbed his rifle, and another of their group
crashed a stone into the soldier's face. The German tried to flee, but he
was chased down and stabbed to death.
"It was about this big," said Salvatore, holding up his pinkie.
"What?" Bob asked.
"The knife we had," Salvatore said. "We had to stab him again and
again it was so small." Salvatore watched Bob's reaction carefully, "Your
father never told you this?"
"My father?" asked Bob with sudden revulsion. He shook his head.
Salvatore smiled nervously. He shrugged, then continued with his story:
the next day, a German patrol came looking for the missing soldier. The
Italians protested that they knew nothing. The Captain of the patrol warned
them that he would begin shooting one of them a minute until the soldier
�PICKENS
59
was found. Zia Pina confessed and they unearthed the body. The Captain
was so enraged by the mutilation of his man that he immediately executed
ten of them. The rest were taken prisoner. But just as they were departing
for the concentration camp in Rome, Ansonia was bombed by the
Americans, and many escaped into the hills during the confusion of the
raid, among them Salvatore, Bob's father, and Zia.
"The streets of Ausonia are made of stone," said Salvatore. "The Ger-
mans wore these steel-soled boots so they could never catch us in the street."
He laughed, and slapped Pasquale on the back as they led the pig up to
the table near the fire in the yard.
"Whaq" asked Pasquale.
"The war," said Salvatore. "What a time to be young, eh Pasquale?"
Pasquale spit. "Porca Dio," he muttered.
The pig's mouth was tied shut, and the heaving bulk was lifted onto
the table, its head dangling over one edge. Pasquale tied the hocks, and
setting his boot into the pig's rear, pulled its hind legs straight. Salvatore
directed Bob to put his weight upon the pig's mid-section and hold taut
the rope binding the front legs. The pig's frightened breathing wheezed
from its muzzled nose and mouth. Zia Pina appeared with a steaming pot
of water, which she poured over the pig's neck while Salvatore cleaned away
the dirt. She set the empty pot under the pig's head, and Salvatore scraped
the blunt edge of a knife back and forth slowly along the pig's gorge,
searching for the vein, before finally digging it forcefully into the pig's
throat. He twisted the blade back and forth, and the blood poured across
Salvatore's wrist and splattered into the pot. The pig shuddered and twisted,
crying mutedly through its clamped jaws, blood spurting with the animal's
convulsions. The pig's breathing gradually slackened as the blood drained
from its body. Suddenly, the mass lunged. Then it lay still.
Zia Pina took the pot of blood into the house. Pasquale poured steaming water from the barrel over the carcass, while Salvatore scraped his knife
across the body. Bristle and skin peeled off as easily as bark from a
sycamore. The two men worked quickly, without speaking. When they were
finished, the carcass lay white and cold, like a slab of marble. There was
the stench of hair and flesh smoldering in the fire.
The corpse was hung upside down from a chain secured to a rafter in
the garage. Blood trickled down the jaws onto the pavement, spreading
slowly under the soles of Salvatore's laceless shoes as he cut into the loins.
The layers of white fat, like heavy folds of warm curd, yielded easily. He
continued the incision down the belly, across the chest, and along the throat.
He cut open the neck and yanked out the esophagus. Salvatore then opened
up the belly, which gave off a humid, fecal odor, and he gathered and pulled
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
60
the coils of intestine and stomach out of the body cavity onto a wide board
that Zia Pina held. The body was propped open wide to dry with staves.
Finally, Pasquale draped the hanging corpse in a bed sheet to keep the
flies away. The only part that showed was the pig's head. Its small eyes
were closed. The mouth gaped. And the skin of the face, with all the stress
of the gutted corpse upon it, was creased by thick wrinkles that made the
gutted pig appear as if it were smiling.
Bob was still something of a curiosity to his relatives at lunch that afternoon. They watched him closely as he ate. The kitchen was warm and
smoky. There was the smell of tripe simmering on the stove, and Bob
thought of the dinners at his grandmother's when he was a little boy.
"I haven't had such good sauce since my grandmother died," Bob said
to Zia Pina. "If you can cook like this all the time, why don't you come
to America with me."
"Ah," she groaned. "I'm on my way to the grave."
"But Zia," Bob said. "Don't worry. We have graves in America, too."
She began to put more pasta into Bob's bowl. He held back her hand.
"I've had enough," he said.
She frowned. "But you just said you like it."
"I do."
She gave him another portion and pointed at his dish with her big
wooden spoon. "Eat!" she commanded. Pasquale poured Bob another glass
of wine. "And drink," he said. "For he who does not drink, does not eat."
Bob took another sip of the heavy red wine.
"What do you eat in America?" Zia Pina asked.
"What's America? What's America?" Pasquale interrupted loudly. "Hot
dogs! Ketchup! And Coca Cola!" Pasquale laughed and repeated ''What's
America? What's America?" He then asked Bob, "Do you like it here?"
"Very much," Bob answered.
"Here life is ugly," said Salvatore. He sat drained and limp in his chair.
The wine had made him dark and moody. He raised his hand. It was large,
black, and dirty, like the burl of a tree root. "Life is ugly here."
"Madonna!' Zia Pina exclaimed. She began to pass around clean plates.
"Why do you have to talk in such a way"
"Why?" he said. "Because we work and eat and sleep until one day
we die."
"Be quiet!" said Zia Pina, and she clanked her serving spoon in
Salvatore's plate as she gave him a portion from the pot she had taken
from the refrigerator.
There was a silence as she continued to serve the table.
�PICKENS
61
"What are we having now?" Bob asked.
"Try it first," Zia Pina said.
Bob took a bite. The three of them watched him expectantly. "What
is it?" he asked.
"Do you like it?"
"What is it?'; asked Bob again.
"The pig's blood," she said.
Bob's throat constricted. He looked up, trying hard not to betray his
disgust. He avoided Zia Pina's eyes, and gazed past her, out the kitchen
window, at the mountains in the near distance. The slopes of Petrella were
ruined stairs, abandoned terraces of fig, olive, and orange trees. A marble
quarry deeply scarred the mountainside yellow and beige. Bob looked back
down at his plate, took another bite, and said through his mouthful, "It's
good." He waved for Zia Pina to put more onto his plate.
"Ah!" Salvatore and Pasquale nodded with approval. They clinked their
glasses against the wine bottle and swallowed their wine in a gulp.
"Yes," Salvatore said, and he smiled. "He is one of us."
��Three Poems
Robert J. Levy
Robert J. Levy is a graduate of St. John's College, Annapolis. These poems are
reprinted from his collection of poems entitled Whistle Maker (published by the
Anhinga Press of Tallahassee, Florida), which received the Anhinga Prize for Poetry
for 1986. Last year Mr. Levy was awarded a Creative Writing Fellowship by the
National Endowment for the Arts.
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�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
64
In Sickness
Three weeks married to our symptoms
and no change in sight. Hot flashes
baffle us by day. Sudden chills
confuse us through the night. Even
sickness, however, can begin
to look like health in time, and ours,
despite its fever sweats and rheums,
has become domesticated
to a pattern of remissions,
always brief, that allows us both
to spell the other for awhile
before the next attack begins.
Monday you read me Baudelaire
in bed. Tuesday it is my turn
to bring you meus/i and a peach.
As the days wear on we trade off
the thermometer between us
like an Olympian's baton:
We run our relay race to see
who can take care of whom the best
and for how long. We just can't do
enough for each other. Frankly,
all this fevered giving becomes
quite tiresome after three weeks
sick in bed, and soon we feign all
our infirmities- withered hands,
a vile catarrh . . . anything to
inject a little selfishness
into our lives. What parity
there is in marriage and disease
is slowly weakened to the point
of no return. Still, we are left
much less alone somehow, in love
once more with the mundanity
of being well, having returned,
at long last, to our chronic norm.
�LEVY
65
The Tristan Chord
More alone with this music than ever before
I find myself thinking of you,
of that other loneliness, and of how
you always had the words for everything,
the way you once called a Beethoven quartet
"the scraping of horses' tails on cats' bowels."
No doubt you could have
talked a rainbow into grayness.
How many times have you walked out from the opera
humming arias like souvenirs?
What you take away with you is candy:
deliciously oblique and self-contained,
a thing that comforts by confining music
to the boundaries of conversation.
But if you would only listen, quietly,
you would hear ... nothing.
Not music but music's aspiration
to a silence so complete
whatever you might say about it
would be, pathetically, about yourself.
This is the Tristan chord. It melts
like ice in the palm of a word.
Like a shell's susurrus, it sings
of where it came from, where it's going,
but not of what it is. And where do you
fit into all of this? You don't.
You never did. And that's the core of it.
I could tell you how your words have broadened
my experience of art, of life, etc. . ..
They haven't changed a thing. Lately,
I find myself rehearsing the 'Ifistan chord
in all its variations. I've been thinking
how you and I are like two notes
upon a stave, parts of a tune
but not ourselves a tune. I've been thinking how words
escape us- or we from them. I've been thinking
that the search for cadence takes a very long time.
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
66
On the Pythagorean Theorem
If we listen to those who wish to recount ancient history, we
may find some of them referring this theorem to Pythagoras
and saying that he sacrificed a brace of oxen in honor of his
-from Prod us
discovery.
Just as a bell curve is a kind
of breast with meaning, or graphed
hyperbolae can represent
the coy geometry of lust
(the soft curves of infinite approach
and loss), so too I can believe
that when Pythagoras deduced
the theorem, his sacrifice of
oxen to the gods was not
prompted by piety alone.
Was it for the sake of gods
the dumb beasts were spitted, charred and sent
ethereal, to bovine heaven?
Did he believe the theorem had descended,
courtesy of some mathematical
Prometheus, from on high?
I would like, instead, to think
that the electric "click" of certainty,
flooding his mind like light into a room
where only dark had been before,
was like the voice of a lovely woman
reclaiming him into the world.
At once abstract and visceral,
the "ah ha!" of sudden knowing
was like the "ahhh ... " of sexual release,
and knowledge struck the belly of his mind
with the neat certainty of wine.
I would like to think he understood
that truth was not otherworldly,
that a fact may reek of burning meat
and its proper offering must be
the smoke from flesh on fire, the smell
of food and sex, the aroma
(corrupt, delicious) of knowledgethe smoldering thigh pieces of the beast.
\
�The Analytic Art
of Viete:
A Review Essay
Richard Ferrier
Francois Viete: The Analytic Art: Nine Studies in Algebra, Geometry, and
Trigonometry from the Opus restitutae mathematicae analyseos, seu Algebra
Nova. Translated by T. Richard Witmer. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University
Press, 1983.
As knowledge of the classical languages ceases to be numbered among the
tools essential to the educated man, it becomes more desirable to have
suitable translations of significant authors who wrote when those languages
were the common possession of the learned. While this work has long been
done and redone in the so-called humanities, it has always proceeded at
a slower pace in mathematics and natural science, so much so that when
the new program was established at St. John's College over forty-five years
ago, heroic efforts were demanded to produce English texts of such central works as the Conics and the Almagest. These translations, the hasty
offspring of necessity, have remained without competition until very recently, while every year sees new versions of Platonic dialogues or classical
tragedies.
Among the mathematical classics included in the new program was
Fran9ois Viele's Introduction to the Analytical Art, which J. Winfree Smith
first translated for use in the mathematics tutorial. Mr. Smith's version
Richard Ferrier, an alumnus of St. John's College, is on the faculty of Thomas
Aquinas College, Santa Paula, California.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
is included as an appendix to the translation of Jacob Klein's Greek
Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra.' Mr. Klein argued there
that Viete's new algebra, or "specious logistic," as he called it, was the first
truly symbolic mathematics and that careful study of Viete's achievement
and its development at the hands of Descartes and others would shed light
on the symbolic character of modern thought, including the number concept and the notion of scientific law. Those who are skeptical of this interpretation of Viete's work must nonetheless acknowledge that he was a great
mathematician. F. Ritter, who wrote the most complete survey of Viete's
life and works, accorded him the impressive title, "inventeur de l'algebre
moderne," and the opinion of Augustus De Morgan, writing in the Penny
Cyclopedia of 1843, put the same claim in this vivid language:
If a Persian or a Hindu, instructed in the modern European algebra, were
to ask, "who, of all individual men, made the step which most distinctly
marks the separation of the science which you now return to us from that
which we delivered to you by the hands of Mohammed Ben Musa?" the
answer must be-VIETA.
The present volume includes the Introduction as well as eight treatises
on various mathematical topics. These last, which treat of the theory of
equations, multiple and partial angle formulae, solutions to cubic and biquadratic equations, and the application of specious logistic to Geometry,
are here published in English for the first time. In performing this labor,
Mr. Witmer has facilitated the study of Viete's thought by those who have
an interest in his mathematical achievements and philosophical significance
but lack the Latin necessary to read the often difficult and dense original
text. Such readers may well have been puzzled by Viete's tantalizingly brief
discussion of procedure and aims in the Introduction, but they have
heretofore been unable to interpret that text by comparison with the execution in detail of the program it enunciates. In particular, Viete proposes
a threefold analytical art comprising Zetetic, Poristic, and Exegetic or
Rhetic, but readers have not been able to agree on what precisely is the
nature or function of each part. Poristic has presented the greatest obscurity,
but there are doubtful matters in the other two as well. Several of the texts
here translated contain the evidence by which these questions can be settled.
Exegetic, or the art of actually exhibiting the unknown magnitude in a
geometrical problem, is the subject of two of the treatises, A Canonical
Survey of Geometrical Constructions and A Supplement to Geometry. The
latter contains Viete's only references to Poristic (pp. 395-97) and gives
an example of a complete synthetic solution to the problem of inscribing
�FERRIER
69
a regular heptagon in a circle. The meaning of such terms as "specious
logistic" and "zetetic" will be clarified by their use throughout all the
treatises, but especially the Preliminary Notes on Symbolic Logistic (Latin:
Ad logisticen speciosam notae priores) and the Five Books of Zetetica.
Viete's apparent identification of Algebra with the whole of Analysis and
his relation to Descartes can be examined more fruitfully through these
texts, and the notion of a geometrical algebra, which has been used to
describe the second book of Euclid's Elements, can be clarified. Particularly
interesting in this last connection is the comparison of Elements II, Viete's
Survey, and Paolo Bonansoni's Geometrical Algebra translated and published for the first time by R. Schmidt.'
And now, with a sense of playing the odious part of Celano at this
banquet, I must warn the reader against uncritically falling to. Mr. Witmer's
translations are so seriously flawed that the reader cannot trust them in
just those places where the greatest interest lies; and, though he may use
them, the reader would be well advised to consult Mr. Smith's earlier and
superior version of the Introduction and, if possible, the Latin original.'
Some of these flaws are the fault of the publisher. The numerous
solecisms in Greek orthography are annoying but they are no real obstacle
to understanding. Others seem to come from a lack of mathematical insight. 4 Readers with knowledge of Euclid will not be misled by hearing
the vertex angle of an isosceles triangle called a "vertical angle," though
they may be irritated at the irregular usage. The unfamiliar technical term
"mesographic" is not synonymous with "cube duplication," as a footnote
gives us to understand. It is rather to be rendered as "mean finding" or,
as Witmer himself awkwardly puts it, "the discovery of two mean continued proportionals between two given ones [sic]." (p. 395)
The most serious of the deficiencies seem to arise from Witmer's having rejected the possibility that changes in notation imply a qualitative
change in the object of mathematics or in the mode in which it is conceived. These are precisely the points that Klein investigated, concluding
that Viele was a revolutionary figure in the history of mathematics.
Witmer's neglect of these considerations shows up most clearly in his
avoidance of all English words that suggest the Latin "species" or the Greek
"Eliioc;". Viete calls his new algebra "Specious Logistic" because it "is exhibited through the species or forms of things." The last phrase is, in Latin,
"species seu rerum formas," an expression that surely is meant to remind
the educated reader of Plato and especially Aristotle, who uses exactly
equivalent language.' Could anyone guess at these echoes in Witmer's rendition (p. 17): "Symbolic logistic employs symbols or signs for things"?
In fairness I should point out that here, and in various places through the
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
book, Witmer does give the Latin and, where they exist, various French
translations as well as Smith's. But why should the more interesting and
accurate rendition be relegated to a footnote? There are numerous indications that when Vifte uses "species" and its cognates, he intends to sug-
gest to the reader the philosophic use of these unusually weighty terms.
The related word genus is used throughout the Introduction in such a way
as to force these reflections upon the reader, most emphatically in Viete's
statement in Chapter I of the effect of the law of homogeneity, which he
calls "the prime and perpetual law of equations." There he employs the
significant expression "Solemnis magnitudem ex genere ad genus vi sua
proportionaliter adscendentium vel descendentium series seu scala," which
Witmer colorlessly renders "a formal series or scale of terms ascending
or descending proportionally from class to class in keeping with their
nature." Compare with this version Klein's "venerable series or scale of
magnitudes ascending or descending from genus to genus ... " or Smith's
"series or ladder, hallowed by custom, of magnitudes ascending or descending by their own nature from genus to genus." I am reminded by this text
not only of the hierarchy of species and genus in scholastic philosophy
but also of Jacob's dream (Genesis 28, 12), where we· find a ladder "scalam"
with angels of God "ascendentes et desc.endentes per earn." Is it on this
scale that the heights of heaven are to be ascended? The founders of
modernity, as readers of the tradition know, are not unwilling to portray
their project as an assault on the heavens through Promethean or even
Satanic metaphor. The whole Introduction, it will be recalled, cadences
with the proud boast "NULLUM NON PROBLEMA SOLVERE": to leave
no problem unsolved.
That the transformation of the mathematical meaning of species or
Ellioc;. particularly in its Diophantine use, is a starting point for Viete's
own specious logistic is most plainly supported by Viele's claim that
Diophantus used species calculation but hid this fact in order to excite admiration at his wit and ingenuity. This means that Viete understands himself
not as innovator but as renovator, which explains the "restitutae" in the
title, the comparison to finding "fossil gold" in the dedicatory letter to his
patroness, and his plain statement there that his new algebra is "in truth,
old." He has cleansed and restored the art of algebra as he had received
it from the Arabs by attending to certain clues and traces of a pure original
algebra found in the procedure of Diophantus in the Arithmetica and the
method of analysis as it is discussed by Pappus, Apollonius, Theon, and,
in a way, Plato. There are strong reasons, therefore, against translating the
conclusion of chapter 5 of the Introduction so as to suggest that Diophantus
did not have specious logistic and that in consequence he is to be admired,
�FERRIER
71
as it were, for operating under a handicap. Witmer's version runs thus:
[In his Arithmetic Diophantus] assuredly exhibits this method in numbers
but not in symbols, for which it is nevertheless used. Because of this his ingenuity and quickness of mind are the more to be admired." (p. 27)
Compare this with Smith:
[Diophantus] presented it as if established by means of numbers and not
also by species (which, nevertheless, he used) in order that his subtlety and
skill might be the more admired. 6
In translating the Survey and the Supplement it is important to keep
the language of specious logistic separate from that of classical geometry.
Like Toomer's otherwise admirable Almagest, Witmer's Survey treats the
operations of algebra as simply equivalent to construction of figures and
composition or decomposition of ratios. Th illustrate, the expression "rectangulam sub CF, FG" (Prop. 9, Survey) which harkens back to Euclid's
"To urro Tiiiv BA, Ar rreptex6~evov 6p9oyrovwv," should be translated
"the rectangle contained by CF and FG." In Vi~te it signifies a definite
individual rectangle. Witmer translates it as CFxFG," turning it into part
of an equation, for example "CF'+(CFxFG)= DF'." This goes beyond
translation and becomes, intentionally or not, an interpretation of the relation between Algebra and Geometry. Both the Survey and the Supplement
concern themselves with just this relation, the bond between geometry and
algebra. This is what makes them part of exegetic, the third part of the
Analytic art.
When the equation of the magnitude which is being sought has been set
in order, the rhetic or exegetic art ... performs its function ... in regard
to lengths, surfaces, and solids, if it is necessary to show the magnitude itself.
And in the latter case, the analyst appears as a geometer by actually carrying out the work in imitation of the like analytical solution7 ••• the skillful
geometer, though a learned analyst, conceals this fact and presents and explicates his problem as a synthetic one: ... 8
It is thus no accident that Viele's exegetical treatises employ the language
of classical, synthetic, geometry. This could also be shown by a more detailed examination of the diction and structure of the propositions they
contain. Viete was here writing in the manner of Euclid. With such texts
the pattern for modern English translations ought to be Sir Thomas Heath's
translation of Euclid's Elements. It is one thing, however, to show that Viele
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
gave these works a geometrical character and content, and another to uncover his reasons for doing so. Perhaps it will not be out of place to attempt an answer to this question by sketching the scheme of the simpler
of the two, the Survey.
There are three parts to this text. In the first eight propositions, Viete
offers constructions as geometrical interpretations of various algebraic
operations involving terms of the first and second genera, or degree, as
we would say. Proposition 6, for example, is a problem: "Given two straight
lines, to find a third proportional." In the 1646 edition, this enunciation
is followed by a line set in different type, apparently serving as a kind of
title for the proposition following. It reads: "The Operation of Division."
The next five propositions divide into two groups. First Viete proves
three theorems on continued proportion. These theorems involve lines forming squares and rectangles suitable for interpreting the three types of
quadratic equations that have at least one positive real root.' Next come
two problems by which the line or lines that interpret the unknown term
in the equation are found. In the last seven propositions, Viete accomplishes
for certain simple biquadratic equations what these five do for the
quadratics.
Everything in the Survey is ordered to the problems that construct the
line interpreting the unknown. Viete titles such a problem the "mechimice"
of its equation, because in it he exhibits the device, the standard and regular
procedure, by which the root of such an equation can be exhibited as a
line constructed geometrically. Unlike Descartes, Viete does not regard these
lines as solutions to the equations. It is in his Zetetica (e.g., in Zetetica
III, prop. l) that Viete gives the properly algebraic solutions, not, interestingly, as formulae, but rather more in the mode of data stated in words.
Why did Viete give the roots in two distinct ways? In particular, why
did he write treatises giving the geometric construction rather than rest
in the zetetic, or algebraic, solution? The answer lies in the fact that Specious
Logistic, though of the highest universality, remains for Viete an auxiliary
procedure. He has yet to make the object of the most universal method
the highest object. He thinks a mathematician should proceed in something
like this manner: A traditional geometric question is proposed, such as
the division of a given line into mean and extreme ratio. This problem is
expressed as a quadratic equation in one unknown. After suitable
simplifications have been carried out in accordance with the stipulations
governing specious logistic, the equation reduces to one of three standard
forms. The geometer then consults the Survey for the construction that
corresponds to an equation of that form. The resulting line solves the
geometrical problem. The geometrical problem, I say, not the equation.
�FERRIER
73
The whole figure drawn, including the line sought, explicates or interprets
the equation. A detailed example of this procedure, minus the analysis that
yields the equation (Viete is just as cunning as the ancients here), as applied to the inscription in a circle of the regular heptagon, completes the
Supplement.
Viete is thus more firmly rooted in the ancient tradition than one might
think from reading Mr. Klein's account. For him as for Aristotle, quantity
exists only as the magnitudes of geometry or the numbers of arithmetic.
Geometry calls on algebra in answering its own proper questions and
translates the aid into its own proper solutions. The equation as such is
not something whose solution is of primary interest.
There is therefore no excuse for the following translation of the first
sentence in the Survey: "This is a review of the rules of geometric construction by which all equations not exceeding the quadratic can be readily
solved.mo In particular, there is no excuse for translating "explicentur" as
"can be solved." There is also no excuse for translating "consectarium ad
mechanicen" as "Corollary on the Geometric solution" of an equation.
This translation may lead readers into the mathematical details with only
occasional misdirection, but with respect to the interesting and problematical features of Viete's work it could well have taken as its motto,
NULLUM NON PROBLEMA OBSCURARE.
Notes
1. Translated by Eva Brann (Cambridge: M.l.T. Press, 1968).
2. Annapolis: Golden Hind Press, 1985.
3. All of Viete's extant works are now available in a facsimile reprint of
the 1646 edition, with foreword and index by Joseph E. Hofmann
(Hildesheim and New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 1970).
4. For example, D should be corrected to 2D on p. 416, and an editor
should not keep silent on the related matter of Van Schooten's erroneous emendation of the inference concerning the size of the angles
in proposition XVII of the Supplement (p. 405).
5. Physics 193a31.
6. GMT, p. 345. Witmer's error is less excusable in that it also demands
bad Latinity; "quibus tamen usus est" simply cannot mean "for which
it is nonetheless used."
7. This text misled Klein into thinking that exegetic merely translates into geometry the already resolved equation- something that becomes
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
possible after the first few pages of Descartes's Geometrie but which
is never done in the work of Viete. (GMT, pp. 167-69, 164)
8. Introduction, Chapter VII (GMT pp. 346-47).
9. The three types of quadratics are x' + px = r', x'- px = r', and px-x' = r'.
These are the forms of the quadratic as Viete received the algebraic
tradition from the Arabs. Even Descartes holds to this classification
in the Geometrie, rejecting the form -px-x'= r' because its only real
roots are negative.
I 0. The Latin runs ''Effectiones Geometricas quibus equationes omnes
quae quadratorum metam non excedunt, commode explicentur, ita
canonice recenseo." I offer the following: "Those geometrical results
by which all equations that do not exceed the bounds set by squares
may be conveniently explicated, I list in standard order as follows."
�The English War and Peace:
Paul Scott's Raj Quartet
Eva Brann
I. The Post-final Novel
II. The Philistine Satan
III. The Respectful Englishman
IV. The Telling Image
I. The Post-final Novel
I want to begin with a judgment of luminous wrong-headedness. It has
appeared twice in the pages of a widely-read weekly book review:
The Raj Quartet is one of the longest, most successfully rendered works of
19th century fiction written in the 20th century.
It is, of course, meant to be put-down, not praise.
What is wrong-headed is the prank played with chronology. Time serves
us in no other way than as an imperturbable order of succession. Dates
of existence give us the only hard ordering frame we have for the world
in its going. Consequently if a novel was completed in 1975, it is a contemporary novel, and should be counted as such. And that is, of course,
precisely what is illuminating in the dictum above. It implies that citizenship in one's time does not accrue by mere reason of date of birth but must
Eva Brann, a Thtor at St. John's College, Annapolis, has been writing review articles
regularly for the Review.
75
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
be earned by passing a critical test: The honor of being here and now is
bestowed by the craft of critics.
With respect to novels this perverse notion, that the times accredit the
work rather than the work the times, takes potently concrete shape. One
would think that all the books recognized as novels come to establish a
genre: the fairly lengthy prose fiction. For such an ex post facto genre the
exception proves the rule, and so deviations are readily accommodated:
There are novels all in rhyme (e.g., Vikram Seth, Golden Gate), non-fiction
novels that are meticulous reportage (e.g., 1\uman Capote's In Cold Blood),
and novels which are one-fifteenth as long as others (cf. Robbe-Grillet's
In the Labyrinth and War and Peace).
In criticism, however, instead of novels there appears something called
"The Novel." It behaves not as a genre but as a species: It has a line of
evolution within which throw-backs like The Raj Quartet are discernible.
Since it has become maladaptive, it is probably heading toward extinction,
to join the dinosaurs. It is on this evolutionary hypothesis that what David
Lodge calls the sermons on the text "Is the novel dying" (38) have become
a preoccupation of criticism.
There is some agreement about the change in environment to which
The Novel is failing to adapt. It is Reality that is killing The Novel (5),
or rather the transmutation of reality, not from one state of affairs to
another, but out of itself altogether: "Reality is no longer realistic," as Norman Mailer says in The Man Who Studied Yoga. What this paradox is
intended to mean is that there is no common phenomenal world anymore;
our environment has gone surreal. Hence it requires a new novel, one that
experiments with "fabulating" techniques: inversions of fact and fiction,
randomness, surrealisms both vulgar and sophisticated, and bottomless
subjectivism.
Now there has got to be something wrong with this vision of things.
That the phenomenal world has illusionistic aspects is simply the wisdom
of the ancients, and it is not what is meant here. That our contemporary
world has been largely transmogrified into second nature, so that primary
beings are harder to find, and that the traditional centers are giving way
to fragmented perspectives- these and all the other much-debated features
of modernity may make the genealogy of "Reality" harder to trace. But
surely the notion that reality is over is a decision and not a finding, a sort
of deliberate self-spooking. To put it another way: the coroners of Reality
are also its assassins.
Oddly enough, among the motives for writing finis to the traditional
novel one powerful purpose is precisely the establishment of a purer, sharper
reality. Recall that "reality" is Latin for "thinginess." Robbe-Grillet's
�BRANN
77
''chosisme" is intended to disinfect things and purify them of their human
meaning, so as to restore their pristine independence.
Either way, what is clear is that the putatively dying novel is the socalled "realistic novel." What would be a good description of this, essentially the traditional novel? To begin with, realism, the usual critical term,
is not quite accurate, for the great traditional novels are full of psychic
and surreal episodes. There is, however, a delineation by Iris Murdoch of
a novel of tolerance which comes closer to the novel that is said to have
come to its end:
A great novelist is essentially tolerant, that is, displays a real apprehension
of persons other than the author as having a right to existence and to have
a separate mode of being which is important and interesting to themselves.
I must say that the defense of the characters inhabiting great novels
in terms of their civil rights gives me a little pause. (Murdoch is defining
the great novel as an expression of Classical Liberalism.) Moreover,
tolerance seems a faint term for the affirmative sympathy great authors
bestow on their characters. Nonetheless, "real persons more or less
naturalistically presented" as being "mutually independent centers of
significance" are indeed to be found in the works of the novelists she mentions, among whom are Jane Austen and Tolstoy. Now here is a huge claim:
Paul Scott belongs in this company.
Let me begin to defend this claim with respect first to tolerance and
then to Tolstoy. I shall use as a small preliminary example Scott's treatment of a character who really requires a lot of toleration: Captain Jimmy
Clark, one of the old boys of Chillingborough, the public school that plays
a fatal role in the book. Scott himself describes him in a later essay as
a "wretched cad of a chap," who, regrettably, succeeds in seducing Sarah,
the major woman of the novel. Yet for all his sexual cockiness and brutal
candor, it is he, and not the gentlemanly chaps, who has the ear for fine
classical sitar playing. That too is in Scott's account. It figures in, though
it does not outweigh Clark's coarseness toward Sarah. Tolerance does not
preclude fine moral reckoning (see III).
As for Tolstoy, the comparison was suggested in passing by David
Rubin, whose brief account of the novel is laden with insights. He was
corrected in a review by Lawrence Graver, who proposes that Trollope rather
than Tolstoy is the proper counterpart. Now I am a loyal Trollope lover,
but this comparison seems to me absurd. Trollope is said to have had more
than an amateurish knowledge of English parliamentary politics, and he
certainly has a wide and nuanced knowledge of English types. But who
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
was ever shaken by the fateful pathos of his setting or his people, as one
might be by Scott's? On the contrary, Ttollope's world is the quintessence
of snugness. That is why he was so fervently revived during the Second
World War.
No, the comparison with Tolstoy is much more telling. First, War and
Peace and The Raj Quartet are both long-breathed and large-scened, though
they do differ from each other-as the Russia of 1812 differs from the
Anglo-India of 1942. Tolstoy's Russians offer indomitable though inertial
resistance to the Western invader of their large land; the British depicted
by Scott subjugate an immense continent with half-hearted sedulousness.
That apotheosis of warm-hearted Russian girlhood, Natasha, finds her entirely lovable completion in bossy, dowdy houswifehood. The ungainly,
inhibited English girl Sarah, on the other hand, finds at the end rele~se
from family and a dawning love of her own. In both novels these consummations take place in the short epilogue of peace- deadly in the Indian
case-that succeeds the great war. The Russian book is elemental and
golden, overlaid with the sheen of a serene love of the land; the English
book is complex and melancholy, ridden with moral scruple, decline, and
loss of faith in England. Accordingly Tolstoy and Scott, who both reflect
on history, have opposite views of it. Tolstoy thinks that it is only the integral of very small human differentials, which consequently make all the
difference. Scott, sensitive to India's immensity, emphasizes the frailty of
human action in the face of history's "moral drift" (1987, 13). Nonetheless,
they and their novels end alike, with the children: Just as, in the last pages
of War and Peace, Andre Bolkonsky's son Nikolai fervently promises to
make his dead father proud, so The Jewel in the Crown ends with an episode
that postdates the quartet as a whole. Parvati, the lovely young daughter
of a dead English mother and a self-exiled Indian father, goes off to her
music lesson. She will grow up to be a gifted keeper of the great tradition,
the Indian music that her mother had just begun to understand.
Putting The Raj Quartet in Tolstoyan company implies of course that
it is a great novel. Let me specify the elements that seem to me to make it so:
(l) First there is indeed that widely affirmative mode Murdoch calls
tolerance. Elizabeth Bowen says somewhere that "a novelist must be imperturbable." Scott, on the other hand, advises the novelist: "You must commit yourself" (1987, 79). It appears to be the fusion of these, serene engagement and subtle wholeheartedness, that is the psychic mode of great novels.
(2) The great novels are full of resolved complexity. The net they knit
is enormous, but there are no dropped stiches or loose ends. The prime
example in the Quartet is the underground life of one of the two
precipitating characters, Parvati's occulted father, Hari Kumar, the Angli-
�BRANN
79
cized Indian with whom Daphne Manners falls in love and who is accused
of her rape. He vanishes from view after the first book, re-emerges in a
harrowing interrogation in the second, only to disappear, as it seems, for
good. His absence hovers over the second half of the novel: Has the author
forgotten him, left him dangling? But he returns toward the end, though
not in propria persona- those connections are missed. He reappears rather
as a printed voice, a voice of infinite melancholy, writing essays about the
lost Eden of England, indeed about Chillingborough, essays which are
signed with the name Philoctetes, the betrayed archer-hero with the incurable wound.
(3) A great novelist has in mind thousands of bits of knowledge which
when selected appear to accrue significance on their own. Scott refers to
this property as "graces bestowed'' (1987, 215). He lists as examples both
the name Daphne, which is a laurel native to Eurasia and the name of a
nymph metamorphosed into that shrub while running from a god; and
the name Philoctetes, which Scott relates to the Great Archer Hari. But
such felicities are legion in the novel.
(4) In all the great novels I know there is an inextricable reciprocity
of scenes and characters, of atmosphere and action. The Raj Quartet is
full of subtle deeds and fine-spun conversations which slowly weave a
magnificent panoramic tapestry. But it also exudes strong, strange-familiar
redolences, enveloping auras, which seem to precipitate the individual
figures. In Section IV below something will be said about how Scott
achieves this effect.
(5) The occurrences and deeds of great novels are explicit. In particular
is the evil done literal evil. I shall dwell on this matter in the next section.
In sum, a very great novel, a post-final novel, was completed little more
than a decade ago, although The Novel was supposed to be dead. Or as
Scott puts it, inveighing against the "literary body-snatchers ... the sort
of people who prove that the novel is dead because they want it to be":
"Well, if the novel is dead, all I can say is that it's having a lovely juneraf'
(1987, 193).
II. The Philistine Satan
The Raj Quartet has something War and Peace lacks: an evil presence of
enormous pathos. It is the almost vibrant desolation around this person
which confirms Scott as a "tolerant" novelist in the'most positive sense.
This villain is Ronald Merrick, whose name, as so many in this novel,
sounds overtones, here those of merit gone wrong. There are, to be sure,
other unadmirable characters in the book. Authorial tolerance, as has been
�80
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
said, does not preclude personal or moral aversion. There is, above all,
Sarah's mother Mildred Layton, a languidly snobbish, rigid Memsahib,
who displays, however, her own sort of arid valor. There is also Pandit
Baba, the fanatical behind-the-scenes instigator of rebellion, Merrick's
ultimate nemesis, who has, for all his slipperiness, a certain blunt righteousness. But neither of these has the odor of unholiness that hangs about
the monstrously efficient District Superintendent of Police in Mayapore,
later a captain in the Indian army, who acquires a defacing scar and a prosthetic hand.
But great treatments of human evil do not take refuge in indeterminate
demonisms. They have the courage of their moral revulsion: Definite crimes
are committed. Thke for example that dark evil which preoccupies Marlowe
in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, surely the greatest novelette of our century. For all its ineffable horror, there are also namable misdeeds: Kurtz
has allowed himself to be worshipped as a god, with human sacrifices. Or
consider how much more vaporous Dostoevsky's Possessed became when
the first editor prudishly excluded Stavrogin's confession, which reveals
the actual deed corresponding to his spiritual perversion: He had seduced
and driven to suicide a little girl.
Scott's Merrick tortures and molests prisoners, and drives one of them
to suicide. He manipulates superiors, blackmails subordinates, and abuses
confidential knowledge- always working discreetly, though at the limits.
Moreover, the explanation of this appalling man's conduct is given along
straightforwardly secular lines, in terms of an unfortunate conjunction of
sexual pathology, social inferiority, and tearingly ambiguous racial feeling. This not unsympathetic account, rendered after Merrick's lurid semisuicidal death, comes from the most understanding quarter, the wise and
decent sophisticate and long-inactive homosexual, Count Bronowski (Book
IV, 594).
It is because there are real crimes and secular diagnosis that Merrick
can acquire theological gravity. This perspective is provided by one of the
most moving figures in fiction, Barbie Batchelor, the missionsary spinster
whose book, The Towers of Silence, is the intense heart of the Raj series.
She is the sort of person one could not stand to spend an hour with in
a social setting. She scurries about officiously and talks compulsively. But
Scott follows her fate from her own center, from the threatening void behind
her chatter, through the spells of "imaginary silences," moments of insight
when she does not know whether she has actually uttered anything, to her
final mute madness. Her despair derives from love deprived of an aim;
above all she is oppressed by an intense devotion to an absconded god.
�BRANN
81
This woman's precarious sanity is finally unhinged as a direct result
of her encounter with Merrick. She is packed and ready to leave Panko!
when she first catches a glimpse of him; she gasps "both at the sight of
a man and at the noxious emanation that lay like an almost visible miasma
around the plants along the balustrade which had grown dense and begun
to trail tendrils." In the course of their meeting- he had sought her out
as he had gone after other victims he had chosen: men, women, finally
a child- he teaches her about despair. In particular he reveals to her the
despair behind the suttee-like death of her friend and heroine, Edwina
Crane. Miss Crane had set herself afire after the fatal beating of the
schoolmaster Chaudhuri, who had been protecting her from a mob on the
road from Dibrapur:
"There is no God. Not even on the road from Dibrapur."
An invisible lightning struck the veranda. The purity of its colourless
fire etched shadows on his face. The cross glowed on her breast and then
seemed to burn out (375).
Having thus undone Damascus, he sends her off on a tonga which, overburdened with the weight of her trunk (it contains the testimonials of her
life), careens down-hill to calamity. Her last sane words are: "I have seen
the devil."
That Merrrick is Satanic is utterly clear: He has a sort of non-being;
he is "a man," as Guy Perrin, the fresh hero of the last book says, "who
comes too late and invents himself to make up for it"- too late, that is,
for the kind of domination he longs to exercise. He hunts and catches souls.
He purveys despair. But he is a smaller and newer devil than Milton's "lost
Archangel" who rules Pandemonium in self-confident grandeur. Merrick
is goaded to middle-class ressentiment by the frosty superiority of the Chillingburians, white and black, not possessed by rebellious pride. What is
more devastating, he is a renegade without a Lord, consigned to traveling
to and fro in India and to riding up and down in it with no one to report
to. He is a devil in a world without a god, a humanistic devil, a human
devil, a human being.
Now I am mindful of the cheap frisson to be gained from that notorious
interpretational identity: "The ostensibly human character X is really the
mythical Y," the Great Earth Mother, say, or the Wicked Witch of the West.
But aside from the fact that Scott's indicators are urunistakable, it is actually only to Barbie Batchelor that Ronald Merrick is the devil, and his
essentially human deviltry is the direct complement of God's absence: In
a world from which God has absconded a man can be a demon.
�82
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
The wonder is that this frigid philistine can invest his own perverted
person with such a bleakly piteous aura. Scott's early novels, some of which
are clear preludes to The Raj Quartet, are all about the moral struggle of
lonely men against forces of disintegration. It is almost as if Merrick had
been molded out of the negative to their common essence.
III. The Respectful Englishman
As the complement to the delineation of the policeman's private perversion, the novel as a whole bears a moral mission. It is an engrossing fact
that the mission is a noble failure, at least in one of its two facets. When
faced on a certain occasion with a direct qnestion by an Indian abont the
present-day contribution of his work, Scott had no positive answer (1987,
147). Nonetheless he made it clear, and others understood, that he was
combatting two evils: the ignorance of the English not so much about
India-that is beyond novelistic cure- but about their own moral responsibility for its fate (1987, 157); and the ingrained lack of respect the English
aliens have for the dark-skinned Indians in whose land they are camping.
It is for racial arrogance alone that Scott shows real contempt.
Now The Raj Quartet is indeed a deeply absorbing history lesson in
the rise and fall of the raj, the English rule of India. So far the mission
is fulfilled.
It is otherwise with the respect of the British for the Indians. For this
has in turn two aspects, a racial and a religious one. The germinal and
controlling event of the book is the consnmmation of Daphne's and Hari's
love in the Bibighar Gardens, and her subsequent rape by a gang of
hooligans, for which Hari is arrested by Merrick. True to his promise to
Daphne (exacted by her for his protection, not hers) he never divulges the
truth of the affair. Hari Kumar is for Daphne Manners a full human being; in the intimacy of this affair color is nothing. But he is also Harry
Coomer, a Chillingburian, Englishman through and through- indeed the
novel's English gentleman par excellence.
If color is at least in one decisive instance conquered, Indianness, Hindu
Indianness, is another matter. Except for Kumar and the above-mentioned
Chaudhuri, "B.A., B.S.C.," who "did not profess to be a Christian" but
"on the other hand, ... did not profess any other religion," no hero of
the book is born Hindu. Indeed there are many unsavory Hindus like the
Pandit. In Staying On, which bears to the Raj tetralogy the relation that
a satyr play has to an ancient tragic trilogy, it gets worse. There we find
that mountainous monument of petty corruption, who exceeds the nastiest
Britisher in nastiness, Mrs. Boolabhoy.
�BRANN
83
In truth, the Indians, who, like the two Kasims, have the authorial
respect are Muslims, and even when apostate they are not unmindful of
their history. Young Kasim is not the only Muslim in this novel who dies
an unassuming hero's death defending English women. I do not know
whether Scott was aware of the fact that he favors the Muslims. The inclination certainly goes way back in India novels.
"One does not write out of one's feelings for books but out of one's
feelings about life," says Scott (1987, 160). But books are part of a writer's
life, the more vitally so the less he is playing "Can you top this" with the
tradition. The book vital to the shaping of The Raj Quartet's mission was
of course E. M. Forster's A Passage to India. Scott was puzzled and disturbed by Forster's final judgment that the liberal Fielding and Dr. Asiz
cannot be friends. Forster's earth and sky say: "No, not yet," "No, not there."
But now it should be possible, Scott thinks, to portray such a friendship
(1987, 1962). Perhaps so, but it is to my point that Asiz is in fact a Muslim.
There is an old, old history of British revulsion from Hinduism (Rubin,
8, 168), and Scott does not break out of it. Perhaps in Hinduism the West
may face its uttermost antithesis, where appreciative respect is perilous.
I do not know. But I do know that Scott's failure should give us pause
in our incessant sanguine calls for understanding our non-Western fellow
humans by means of heaps of self-denigration and a few three-credit
courses. It can't be done: At most we can examine ourselves to discern what
is inalienably ours, what is insuperably alien, and what is residually
common.
Accordingly, this English novel is more than anything about being
British, that is to say, about being an English man or woman cut off from
and forgotten by England, camping on alien soil, coping with obligations
and succumbing to spiritual temptations not known at home. Such highly
local trials bring out deeply human quandaries. Except for the color question, Scott's sympathy is inexhaustible, so much so that he has been, absurdly, accused of being an "imperialist-manque." But then the novel has
also been called anti-British: If it is, then anxious reproaches are not a
part of love. In fact, of course, the charges balance out, confirming the
work as the "moral dialogue between writer and reader" that Scott thinks
a novel should, among other things, be (1987, 149). He does not think,
however, that the moral effect is the essential function of a novel.
Here is what a novel, more centrally, is: It is "a view into a private vi-
sion of reality." (1987,104). For Scott this definition has a meaning at once
deep and precise.
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
84
IV. The Telling Image
The deeper meaning is that a novelist works with being and with a perspective on being, with reality acknowledged and with reality viewed. It should
be said here that the catchword "reality" includes all sorts of observed
otherness, from infinite landscapes to intimate reveries, from hardest
thinghood to surrealist visions: Viewed reality is precisely reality viewed
as experience, "human reality" (107). The implication of this complex notion is that one might work out-not here, though-a metaphysics specific
to the "the novel of tolerance," the traditional great novel par excellence.
Of course a novelist of Scott's stature was deeply preoccupied by what one
might call "applied metaphysics." His reflections, scattered but cohesive,
are to be found in the essays collected in On Writing and the Novel.
The more precise, almost technical meaning of Scott's definition is that
a novel is the telling of an image. Here is the author's most specific idea
of "what a novel is'':
A series of images, conveyed from me to you, in such a manner that my
view of life is also conveyed- BUT ONLY TO ONE PERSON AT A TIME:
THE READER (consenting adults). IT IS THAT READER I'M WRITING
TV (212).
So to begin with, and as he continually emphasizes, a novel is a communication; indeed it is a sort of love affair between the writer and each separate
reader. This intention distinguishes him from the experimental writer, whose
responsibility is to keep the genre alive by his innovations and the critics
at work by his sophistication.
That is not to say that Scott is not a very clever narrator. He uses a
great multiplicity of means: audacious perturbations of time, such as
reprises, anticipations, parallelisms; large varieties of sources, fictive and
real, such as diaries, newspaper accounts, descriptions of cartoons; and,
above all, the several kinds of narration: direct, oblique, third-, second-,
first-person narrative. In fact there are in The Raj Quartet two distinct narrators. The first of these is an anonymous inquirer who investigates the
ramifications of the Bibighar affair in the first book. The second is Guy
Perrin, the character obviously closest to the author. He is introduced in
the last book as a "breath of fresh air," to represent a healthier "modernity," a man who baffles Merrick's designs on him (214). We learn in Staying On that the delicate understanding between him and Sarah, first expressed in the aftermath .of the Hindu massacre of Muslims during which
they had failed to save their friend Ahmed Kasim from self-sacrifice, had
resulted in a happy marriage. The "question of who is telling the story"
�BRANN
85
(212) was on Scott's mind; one might say that its asking- whose first occurrence is in Plato's Republic (393)- is one chief mark of a self-conscious,
reflective writer.
The telling, the narrative, is packed into the "small, hard rectangular
object" (114) which the reader gets to hold. The material book and the
telling between its covers are successive reductions of a first, originating
element: the image. Here then is Scott's most concise definition of a novel:
A novel is a sequence of images. In sequence these images tell a story (74).
Hence the language of a novel is for all its verbal linearity not a telling
but a showing (74). This secret of Scott's novels is first set out in an essay,
antedating The Raj Quartet, called "Imagination and the Novel" (1961).
And indeed, the earlier novels which, though fine in themselves, look in
hindsight like exercises for the Raj, are full of such images. In The Chinese
Love Pavilion, for example, a crucial image is the "landscape without
figures," "the intimate distances preserved behind glass,'' pictures of India
painted by the narrator's grandfather. They are shown to signify the complication introduced into the romantic love of_ the land by the presence
of real people, dark-skinned natives and white dispensers of justice. Here
one can see how the image invokes the moral preoccupation of a novel.
Indeed, in "Method: The Mystery and the Mechanics" (1967), Scott goes
so far as to say that writing which does not grow out of an image but in
which, conversely, the image is fitted to the text, is flat and tenuous (75).
He "won't begin until the images start coming" (212). The mystery-for
Scott that image is the writer's mystery-must precede the mechanics.
Again, in The Birds of Paradise the narrator is beset with images, often
flashing forth as from a lost paradise (Swindon). However, mention of this
novel gives an opportunity to make a different, though essential point:
Scott's aboriginal image is not a literary image in the usual sense. The dead
paradisea regia of the title and the very live parrot with which the narrator
makes do are-very resonant-literary images: of beauty fallen prey to consumption, of rajahs and of the Raj. But the image Scott means is another
thing: It is a vision, a literal vision of the visual and, secondarily, of the
auditory imagination, a sight before the mind's eye with the specific
properties of internal vision:
First, ... the primary materials, from both the author's and the reader's
point of view, are the images. Secondly, ... because they are images- illusions
of a mobile, audible, human activity-there are perhaps no actual rules to
follow which will ensure they hold together, or to depart from which will
�86
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
lead to collapse. You could say that because the images are not tactile. the
question of their holding together simply doesn't arise ... (110).
This passage presents the canonical properties of visual imagery established
in the disciplines and sciences that study them: freedom from the laws of
motion and of inertial bodies; elsewhere Scott adds yet another, release
from temporal determinacy (83). But it also says something about the
special relation that the image-based novel establishes between author and
reader: The reader's absorption of the novel recapitulates its genesis in the
writer's imagination: Both begin with the image.
And end with it. Scott's theory is entirely abstracted from his practice,
and accordingly the Raj books begin with, are sustained by, and end on
an image, the specific spontaneous vision from which and into which the
novel grows. One might say that the novelistic image acts somewhat like
an Aristotelian form: It guides the novel's coming into being and it is the
shape of its completion.
The governing image of The Raj Quartet is that of a girl running (82,
84). The writer starts "bombarding the image with experience," the image
here being a girl he's met briefly in Calcutta, a husky, awkward girl (85)
as both Daphne and Sarah will be. The image opens up, shows the plot,
the problems it contains. The Jewel in the Crown begins with this running
girl, gawky Daphne Manners fleeing from the Bibighar catastrophe. It
closes with a running girl, Parvati, her graceful golden-brown daughter
running to her music lesson. And the whole quartet ends with a double
image in a song by the Muslim poet Gaffur: the bowman choosing his
arrows and the girl running with the deer- Hari and Daphne raised to a
mythical vision.
The running girl is indeed the human figure of the image, but behind
that figure is a scene, an Indian setting, vast and variable, "conveying to
a girl running ... an idea of immensity." Hence the whole image consists
of the landscape and the figure in it: a reciprocating vision of intimating
atmosphere and poignant action.
Works Cited
Scott, Paul. The Chinese Love Pavilion. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode,
1960.
__. The Birds of Paradise. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1962.
__. The Raj Quartet. New York: Avon Books, 1979.
Book I: The Jewel in the Crown [1966]
Book II: The Day of the Scorpion [1968]
�BRANN
87
Book III: The Towers of Silence [1971]
Book IV: A Division of the Spoils [1975]
__. Staying On. London: Heinemann, 1975.
__. On Writing and the Novel: Essays by Paul Scott (1961-1975). Edited
by S. C. Reece. New York: Morrow, 1987.
Graver, Lawrence. Review of Paul Scott: On Writing and the Novel· and
David Rubin: After the Raj. The New York Times Book Review, March
15, 1987.
Lodge, David, The Novelist at the Crossroads. London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1971.
Murdoch, Iris. "The Sublime and the Beautiful Revisited." The fule Review,
49 (1959), pp. 247-71.
Rubin, David. After the Raj: British Novels of India. Hanover, N.H.:
University Press of New England, 1986.
Swinden, Patrick. Paul Scott: Images of India. London: Macmillan, 1980.
������
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The St. John's Review
Volume XXXIX, numbers one and two (1989-90)
Editor
Elliott Zuckerman
Editorial Board
Eva Brann
Beale Ruhm von Oppen
Cary Stickney
John Van Doren
Robert B. Williamson
Subscriptions Assistant
Deirdre Routt
The St. John,s Review is published three times a year by the Office of the Dean,
St. John's College, Annapolis; William Dyal, President; Thomas Slakey, Dean. For
those not on the distribution list, subscriptions are $12.00 per year. Unsolicited
essays, stories, poems, and reasoned letters are welcome. Address correspondence
to the Review, St. John's College, Annapolis, MD 21404. Back issues are available,
at $4.00 per issue, from the St. John's College Bookstore.
© 1990
St. John's College. All rights reserved; reproduction in whole or in part
without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
Composition
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�v ...... Preface
David Lachterman
I . . . . . . The Music of the Republic
Eva T. H Brann
105 . . . . . . Eidos and Agathon in Plato's Republic
Robert B. Williamson
139 . . . . . . What is "The Good" of Plato's Republic?
David Lachterman
173 . . . . . . Imitation
John White
201 . . . . . . A Note About the Authors
�Preface
Although the four essays iu this volume were conceived and generated
on separate occasions, they form, I think, a true collection, and not only
by virtue of their common theme, Plato's Republic.
First, all four authors are "historically" indebted to the speeches (spoken
or wntten) and to the silences of Jacob Klein. The first two writers were
his colleagues, while the third and the fourth were students at St.John's
College during four of the more than forty years Jacob Klein taught there.
The ec·;ays gathered together in this book, however, are not static testimonies
to his ·'influence," but are intended as lively episodes in the continuing,
even
L
nremitting, course of serious reading and education he practiced,
often •n the most playful manner. (The colloquial expression "former
teachcc·" is here, if anywhere, an oxymoron.)
T\.,: Platonic dialogues were his exemplars of that uncanny kinship between nlay and seriousness to which Plato, or a soul-mate, refers in the Sixth
Letter (kai tei tes spoudes adelphei paidiai- 323d). Imitating, or commenting OL. these exemplars, he brought to the awareness of the authors of
these .essays the status of the dialogues as "ethological mimes." Interrogation o ,· the souls and opinions of the interlocutors, with, on a very few
occas: ms, a display of the abrupt "turnabout" (periagoge) in which, according to Socrates (Rep. VII, 518d), the beginnings of education consist,
takes orecedence over any of the putative theses, theories, or systems to
which Platonic thinking was reduced or calcified, as early as Aristotle's
On the Ideas (Peri !dean) and as recently as Hegel and Heidegger.
Noteworthy is the way the comic poets of Plato's age (e.g., Theopompus, Amphis, Aristophon) and their Athenian audiences seem to have been
quite amused by such reductions or by their ascription, in all seriousness,
to Plato; compare, too, the newly discovered papyrus-fragment in which
v
�vi
PREFACE
the dramatic, or miming genre of the dialogues is discussed ( =P. Oxy, 3219).
An exotic modern variant, or obversion, of the same thoughts may be found
in Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols (par. 5): "Socrates was the buffoon who
got himself taken seriously: What really happened there?"
Klein's own account of these "ethological mimes"· is familiar from the
Introductory Remarks to his book A Commentary on Plato's Meno (Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965); his renditions ofthe various
modes of Socratic interrogation and its dramatization by Plato are available
in his lectures on the Phaedo, the Ion, and the Philebus (Essays and Lectures, ed. E. Zuckerman and R. Williamson [Annapolis: The St. John's
College Press, 1985]), as well as in his last book Plato's 'Ii'ilogy (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1977). Accordingly a very few comments
should be sufficient here. (For further reflections on some differences between Klein's approach to Plato and now traditional or institutional
fashions, see the review of Plato's Trilogy in Nous 13 [1979], pp. 106-12.)
Emphasis on the dialogues as "ethological mimes," on their dramatic,
sly, convoluted ironies, is not at odds with the presence in those same
dialogues of Platonic "teachings," those teachings with which Klein was
equally preoccupied, especially in his first. book Greek Mathematical
Thought and the Origin of Algebra (trans. E. Brann [Cambridge, Mass.:
M.I.T. Press, 1968]; German original, 1934-1936). The link between that
emphasis and this preoccupation may be stated in the following,
unavoidably truncated, way: that to take the due measure of Socratic interrogations one must reflect deeply on the sources of their governing begin,
nings or archai. Reflection of this sort leads, in turn, to consideration of
the most plausible source of those sources (esp. Aristotle, Metaph. A6,
988a7-14).
Mathematics, especially arithmetic, carries a heavy weight in the bulk
of ancient testimonia concerning the outcome of Plato's reflections on the
governing beginnings and their own sources. Three speculations- not
necessarily shared in full by Klein or by all four authors in this volumesuggest themselves:
(!) If mathematics does play this conspicuous role in Platonic reflection, this is due not to its being a precise technique of problem-solving
or a formal deductive system, but to the way its elements and their connections come home to us as truly ta mathemata, the items we can succeed in understanding by questioning and learning.
· (2) When it is a question of the very first among these first beginnings
or archai, understanding and discursive articulation (dianoia) part company. Reports of Plato's "mathematical" speculations on The One, The
Unlimited Dyad, etc., refer to his "unwritten opinions" (agrapha dogmata);
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rivers of ink have subsequently flowed over these reports. Secretiveness or
esotericism, however, seems less the point than the acknowledgment that
what makes learning always possible is not open to discursive articulation
(either in speech or in writing). Paradoxically, perhaps, the underpinnings
of intelligibility are not themselves intelligible, at least not in any accustomed fashion. When Plato, in the Seventh Letter, speaks of "the weakness
of the logos" (to asthenes tou logou), this is not an index of human finitude
or of the critical limits of reason, but an indication that logos, a collected
tally of the beings that belong together in discourse and learning, cannot
offer a similar reckoning of its own ultimate archai. These make their appearance, if at all, in the interstices of discourse, and with the suddenness
characteristic of recognition as well as of eros (cf. Symp. 2!0e).
(3) Because speculation on the "mathematical" constitution of the
governing beginnings remains tied to concern for the human enterprise
of learning (and of failing to learn), Plato's putative "unwritten opinions"
cannot be divorced from his crafting of psychic characters in words, his
ethopoiia, as the Ancients called it. Ethopoiia, mathematics, and what was
later named "ontology" meet at the point of optimum responsiveness to
the testing demands of Socratic questioning. Souls are all together better
off by virtue of this responsiveness. Hence one version of the probably
legendary inscription over the entrance to the Academy explains "'Let no
one who is not a geometer enter here.' That is, let no one who is unjust
come in here, for geometry is equality and the just" (Cf. Johannes Tzetzes,
Chiliades, VIII, 974-77 [ed. Kiessling]).
The three points just made can also be put somewhat differently. According to an anonymous follower of the neoplatonic school (ca. 6th C.
E.), each Platonic dialogue "is a cosmos," composed of elements at first
hearing motley (poikilos), but finally arrayed decorously with one another
(Anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy 16.1-40 [ed. Westerink]).
In the light provided by Klein's own readings we might be tempted to discern
three dimensions of a dialogue such as The Republic, three measures of
responsiveness through which that written artifact is given amplitude and
audibility:
(a) The seeming impromptus of Socrates, the two strangers, and
the other interlocutors, given voice by Plato's ethopoietic art (the dialogue
as eiki5n);
(b) Plato's formal orchestration of these voices, always modulated
to suit the disparate perspectives of his listeners and readers (the dialogue
as phantasma);
(c) The dialogue of the soul with, and within, itself (Soph. 263e),
provoked by Plato's two-fold art (the dialogue as psychagi5gia or maieusis).
�viii
PREFACE
The Platonic dialogue as a "cosmos" takes its proportions from the
interplay of these three dimensions. In sometimes very different ways the
authors of the following essays try to do justice to that interplay and thus
to both versions of Jacob J(lein's teaching.
Eva Brann's "The Music of Plato's Republic" first appeared as a special
supplement to The Collegian (March 1966) before being published in the
inaugural issue of AGON. Journal of Classical Studies (April, 1967). In
it the animated structure of so-called "ring-composition" in early Greek
poetry, or in the design of "geometric" vases, is displayed as the shaping
force of The Republic as well. By exposing the plot of the dialogue she
renews the truth of Aristotle's claim in the Poetics: "The governing principle and, so to say, the soul of the tragic play is the tale it tells (muthos)"
(1450a39). So, among many other things, she shows how the dyad of descent and ascent, far from being merely part of the spectacle (apsis) of the
dialogue, is consubstantial with its primary philosophical themes. It might
be worth recalling that, according to tradition, when the young Plato
mounted the dais to defend the accused Socrates, the dicasts shouted him
down (Kataba, kataba: D. L. 11.41). The Republic, on Brann's reading, is
Plato's Anabasis.
Robert B. Williamson's "Eidos and Agathon in Plato's Republic" was
originally published in Essays in Honor of Jacob Klein (Annapolis, 1976).
In it he moves to the center of the questions elicited by Socrates' talk of
"forms" (eide/ideaz) and of their interconnection under the yoke of The
Good. This movement is promoted by Williamson's thesis that, long before
Socrates introduces "the look of The Good" in Book VI, the divergent opinions about justice expressed in Book I presuppose that one could provide
a set of criteria for being just or doing justly that are "free of all opposition" to one another. The intelligibility of an eidos is, under this aspect,
its capacity to satisfy many, even disparate, criteria (for being just, for being large, etc.), without contradiction. The Good, eluding express accounts
of "What it is," poses multiple quandaries concerning the interrelatedness
of the eide with one another and with their images. Why, in other words,
is there apparently a Whole?
Versions of the third essay, "What is The Good of Plato's Republic?"
were delivered as lectures at Trinity College (Hartford), Haverford College, The Johns Hopkins University, and St. John's College (Annapolis,
November, 1984). Its epideictic form and length have been kept; as a result
arguments are compressed into proposals and the requisite scholarly
references are largely absent. As the chronological and substantive sequel
to the essays by Brann and Williamson, my piece takes for granted much
of what they have already argued. I attempt to find a mean between
�LACHTERMAN
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Socrates' elliptical and his ''daemonically hyperbolic" (Rep. VI, 509c)
statements about The Good. In particular, I undertake to show that
Socrates' management of the conversation from the beginning of The
Republic furnishes clues to some of the characteristics claimed for The
Good. The roots sustaining his persuasive practice may be sought in the
reflections awakened by those claims. Somewhat along the lines of Williamson's (more guarded) description, I suggest that The Good is the omnium
gatherum.
The fourth essay, John White's on "Imitation," was originally presented
as a lecture at St. John's College, Santa Fe, in the Spring of 1987; it has
been modified for publication in this format. In it he studies perhaps the
central paradox of The Republic, one not fully reckoned with in the
preceding essays: A dialogue in which Socrates offers fundamental and
austere arguments against mimesis and mimetic poetry is itself a work of
motley poetry. Does the dialogue's own poetic nature "cancel much that
was said in the first nine books?"
White pursues this question by investigating Socrates' most noble opponent, Homer, especially the Homer of The Iliad. On his reading, The
Republic, like The Iliad, is the forging of a shield; Socrates is a new and
very different kind of Hephaistos. As he suggests at the end of his essay,
The Republic tries to hold together thumos and mind, poetry and
philosophy, the desire for greatness and the desire for truth.
There are, then, many overlappings, even repetitions, to be found in
these studies. Neither historical sequence nor allegiance to Jacob Klein can
fully explain these phenomena. The Republic is a speech about communities
whose very being is in speech. Perhaps, as Eva Brann suggests, the community formed by Socrates, Thrasymachus, Glaucon, Adeimantus, and the
others is Plato's written emblem of what the best communities might look
and sound like. In The Statesman Plato has the Eleatic Stranger say: "Th
be sure, when human beings do things in common it is a pleasure for them
to think similarly" (homonoein; Politicus 260b ). Or, in the Pythagorean
aphorism closing the Phaedfus, "The things of friends are common."
David Lachterman
�The Music of the Republic
Eva T. H. Brann
SURVEY OF ARGUMENTS
I. Mythos
A. The Republic is composed of concentric rings encompassing
a center.
8. The outer ring represents Socrates' descent into the house of
Pluto-Cephalus.
1. The oath "By the Dog'' is an appeal to Hermes the Conductor of Souls.
2. Socrates assumes the role of Heracles, founder of cities.
3. His longest labor is the bringing up of the triple monster
Cerberus- the soul.
4. His greatest labor is the release of a new Theseus.
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II. Logos
A. The second ring represents the founding and degeneration of
cities "in speech" (Books III, IV and VIII, IX).
1. Four cities are founded: the city of demiurges or craftsmen,
of warriors, of guardians, and of philosophers.
2. To these correspond four degenerate forms.
B. These cities are "in speech" only, since they can be neither
generated nor regenerated.
1. The Phoenician tale implies that men can be mined as a
public treasure.
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2. The just city founders on the un-naturalness of human
nature and on the "founding paradox."
3. The degenerate cities themselves are actual, but the argument about them is "detached."
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In Polemarchus's house justice, defined as "doing one's own
business," is the craftsmen's specific virtue.
I. The "demiurge'' is opposed to the "panurge" in all his forms.
2. The inner justice of the philosopher converts this definition into "knowing one's own soul."
3. For the philosopher the argument that justice is profitable
fails.
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III. Ergon
I
In the center of the Republic Socrates founds the philosopher's
city "in deed" (Books V-VII).
I. A public vote forces Socrates to propose his communal
design.
2. Other works corroborate the assertion that the philosopher
city is not identical with the guardian city.
3. Socrates' city in the Timaeus is not that of the Republic.
Th ; paradoxical condition for bringing about the city is that
its founder must already live within it.
I. Socrates lives so as to fulfill this condition.
2. Glaucon has the qualifications of a young ruler.
3. The bodily community of the guardian city is replaced by
a dialogic community.
Democracy, the exact inverse of the just constitution, perversely
proves to be the soil for the just city.
The just city can be brought to life by providing a fitting
macrocosm, as in the Timaeus.
I. Temperance replaces justice in this city.
2. Antiquity in the Timaeus represents spurious actuality.
3. The city of the Laws is non-Socratic.
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IV. Music
A Glaucon's education in Books V-VII is Socratic music.
I. The guardians' training is accomplished by purged trad.itional 'music (Books II and X).
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a. Socrates corrects the myths of gods and Hades but
postpones the correction of the myths of man.
b. The Republic itself exactly obeys the stylistic requirements of "purged music."
c. This music is explicity excluded from the plan of the
philosophers' education.
2. Socrates' new music is "philosophical music."
a. Socrates has spent his life making music.
b. Socratic mimeseis of truth are images rather than myths.
c. Such images are sketched in the soul by long reflection.
d. Socratic images induce a logos, while myths are preceded
~=
e. Socrates fulfills his own requirement that all poets make
an "image of the Good."
f. Socrates corrects the Promethean Myth of Man in the
"cave image."
g. These two images respectively represent the One and the
Indefinite Dyad of Plato's "Unwritten Teachings."
3. His plan for the philosophical education is presented
musically as the "prelude" of mathematics and the "hymn"
of dialectic.
4. The central dialogue is a symmetric texture of images and
their explications and correlations.
B. The discovery of opinion (doxa) is Glaucon's introduction to
philosophy.
I. The outer dialogue requires the "helmet of Hades," which
obviates reputation or "good opinion" (Books II and X),
but the central conversation is governed by "true opinion."
2. Summary of 474-480 (Book V). As "becoming" is between
being and non-being, so "opinion" is between ignorance and
knowing.
3. "Opinion" correspond.s to "spirit," the mean between
"reasoning" (logistikon) and "desire" in the tripartite soul.
4. The /ogistikon, properly called the "calculating power," is
a lesser faculty than "knowledge."
5. After the new division of the soul as an "instrument of
learning" the terms of the "lower" tripartite soul designate
desires.
6. The finer division of the soul by the device of finding "the
middle" is the dialogue's main pre-dialectical exercise.
C. The orator Socrates is elected to defend philosophy before the
democracy (487-505, Book VI).
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MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
I. Adehuantus is the expert on corruption.
2. Socrates, by his images, persuades the many to accept
philosophers as kings.
3. He refuses Adeimantus access to the "highest study," the
Good.
D. Socrates tells Glaucon of the Good in a "true image," the "sun
image."
I. Summary and tables of 506-511 (Book VI). The sun image
is explicated by the Divided Line.
2. This image requires Glaucon to exercise the two lower, "doxastic," powers of the soul.
a. The lower of these, likeness-making and recognizing
(eikasia), known to Glaucon as a game, is Socrates' chief
instrument in this context. The image itself forces
Glaucon to recognize the visible world as a mere image
or likeness.
b. His trust (pistis) in the visible world is shaken and a
belief in the rule of the Good is substituted.
c. Socrates' non-dialectical or "doxastic" presentation of
the Good serves both to avoid misunderstanding and to
instill a kind of artificial recollection in Glaucon.
3. The Divided Line, a figure for knowledge, provides training for Glaucon's power of "thinking."
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a. Dianoia, "thinking things through," involves a higher
eikasia in two ways: Natural objects are here regarded
as images; and analogies are to be made by recognizing
likenesses.
b. The mathematical faculty characteristic of Glaucon, the
dianoia, is discovered by him as a "mean."
c. Socrates particularly invites Glaucon to a dialogue on
number; this passage is the only approach to dialectic
in the Republic.
d. Dialegesthai has three meanings: conversation among
the many, dialogue between a knower and a learner, and
dialectic, the movement of the soul within itself.
4. The mathematical model of proportion (analogia) is fully
exploited.
a. The Good is not a "study" in the usual sense.
b. The absence of the dialectical accounts (log01) of being
is expressed by the absence of definite ratios (logo!) between the line segments.
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c. The "embodied soul" has solidity; the "knowing soul"
is "non-dimensional."
d. Socrates forms four proportions from the Divided Line,
showing Glaucon how sameness of relation runs through
the whole before he knows the parts themselves.
e. This induces Glaucon to trust the bond of similarity
(homoiotes) required for dianoetic ascent, which is by
likenesses.
f. The Good, by exercising a downward eikasia and likening things to itself, makes the ascent possible.
g. The mimetic arts are condemned for usurping the power
of the Good (Book X).
5. The image of the Good implicitly introduces Glaucon to
the fundamental problems of dialectic.
a. The Good has three capacities: as progenitor it fathers
the sun; it is the responsible cause (aitia) of knowing;
it is the ruling source (arche) of being. These are
presented in reverse order of "political" importance.
b. A diagram shows how being is articulated doubly by the
Good, and particularly why becoming is doubly apprehended, namely in sense perception and opinion.
c. The Good is not a differentiating but a binding source,
complemented, the image implies, by a secondary
"dyadic" source.
d. "Likeness," which fails to account for "participation"
within the realm of being, takes the place of "otherness"
beyond being. It is that "bond" by which the whole
becomes one, the bond which the three-term proportion
of the Divided Line expresses.
e. In the dialectic progress from "what each is" to "what
the Good is," the latter is revealed as the order (taxis)
of the "whole," and thus as the pattern of all political
community.
f. The One is treated explicity in no Platonic dialogue, least
of all in the Parmenides.
g. The Myth of Er contains the mythical counterpart of
the sun image - a model of the world within the world.
E. Socrates tells Glaucon of evil in a second "true image," the
"cave image."
I. Summary and table of 514-517 (Book VIII). The cave is
to the upper world as the place of visibility is to the place
of thought.
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2. While in the sun image the places prepared by the Good
for the soul are shown, the cave image shows the actual
dwelling of men; thus the cave image explicity includes ignorance and even deceit. Ignorance, however, corresponds
to non-being.
3. Therefore a different correlation of the images is implicit:
being
becoming
non-being :
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sun image
cave image
intellectual realm
sensible realm
underground realm
4. Non-being is the mother corresponding to the Good as
father.
a. Politics as the dissembling art of managing human
stupidity has a special place in the cave image.
b. The cave as a womb is a figure for non-being, to which
is opposed the realm of being under the sun; between
them lies the road along which "coming into being" takes
place.
c. Socrates identifies the cave as the mortal Hades, the
"sightless place." The backward position of the prisoners
signifies human perversion, which is corrected by the
Socratic "conversion."
d. Socrates alludes to Pythagoras's descent into Hades; in
fact the dialogue itself has the form of a Pythagorean
"recollection exercise."
F. Socrates recites the "hymn of dialectic" for Glaucon.
1. The ascent from the cave represents the road of learning,
which has three parts:
a. "Conversion" is not within the formal plan because it
is, in effect, now being accomplished.
b. The "haul upwards" is effected by Socratic mathematics,
pursued not for its own sake or as giving the order of
being, but as "inverse" dialectic. It consists of the
analytical solution of such problems as the construction
of a hypothetical cosmos according to a purified
Pythagorean mathematical order. Its analytic approach
permits a constant return to its own hypotheses, which
reflect the requirements of the logos.
c. "Dialectic" itself is withheld from Glaucon as accessible
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only by the long path of study; instead its praises are
sung in a "hymn."
d. Having heard the plan, Glaucon, as an initiate of the
mysteries of learning, becomes a fellow law-giver.
2. The ages for study and practice are set out as in a formal
curriculum.
a. The education of the rulers always leads out of the city,
which contains nothing "fair" for them; in it geometry
is substituted for eros.
b. Because of the hypothetical character of "patterns," the
rulers in the Constitution do not study constitutions, but
learn to rule "in the light of the whole."
c. Socrates introduces the dead philosophers as "new
divinities."
d. Socrates has brought up his Theseus from Hades.
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•**
I. MYTHOS
A.
"
Socrates begins most of his investigations not at the center but
at the periphery .... "
At the center of Plato's second longest dialogue, the Constitution
(Politeia), usually called the Republic, there is an ergon, a deed or accomplishment. In order to find this center it is necessary to establish the
periphery. The Republic is composed on the plan of concentric rings; the
themes on the diameter reappear in reverse order as if they were reflected
through a central axis. The outermost periphery is a setting of myth. A
broad inner ring consists of the construction and destruction of the successive forms of a pattern city in "speech," logos. The themes of this ring,
for instance the attack on the poets, are also symmetrical with respect to
the center. This center itself, clearly defined as such by the plan of the
dialogue, presents the actual founding of a city in "deed," ergon. The
Republic, as will be shown, exemplifies the insight quoted above, which
Si2Sren Kierkegaard expressed in his dissertation The Concept of Irony, With
Constant Reference to Socrates (London 1966, p. 70).
·
�MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
8
B.
I. Anyone who has used an annotated edition of the Republic' will
have read the curious anecdote told by Diogenes Laertius and Dionysius
of Halicarnassus about the beginning of the work. Dionysius reports that
many stories about the care Plato took to "comb and curl" his dialogues
were current, especially one about a tablet found at his death, which contained "that beginning of the Republic which goes 'I went down yesterday
to Peiraeus with Glaucon the son of Ariston,' transposed with subtle
variety." We may infer that some special meaning was to be conveyed by
the beginning. Indeed, there is something curious about its style: ancient
as well as modern Athenians·, when they visit their harbor, usually go not
"to Peiraeus" but to the Peiraeus (e.g., Thucydides VIII, 92, 9);' this is
Cephalus's own usage (328c6), and since he lives there he ought to know.
The phrase is to be heard in a special way. Now it happens that the Athenians did hear a certain meaning in this name- it meant the "beyond-land,"
he Peraia, the land beyond the river that was once thought to have separated
the Peiraic peninsula from Attica.' Therefore let us try reading: "!descended
yesterday to the land beyond the river, together with Glaucon, the son of
Ariston ... "; "in order to· offer my devotions," he goes on, "to the goddess ..... " The goddess, we learn at the end of the first book (354all),
L
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is Ben dis, a Thracian stranger identified with Hecate, 4 the guardian deity
of the underworld. Socrates is on his way back up to town when Polemarchus with his companions detains him and presses him to come to his house,
where they find Cephalus, Polemarchus's rich old father, sitting in state.
He is on that "threshold [to Hades] which is old age" (328e6).' As he himself
explains, he scarcely has a body anymore; he is, as his name signifies, a
mere "head"-as Socrates slyly points out, he sits on a head-rest, a
proskepha/aion (328c!). His riches, ploutos (331b7), Socrates suspects, are
his great comfort. A strange light is thrown on him and his house by an
ancient source that reports that he was over thirty years dead at the dramatic
date of the dialogue, namely between 411 and 405 B.C.; his son himself
has only a few more years to live before his death at the hands of the Thirty
Tyrants.' We are in the city of shades, in the house of Pluto.
Socrates takes occasion to refer to this situation throughout the
dialogue, for instance when he declares to Thrasymachus and the others
who are there, in solemnly ambiguous language, that he will not cease his
efforts until he has prepared them "against that other life when, born again,
they may happen to hold such discourse" (498d3-4). And the very figure
for the young guardians of the city which he builds for his audience is
a reminder of the setting: they are to be like watchdogs, who, as true lovers
of wisdom, determine their friends and their enemies by the test of their
knowledge or ignorance of them- they know the art of loyalty. The perverse
pattern of such dogs is Hesiod's hound of Hades, who possesses the "evil
art" (Theogony 770) of fawning on strangers and devouring those at home
in Hades who try to escape. The guardians are tamed and converted hounds
of hell.
2. What is Socrates' business down there? To detect the myth that provides the venerable setting for Socrates' descent it is necessary to go rather
far afield for a moment.
On certain occasions Socrates uses an oath that was evidently considered
in antiquity to be his very own: ''By the dog!"- and in the Gorgias (482b5)
more explicitly: "By the dog, the Egyptian god!"' Socrates uses the oath
twice in the Republic and, as elsewhere, in passages concerned with the
philosopher's part both in human speech and in politics (399e5, 592a7;
cf. Cratylus 4llb3). Who is the Egyptian dog-god on whom Socrates calls?
Plutarch (On Isis and Osiris 368e-f) describes him in this way: He is born
of an underworld mother but nursed by a heavenly goddess and thus
belongs to both these realms; he can see his way both by light and by dark
and therefore has the office of mediating between the upper and the lower
world. His Egyptian name is Anubis, but to the Greeks he is Hermes, the
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MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
Interpreter, the ''psychagogue" (cf. Phaedrus 27Ic!O) who conducts the souls
of the dead and guides those who must descend into Hades while yet alive
(cf. Diogenes Laertius VIII, 31). He is also the bringer of political wisdom
to men (Protagoras 322c2). In particular, Hermes is known as the guide
of the hero Heracles in his famous descent into Hades (Odyssey XI, 626),
and he is often so represented on vases.
Heracles himself is a most versatile hero.' He is the chief founder of
cities- witness the many cities called Heracleia. He is the great civilizer,
"using music" (Plutarch, On Music XL, 4), at which he is proficient, in
this task. He is the guardian of boys' education, the guardian of the
palaestra, and the boys devote their hair to him. He teaches men letters;
Plutarch jokingly calls him "most dialectical" (TheE at Delphi 387d). He
is a partisan of virtue, having, according to a story told by Socrates
(Xenophon, Memorabilia II, i, 21; cf. Plato, Symposium 177b), chosen to
follow Virtue rather than Vice as a teacher because of the happiness
(eudaimonia) she had promised. But Heracles' greatest fame derives from
the deeds or labors imposed on him by the unjust king Eurystheus. These
include the killing of the snake-headed Hydra and of the Nemean Lion;
but his most awesome deed is his descent, his katabasis, into Hades. His
task there is to bring up to the light of day the triple monster Cerberus.
He has Hades' permission to do this, but he is instructed to persuade the
beast and make it more gentle, not to hurt it. On his way into Hades, so
the story goes, he at first forgets his business and allows the shades to detain him in conversation. Before returning, he performs an incidental labor,
a parergon, in releasing Theseus, his emulator and the founder and lawgiver
of Athens who had been chained down in Hades; however, he fails to free
Theseus's companion Pirithous. While in Hades, Heracles is nearly washed
away by the underworld river.
This hero is, as it were, made for Socrates, and Socrates himself makes
the comparison. In the Apology, speaking of his search for a wise man,
he says to the court: "And by the dog, men of Athens-for I must speak
the truth to you- ... those who had the greatest reputation seemed to
me nearly the most deficient ... , so I must show you how I wandered
as if performing certain labors ... " (22al). Every Athenian would of course
recognize the allusion; most translators put it into the text. In the Cratylus
Socrates says to Hermogenes: "You are raising a class of names not to be
despised; however, since I have put on my lion helmet I must not be
cowardly.... By the dog, I am having an inspiration" (4lla-b). Again,
in an interlude in the Phaedo, Socrates explicitly consents to take the role
of Heracles in the battle of argument, with Phaedo taking the role of Iolaus,
Heracles' friend (89b-c). As they talk, Socrates plays with Phaedo's hair:
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11
as Heracles, the hair is his due, and as Iolaus's friend, the intimacy is hls
right.
There are certain signs and indications that Socrates plays this same
role in the Republic. He "descends" to the land beyond, is caught in conversation in the house of Pluto, and, like the phantom Heracles whom
Odysseus meets on his own visit to the shades- the true Heracles is among
the gods- he tells down there the story of his own descent (Odyssey XI,
601). He first fights the sophist Thrasymachus, who comes at him "like
a beast" (336b5)' and with whom he says he would as soon quibble as "shave
a lion" (341c1). A little before, Thrasymachus, laughing sardanion-"Iike
one doomed," as the scholiast explains the word- had addressed him "0
Heracles! this is that wonted dissembling of Socrates" (337a4). This is, of
course, nothing but a popular exclamation of wonder, but it sounds almost
like the lion's roar of recognition; by the end of the first book the lion
is subdued. And at one point, Socrates refers to the wrong way to kill the
Hydra, implying that he knows the better way (426e8).
3-4. But the longest labor begins after the "prelude" (357a2) of the
first book." In the nine books following, the running motif will be that
old Heraclean theme, the relation of virtue to happiness, which is ever recalled, even in the midst of yet greater matters that are curtailed in its favor
(e.g.,445a, 580b, 608c); this relation is to be examined in a man who is
wearing the Ring of Gyge_s (359dl), and as Socrates adds, the Helmet of
Hades too (612b5), a magic cap that deprives hlm in life of all appearance
and reputation and puts him on a level with the bare, stripped souls in
Hades (cf. Gorgias 523c). In the course of this argument Socrates will indeed teach his audience letters, using the great text of the city to teach
them the small letters of the soul (368d; cf. 402a7). He will also, as we
shall see, found a city. By the "psychagoguery" of his rhetorical music
(Phaedrus 261a, Aristophanes, Birds 1555") he will release his Theseus,
blamelessly confined to Hades (39lc9). But his longest effort will drag to
light a triple monster having, like Cerberus himself, a blush of snakes for
its lower part (590bl). For when he has plumbed in argument the remote
depths of the tyrant's life, Socrates recalls once more "those first words
because of which we are here" (588b2), namely Thrasymachus's claim that
injustice under the reputation of justice is profitable. To conclude the case
against hlm they "model an image of the soul in words" (588bl0). It will,
Socrates says, be a creature such as is found in ancient myth, a Chimaera
or Scylla or a Cerberus, whose nature it is to have "many forms grown
together into one" (588c4) under the outward guise of a man's shape. As
soon as this soul has been hauled up and cleansed of its accretions (611),
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MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
"we have," Socrates says, "discharged ourselves of this argument'' (612a8).
Heracles has delivered Hades from its monster, a deliverance that signifies
that exposure of human nature which is the condition of its rescue. And
he has, incidentally, brought up a young Theseus (the name connotes
nomothesis, law-giving)- Plato's brother, Glaucon.
Having ceased to enact a myth, Socrates closes the dialogue by telling
one, a recollection of one of the "myths which are told about those in
Hades." These are the very myths that keep tormenting Cephal us, because
he is so close to these things (330d7). In it Er, the Pamphylian or "Alltribesman" (614b4), is charged by the souls to carry back to the living the
long tale of their thousand-year journey, of the ascent or descent that is
their reward or punishment. He actually tells only of the end of these
journeys, since, as Socrates significantly observes to Glaucon, who has noW
listened the better part of a day and a night, the story itself would take
"a very long time to go through" (615a5). Socrates ends the dialogue by
urging Glaucon to hold fast to the "upward way" (cf. 514b4), so that they
may do well in the thousand-year journey "which we have just gone
through" (62ld2). He must mean the ascent of the dialogue itself (e.g.,
473a5, 544b2).
This then is the setting of the Republic: Hades with its tales and a
deliverer willing to go down and able to come up- a most appropriate setting, for down there, so it is said, justice is close at hand (330d8, 614c3;
cf. Apology 41a, Gorgias 523, Sophocles, Antigone 451). In recounting the
discourse Socrates will then be playing that "noblest of games": telling
myths about justice and other things" (Phaedrus 276e).
ll. WGOS
A.
1-2. We come now to the arguments, the /ogoi, that form the broad
middle ring encircling the center. Just as the question concerning the connection of justice to happiness is answered by bringing to light the human
soul in its mythical shape, so the soul itself, that is, its formal "constitution," is discovered by raising and taking down cities. This is done "in
speech" (logoi) and not, to use a pervasive Greek opposition, "in deed"
(ergoi, e.g., 382e8, 383a5, 498e4; cf. Laws 778b). Let us first follow how
these cities are constructed in argument.
At the beginning of the enterprise Socrates says: "Come then, let us
make a city from the beginning in argument" (logoi, 369c9; cf. also 369a5,
�13
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472el, 592all). The object is to find the nature of justice by looking at
the largest context to which it is applicable-hence the city founded in
speech will have to be just. Socrates and his interlocutors first found a
community of craftsmen,· workers collected to ply their own trades so as
to supply each other's wants, making the city as a whole, as opposed to
its citizens, self-sufficient (369b). In this city the full political weight of
the Greek name for craftsmen, "demiourgoi" (370d6), "public workers,"
is realized. This city is, as we shall see, the most liberal model from which
to read off the definition of justice that runs through the Republic, but
just as Socrates is about to articulate that definition, Glaucon stops him.
Here, he says, we have a city of pigs (372d4). He means that the citizens'
whole being, like that of pigs, is absorbed in consuming and providing
for consumption-there is no place or leisure for honor and nobility (cf.
Aristotle, Politics l291a18). Socrates, though still maintaining that this is
the "true" .and "healthy" city (372e6), yields to Glaucon, and, giving up
once and for all that self-sufficiency definitive of the natural city (Politics
J253a2), changes the "first city" (373c5; Politics l29la17) by the addition
of luxury and that soldier element which will procure wealth and maintain safety. He assents to the construction of this "fevered" city because
in it one might see "how justice and injustice grow up in cities" (372e5);
this city, then, will somehow contain the seeds of injustice also. He describes
the natures and the training of the soldiers or "guardians," a subject to
which we must return. At the end of this long argument (375-414) Socrates
again reorganizes the city, this time by dividing the "guardians" into guardians proper, older men who rule, and their "auxiliaries and helpers" (414b5),
the younger fighting men. This third, tripartite, city suffices for reading
off the similar constitution of the soul and for showing conclusively that,
as in the city, so in the soul, justice must be profitable. Socrates now considers the positive half of his task finished and is about to go on to investigate how injustice comes about in cities and souls (445-449, Book IV).
He is interrupted. Three whole books (V-VII) intervene, in which a fourth
and very different city is founded. Not until Book VIII does he return to
the argument. In Glaucon's figure, "like a wrestler he assumes again the
same position" (544b5) and goes on to account in order for the four
degenerate cities (544-592). When this argument, the complement to the
genesis of cities, is finished, Glaucon once again refers to "the city that
we have just been founding and that is preserved in speech only, for I do
not think that it is anywhere on earth" (592a!O).
B.
I. Now what is· the meaning of the claim that the genesis of the city,
�,.,
IT
,,
!,
;'
14
MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
or the city itself, is only "in speech"? It means of course first of all that
no actual city of living men comes into being while they speak or as a
consequence of their discourse. But that is mere fact. What is more interesting is that no such city can come to be now or later, by the design
and intent of the argument itself. These word constructions are not "constitutions," the practical patterns for working cities such as Plato and his
pupils were invited to write for Greek cities, nor are they even a model
for such patterns- they are instead contrivances for a different purpose,
and intended to reveal themselves as such." The dialogue conveys this first
of all in one astounding fact: no human being is ever born into any of
the three cities- they cannot regenerate themselves; they are unnatural.
The first city is constituted by the collection, the second by the addition, the third by the division of adults who are all of one and the same
generation; the institution of each city is simply the rearrangement of readymade human material. This is reflected in the actual physical settlement
of the third city, which is, at first, said to begin with the separate encampment of the guardians, who found, as it were, a separate city (415d8, Critias
110c6, Politics 1264a25 ff.); hence the guardians' progeny will be born, quite
literally, outside of the civilian city. Furthermore, this same third city is
later said to be settled by the expulsion of all souls over ten years old
(540e5), a contradiction that reflects the two irreconcilable geneses of the
just city; in the books relevant in the present context the city is understood
as a re-constitution of available communities, while after the central books
it is a radically new institution demanding a radical change in the character
of citizens, to be achieved only by a lengthy process of education; it is a
city essentially of children.
Now the re-constitution that brings about the third or guardian city
in the early books is secured by the circulation of one noble lie, the "Phoenician myth," "our trick," which will persuade "especially the rulers them-
selves, and if not them, the rest of the city" (414cl). To be sure, Socrates
later admits, the founding generation itself can never be brought to believe
the story, but he dismisses this crucial difficulty by high-handedly treating
these citizens as the creatures of this argument that they indeed are: "Let
this matter be left to rumor to carry about as best it can, while we arm
our Earthborn and lead them forth, under the leadership of their rulers"
(415d6). Suppose then that the founding was somehow accomplished and
that the myth was somehow in practice accepted. The citizens would now
believe that their youth and education was a dream; that they were really
formed like metals in the womb of the earth, their mother, who sent them
up fully formed, so that they had never been children; and that tl\ey are
therefore all brothers, though of different metals. Those who have an ad-
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15
mixture of gold must rule and those of silver must assist, for, as an oracle
foretells, the city will fall when a man of brass or iron rules. The purity
of the metals must be carefully preserved, and if a gold or silver parent
has a child with an admixture of brass or iron he must consent to see it
put into a lower class. (For the earth as the common mother of citizens,
see Menexenus 237c, 239a.)
The "lie" in this myth is not that men are of different metals or that
the city cannot survive the wrong kind of ruler-all that is true-but rather
the claim that the citizens have no proper natural birth and no privacy,
that is, no secrecy of soul. Under their flattering epithet "earth-born"
(4!5d7), which intimates that they are Giants, or that they were moulded
by a god, are hidden the claims that they are natural bastards who have
a mother but no father and that their soul can be accurately assayed like
any ore. So too the continuation of the city depends on the citizens' belief
that each generation is newly mined, like a public treasure," from the earthly
element on which the city rests.
But the curious character of this "needful lie" (414b9) is that it catches
up, so to speak, with its perpetrators: the myth must not only somehow
be believed at the outset if the city is to be founded, but it ought in fact
not to be a lie at all, if the city is to breed true. For if men are not born
from a common parent at the right time and with pure souls easily assayed,
the guardians cannot control the new generation and insure the stability
of the city. Its first birth will refute its foundations.
2. The community (koinonia) of women and children, the "source of
the greatest good to the city" (464b5), is intended to achieve exactly this
community of birth. All children born in the same year are to be ignorant
of their parents and are to be called brothers and sisters, although the ignorance will eventually lead to incest (461e2; Politics 1262a35). These
children of the city will be tested and assayed all the time, but one of the
conditions for stability is beyond the guardians' control: the timing of the
mating. For as Glaucon wisely observes, the best are drawn by necessity
to have intercourse with the best, but this necessity is "not geometric but
erotic" (458d5). Yet the guardians' control of breeding is to be precisely
"geometric." The Phoenician myth, in accordance with Phoenician greed
(436a2), makes of men a Plutonic treasure to be dug up and refined at
will; the scientific counterpart of the myth is to consider them a crop to
be sown and harvested in accordance with the heavenly motions.
The geometry of these motions as they affect breeding is, however, not
known to the rulers. In Book VIII Socrates has just resumed the discussion of the degenerate cities when he stops himself and prays to the Muses
�16
MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
to tell him "how discord first arose," an allusion to the Iliad (I, 6) and the
fall of the city of Troy. The Muses' response is a mathematical myth. A
city so constituted as his, they say, can hardly be moved (546al), but since
everything that has a genesis also has a degeneration, the city will not last
forever. Note that in the order of argument the decline in fact follows immediately upon the beginning, with no account of the city's life and history
intervening at all. This end must come (and may, as Aristotle points out,
come on the day after the city's birth, Politics 1316al7) because the rulers'
reasoning, or rather their "calculating power, mixed with sense" (bl) as it
is, will not be able to apprehend the "geometric number" that governs births.
The Muses recite this fabulous number, which in fact no one has ever practically understood. Thus .the generation of rulers is corrupted, and as a
final consequence of their baser metal they neglect the study of music and
themselves lose the power of testing souls. This is the genetic revolution
initiating the declining succession of Hesiod's ages from gold down to iron,
a revolution radically different from the political revolutions the city
undergoes thereafter (Politics 1316a14 ff.).
Human generation is thus an impenetrable mystery, and the city
founders on the rock of the fact of bisexual generation. The human be-.
ing, considered as that unstable union of body and soul, does not run true
to type as does a plant (and, as Aristotle [Politics 1262a] observes, where
a child does resemble its parent in looks, that very fact immediately destroys
the founding illusion of common birth). If it is the nature of each kind
to generate its like, human nature is un-natural; dwarf peas always bear
dwarf peas, but golden parents may bear brass children. This is the insuperable problem that is again attacked in the Statesman. In this dialogue
the Golden Age, the age of the direct divine rule of Cronos, is mockingly
characterized by the fact that men grow directly from the earth and have
no human birth (271), while in the Human Age the proper mixing of human
bents (trop01) by mating is the specifically human object of the political
art (310). Later on Socrates quotes an old phrase" to contrast the city with
non-human nature: "You do hot think," he says~ "that constitutions come
out of 'an oak or a rock' and not out of the characters of those in the
city?" (544d8). Very nearly the same figure is used by Vergil for the human',
race of the Golden Age of Saturn; they are sprung from "trunks of
,
or a rugged oak" (Aeneid VIII, 315): the Golden Age is the age when men
spring up "naturally," like vegetables, and ripen to ineducable childhood. ·•
The dialogue itself tacitly underscores the impossibility of genetic
trol, both at the very beginning and at the end. For of those said to
present in Cephalus's house, five are full brothers, two of them, Gl•mcon,,
and Adeimantus, sons of Ariston, and the three others, Po•lernarctms,
�17
Lysias, and Euthydemus, the host's sons. The conversation itself will show
how the sons of the "Best"- Socrates often alludes to the meaning of the
father's name (e.g., 327al, 368a4)- differ profoundly, and something similar
was known of Polemarchus and Lysias (Phaedrus 257b ). The Myth of Er,
moreover, which concludes the conversation, shows why generation is intractable; human natures are determined not on the hither side of life by
other humans, but in the "divine place" beyond by each soul for itself
(617d6). The coming to be of the city is therefore not in accord with the
coming to be of human beings.
The enigma of regeneration is, however, only secondary to the paradox
of the city's foundation itself. For it seems that only those will be content
to accept this constitution who have accepted the "dye" of its laws (430a3).
The just city can only be realized by its own children; to begin it must
already have begun. We see why the act of settlement itself is so curiously
and doubly contrived: At one time it seems to amount to the separation
of those adults who might be fit to govern and who establish the ideal
city by leaving the real city. But at another time the new city results from
the removal of all adults whatsoever who by this act appear to found a
city of children. This is what is meant by claiming that the three cities that
have been constructed are cities in speech only.
·
3. The degenerate cities that are symmetrical with these three cities are,
on the other hand, all too realizable- indeed, they exist. Socrates underscores this by mentioning, in this context alone, actual Greek cities, namely
Crete and Sparta, the timocracies, the first of the less-than-just cities
(544c3). Yet here too, in a different way, the argument is remote from the
deed.
The argument to which Socrates returns in the eighth book had been
merely initiated at the end of the fourth. Of the five "bents" (trop01) of
the soul, one alone is good while the other four illustrate the multifariousness of evil; to these latter correspond four cities. The interlocutors
have "so far ascended in argument" (445c5) as to stand on a look-out tower
whence to view the manyness of vice. This discussion of vice, when picked
up three books later (544), continues to rise until, having traversed
timocracy, oligarchy, and democracy, the interlocutors finally look down
on the sinkhole of tyranny and the abyss of the tyrant's misery, which is
729 days, that is, two years of continual travel, beneath them (587e). This
is what characterizes all serious discussions of vice: they must certainly
not bring about that of which they speak, but rather become more detached
the closer they come to the truth, just as the best judge of criminals should
have the least experience of crime ( 409a). The effect of this "remoteness"
�MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
18
on the argument itself is that the degeneration of cities is presented as an
inevitable, irresistible, downward progression (which Aristotle finds implausible, Politics 1316a20 ff.), not, indeed, of the natures but of the nurtures of successive generations. Here the argument represents, as it were,
its own impotence- the situation is in actual fact desperate (Seventh Letter 325d ff.); in a few years a fierce battle between the democratic faction
and not one but Thirty Tyrants will be raging about the sanctuary of the
very goddess whose feast is now being celebrated (Xenophon, Hellenica
II, 4, 11), and the tyranny will have destroyed the host's family; while yet
a few years later a temporarily restored democracy will have murdered
Socrates (399 B.C.).
c.
I. The facts of the host family's condition and politics determine the
conversation in yet another and pervasive way. The family ran a prosperous
business in manufacturing and selling shields, and both Polemarchus and
Lysias are known to have been democrats, though, we may suppose, of
a decent and moderate sort. This is the clue to the peculiar treatment of
the virtue that later gave the subtitle "On Justice" to the dialogue.. It is
not usually Socrates' way to inquire whether a thing is profitable or unprofitable before having inquired "what it is" (e.g., Republic 354c, Meno
7lb); but this is just what happens with respect to justice in the latter books
of the Republic. From the second book to the end the question is: Is justice
profitable? The knowledge of what justice is, is assumed. As Socrates,
somewhat to Glaucon's annoyance, insists (432e8), when they come to find
justice in the city they have constructed, they find there nothing more than
they had put in; the city is just because they have made it that way (433al,
443b7). The working definition, which is not the result but the assumption of the argument, is that justice is "doing one's own business and not
meddling" (433a8), a definition they have heard from many others and have
themselves often given.
Justice so conceived is, to begin with, simply the opposite of the literal
understanding of the names for various degrees of wrong-doing. There is
polypragmoneuein (433a9, 443d2, 444b2), literally "much-doing" or being a meddling busybody, and panta poiein (596c2), "doing everything"
or being a jack-of-all-trades- Socrates' favorite description of the sophists'
easy expertise (cf. 397, 596; cf. Sophist 233d9). And worst of all, there
is panourgein (409c5), "being up to anything" or simple shameless
wickedness, the behavior of the man who takes full advantage of the impunity given by Adeimantus's Ring of Gyges, the wily Odyssean wisdom
�19
man of "many bents" (Lesser Hippias 365e2; cf. Phaedrus 27lc2).
:tinsitivelv. justice is acting in accordance with that conveniently ambiguous
eu prattein, either "doing Tight" or "being well," with which the
Rim•u/Jttc ends (463e4, 519e2, 62ld2; cf. Politics 1323b31).
From this point of view the simply just city is, as Socrates himself says,
first, the self-sufficient city of demiurges or craftsmen who both know
to do their own business and do it (372e6, 428bl2). In them virtue
indeed "wisdom," in the good old-fashioned sense in which sophia means
in English used to be meant by "cunning," namely craft and skill,
aretemeans the power to do work, the "virtue" of an agent (cf. 350c4,
. j'""'·· cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1141a9).
We may well ask how a view so practical, almost banal, comes to
underlie the dialogue. It is necessary here to recall that justice in the city
is exposed by finding and analyzing out the other virtues and considering
the remainder (427el3). Thus wisdom is found to be the rulers' virtue,
courage that of the warriors, temperance the agreement of all on who shall
rule (432a). Justice is then found in each class as a remainder: as that virtue by which the class does its own work and nothing else. Now clearly
in this context temperance is somewhat redundant. In fact, when Socrates
turns from the city to the soul he makes no distinction between justice
and temperance (443d4; cf. Laws 696dll, where temperance is called a mere
"appendage," and Charmides 16lb6, where Critias very knowingly, as he
thinks, proposes the present definition of justice as a definition of temperance). We may therefore say that justice, precisely because it is the one
virtue that all three classes possess, stands out as a unique and special virtue for the craftsmen, "the popular and citizen virtue" (Phaedo 82all),
the practical virtue of non-rulers. (In fact, it is pointed out in the Statesman
[307e] that rulers who possess this virtue too literally endanger the city.)
It is the virtue by reason of which each performs "that to which his own
nature is most fitted" (Republic 433a5), by which, we might say, a human
being is ever at his best. In some cases this means quite simply quietly
"minding one's own business," as must the lover of wisdom, for instance,
in acity not fitted to his nature (496d6, Gorgias 526c4). Justice might
therefore be termed the private public virtue, which turns particular natures
to the general account (423d). This is why its presence is the greatest good
and its absence the greatest ruin to cities (443c4-444b8)-it allows the city
to assimilate even those men who are by nature private. (Hegel, in his interpretation of the Republic, which is in this point the opposite of Aristotle's, understands and appreciates justice in precisely such terms, namely
as the integration of the particular as particular, the confirmation of the
individual in the whole, "the being-for-itself of each part"; History of
Philosophy, Pt. I, ch. 3).
�~··
20
MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
This virtue, understood not as a relation toward others but as decently
self-serving self-respect, is therefore quite naturally discussed in these terms
under the roof of the kind of people who would constitute the multitude,
the merchant and artisan class, of the third city. This class would supply
young warriors like the sons of Ariston with their armor and would occasionally send a philosophically disposed son like Polemarchus (cf. Phaedrus
257b4) up into the ruling class. Socrates is speaking that saving "dialect
of democracy'' (Fifth Letter 32ld), which many people think they know
but very few really master.
'I
!
2. But Socrates never allows us to forget that this third city is a dialogical
phantom and that the justice in it is, for all its apparent practicality, a mere
"idol" (443c4). For the true virtue lies not in deeds concerned with the outside but in the inner disposition of the "classes" (gene; d3) of the soul and
their ordering. We shall see that in the case of the true ruler, that is, of
one so "constituted" as to be able first of all to rule himself, the distinction between "his own affairs" and "others' business" vanishes. For him
that which is most common is also most his own "and with his private
affairs he will preserve the common business" (497a5). In him, "doing his
own business" wili be turned into "knowing himself," which means "looking ... at myself, whether I happen to be some beast more complicated
than Typhon [Cerberus's father, Theogony 311] or a gentler and simpler
animal" (Phaedrus 230a; cf. Timaeus 72a5). True justice is concerned with
that in man which is "truly about himself and his own business" (443dl;
cf. Alcibiades Major 130eff.); the true ruler knows not only that he should
do his own business but what it is. In Aristotelian terms, the practical or
moral virtue turns into an intellectual one, in comparison with which the
old justice is "somehow near to the body" (518d!O). This individual
character of justice is one of the reasons why, as we shall see below, the
soul is the one single subject of the dialectical method in the Republic.
3. The "inversion" of justice in the case of the true ruler, in the philosopher king, leads to a curious suspension of the main argument in the
central three books. If justice can only with difficulty be proved to be profitable for the guardian rulers, because of the hard life they lead (419a, 465e4),
for the philosopher kings this proof is altogether impossible. For those
who already consider themselves to be living in the Isles of the Blessed
(519c5), the descent into the city to take office cannot be made to seem
like happiness (519d8), nor can it possibly improve the tone of their souls.
They must be made to enter politics "forcibly" (520e2); in fact their reluctance is a guarantee of their suitability (e4). Glaucon sees immediately that
�21
object of the city constructions that constitute the outer rings
argument, namely that justice brings happiness- an argument still
iUTILchly maintained for the warriors (466b)-has been lost; he wants to
if the philosopher rulers are not being treated unjustly (519d8).
nco·•"·'' answer is an evasion (cf. Politics 1264b16); it is not their hapbut that of the whole city which is to be considered. When all is
and done, the true rulers of the Republic enter politics only out of
gratitude, and simple decency (516c, 520a-e).
III. Ergon
A.
Socrates is about to go on with the investigation of the unjust cities
he is again restrained, as orice before on his way up to Athens (327),
a conspiracy of Polemarchus and Adeimantus (499). After some whispera vote is taken, and the decree that has been passed is announced by
/,)£''.TlLra:;yn1ac:hus (450a3). Thrasymachus represents that "force" (Phaedrus
which boasts of its ability to rouse and soothe the multitude (and
is itself so easily managed by Socrates) and now speaks for them:
Socrates must expand and defend that principle, mentioned before with
conspicuous brevity (424al), which is to give the city unanimity or, better,
a perfectly public character: "Friends own what is common" (499c5). Here
is a new political reading of a current phrase (cf. Lysis 207cl0, Phaedrus
279c6, Laws 739c2), which may mean, significantly, two things: "What a
friend owns is at the service of his friends," or "What friends own insofar
as they are friends is communal by nature." They particularly want to know
about the equality of education for men and women (45lb) and the community of wives and children (457b). Socrates reluctantly complies and
faces the first two of the three waves threatening to overwhelm him (473b6).
When he has faced them, and gone on to describe such a city's relation
to other Greek cities, Glaucon erupts: "But it seems to me, Socrates, that
if one were to allow you to talk about such matters you would never
remember what it is you pushed aside in saying all this, namely this question: Is such a constitution capable of coming into being and in what way
is it possible?" (47lc). And he insists on this question even though Socrates
stalls by getting him to admit that the object of their discourse was the
discovery of justice and injustice and their respective merits, and that the
"city in speech," having served that purpose, is none the worse for being
�"I
''i
22
MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
impractical (473al). But since Glaucon does insist (understandably, we cannot help feeling) on trying out their just constitution as a practical political
pattern, he must not, Socrates stipulates, force him to show that "what
they went through in speech can completely be in deed"; Glaucon must
content himself with as close an approximation as is possible (a5). This
approximation will be reached by making the least possible number of
changes to improve things now done badly in cities, changes that will
amount to a re-founding of the city according to the constitution just
discussed. There may be one or two or more such changes, but in any case
there should be as few as possible (b4).
So Socrates, like Odysseus, meets that third wave which will carry him
to his Phaeacia (Odyssey V, 313, 425). The one thing that must be changed,
he announces solemnly (c2) is this: "Unless either philosophers rule in the
cities, or those who are now called kings and dynasts philosophize genuinely
and sufficiently, and these two-namely political power and philosophycoincide, and the many natures of those who now pursue either way
separately have been excluded by necessity, there can be no end of evils,
my dear Glaucon, in cities, or, in my opinion, in the human race" (ell).
He adds that he cannot see how any other city can be happy in public or
in private.
Together with Glaucon he now prepares the ground for a new, a fourth,
city. It is necessary to show why this "one change" may be said to produce
a new city; is it not merely the third, the guardian constitution, put into
effect? Both Socrates and Glaucon, at least, do seem to regard these two
as different; Socrates calls the guardian city, as opposed to the fourth city,
"the first selection" merely (536c8), and Glaucon refers to the new city as
the bettter of the two (543dl). And rightly so, for as Socrates himself says,
an actual city is never the same as its pattern, its paradeigma (472d9, 473a).
The guardian city and the philosopher city differ, then, as does a realization from its plan. The discourse on the possible city will be, among other
things, a subtle consideration of the relation of pattern to product, of
"theory" to "practice." In its course that which makes the pattern possible
will prove to be that which makes it superfluous: the fourth or philosophers'
city will have no constitution separable from its very life.
2. The philosopher kings, to pursue the difference between the cities
further, can certainly not be regarded as part of the constitution of that
just city which must have been known generally as "Socrates' city." Aristotle,
in his critique of what "Socrates says" in the Republic, mentions the warrior class and the community of women, children, and goods, but omits
all mention of the philosopher kings (Politics 129la20, 1261a4). Aristo-
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23
phanes, too, in The Female Parliament (427), where the community of
goods and women becomes the law of Athens, fails to seize the comic opportunity inherent in the subject of female philosophers. It is likely that
this plaY was written before the Republic, and we may infer that peopleSocrates in particular- had long been talking about such a city. In the
dialogue there are enough passages parallel to the play" to constitute an
acknowledgment to posterity that Aristophanes' women's city is a parody
of Socrates' already notorious city. In fact, the nod to the comedian is explicit, for, in facing his first wave, Socrates remarks that after the men's
part has been played out it is only right to recite "the women's drama"
(45lc2); moreover, in going to meet his third wave he says, as if speaking
from a familiar experience, that "it might overwhelm him with laughter
and disrepute" (473c8).
3. Last and most weighty is the account Socrates himself gives of his
city in the Timaeus when he recapitulates the constitution that he had
presented to his friends in a discourse on the previous day. There is no
reason whatever to conclude that the Republic is that discourse. In fact,
while the Republic is recounted on the day after the Bendideia, the Timaeus,
quite appropriately, takes place on the Lesser Panathenaea, a festival that
occurred two months later, also in the Peiraeus (26e); during the festival
a gown was sent up to Athena "on which the Athenians, her nurslings,
could be seen winning the war against the people of Atlantis" (scholiast
on Republic 327a). Furthermore, the dramatic year of the Timaeus seems
to be earlier than that of the Republic." The city Socrates recapitulates
in the Timaeus is, in any case, not the city of the central books of the
Republic, for, although his account is said to be complete (19a7), the
philosopher kings are omitted; it is rather the "third city" with all its
notorious features. We may infer that Socrates proposed this city on various
occasions and that it was known as "his."
This guardian city therefore differs from the philosopher city as the
best pattern differs from its realization, and, it has now turned out, as the
impossible differs from the possible. Socrates himself explains to Adeimantus, when he asks whether this guardian city they have founded is the city
suited to philosophy, that it is that city in many ways but that in addition
there "would always be needed someone understanding the reasoning
[logos] behind the constitution- that same one who guided you when as
a law-giver you laid down the laws" (497c8). The difference between the
cities is therefore not constitutional, for the older guardians will still rule,
and rule so as to achieve the most harmonious community possible. The
difference is rather in the rulers themselves, in what they know and in what
�24
MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
they will look to, in their education. We shall see whether this may not
outweigh any more externally obvious formal difference.
B.
I. However, the claim is not that the fourth city is a possible city but
something more dramatic: that it is actual, that ii comes into being while
Glaucon and Socrates converse, that it is a city "in deed," ergi#. According to what has been said, this could happen only if one paradoxical condition were fulfiiled: if there were some one adult who actually lives in
the just city, and who, as a living citizen of the city, can bring up another
within it and so begin the accelerating "cycle" (424a5) of the reciprocating
interplay between the citizens' education and their nature. This founder
must be a first citizen not only in the sense that he possesses what Socrates
calls "the constitution within himself" (59lel, 608bl) but also in the sense
that he has such external relations- natural, as we shall see, to any truly
educated human being (423e4)-as correspond with the constitution of
the third, the fully differentiated just city, and its working counterpart,
the fourth or the "possible" city." What would such a life and such a man
look like?
To begin with, he would have to be brave and a soldier proven in battle, who put the safety of his comrades before his own (Apology 28e, Symposium 220d5), past the age of fighting and over fifty years old (cf. Republic
540a4; Socrates is about sixty), but still spirited in the defense of philosophy
(Republic 536c4), which he had steadily pursued from an apt youth
(Parmenides 130b) to old age. He would have no private possessions
(Republic 337d8, Apology 31c2), bnt would live with .his friends as if all
their goods were held in common (Apology 38b6, Crito 44e, Republic
337d!O). He would regard all promising young men as his sons to the neglect
of his private family, and they would regard him as a father (Apology 3ib4,
Phaedo 60a7, 116a6). When he wished he would possess the persuasiveness
to make gentler the enemies of philosophy so that they would accept its
rule (Republic 354). He would be able to ascend in thought above the city,
leaving his body behind (Symposium 174d5, 220c3). He would be willing,
though not eager, to undertake political tasks (Republic 327, Apology 31c).
He would regard it as part of his charge to select and educate the best
among the young for future rule, and he would prevent them from reaching
too high too fast (Republic 506d7, 533al). Finally, he would possess some
special quality that would hold him to philosophy and protect him from
corruption (496c4). Such a man would fulfill Socrates' last words concerning the possibility of the city, for, without caring in the least whether she
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25
is or ever will be in fact, "he will do her business and that of no other"
(592b3).
The references after each statement above give passages in the Platonic
dialogues where Socrates is so described. He is a man, the dialogues assert,
who is here and now doing the business of the just city. Thus we see that
the sum of Aristotle's criticism of Socrates' city, that its communality is
really not the bond uniting a multitude, but rather the bond of each good
man with every other (Politics 1263a29), is deeply accurate, and what is
more, that Aristotle's politics are ultimately not so very different- "and
friendship seems to hold cities together; and lawgivers care more for it than
for justice" (Nicomachean Ethics 1155a23). The reason that the corporate
genesis of the third, the guardian city, is presented as a insurmountable
dilemma is that that city was never meant to be a self-sufficient body politic,
nor, for that matter, a single soul writ large, but something between thesethat set of relations, correctly called friendship, which is essentially political, as we shall see, and which a philosopher institutes between himself
and his fellow-citizens whenever he is able. And when this kind of man
comes to power, "our constitution, which we have told as a myth in speech,
will achieve its consummation in deed" (501e4). As we shall see, Socrates
is in power.
2. In the same way we must look at the nature and condition of the
youth, whom he will educate to be a helper and auxiliary first and later
a successor and ruler. He will be a young man of twenty (537b8), markedly
spirited (357a3, 44la2, 548d9), and with some experience in soldiering, open
to the influence of music and with a strong bent toward mathematics. Now
this is a picture of Glaucon, "erotic" like Socrates himself (474d4; cf. Symposium 177d8), a young man of about twenty, whose manly courage and
desire for victory are emphasized together with his receptivity to music
(548e5); he has already distinguished himself in battle (368a3), is delighted
by mathematics (528e7, 531a3), and is the son of the "Best" of fathers.
He is therefore quite right to offer himself as a "helper" (474bl; cf. the
"helpers" of the guardian city, 414b5) and to say that "perhaps I could
answer more fitly than another," for he is the reason why Socrates is taking so much trouble on himself (474a5); he is "responsible" (509c3) for
Socrates' overcoming his reluctance to speak on the highest matters. And
we must not forget that as the dialogue closes Socrates speaks to
Glaucon -and him alone-of the "upward road" as if they were again all
by themselves, as they had been when they "came down" at the beginning.
There is some additional evidence in favor of Glaucon as a prospective
ruler. Xenophon (Memorabilia III, vi) recounts a conversation in which
�26
MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
Socrates persuades Glaucon, who is less than twenty years old and wants
to become head of state immediately, that he knows nothing of statecraft,
nothing of revenues, and nothing of military management, and that he
should perhaps first learn something about these subjects .. Socrates,
Xenophon says, took an interest in Glaucon "for the sake of Plato and
Charmides"; he alone succeeded where everyone had failed, and persuaded
Glaucon to restrain his ambitions until he should have become competent
enough not to make a fool of himself. We see that Glaucon must in fact
have been very interested in politics and that Socrates was known to have
been interested in him. The Republic even contains the counterpart in the
Platonic mode of the Xenophontic dissuasion: Glaucon is persuaded that
the mark of the true ruler is that he has no ambition to rule and despises
the "political life"- the subtlest possible deterrent for a proud young man
(520e4 ff.). Beyond this Glaucon's name had for Plato the tremendous advantage that unlike that of Critias and Charmides it was not tainted with
political crimes. He may have died young, for scarcely anything is known
of him, except that he wrote dialogues (Diogenes Laertius II, 124)- and
was Plato's brother.
3. The philosopher's city is coming into being while Socrates and
Glaucon converse: the primary political act is the "conversion" to a
philosophical education of one youth by one man. Because he engages
in this kind of activity, Socrates can maintain in one and the same dialogue
(Gorgias 473e6, 52ld6) that he is not one of the "political men" and that
he alone in Athens practices the "truly political art." (Plato's own activities
were in accordance with this principle, Seventh Letter 326b ff.) The contrived bodily community of the guardian city (416d) is here converted into
a natural dialogic community. This is by nature a community of two;
throughout the dialogue Socrates has one interlocutor, and when another
enters, it is by way of interruption (e.g., 449bl, 487bl; cf. Gorgias 474a).
But minimal as it is, it is a true community as opposed to the artificial
unity of the guardian city. For the latter is an artificially composed harmony of "one out of many" (423d6, 443el), in musical terminology a
diapason (cf. the dia panton as a characteristic of "otherness," Sophist
253el), an "all-encompassing consonance," but it has no one natural source
and no discernible end beyond subsisting as a unity. There is, as we shall
see, no eidos, no idea of a city, while the community that underlies dialogic
communication is, on the contrary, precisely eidetic and, unlike the guardians' community of bodily goods (416d), indestructible. For the eidos that
underlies speech is not a delicate adjustment of "one out of many" in which
the many constitute and enter into the unity, but an indivisible one "by
�27
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itself'' and opposed to all multiplicity (e.g., 479; contrast the preposition
used for the community of eide: "one idea through many" [Sophist 253d9]
with that used for the relation of many sensible things to their eidos: "many
... under one idea" [Republic 507b6]). The eidos is the "common thing,"
the thing public by nature that belongs to friends. The foundation of the
fourth city, the establishment of that Politeia which is indeed rightly
translated by Republic- that is, Commonwealth- consists in beginning that
dialogue with which any Western education, an education that is the making
of a free citizen, begins. We shall see exactly how Socrates goes about this
founding act. As Rousseau half-truly observes in his Emile, "Plato's
Republic ... isnot a political treatise, as those who merely judge books
by their titles think. It is the finest treatise on education ever written."
c
But first it is necessary to see where and under what circumstances his
foundation takes place.
The conversation of the Republic is held on the day of the Bendideia
in the Peiraeus, the harbor of Athens, which was united with the upper
city by the Themistoclean walls (Thucydides I, 93), so that the dialogue
may be said to take place within Athens. In the mythical dimension this
place is revealed as Hades; in fact it is a turbulent center of Athenian
democracy. The cult of Bendis, a new Thracian import, is itself a symptom of dissolution, "a new workshop of turbulent revelry," as a comic
writer" seems to have described it. Its celebration is to culminate that night
in a torch-race and an "all-nighter" (328a8), an orgiastic affair which the
young men are clearly waiting to join.
Socrates and Glaucon, both citizens of this democracy, will conduct
their conversation, which occupies the central books of the Republic, within
this setting. It is, in a strange way, the right setting, as the dialogue itself
intimates. To show this let us look at the degenerating cities and citizen
souls of Books VIII and IX.
There are four of them, in downward order: timocracy, oligarchy,
democracy, and tyranny (544c). But exactly as in the case of the just city,
the monarchy and aristocracy are regarded as being two names for one
constitution (445d4); so a case may be made for taking democracy and
its inevitable degenerate consequence, tyranny, together (cf. Politics 1292al8,
where democracy is said to be analogous to tyranny; also 1286bl7). For
not only do they in fact alternate with each other in Athens at this time,
but within Socrates' scheme they have this important trait in common, that
they are both less than cities, almost non-constitutions, to which no definite
�. 1:
28
MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
kind of soul corresponds (557cl). This bracketing of the two gives us the
following scheme:
3. monarchy-aristocracy
2. warrior city
l. craftsmen city
0.
I,
I
tl
timocracy
oligarchy
democracy-tyranny,
which conveys a kind of inverse correspondence between the best and worst.
The correspondence of opposites is evident in a number of ways: the just
rulers, especially when the elders of the third city become the philosophers
of the fourth, make no distinction between their own and the public business (497a5), and in a perverted way neither does the tyrant, whose rule
is a private nightmare publicly staged (573, 576b5)- for in private the tyrant
is himself, like his city, almost absolutely tyrannized. Like the just constitution, the democracy contains three classes, which again correspond
inversely: the have-nots in the democracy form the lowest and largest class,
the class most eager for revolution, while in the just city they are in highest
and least class (428e7), the unpropertied class most devoted to the preservation of the city. And again: the ruling class in the democracy cannot
fight because of its luxuriousness (556c8), while those who have that
strength and should be the watchdogs become wolves to the human fold
(415e2, 566a4). These cities then are related by Socrates as extreme opposites
which meet (576d); he even describes them by the same term: the just city
is called "the city of beauty" or "fair-city" (kal/ipolis, 527c2), and so is
the democracy called, bitterly, the "fairest" of constitutions (557c4; the same
of tyranny, 562a4) for the colorful variety of constitutions to be found
within it. All the other characteristics contribute toward putting the citizen
of a democracy into a perverse and yet peculiarly intimate relation to the
just city, but it is this last that makes democracy practically the best base
of Socrates' enterprise. (The ordering of constitutions in the Republic is
made in abstraction from considerations of legitimacy; contrast the
classification of the Statesman, 29ld ff., where democracy is "the best of
all lawless constitutions"; also 303a8; cf. Politics 1289b9. From this point
of view, incidentally, such sub-political democracy is the degenerate counterpart of that Cyclopean pre-political self-sufficiency which must have preceded the cooperation of the craftmen's city; cf. Odyssey IX, 187 ff.) For,
as he tells Adeimantus, it plays host to so many constitutions that "he who
happens to want to found a city, as we are now doing, must go to a
democratic city"; having picked a constitution he likes he may then proceed to settle his own city (557d). This is precisely what Socrates does, who,
�29
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as he himself points out, even while sitting .in an Athenian prison, never
considered leaving a perverse Athenian democracy for a dully decent
timocracy like that-of Sparta or Crete (Crito 52e5); in fact, the perverse
excellence of Athens is epitomized in this- that Socrates is taken seriously
enough to become the center of a public scandal. Socrates' dialogic community is one of the many Athenian constitutions.
D.
!. A consideration of the guardian city as it appears in the Timaeus
will bring out the full force of Socrates' founding act. As we have shown,
two things are required to bring the best city into being as an actual political
body: that the breeding of the citizens should be founded in nature and
that the vicious circle by which the established order makes citizens in its
own image should somehow be broken. These very conditions are fulfilled
in the Timaeus in a way totally different from that of the Republic.
Although the guardian city and its institutions are said at various times
to be according to nature·(e.g., Republic 428e9, 456cl), it is the nature of
the soul that is really meant- a most un-natural nature, as we shall see.
The consequence of this unnatural psychic base is that the city no sooner
ceases to be regarded as a mere pattern and begins to have corporeal life,
than ii enters its road of dissolution. For it, change or "motion" (kinesis)
is always "discord" (stasis, 545d), since "a constitution in agreement with
itself caniwt be. changed" (d3); for it also, motion is unintelligible, since
the question "how ... then does our city come to have changed?" (d5)
is answered only by the inaccessible mystery of the mathematics of birthgoverning celestial cycles (546). Now in the Timaeus Socrates expresses .
precisely this wish: to see his city "put into motion" (19b8), like a person
who sees some fine animals painted or resting and feels a desire to stir
them. His hosts therefore must find a way to move his city without dissolving it. The entertainment that Timaeus, Critias, and Hermocrates provide
for Socrates on the Panathenaea (17al, 26e2), unlike the bitter feast
Thrasymachus serves him on the Bendideia (354a!O, 357a2), is truly amusing for him. They present to him the frame of his picture, as it were, by
providing a mathematical hypothesis (see below IV D 3 a), a "supposed
eidos" (48e6), which will serve as a pattern for that mathematically moving macrocosm into which the harmony of his animated city will fit consonantly. In the Republic the largest context (and that one of strife) had
been Hellas (470e4); now it is the numbered heavens. Whereas in the
Republic the city was a soul writ large, in the Timaeus the city and th.e
soul is a cosmos writ small (24c, 27b, 30d, 42e ff., 69b). The rulers of such
�MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
30
a city would not need to do any intricate geometrizing- contrast the forced,
unnatural imitation of celestial circular geometry in Atlantis with the
natural lay-out of Athens (Critias 111, 113d). Obviously, in this setting the
main political virtue would not be what might be called the "substantial"
virtue of justice, which makes each man true to himself, but rather the
"relational" virtue of temperance, which keeps him in balance, "sound-
minded" (si5phri5n)- "sane." This virtue is understandably dim in the local
context of the Republic, for as Socrates says there (430e6), "temperance
is a sort of cosmos"- an interior adjustment in tune with an outer order
(cf. Theon, Mathematical Matters Useful for Reading Plato, Introduction:
"For the harmony of the cosmos, the good order of the city, and temperance
in private affairs are one and the same").
·
'
2. The city itself they animate by translating it into history. Its citizens
.are indeed earth-born, sown by the twin gods Hephaestus and Athena, she
the goddess of wisdom and war and he the patron of the craftsmen of
the city. To this natural genesis corresponds a natural end: the city sinks
out of sight in a cataclysmic earth-quake (Timaeus 25c7). Socrates had
presented them with a theoretical myth (26b4, c8), and a factual myth,
a tale of antiquity, is the gift they return.
The city of the Republic, on the other hand, is only as old as "yesterday." It too has a source beyond itself, but this source is not within nature,
visible or intelligible, but beyond nature itse/f(540a8). The true ruler must
be in touch with this source- thus the love of attainable wisdom is what
is meant in this dialogue by philosophy (cf. Sixth Letter 323d); Glaucon's
question about the genesis of the best city turns into a question about the
genesis of a philosopher (504b ). Socrates is going to answer this question
with a practical demonstration.
3. Socrates' city, it is necessary to note, is mentioned once more, briefly,
in a dialogue from which Socrates is absent, the Laws (cf. also Diogenes
Laertius III, 52). There an old man, an Athenian stranger of So!onic-as
opposed to philosophic-wisdom (cf. Republic 536d!), sets up, in the course
of a walk through Crete, a "constitution." It is a constitution not only in
the first sense of the word, in which it means the institution of rulers and
ruled as in the Republic, but also in the second sense, namely as a code
of laws for the rulers to administer (Laws 75la). He mentions the guardian city of the Republic in which "friends have all things in common" as
a city inhabited by gods, a "pattern" for his own (739el)-he clearly means
an unattainable and impracticable pattern. The cities he can undertake to
build are only the second and the third best (e5; cf. Republic 445c5, where
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31
the best city is said to be unique, while the degenerate forms are several).
The constitution that is then given, a conflation of monarchy and
democracy (Laws 693d), is meant as a practical political model for actual
cities, and it was in fact so used. This city differs from the best city in
its essential characteristics: property, women, and children are no longer
held in common (740), and a concomitant adjustment is made in the
citizens' and rulers' education, which is no longer "eidetic" but rather
"aisthetic," based on sense experience (817e ff., 967)-it is often observed
that the word "philosophy" does not occur in the dialogue at all.
Now the city of law is discussed in the Statesman, a dialogue where
Socrates is present, and it is evidently discussed in his spirit. There it is
called the "second sailing" (300c2), i.e., that laborious rowing by which
boats are moved when the wind fails (scholion on Phaedo 99c); the phrase
means not "second best," but rather "least worst" (Aristotle, Nicomachean
Ethics 1109bl). The city of law is said to be merely the best of all those
cities which are not true and genuine cities at all but only copies (Statesman
293e3); the "only constitution" is that in which the rulers are men of
knowledge (c6). The Eleatic Stranger, the chief interlocutor, mentions one
aspect of the rule of law that particularly bears on the education of such
men, that is, of philosopher kings, as it is set out in the Republic: Whatever,
he asks, would be the meaning of a mathematics studied according to a
"code of law" (299e4)?- clearly the liberal study of mathematics set out
in the Republic is not appropriate to the rulers in the Statesman. Moreover,
the one hope for the rule of law is, the Stranger says, its meticulous preservation under all circumstances (300c), a demand totally incompatible with
the radical excellence demanded of Socrates' foundation (Republic 50la).
· The practical city, the city of law, is therefore essentially opposed to the
philosopher city. One might say that the former is firmly founded in the
"Cretan" realm of the underworld judges Minos and Rhadamanthus (Laws
624b) while the latter leads ever beyond it.
One more remark on the significance of Socrates' absence in the Laws.
In the Politics Aristotle gives a critique of the Republic, in his usual way
cutting through Socratic "brilliance" and "originality" (1265al2, 129lall)
to reach the sober political content of the dialogue, and consequently stripping away the "extraneous arguments and those about education" (l264b39),
until he finally reduces the Socratic foundation to one law: "that the guardians shall not farm" (1264a9)-and the Spartans have already thought of
that! Thus the Republic is made to emerge as an insufficiently detailed
forerunner of the Laws, while the Laws are regarded as a Republic made
practicable (1264b26 ff.). And Aristotle proceeds to underwrite this interpretation by pretending that Socrates, the man who never left Athens ex- ·
�MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
32
cept on a campaign, is the much-traveled (Laws 639d9) Athenian stranger!
It seems that for him the presence or absence of Socrates determines the
mode of dialogue.
IV. MUSIC
A.
Ia. We shail now show that, like Heracles, Socrates uses music to
"civilize" his young guardian. He uses not the traditional music of the poets
but his own restoration of true music; he shows how to apply seriously
Damon's thesis that a change in the character of a city's music produces
a change in the fundamental laws (424c5). Socratic music is, as we shall
see, philosophical music, the music of truth. Its special force will lie in
this, that its logoi are at the same time erga, this coincidence being precisely
what the poets cannot achieve; they, for all their speeches, leave no true
works behind at all (599b3).
By "music" the Greeks mean whatever activity is under the care of the
Muses, that tradition consisting of the arts and skills which we call "arts
and letters," and among these especially poetry and melodic music. To be
"amusical" is to be an uneducated boor. Accordingly, the upbringing of
the guardians of the third city, described in Book III, is to be "that
discovered over a long period of time," namely gymnastic to strengthen
the body, and music for the soul (376e2) to make it gentle and "wellarranged" (40ld8). But this available music will have to be purified and
purged. Now music is understood to be altogether "image-making and imitative," mimetic (Laws 668a6), so that the purging consists of condemning the poet's false and deteriorating representations especially of gods and
heroes, and of expunging the passages where he "makes images vilely in
his logos" (377el). Children must, then, be. told myths that will be, on the
whole, lies- albeit harmless ones- though they will contain some truths
(377a4). Socrates gives a practical demonstration of this purgation in reviewing passages containing myths- as Aristotle did later, he regards poets
primarily as "myth-makers" (377bll; cf. Poetics 145lb)-harmful to the
tone of the soul. When he has criticized the myths, particularly the Homeric
tales, "about gods ... and demigods as well as heroes and about those
in Hades" (392a4), among them the slanders concerning Theseus's presence
there (391c9), he declines for the moment to go on to correct the myths
concerning men. For these are the myths the poets are worst at telling,
but we cannot correct them until we know how justice works (392b). We
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33
may accordingly expect such a correction of the myths of man later on.
Socrates concludes by requiring not only the poets but all imitative artists
to devote their works to "the image of the Good" (40lb2).
lb. Not only are the stories of the poets, their logoi (392c6), purged,
but their mode of speech, their texis (ibid.),. which corresponds for them
to the modes of melodic music, also comes under Socrates' review. His
remarks make the whole dialogue itself the vehicle of a most fundamental
reflection on the dialogic mode, for the form of the Republic is a subtle
but precise example of the approved texis. Socrates distinguishes two basic
poetic modes. The first of these is straight narration, in which the poet
'himself is speaking directly while his characters speak in indirect discourse;
for example, Homer says that "Agamemnon ... said [t0 Chryses] that
rather than release his daughter he would grow old in Argos with her."
In the second mode the narrator drops out entirely and the characters speak
in their own persons, as in all drama (392d5). Epic represents a mixture
of these two basic styles (394c4). The first mode is honest enough, but
the second mode is censured. It is bad because in it the poet, by hiding
himself, hides the fictional nature of his work and evades all responsibility for its truth, leaving the actor.(or reader) caught in an unwitting imitation. For the actor becomes, as it were, the character-all too often
reprehensible- whose direct speech he declaims. But the guardians should
be allowed to imitate only good men (395d).
The Republic itself, however, has that form which is exactly designed
to provide at once the most complete poetic responsibility, the greatest
mimetic force, and the most worthwhile imitation. For the narrator, Socrates
himself, is always present and responsible, and he keeps himself before us
with the ever-recurring phrases "he said" and "I said" (393cll; contrast
Theaetetus 143c); nor is he an anonymous mouth-piece whose work a reader
reads, as he does the Homeric epics, without ever learning who the poet
was. (We see here, incidentally, one reason why Hesiod, who not only identifies himself but even warns.the reader that his source, the Muses, will
sometimes lie [Theogony 22, 27], is, if less loved, yet more acceptable to
Socrates; Republic 546ei, 607c8). The teller is Socrates, backing his own
words with the acts of his own life. At the same time the words and
arguments are dramatically direct, in the sense that the reader can almost
hear them- he may imitate them in the sense of rehearsing them in his
own soul and trying them out for truth; he can let the logos turn into an
ergon. This text is almost an "unwritten teaching," having overcome the
dead letter. And finally, the Republic as a whole- and this is a feature
it shares with other dialogues- is just the required imitation of the activ-
�34
MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
ity of the "best of men" (Phaedo 118al6); it is Plato's imitation of Socrates,
an imitation that will prove its authenticity by serving the double function
of commenting on the original while representing it. Consequently, we can
distinguish between what Socrates says and what the dialogues say; the
most striking example of this is the Phaedrus, which is so written that,
when rightly read, it casts doubt on Socrates' assertion within it that the
written word cannot teach (274c ff.) We shall see that similar tensions,
similarly inviting to thought, are written into the Republic.
lc. Yet in Book VII, when Socrates revises the guardian education for
the philosopher city, even this purged music is explicitly and emphatically
excluded from the formal plan of education as containing no "learning
matter" (mathema, 522a8, 537; cf. 504dl) leading. toward being. For such
music is merely "ethical" (522a4), i.e., an habituation of the soul that does
not lead to knowledge; it is a training but not an education, a conditioning but not a journey to the source, for "the dialectic pursuit alone travels
in this way" (533c7). Consequently, the musical training is completed very
early and culminates in gymnastics (cf. 376e6, 546d7, S91c5).
2a. We know from the dialogues, however, that there is a music yet
different from both the traditional and the purged music, the philosophical
music mentioned above. Evidently it was Pythagoras who first appropriated
the oldest of the Muses, Calliope, for philosophy. " Socrates gives her,
together with the next sister, Urania, the same office in the Phaedrus, where
Urania watches over those who make stories about the heavens and the
gods, while Calliope cares for those who compose "human stories" (259d6).
And in the Phaedo Socrates tells of a dream that has come to him often
and in various shapes but always with the same message: "0 Socrates, make
music and let that be your work" (60e6); he has always taken this dream
to mean that he should pursue philosophy, that being "the greatest music"
(6la3; cf. Republic 499d4, 548b8).
2b. What then is this philosophical music, this "imitation of inquiry"
(historiken mimesin, Sophist 267e2)? In the passage of the Phaedo quoted
above, Socrates says: "I myself am not a myth-teller" (61b5). This is literally true, for he is not one who makes imitations of what never was nor
will be, producing mere phantasms (cf. Sophist 236c), but he is one who
makes images of what is. We must immediately mention an almost paradoxical exception to this: the logos of the cities built "in speech" is, as it were,
Socrates' own myth; he speaks of ''the constitution which we told as a myth
in speech" (50le4). But otherwise Socrates, although he is willing enough
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35
to act out a myth, avoids telling myths of his own making; the "noble lie"
of the guardians is a myth attributed to the Phoenicians (414c4); that anti,
Homeric Nekyia or Descent to Hades, Socrates' substitute for Odysseus's
false and tedious tale to Alcinous (cf. scholion on 614bl and Note 11), which
closes the dialogue, is attributed to Er and only "saved" by Socrates (62lb8);
in other dialogues too Socrates avoids responsibility for myths (e.g., Gorgias
493, Phaedrus 244, Meno 81). Images, on the other hand, are his very own
mode; as Adeimantus ironically remarks at one point: "It isn't the usual
thing, I suppose, for you to speak through images" (487e6).
2c. An account of how such images as Socrates makes are formed is
given in the Phi/ebus (38e). When someone goes about reflecting much
by himself, many true opinions and accounts become written into his soul,
as by an inner scribe. This scribe is succeeded by a painter who draws images illustrating these inner accounts, and if the accounts are true, then
so are these images.
2d. Socratic images therefore differ from myths in being the direct consequence of an inner argument, and not the persuasive counterpart and
conclusion of a public conversation. When the dialectic attempt has ended,
often in failure, the imagination, as Kierkegaard says, feels fatigued and
reacts: "The mythical is thus the enthusiasm of the imagination in the service of speculation ... " (Concept of Irony, p. 132); the same faculty, in
its vigorous sobriety, produces the images here called Socratic. In their
presentation myths are thus preceded by an argument, as nearly the whole
Republic precedes the Myth of Er, and dialogic passages precede the myths
of, for insta.nce, the Phaedo, the Phaedrus, the Symposium, and the
Gorgias; images, on the other hand, are either actually followed by an explication of the interior argument that went into their making, or they
themselves give plain hints how the participant in the dialogue should reflect
on them. This reflection is of a very peculiar kind, and in inducing it lies
the special strength of the Socratic image: each such effort is accompanied
by a reflection on the effort itself, for to study a Socratic image always
means to study not only its content but the nature of "image" and "imaging" itself. The study of Socratic imagery is then exactly what Socrates
himself says music ought to be: the study of true being and its images;
as he repeats twice, this is one and the same art and effort (402b7, c7).
In Aristotle's opinion the making of such images, which are, as we shall
see, based on analogy, the chief sort of metaphor (Poetics 1457b16),
demands by far the greatest poetic gift, namely "the ability to see what
is like" (1459a8). We shall see that this is also the philosophical gift. In
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MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
Socrates' images the "ancient difference between philosophy and poetry"
(Republic 607b5) is reconciled.
2e-f. Socrates himself fulfills the demand he makes of all poets, which
is to "make an image of the Good" (40lbl). His image of the Good is the
"sun image"· or "likeness" (eikona, 509a9, homoioteta, 509c6), which
dominates the center of the dialogue. It is followed by that example of
a "corrected" Myth of Man which Socrates had before omitted (392a8).
The myth that he chooses to correct, tacitly but devastatingly, is indeed
the most crucial of all stories concerning humans. It is the one dramatized by Aeschylus in the tragedy of Prometheus Bound. It tells how the
treasonous immortal Prometheus gave men fire (252), how he opened their
eyes (447) and made them see, and how he made them come out of the
caves they had been, antlike, inhabiting (452) into the light of day to see
the heavens and to become wise (476). As Socrates re-tells this myth in
his "image of the cave" (Republic 514), it turns out that the fire Prometheus
brought was a counterfeit light (b2); those few who know how to nse it
only abuse it by allowing it to project deceptions (b8); men's eyes are as
blind as ever (515c9); they continue to live deep in a dark cave and their
wisdom is worthless (516c4-7). We might note here in passing that in the
Phi/ebus Socrates intimates that the true Prometheus is Pythagoras (16c),
and that in the Protagorasthe sophist himself, while crediting Prometheus
with having brought the other arts to men, claims that he omitted the
political art, which Hermes brought later directly from Zeus to all men
alike (322c1). 20
2g. The logos belonging to these images is absent in the Republic, but
its terms may be recovered from that tradition dealing with Plato's oral
"Unwritten Teachings," particularly the lecture- or meetings- Concerning the Good (see Note 28). In these terms, the terms of the Academy, the
"image of the Good" represents the One and the "image of the cave" the
Indiifinite Dyad; this interpretation will be pursued below in somewhat
more detail. So much, however, must be said at the outset: While it is a
serious enterprise to attempt to bring out what is in the dialogues without
being written there, it is a very external approach to discover in the texts
some Academic formula, and it is patent folly to think that the wisdom
which never would or even could be written (cf. Seventh Letter 341c-d)
can be recovered by making such identifications. For what is thus recovered
is obviously precisely its dead written image, as found, for the most part,
in Aristotle. For Aristotle, here as always, proceeds soberly and seriously
to profane the Academic mysteries in the interests of formulable truth. The
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37
very "mathematical" nature of the "Unwritten Teachings" supports this
point of view, for it is evidence that there was a live community concerned
with what is learnable par excellence, a group for whom the terms of the
teaching were pregnant with semi-technical meanings, which, bandied about
out of context, become exactly what Plato feared: somewhat fantastic fossils
of truth. Nor does it signify much that Plato himself on some occasion
did speak to the public in the language of the school, giving out such
schematisms as anyone may carry away in his memory or his pocket and
as everyone would have heard of anyhow-or that for some students
"mathematics had become philosophy, although they say that it should
be studied for the sake of something else" (Aristotle, Metaphysics 992a32
ff.). It is, after all, a remarkable fact of the tradition concerning the "Unwritten Teachings" that the doctrine that must have been their central matter, the doctrine concerning the order or taxis of the eide as discovered
by dialectic (cf. Philebus 16d-e), is divulged by no one, not even by Aristotle
(see Note 35).
3. The particular object of Socrates' music in the Republic, which may
be contrasted with the battering ram of his rhetoric in the Gorgias, is to
work a gentle and orderly revolution of the soul in respect to the love of
wisdom. The musical art is the ability to give an inviting preview of the
"marvelous way" that, according to the Seventh Letter (340c3), must be
given to any beginner- it is an art which Socrates once refers to as the
"art of conversion" (518d3). According to the stated plan of the philosophers' education, at twenty those chosen to study begin a formal sequence
of mathematics culminating in a "synopsis" (537c2). At thirty, after another
selection, the young philosophers enter upon the long road of dialectic,
which again culminates in a synoptic vision, that of the Good itself (540a8).
Just as Socrates had first introduced Glaucon to the Good as the "greatest
learning matter" (megiston mathema) poetically, by an image, so he now
sets out the plan of study that will prepare Glaucon to reach the Good
as a "hymn": "Don't we know," he says, speaking of the mathematical
studies they have just surveyed, "that all these things are only the preludes
of the hymn which we must study?" (53ld7; cf. Timaeus 29d5, Laws 722c6).
And a little later, playing on the double meaning of nomos, law or song,
he speaks of the "law which the activity of dialectic fulfills" or the "song
which it performs" (532al). Socrates will not turn this song into expository
prose, since "no longer, dear Glaucon, will you be able to follow ... , for
you would no longer be seeing an image of what we are discussing but
the truth itself, as it appears to me" (533al). Socrates' music, as the art
of conversion, is nothing but the poetic synopsis of the end as well as the
I
I
�MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
38
road of the philosophical education itself. It is designed to turn Glaucon
into the right course by showing him "what the business as a whole is .
. . . For once he hears this, if he is indeed properly philosophical and worthy
of the undertaking- a man divine- he is persuaded that he has heard of
a wonderful way and that right now he must concentrate on it, or else life
will not be worth living" (Seventh Letter 340b-c). So this was the
significance of the omission of music from the plan of education: the very
presentation was itself to be the musical overture to learning. We shall see
that when the object of study is the "highest learning matter" the images
and songs in which it is previewed demand the highest art.
4. Books V-VII, which contain the central images, are again, like the
outer books, roughly symmetrical about the center. Upon the completion
of the just city, culminating in the discussion of the community of women
and children (V, 449-471: VIII, 543a), Glaucon asks his question concerning the possibility of this city. Socrates answers it by introducing the
philosopher kings. This question and its answer frame the center of the
dialogue (V, 47lc-473: VII, 540d; cf. 466d8). The next inner theme is the
definition and- here Adeimantus interposes- the defense, temperament,
and proper age of the philosopher (V, 474b-VI, 502: VII, 535-540). At
the innermost core is Socrates' initiation of Glaucon into the philosophical
education, effected by two great images, the "sun image" and the "cave
image," which are interwoven with explications and with each other, as
shown in the table:
507 a ff. [sun image
509d ff.
explication of the sun image by the
r
I "Divided line"
514a ff.
517b ff.
522a ff
533a ff.
lr
cave image
correlation of the two images
explication of the cave image in the
"plan of studies"
l
·
correlation of the explications of both images.
We have before us a composition of intricate but clear texture.
B.
I. Glaucon's introduction to philosophy will itself have a prelude. He
will discover for himself the meaning of "opinion," doxa.
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39
Opinion in its various meanings determines the musical key of the different parts of the dialogue by its absence or presence. The outer ring of
logoi is explicitly spoken in a signature appropriate to the absence of the
"good opinion" (doxa) of mankind and its homonymous consequence,
"reputation (doxa)." Adeimantus had stipulated at the beginning (Book
II) that the argument about justice must "remove reputations" (367b5),
and Glaucon had provided the magic Ring of Gyges, 21 which will allow
the wearer "to do anything"- that is, to be a complete crook, pan-ourgos,
without being either seen or blamed. At the end of the argument (Book
X) the ring and also the concealing Helmet of Hades, which the argument
had been, so to speak, wearing, can be removed (612b5), for even on the
supposition that the opinion of men carries no weight, justice has been
proved profitable. At the center of the dialogue, however, where an ergon
is set into the logos, the opinion of mankind cannot be supposed away,
for the many will have to be won to some sort of acceptance of philosophy
if anything is to be done.
But it is really as the individual inner source of this public opinion,
as the faculty of the soul Glaucon will soon learn to call doxa, that opinion becomes of overwhelming importance at the center, for both the older
and the younger lover of wisdom. For about the "greatest learning matter" Socrates himself has, as he repeatedly says, only opinion (506c4, e2,
509c3, 517b7, 533a4; cf. Phaedrus 278d), although opinion so well founded
that Glaucon will not be able to follow him without a long course of study.
So also the "interest" on the capital Good, its "child" (Socrates plays on
the double meaning of tokos: child and interest, as in our phrase "bearing
interest"), which he gives to Glaucon, will provide the latter only with opinion. But since the interest is not paid in counterfeit coin and the child is
no bastard (507b5), we may infer thatOlaucon will conceive not false but
"true opinion," and this is the beginning required if positive learning, as
distinct from a preliminary purgative refutation, is to take place. However,
throughout the conversation the Good, that one thing which everyone wants
in truth and without regard to "seeming" (doxan, 505d8), will have to be
approached by opinion: "A man should remember that he is human not
only in his fortune but also in his demonstrative knowledge" (quoted from
On the Good, Vita Aristotelis Marciano 953b, ed. Bekker).
2. As so often in the Republic, the conversation makes its own mode
the object of reflection- in the case of doxa, at its very inception; Socrates'
opinions on the highest matters are prefaced by ~n inquiry into the meaning of opining.
The "third wave" has just closed in on Socrates (Book V, 473c6); he
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MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
and Glaucon must now define the philosopher (474b5). Just as there are
some who desire love, he says, and some who desire honor, there are some
who desire wisdom, and all of it. Glaucon asks whether lovers of wisdom
then include lovers of sights and sounds. Socrates answers with a distinction which he would have difficulty, he says, in getting anyone but Glaucon
to admit (47 5e6): The just and the unjust, the good and the bad, are each
one by itself, but "in communion with deeds and bodies and one another
they are imagined in every way and appear each to be many" (476a4). Now
lovers of sights love-and apprehend- beauty in its manyness and are asleep
with respect to true beauty itself, being unable to distinguish this one from
the many, but the philosopher loves the one true beauty. The "thinking"
(dianoia) of the philosopher is knowing and is to be called knowledge,
gnome, while the lovers of beauty only opine and have opinion, doxa
(476d5), Furthermore, knowledge must be of something which is, and which
is "that which is completely," and which is therefore completely ''to be
known," gni5ston, w~ile "what is not" is entirely unknowable," agniiston
(477al). Now if there is something "between" (metaxy) complete being and
complete non-being, then, as knowledge was said to belong to being and
ignorance (agnosia) to non-being, so to this "thing between" must correspond something that is itself ''between ignorance and knowledge" (episteme,
aiD). This is found to be opinion, having an object and a "power" (dynamis)
different from both knowledge and ignorance (b8; cf. Symposium 202a).
If he and Glaucon can discover what it is that, being more shadowy than
being but brighter than non-being, lies between them, they will have found
"that which is to be opined," the doxaston (478e3). Then they will name
it, "assigning extremes to extremes and means to means" (e4). They will
appeal to the lover of beauty in manyness and ask him if all these things
he loves are not also sometimes ugly, and if the same is not true of things
just, great, or heavy- that they will all be found at some time to be the
opposite, so that they cannot be said to be or not to be one thing or another,
but are tossed about in-between being and non-being. Lovers of such things
should be called "lovers of opinion" and not "lovers of wisdom" (philodoxous: philosophous, 480all). So ends Book V: becoming, genesis, that "inbetween thing," has not been explicitly named, but it will clearly have to
play a fundamental role in Socrates' subsequent presentation.
3. The foregoing argument cannot help reminding Glaucon of an earlier
one (Book IV), in which it had been concluded that cities derive their constitutions from the individual constitutions of their citizens. 22 Socrates had
then asked whether the three capacities of the soul, desire, spiritedness,
and reasoning, belong to three different parts or whether each of these
�41
; belongs to the whole soul (436a8). To show that they are. indeed three
separate parts, Socrates and Glaucon had posited a strict correspondence
, between desires and their objects. If a man wants at the same time to drink
and not to drink because he knows that he ought not to, then his soul must
contain opposing parts: a "bidding" and a "forbidding" part (439c6). There
are then two parts, the rational part or logistikon "with which· a man
calculates" (logizetat), and the desiring part or epithymetikon which is
"unreasoning" (alogiston) and in which desire (epithymia) is located (439d).
Between these two, the "forms" (eide, e2) that are ordinarily recognized,
Socrates inserts a third (e3), the spirited part or thymoeides. Glaucon, obviously listening to the name, thinks that it is more akin to desire than
to reason. But Socrates points out that it can be an "auxiliary" of the reasoning part, since it makes us feel high-minded anger, or thymos (440e). Finally,
these three parts are arranged within us as the "three terms of a musical
proportion" (443d6), and thymos becomes "the in-between power" (479d8),
which, while itself obedient to reason, can in turn govern the body (403d,
4lle6).
Glaucon had therefore been asked long before the present argument
to distinguish the parts of the soul by means of their relative objects and
to understand one of these parts as a mean between two extremes. If we
juxtapose the results of both exercises we get the following result:
BOOK IV
logistikon
thymoeiaes
epithymetikon
BOOKY
gnosis
doxa
(agnosia)
For the middle parts this correlation is indeed tacitly but unmistakably
made in the dialogue. For instance, a chief characteristic of the warriors,
who as a class of the just city correspond to the spirited part of the soul,
is the "preservation of law-abiding opinions" (433c7) within them; in fact,
as Aristotle points out (Politics 1327b40), their thymos is the source of
their discernment. Also, in a limocracy, which represents spiritedness among
the degenerating cities and is emphatically presented as lying "between"
aristocracy and oligarchy (545c6, dl), the chief characteristic of citizens
is love of honor (548c7), which implies an interrelation of the thymos with
the external doxa called reputation.
4. The logistikon, on the other hand, is not quite coextensive with·
gniisis. Here we must stop to observe the name itself. In the traditional ·
double division of the soul into a rational and an irrational part, the first,
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MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
as having "reason" (logos), that is, the power of giving accounts (Nicomachean Ethics, 1102a30), was quite properly called logikon, a term evidently used already by the Pythagoreans. 23 Why then does Socrates call
it the logistikon,.connecting it explicitly with the verb logizesthai, to reckon
or calculate (439d5), rather than ·with the logos of dialegesthai (5llb4,
534c3)? It is because the logistikon is a restricted power, a power of planning, whose specific "work" later turns out to be calculation (cf.
Nichomachean Ethics 1139a13), measuring,. and weighing-in short,
whatever corresponds only to the lower part of the knowing power, to that
power of mathematical thinking which Glaucon will discover later, once
again as a mean between opinion and knowledge; and will learn to call
dianoia. We must remember that the guardians as dog-philosophers have
an admixture of ignorance in their knowing power, since they rewgnize
the city's enemies by the criterion of their own ignorance of them (376bS).
Moreover, their service as soldiers and administrators requires a knowledge
of applied mathematics, an ability to be correct in matters sensual, which
forms a part, although a secondary one, even of the philosophers' education (522c).
The lowest capacity, on the other hand, the epithymetikon, might well
be said to correspond to ignorance in a certain way, since the object of
the first, pleasure, partakes, as Socrates later shows Glaucon, of the object of the second, non-being (585)- though actually "ignorance ... is a
voidness in the condition of the soul" (b3) and no capacity at all.
It follows that the tripartite soul bf Book IV, although it has a coextensive middle part, both begins and ends on a level below the soul described
in the central conversation. How is this new soul to be understood?
5. At the very beginning of the articulation of the first soul Socrates
had warned that nothing accurate could come "from such proceedings"
(methadon, 435dl) and that a "longer and fuller way'' (d3) would be needed,
a requirement repeated at a crucial moment in Book VI (504b2). With the
discovery of doxa Socrates has started Glaucon on this longer way. The
soul that now emerges is the soul as "the organ by which each man learns"
(518c5; cf. 527d8), analogous in its passive openness to an organ of sense.
The parts of this soul are specifically called "powers" (477b, c, e) when
first introduced, and· this describes them completely- they are nothing but
the soul's capability of taking in, without modification, beings of a different degree, of "having ideas" in the original sense; this is why in a crucial
place (5lld7) they can as easily be called "receptivities" (pathemata) in the
soul. Compared to this learning soul, the three parts of the first soul sink
to mere tendencies, dispositions, or appetites (cf. Nicomachean Ethics,
�43
U02b30). Indeed, the alternate name of the logistikon is "the wisdom-loving
part" (philosophon, 586e4), and the love of wisdom is often called an
epithymia, a desire, in the central books (e.g., 475b4, 8; 517b6). And of
course, the very name of the thymos, with its allusion to epithymia, implies a kind of reflexive desire, as opposed to the desire that goes out upon
an object. This means that in a sense allthese parts function as desires,.
as activating human wants, and so it fits very well that the wisdom-loving·
part should not be coextensive with the knowing part, since when the soul
truly knows, it no longer desires the objects of knowledge but has attained
and moves among them (cf. Note 10). Thus, once the learning soul has
come into focus, the terms of the tripartite soul are used mostly to
distinguish' temperaments or ''lovers.". The philosopher, for instance, is
defined by means of a division of men into lovers of erotic pleasure and
wine, lovers of honor, and lovers of wisdom (474c8; cf. 435e7). Again, the
degenerate cities ate characterized by different prevailing appetites, and
when tyranny is discussed the three parts of the first soul are even explicitly connected to three "pleasures" or "desires" (580d). This restlessly desir"
ing tripartite soul is the embodied soul, a monstrous, precariously conflated unity (588d); it turns into a single rising organ of love only at the
sight of beauty (Phaedrus 249d ff.), under the influence of that divine
madness (244} which induces visions of the invisible. In contrast, the increasingly more receptive soul of the center, although still using the senses,
is more nearly the soul by itself, whose oneness, presumably similar to that
of the Whole, is a subject,· as Socrates says, for a more advanced inquiry
(see next section).
·
6. The "division" of the soul is the pre-dialectical "exercise," the gymnasia (Parmenides 135c8, d4, 7), of the Republic. Almost every reference
to the dialectical process of "dividing" refers to distinguishing the parts
or the objects of the soul (454a, 476a, 523a, 580d, 571a-b, 595a-b, 618c).
"Division" or diairesis is not here a very formal undertaking, as can be
gathered from the numerous names given to these parts: eide, gene, mere,
pathe (435b, c, e, 439e, 441c, 443d, 442b, c, .612a5). In the course of the
central conversation a quadripartite learning soul will emerge, but Socrates
indicates that more divisions might be made in a more complete study
(534a7) and that the question whether the soul is ultimately "many or one
in kind" (612a4; cf. 443d7) has not really been settled. An important aspect
of this dialectic exercise is the finding of the "in-between," the metaxy, which
Glaucon immediately recognizes as analogous to the mathematical problem of "finding the mean." The ability to discover means is the chief gift
necessary to the dialectician (Philebus 16el). The soul becomes the object
�MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
44
of this exercise, not only because, as we have seen, the philosopher's version of the definition of justice is "Know Thyself,"24 but also because the
politically indispensable "art of leading souls," rhetoric, depends on a
knowledge of the divisions of the soul (Phaedrus 27ld; in the Republic
Thrasymachus is told to acquire this art-Socrates is teaching him his own
business, as it were). However, the undertaking remains a mere exercise
because, as we shall see, Socrates must exclude true dialectic from the
Republic.
c.
1~2.
Adeimantus, named the "Dauntless," who has heard and is shaken
by every current doubt (cf. 362e, 419a), interposes an objection (487b):
Socrates' argument about the excellence of philosophers is convincing in
words, but in deed everyone knows that these people end up either
scoundrelly or impotent, especially if they keep philosophizing past their
youth. Socrates proceeds to win Adeimantus and the rest of the crowdthere are, besides Glaucon, eight named and several nameless auditors"in deed" (327c, 328b). He does not deny the accusation, but he will justify
his demand for the rule of the philosophers by an image (487e5) and. its.
explication (489a4); the image is that of a mutinous crew and the good
but powerless captain. There follows a series of images that show that the
greatest of all sophists, the Many, is in fact the greatest corrupter of natures,
who corrupts the best most deeply; this Public Sophist is like a great brute
that the little private sophists know how to propitiate (492a-493d). Thus
philosophy is left desolate and any little tinker may, as it were, take her
to wife (495e). There are, however, some good natures who are for various
reasons incorruptible- Socrates here cites as one such reason his own
"divine sign," the daimonion (496c4); when soon after he speaks of a "wellborn and well-bred ethos" (b2) one can scarcely help thinking of the Heraclitean saying that "ethos is a man's daimon" (Diels, Vorsokratiker, Fr..
119). Such a nature will run to shelter as from a storm and will live-and
die-in private. Thus such a man will do great deeds but not the greatest,
which can only be done within a suitable constitution (497a).
Adeimantus's worries about the slanders of philosophy he has heard
are allayed. They return to the question of the possibility of the city, and
now Adeimantus wants to know whether any of the contemporary cities
are suitable to philosophy (497a9). Not a single one, says Socrates (who,
however, as we know, himself lives and acts as a philosopher in Athens),
not even the city in speech that we have just founded, because it too is
deficient without the addition of a man, of a living law-giver (497d)-the
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45
very one they were talking about when Adeimantus interrupted. This man's
main problem will be how philosophy may be pursued in such a way as
not to ruin the city; the solution, as announced .by Socrates, is that not
the young but those advanced in life must most devote themselves to
philosophy. Adeimantus remarks how serious Socrates seems to be here,
but he thinks that most of his hearers will object just as earnestly, and
Thrasymachus most of all. Socrates says reprovingly, "Do not make a quarrel between me and Thrasymachus, who have just become friends- although we were not enemies before'.' (498c9). Thrasymachus approves this
remark by his silence (cf.450a5)_ It is no wonder, Socrates goes on, that
the people are hard to persuade, for they have never seen a virtuous man
rule in a similarly virtuous city. This is why no city or constitution will
ever become perfect until either some necessity forces the lover of wisdom
to take care of the city, or the true eros of philosophy falls on princes.
This may very well happen; in fact it may already have happened if there
is now some "barbaric place" (499c9), or if there ever was or will be a situation, wherC a virtuous man rules: "The constitution we discusSed has cOme
into being and was and will be, whenever this Muse is in power in the city"
(d2). We must.not attack the many, for they will then become gentle and
will believe that no city can be happy which is not painted by an artist
looking "to the divine pattern" (500e3). Such an artist will begin with a
clean slate, painting on it a constitution whose model is both the just and
the beautiful and the temperate itse.lf and the actual condition of men
(50! b), and the many will accept him. So a conclusion has been reached:
Our law-giving is difficult but not impossible (502c).
In this interlude with Adeimantus, Socrates completes the practical
foundation of his city. Having been voted into office, he succeeds by his
oratory in allaying the popular fears of the "philosophical clan" (50!e3);
his persuasiveness is due to his ability to present a persuasive example of
the uncorrupted lover of wisdom- himself. In defending what appears to
both of them a crucial matter, the life-long pursuit of philosophy, he even
becomes, as he himself remarks in retrospect, a spirited orator who speaks
"as an indignant man will" (thymotheis, 536c4). He is anxious for, and
successful in, preserving the peace with Thrasymachus, the single sophist
who represents that brutal public sophist, the people (cf. 336b5). And when
he imagines that their city may at this very moment exist in some barbarian
. spot, we must recall that the dialogue must by now have been going for
well over ten hours; it is night, and we may imagine the barbaric sounds
of a Thracian orgy beginning to penetrate into the house, the celebration
the company had come to attend but which they will now miss as they
sit through the rest of the night under Socrates' spell.
�MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
46
3. Socrates is now actually finished with Adeimantus. He will use him
as an interlocutor only once more, in the discovery of the degenerate cities
(548d8-576bl0), for Adeimantus is the expert on accounts of the worst.
However, they continue a little beyond. Socrates reviews the three waves
he has faced and ends by daring to formulate the "possible city" boldly
in terms of the guardian city: "Guardians in the accurate sense, it must
be ordained, are philosophers" (503b5). These must be at once quick and
gentle and able to undertake. the "greatest learning matters" (503e4). Adeimantus wants to know what these are, and Socrates reminds him of their
former study of the soul and its virtues and how they then said that a longer
road must be taken to reach better things (504e). But what are these things?
Adeimantus asks insistently. Socrates is annoyed that Adeimantus either
does not understand or is trying to make trouble, "since you have often
heard this-that 'the idea of the Good' is the greatest study" (505a2), for
this alone is what everyone wants not in seeming but in truth. Although
Socrates has already said that this Good cannot be either knowledge or
pleasure (505c), Adeimantus presses to be told whether it is either of these
or yet something else. A sarcastic exchange follows, in which Socrates denounces Adeimantus's unwillingness to hear, and Adeimantus scores
Socrates' propensity for repeating the opinion of others (!); this ends in
Socrates' refusing to talk to him about the Good (506cll). Now Glaucon
returns to the conversation and implores Socrates not to stop just as the
consummation of the argument is ahead; they will be satisfied if Socrates
speaks of the Good as he did before of the virtues (d2). Glaucon does not
realize that they have, in fact, already set out on the "longer path."
D.
i
,I
I. Socrates yields to Glaucon. He will speak, though not of the Good
itself but rather of its "offspring," which is most like it (506e). Socrates
reminds Glaucon of the "oft-told" story of the one and the many (cf. 476).
Those many good and beautiful things are seen but not known, while the
thing itself, by which what was many comes "under one idea," is "known"
but not "seen" (507b9). Now the artificer of the senses has made sight the
most costly of the senses, since it needs a "third kind of thing" (el), light,
to work. The sun is he of all the gods in heaven who gives us this light,
and so the "sense" (aisthesis) of sight and the "power" of being seen (e6)
depend on him. The eye is, of all "the organs of sense," "most like the sun"
(508b3). This sun is the child of the Good, a child begotten "analogous
to itself" (bl3). For the Good is "in the place of thought" in relation both
"to thought and to things thought" (nous, noumena, cl) what the sun is
�47
BRANN
"in the place of visibility" (c2) in relation to sight and things seen. Socrates
completes the analogy by likening "that in the soul which knows in this
way" to the eye; as the eye sees things "clearly" (dl) when lit up by the
sun, so the soul knows or merely opines things in the measure that the
idea of the Good gives or fails to give "truth" (atetheia, d5). Glaucon is
amazed. Adeimantus's question is now certainly answered; the Good cannot be either knowledge or pleasure (509a6). Socrates says that there is
yet more to be seen in the image (a9), for the sun provides not only visibility
but also growth and "becoming," genesis (b3), though it is not itself Becoming. Analogously the Good is the source of being, though not itself Being
(b7, 9). This "image" or eikon, which we shall call the "sun image" for
short, is best seen in a schematic sentence:
As the
light
sun
is responsible for giving
So
the
{ Good
visibility
the place of
in
{ truth
vision
to objects of
{ thought
{ thought
clarity
which are therefore perceived with
by the
{ knowledge
eye
becoming
, and is also the source of
{ soul
{ being
This image is now explicated in the "Divided Line." Glaucon is to take
the "double kinds" (509d4), the "visible" (horaton) and the "intelligible"
(noeton), and to cut them, as he would a line, into two unequal parts. Then
he is to cut each section again in the same ratio (d7). Thus he will have,
in the lower part, one subsection related to the other "in respect to clarity
and lack of clarity" (d9) in the same way that images such as shadows and
reflections are related to that of which they are images, namely natural
objects and manufactured things (510a). To this whole lower part belongs
"the opinable" (doxaston, a9). Next, the lower subsection of the upper part
is considered. Here "the soul, using those things before imitated as images"
{510b4), proceeds "from hypotheses" not "to the beginning" (ep'archen)
but "to the end," while in the uppermost section she makes "her way"
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MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
(methodon) without any use ofimages but by the "ideas" or eidethemselves
and through them alone, up to the un-hypothetical beginning (b6). Socrates
explains the lower of these subsections in terms of the work of the mathe- .
maticians, who assume certain hypotheses without giving an account of
them and who reach consistent conclusions on the basis of these. In doing
this they may use the "visible looks" of things, but these are not what they
are really thinking about. The true object of their thinking is the intelligible eidos (5lla3), the "look" that "one may see in no other way than by
means of the thinking faculty" (dianoia, al); thus Socrates indicates that
his use of the term eidos is fundamentally ironic. In the top section this
paradoxically named "intelligible look" itself, the eidos noeton, is attained
by "the power of dialectic" (b4), which uses the hypotheses as "hypotheses
in effect" -or "in being." This is a double entendre which means both that
the soul is now aware of the hypotheses as being so far nothing but
hypotheses and that it will now treat them as hypotheses underlying being. And having risen by means of these "up to the unhypothesized, unto
the beginning of the whole," it descends, using nothing sensible, but only
the hypotheses which are now no longer "suppositions"; these are the eide
themselves (b-e). Book VI closes as Socrates assigns four "affections" or
receptive powers (d7) of the soul to the four sections: thought or noesis
to the highest, thinking or dianoia to the second, trust or pistis to the third,
and to the lowest image-recognition" or eikasia; ,these are to be "ordered
analogously'' to their objects (e2). (Noesis, usually "intellection," and nous,
usually "intellect," are here both rendered by "thought" to contrast their
perfect and direct mode with the progressive and intermediary mode of
dianoetic "thinking.") A table (see next page) relating the line to the sun
image will make the correlation clearer.
2a. In presenting the sun image to Glaucon Socrates is requiring him
to exercise his doxa.
Of the two "doxastic" poWers,· the lower, whose pregnant name is eikasia,
and which is thrown in at the very end with conscious nonchalance, will
prove to be the most pervasive of the four "affections."
Ordinarily the verb eikazein means to "imagine," both in the sense of
making an image and likeness, and of discovering a likeness or likelihood;
so it means to compare or conjecture. The noun eikasia means both the
ability to make or see images, likelihoods, and conjectures, and the image,
likelihood, or conjecture itself. For Glaucon the word would probably call
to mind a witty and malicious amusement with which clever people spice
their symposia, called "likenesses" or eikasiai." The game consisted of
representing someone in an image, whereupon the victim might retaliate
�49
Source of the Whole
truth
Idea of the Good
clarity
ideas
thought or
know lege as
exercised in
dialetic
hypotheses
thinking as
exercised in
mathematics
place of
intelligibles:
being
Intelligible
things
---~--------------------- ------------~--
Things of
sight and
opinion
natural and
artifiCial
objects
trust
Sun
place of
visibles:
becoming
recognition
reflections . and making
of images
by making a "counter-image"- or by refusing to play. So Meno tells
Socrates that be appears to be "most like" (80a5) a torpedo fish (while
Socrates ostensibly declines to make a counter-image-of course the whole
dialogue is an unflattering portrait of Meno); and Alcibiades, in the one
true triumph of his life, appearing in the Symposium as the god Dionysus
himself, speaks of Socrates "through images" and compares him to one
of the Sileni in his train, except that, in his image, which is "for the sake
of truth" (215a6), this Silenus is more sober and far more divine than the
god himself. And in Xenophon's Symposium (VI, 8; cf. also VIII, 43)
Socrates curtly forbids the game when the eikasiai threaten to become in-·
jurious and false. Now Socrates is in the habit of introducing great matters u11der the image of a game or riddle (cf. 479bll, 521c5), and Glaucon
will soon see that the "game of images" is an image- arid an example- of
the most distinctive of human faculties.
In the meantime it must startle him to hear "conjecturing" elevated into a power of the soul along with thought itself. But as the meaning of
Socrates' central image penetrates he must notice that this image itself required a peculiar application of his ability to see images. For he is, on the
one hand, intended to imagine by means of the image what the Good is
"like," but he is also, on the other hand, required to recognize simultaneously
�.
il
50
MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
that the sun's world is but a likeness, that his own visible world is a
counterfeit of being. Socrates had in fact prepared Glaucon for the fundamental importance of this power to recognize an image as an image when
he had intimated earlier that to fail to possess it is to be permanently asleep·
to being: "Look, isn't that just what dreaming is: when someone either
in his sleep or while awake regards that which is like to something not as
like but as the same as that to which it is like?" (476c4). In taking in the
sun image, Glaucon then learns to use his eikasia in both of the fundamental senses that Socrates, as the savior of the true and original meaning of
words, has restored to it.
2b. Similarly the next power, pistis or trust, comes into play. For just
as in seeing the sun's world as an image Glaucon has been forced to lose
trust in the visible world, so in seeing the sun as an image of !he Good
and "most like it" (506e3) he acquires a better doxa of this world, a trust
that life and government in the image of the Good are possible here. This
trust is the "eikastic" counterpart of that persuasion to virtue which is the
purpose of Socratic myth-telling (cf. 62lcl, 3). The question "whatever is
the Good itself?" is bidden goodbye for now" (506el), and no explicit dialectical account of the Good is given at all. The Good appears here only as
an object for belief, namely as the motive for study, the end and incentive
to learning and doing. It is "that which every soul pursues and on account
of which it does everything, having a pre-sentiment .that there is some such
thing" (505dll). It is the one same, single, thing which all human acti.on,
be it for show or genuine, intends not in seeming but in being, that which
makes anything, including the virtues, good for us, namely "useful and
profitable" (504a4). What makes the difference between attaining this true
desire or missing it is precisely knowledge or lack of knowledge of the Good
(e2). In that sense only is it the "greatest study," for, as we shall see, in
another sense it is no "learning matter" at all. Nevertheless, the explicit
consideration of the relation that human excellence and the human good
have to the agathon, the good, was dropped as soon as Giaucon re-entered
the conversation (506e); clearly it is a question to be discusseq either very
superficially or only after long preparation (cf. Aristotle, Magna Mora/ia
1182a27, who refers to the discussion of this question in Concerning the
Good).
2c. Perhaps the absence of any direct reflection on the nature of the
Good seems to be in want of some further explanation.
An Aristotelian anecdote about the audience's reaction to Plato's "Lecture on the Good," that half-mythical event when he spoke to the public
�BRANN
51
of the "Unwritten Teachings" of his school, is related by Aristoxenus in
his Harmonic Elements (II, 30), and is pertinent here: "They came, every
one of them, expecting to get some one of the goods considered human,
... but when his reasonings appeared to be of mathematical studies and
numbers and geometry and astronomy and [when he said), at last, that
the Good is the One, I think it seemed to them very strange indeed; and
then some sneered at it and others criticized it. Now what was the reason
for this? That they knew nothing beforehand, but just like intellectuals
(eristik01) were present to lap it up on the strength of the mere name." Now
Socrates himself has several such argumentative types, such "eristics,'' on
his hands- one of them Adeimantus, to whom he is careful to mention
the "idea of the Good" as something Adeimantus has often heard of before,
as something which is a cause of usefulness and profit and without which
a man "cannot have the sentiments of a gentlemen" (505b3). Adeimantus
reacts with a pat, eristic question worthy of the obtuse cleverness of a Meno:
"But you, Socrates, do you think the Good is knowledge or pleasure or
some other thing besides these?" (506b2; cf. Meno 70a); clearly this is a
standard, routine question about the Good (cf. Philebus 19c). Here, Plato,
as is his wont, nobly shows a Socrates wiser in practice than Plato himself
was, for in the two dialogues dealing with the Good, the Republic and
the Philebus, Socrates finds tactful ways to choose his interlocutor and
to bring him along. In the present dialogue he silences Adeimantus by suggesting to him that he has heard it all before- the ritual-like use of the
term "idea of the Good" (505a, 505e, 517b, 526e, 534b), although it is made
clear enough that the Good is not an eidos at all, sounds like a soothing
allusion to current discussions (cf. Epicharmus in Diogenes Laertius Ill,
14, 27). Meanwhile he gently brings Glaucon to face, without taking refuge
in clowning, the "awe-inspiring enormity" (509cl) of this Socratic Good.
But Socrates' indirection is not only a matter of avoiding public
misunderstanding; it also has a positive pedagogic purpose, which is precisely to prevent Glaucon from pouncing precipitously on some bare truths
that might turn his high spirits (cl) into bored sneers. In providing Glaucon
with images to reflect upon, Socrates instills in him a kind of artificial
"recollection" (cf. Meno 81c), which will enable him to "recognize" the logos
whenever he himself should come upon it." This is, after all, what the
effect of any artfully wrought image ought to be- a slow or a sudden dawn'
ing of its logos. Therefore in some way a dialectical account of the Good,
formulable in terms not unlike those of the "Unwritten Teachings," must
be latent here.'' We shall try to work it out.
3a. When Socrates has delivered his sun image Glaucon asks him to
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MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
go once more through the "likeness of the sun" (509c5) in order to fill in
whatever had been omitted before. Socrates' answer to this request is the
dividing of the line.
The "Divided Line" is the mathematical figure for an implicit logos
and the possibility of learning what is yet unknown. The choice of a linear
figure is itself meaningful, for the line, as the unique connection of two
point-monads, stands for the closest of all relationships, that of like to
like, of which the knower and the known are the paradigm (cf. Aristotle,
On the Soul, 404b23, citing Plato; Metaphysics 1036bl3 f., on the Pythagoreans); it stands as well for the possibility of incommensurable and hence
irrational, i.e., not directly expressible, relations. Th understand this explication of the sun image, Glaucon will have to exercise his dianoia.
The word dianoia can be used quite generally for what we would call
"mental activity." For instance, Socrates himself says (476d5): "Why may
we not call the mental activity (dianoia) [cf. Sophist 263d] of one who
knows, 'gnomi,' and of one who opines, 'doxa'?" This word, doxa, too,
will be "restored" by Socrates to its full significance. The dianoia, which
goes with the third section from the bottom of the line, is, then, the power
used in thinking or, as the phrase goes, in "thinking things through"; this
thinking is the soul organ's restless scanning of the articulations of being
for distinctions and comparisons. It means attending to, or searching for,
that in things which can be grasped in thoughtful words, such as the Greeks
calllogoi. This scanning involves a higher kind of eikasia, which may be
termed "dianoetic eikasia.m 9 For sensible things, when caught in speech,
reveal themselves as mere imitations of something which the logos is truly
about-as the "visible aspects" (horomena eide, 510d5) copying the true
invisible "looks" (eide) of the thing itself. Likewise in the Phaedo (100a2)
Socrates intimates that those who look at things in terms of /ogoi are Jess
involved in images than those who look at them more literally with their
physical eyes. In the Sophist (26le) it turns out that this is because logoi
are "manifestations" (de/ornata) of being. The natural objects considered
by the dianoia are therefore described primarily as "images"; in the dianoetic
section, the soul proceeds by "using the very things before imitated [i.e.,
the natural objects that were imitated in the lowest section] as images"
(510b4, 5lla7). The originals of these new images are -somehow-caught
in what speech says: recall that the term logos stands for the meaning as
well as for the words that convey it. By entrusting its inquiry to this logos,
the dianoia is, in effect, "supposing" such originals; it is literally
"hypothesizing" them so that they may serve as the basis of all distinctions, comparisons, inferences, and deductions.
Now in an inquiry by means of logo!, certain results turn out to be
�BRANN
53
primary and pervasive (522c8). Among these are the fact that a thing can
always be called "one," and together with another, "two," that counting
seems the inevitable concomitant of naming; furthermore, that in different
things the same shape can be discerned and that it is caught accurately
only in speech and never in a representation. To work out the parts and
interconnections- they seem to be inherently perspicuous- of these objects that speech has discovered, it is necessary to recognize them as pure
and separate, Hence arise the mathematicals, the "objects of study" par
excellence, which form an especially important province of the dianoetic
realm. On the highest level they supply the subjects of that indispensable
pre-dialectical "exercise" in which Parmenides engaged Socrates in his youth
(Parmenides 135e); for the Platonic Parmenides the most important
hypotheses to be investigated are, of course, the two suppositions concerning the "One," namely that it is or is not. However, any common name
is in fact a dianoetic hypothesis as well, and any sentence is a dianoetic
structure- both are worthy objects of study.
3b. If for Socrates, the philosophical poet, the fundamental nature of
the present discourse is eikastic, for Glaucon, the mathematical enthusiast,
it is dianoetic. Summarizing in his own words, but accurately, what he has
learned from the division of the line, Glaucon perceptively brings out a
central fact only implicit in Socrates' words, namely that the objects of
the dianoia are the same as the noeta of the uppermost part-thatthey
are these noeta before that complete logos, which brings the thinker up
to the thing itself, has been reached. In fact, he ends by treating the divided
line as if the whole purpose of the division had been only to set the terms
for defining the dianoia. For, observing that the very name of dia-noia
suggests something in-between, or a mean, Glaucon defines it, in analogy
to his earlier definition of doxa, as "something between doxa and nous"
(5lld4), as the naturally intermediate faculty par excellence (cf. Symposium
202, where Eros as daimon is the corresponding intermediary).
3c. Socrates, of course, depends on the mathematical predisposition
of his.young philosopher-mathematics being after all the young rulers'
childhood amusement-in introducing him to the exercise ofthis, the lower
noetic faculty (cf. 508c4, 509dll). In Book VII, Socrates takes the act of
beginning the long description of the formal mathematical education that
is the "prelude" to dialectic (53ld7) as an opportunity to engage Glaucon
in a serious "methodical" dianoetic exercise. When Glaucon, accurately
recalling the musical education of the guardians, perceptively concludes
that this training cannot be the study that the future philosophers need,
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MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
Socrates asks him: "0 my marvelous Glaucon, what would be such a study
... ?" Glaucon eagerly interrupts to ask in turn what study might indeed
remain to them (522b6). Socrates now invites him pointedly to become his
"fellow viewer" (523a7) while, as he says, he makes divisions within himself
about the studies that might lead toward being; he is to "say 'I agree' or
'I disagree,' " watching carefully that Socrates is "oracling" correctly. The
discussion that follows shows Glaucon that arithmetic is precisely the study
wanted, since it is "inviting to the dianoia" (524d3) and "arousing to noesis''
(d5), and that all the best natures should be educated in it-to which his
slyly docile response is: "I agree" (526c7). Socrates proceeds to initiate him
into the very study of "the one and the two and the three" (522c-526c)
that Parmenides had once taught him. This is Glaucon's first and only
step on the dialectical way; here and nowhere else in the Republic is undisguised direct philosophical work done-a "huge work," as he has begun
to realize (5llc3, 53ld5). Glaucon intends to do it seriously, and when
Socrates asks him whether he means to carry on as if demonstrating before
others or in his own behalf, he wants to converse chiefly for his own sake.
But, as Socrates says, suddenly speaking straight out to us beyond the
dialogue, "if someone else should be able to profit in some way, you won't
grudge him that" (528a2).
3d. But why should Glaucon need to be especially invited to this
dialogue, since they are already in the midst of one and have indeed come
precisely, as Polemarchus says in the beginning, to converse (328a9)?
Evidently there are various ways to "converse." In fact, three meanings of
dialegesthai can be distinguished within this dialogue.
First it can mean a conversation in which anyone may and can take
part. This, despite Thrasymachus's efforts to stage an exclusive rhetorical
display, is its meaning in the "prelude" (357a2) of the dialogue, Book I.
It can also mean that "power of dialectic" proper (5llb4, 532d8, 533a8)
in which the logos, the account-giving power, leaves all sense perception
behind and is moved "by the eide themselves," advancing "through them
and into them" (5llcl). This activity is what is imitated by sight (532a2);
as the soul ranges over noetic "sights," as the name eidos, "sight, look,
aspect," indicates, so the eye sees things at once distinct and together. It
is clear that Socrates regards the soul as truly moving (cf. Timaeus 36el)
both upward and downward ouly in dialectic, which is thus repeatedly called
a "way," meaning a pursuit or a method, a "journey'' (533b3, 532el, 3;
533b3, c7; 532e3). In contrast, the conclusive motion of the dianoia is
downward (510b6, d2) as in deduction, that of the lowest power, eikasia,
is back and forth as in comparisons, and the next-to-lowest power, pistis,
�55
' enjoys rarely disturbed rest. In the use of its lower powers the soul is
therefore said to be bogged down and made sluggish (533dl, 61lc). The
cause is its association with the body; the soul is never quick with bodily
life but only with the logos, and its proper motion is a "heavenly journey"
' (cf. Phaedrus 256d8). But this dialectic is only praised in the Republic
(532al); its actual exercise is impossible to one who is not already "practiced" (533a9) in dianoetic studies (and perhaps to any mortal), for dialectic is thought out-thinking itself. And indeed the "propaedeutic" (536d6)
, mathematical studies are carefully trimmed: they exclude not merely all
"banausic," i.e., applied, elements, but also any explicit "eidetic" admix-
ture as well; for instance, nothing is said of Plato's arithmological teaching,
the "eidetic numbers" (cf. Metaphysics 1080a12 ff.), although, as we shall
see, allusions to dialectical terms abound.
There remains a middle dialegesthai, which happens to be the one
characteristic of this central conversation. This is speech between two souls.
Such speech must have a sensible clothing of sound, the audible dialogue.
Such dialogue is strongly distinguished from myth telling and hearing (e.g.,
Protagoras 320c, 3Z4d, Gorgias 523a, Timaeus 26c), since the latter appeals to trust and imagination, while the former involves primarily the
dianoia. For the dianoia supervenes as soon as sense perception is expressed
in words, which inevitably gives rise to dilemma, especially to selfcontradiction (524e3). In supplying hypotheses to solve these dilemmas the
dianoia brings in noeta and thus invites the uppermost faculty of thought,
noesis (523al). In itself the dianoia is the faculty of differences, distinctions, and contradictions. As such it ever ranges betwixt and between and
is called out by human perplexities as well as by mathematical problems
(530b6). Unguided, it can easily become an aporetic or "wayless" affection (524a7). Therefore in such a dialogue one of the interlocutors must
know somewhat more than the other, must have advanced into dialectic,
so that he will be able "to ask and answer most knowledgeably" (534d9,
528b8; cf. Phaedrus, 276e5). In this dialogue with Glaucon Socrates exercises such a superiority even more than usually, since their conversation
is "synoptic" and requires a large foreknowledge. The introduction to
arithmetic mentioned above displays precisely the required relation of the
interlocutors: Socrates makes dialectical divisions "within himself' (523a6),
which he then "shows" to Glaucon (a9), while Glaucon is to look on with
him and to respond to Socrates' affirmations or negations (cf. Sophist
263el2) with his own agreement or disagreement. But this dialogic superiority is evident most of all in the very naming of the powers of the soul with
which Book VI closes. For these powers are, as it were, named from aboye,
from a synoptic point of view. Anyone who has not left the first three sec-
�56
tions cannot possibly know their true names: doxa, as used ordinarily,',
means the faculty of judgment; people rarely think that they have what
to Socrates is "mere opinion," but they think that they know their minds;
in· fact, the various provinces· of the dianoia, such as the arts and
mathematics (5llc6, d3), are particularly highly regarded by their devotees,
as producing nothing less than knowledge (533d4). For Socrates, of course,
the dianoia is below knowledge.
4a. Let us return to the invitation to reflection that is extended to
Glaucon by the sectioning of the realms "as if" they were a line; he must
wonder why, as has been said, the Republic has no dialectical treatment
either of the Good or of the eide under it. This missing logos is, however,
absent in a different way for both of these dialectical objects. Let us begin
with the Good.
The Good has no "place" within the realm of being, for it is "beyond
being" (509b9). Since it is that which is "un-hypothesized" it cannot be
traversed in the same way as the "hypotheses to being," the stepping stones
of the logos (5llb8). Consequently there is in this dialogue no power of
the soul that corresponds to it, as is signified by the fact that it is off the
top of the Divided Line. Although within the context of the imagery of
sight the eye of the soul is said to look at it, a distinction between movement "among" and "through" the eide (510b8, 5llc2) and movement "up
unto" the Good (5llb6, 533c8) is pretty generally maintained; the latter
has about it something tangential and momentary; a glimpse of the Good
is "scarcely" (517cl) achieved. Consequently this beholding is not quite
knowing in the dialectical sense at all, for the "idea of the Good" is the
result not of a unitary act of sight but of "abstracting" and "determining
in logos'' (534b9). Socrates repeats this several times: The Good as responsible source is known only after the eidetic vision; it is known on the
downward return, so to speak, by a syllogismos or collection of logoi, a
logos of logoi (516b9, 517cl}. It is, in effect, the most comprehensive of
all those "collections" (e.g., Sophist 267bl) that follow the "divisions" of
dialectic. The Good, the "greatest study," is a "learning matter" or a
mathema only in a new and strange sense, for it is learned in the movement away from it-to confront the Whole as a knower is to step back
among the parts.
4b. For those realms, however, that are on the Divided Line, the absence
of logoi takes on a different significance and form. It is essential to the
following discussion to recall that the word logos means not only account
or reasoning but also the mathematical relation of ratio, a double mean-
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57
ing of great importance particularly in Pythagorean contexts (e.g., Epinomis
977c3). Now we are told that each of the unequal main sections of the
line is again to be cut "in the same ratio" (509d7), but we are neither given
the ratio itself-we are not even told whether it is numerical or irrational,
i.e., a ratio of commensurable or incommensurable lines- nor are we
definitely told whether the greater or the less of the unequal segments is
to be the upper one (cf. Plutarch, Platonic Questions lOOld). We can conclude nothing except that the two middle segments must be equal, which
means that pistis and dianoia are in some way coextensive. That is indeed
necessary, since the realm of the dianoia uses the realm of natural objects
as corresponding images. 30
4c. This absence of definite ratios is the more noteworthy because for
the earlier tripartite soul the numerical ratios of the parts are, playfully,
given: they form the musical progression of the "highest," "middle," and
"lowest" place in the diapason (443d6; cf. 432a). If the "middle" is here
taken non-technically to designate the mean through which the "first consonances," the fifth and the fourth, are compounded (cf. Nicomachus,
below) then these are as 6:4:3, the three terrns of a harmony, where 4, which
represents the spirited element, the thymos, is a "harmonic mean." (If the
meseis understood as the string of the fourth, then, as Theon, Hiller, p.
62, shows, this ratio can be immediately obtained.) The use of the terms
of the "harmonic proportion," i.e., for b ~ 4, a(6):c(3)::a- b(2):b- c(l), may
have a special significance here. Nicomachus (Introduction to Arithmetic
II, xxvi) says that Philolaos the Pythagorean regarded this proportion as
the "geometric harmony," expressing the cube, which has 12 sides, 8 angles,
and 6 faces, so that its characteristics are given in the terms 6:4:3. The tripartite "embodied" soul is therefore here characterized as the basic solid. Now
Aristotle (On the Soul404bl6 ff.) reports a similar Platonic oral teaching
about the soul. The noetic cosmos, called "the animal itself," arises "from
the idea of the one and primary length and breadth and depth": so that
in respect to the soul, which is similar to that animal, "intellect (nous) is
one; knowledge (episteme) is two, since it is uniquely related to one; the
number of the plane is opinion (doxa); and sense perception (aisthesis)
belongs to the solid." Evidently the Academy too believed that the soul
reaches some sort of solidity as it meets the body.
We may ask further how this dimensional structure is related to the
quadripartite "knowing" soul of the central Republic. Although it is certainly not the same, there is an instructive relation between them which
is best seen schematically:
�MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
58
On the Soul 404b23
I
3
2
no us
episteme
doxa (pistis) }
4
aisthfsis
{
dianoia
eikasia
~
Republic 534a
The dimensional soul will be seen to be the more comprehensive of the
two since it possesses elements for apprehending both extremities of dimensionality, namely unit and body, where the former is the source of the whole
soul, and the latter is its full-grown structure. The soul of the Republic
has, as we have seen, no clear and separate capacities corresponding to
these; furthermore, as the Divided Line shows, it has no dimensional progression, for apprehension of solids occurs in one of the middle sections.
On the other hand, it does have what one might call a certain reflective
depth, which arises from the eikastic reduplication of episteme in dianoia
and of pistis in eikasia that takes place within its two major parts, noesis
and doxa (534a)." In summary, it might be said that the dimensional soul
is all-embracing or cosmic, which is why some can say that "the soul is
the place of the eide" (On the Soul 429a27), while in respect to the soul
that goes with the realms of the Divided Line, it might rather be said that
"the eide are the place of the soul." The soul ranges all over this place,
sometimes settling in one spot and then moving again, remaining always
somewhat a stranger-in accordance with the similarity between knowledge
and the pervasive, piece-meal eidos of otherness described in the Sophist
(257c7).
Later we shall see the significance of the fact just pointed out, namely
that the soul of the Republic is not a cosmic harmony of number ratios.
But if the logoi themselves are absent, this much about them is given:
they are the same throughout, for sameness of ratio defines a proportion,
an ana-logia or "recurrence of logoi." How is Glaucon to interpret the
mathematical fact that is here presented to his dianoia?
4d. We should, first of all, keep firmly in mind that this mathematical
�59
presentation is itself only a simile; Glaucon is to cut the realms "just as"
he would a line (509d6). He has no reason to think either that the realms
of being literally have mathematical ratios to one another or that the inexplicitness of the logos in any way implies that the ratio of any two quantities is indeterminate (as are the greater and the less, a ratio technically
known as "indefinite," aoristos, Metaphysics 1021a4); on the contrary, the
logos here stands for the possibility of articulate human language. Thus
cautioned, let us see what the model will yield.
Immediately after the fundamental division of the line and description
of the lower subsections has been made, Socrates reads off a first proportion (510a9):
opined : known :: images : imaged object
· This proportion announces that the internal relations of the two lowest
are the same as those of the whole, that the relations connecting
whole are mirrored in even its lowest parts. At the very end of the
nividled Line passage he reads off yet another proportion (5ile3):
segments of line : truth :: affections of soul : clarity
which means in mathematical terms that the affections of the soul are
correspondents (Euclid V, Def. 11: Given a:b::c:d, a and c, as well as
and d, are said to correspond) of the realms of being that the line segments
re>>re,;ent. Or, using analogical reasoning- that is, inferring the likeness
correspondents (cf. Metaphysics 1016b34, 1093b18; Topics 108a7)-we
conclude that known and knower are alike (cf. On the Soul, 404b18).
the analogical method brings out the bond that "yokes together with
strongest yoke" (508al), the linking of known and knower by the clarilight of truth; this illumination can bind them because they are both
the Good" (509a3), that "ruling source" of the "community'' of knowns
knowers (cf. Sophist 248all).
And finally, in concluding the explication of both the sun and the cave
Socrates forms two more proportions (534a3):
being : becoming :: thought : opinion
thought : opinion :: knowledge : trust :: thinking : image recognition
first of which signifies that the gradations of knowing are the same
the degrees of being. The last, more extended, proportion displays paricularlv well the force of the mathematical form Socrates has chosen. For
�60
MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC,
since the affections of the soul are coordinated with linear magnitudes, ,,
they may be "alternated" (Euclid, Elements V, Defs. 12, 3), so that the first
is to be the third as the second to the fourth-and this is exactly what:
Socrates has done here; he has alternated the original proportion of the
segments, so that now
knowledge : thinking :: trust : image recognition
This new form of the proportion draws attention to the close relation of
each faculty in one main segment to the corresponding faculty in the other,
a relation which mirrors that of the main faculties and again that of the
realms of being. The last ratio, which links thinking (dianoia) with image
recognition (eikasia), particularly justifies the notion of a "dianoetic
eikasia," a thinking use of images, while the preceding ratio shows a certain special relation between knowledge and trust, which we experience
in that unassailable finality or incorrigibility, analogous to the selfsufficiency of knowledge, which certain sense perceptions possess (523bl).
Obviously, by using the various Euclidean operations (Euclid V, Defs.
11-18) on these proportions, and by attending either to the sameness of
the ratio relation or to the likeness of the correspondents in the new proportions, it is possible to obtain a variety of illuminating results. That this
would be a legitimate enterprise is shown by the 'ierm Socrates uses when
he dismisses further division of the line lest there be a surfeit of
"multiplicate logoi" (534a7), a punning reference to the "duplicate" and
"triplicate" ratios of the theory of proportion (Euclid V, Defs. 9-10)."
All of these further results would be, however, only the expression of
two fundamental similarities: First is that of the knower and the known,
mentioned above, which Socrates has in mind when he tells Glaucon to
"order them [the affections of the soul] analogously" (5lle2) to the realms
of being; and second is that-really prior-similarity of each degree of
being to the next higher degree. It is by reason of this similarity that the
successive realms of (I) images, (2) natural objects, (3) mathematicals, and
(4) eide are described in turn as (1) "that which is made as something
similar," (2) "that to which it is made similar," and (3) "that which was
before copied and is now treated as a likeness" (cf. 510al0, b4, 5lla7); and
(4) even the eide themselves are, as we learn from other sources, formed
in the likeness of the Good understood as the One (see below), being
themselves each one (e.g., Metaphysics 987bl8 ff. -the formula is on/hen,
being/one.
This four-stepped ladder of similars is what .makes upward transition, ·
i.e., the .dialectical road, possible. It is, we should note, completely ar-
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61
ticulated first in the Divided Line; the sun image has only two undifferentiated realms, the intelligible and the visible. The Divided Line in a certain
way preserves this original homogeneity of the larger realms; images and
natural bodies are not found in differently constituted realms, for both
are sensibles and either have their own body or use an alien one-reflections
themselves are "in water" and "on smooth bodies" (510al)-so that the
difference is not really that between the plane and the solid dimension or
between visible and palpable things. Similarly, hypotheses and eide are
equally intelligibles. What differentiates the realms internally is not, to use
a latter-day expression, a different "material," but rather the reflective
distinction of like to likened and of genuine to counterfeit, which reflects
in the parts of the line the imaging relation of the sun to the Good.
4e. Glaucon will, then, see that the logoi relating certain aspects of
the whole are one and the same throughout, that on account of similarity
or likeness (homoiotes; cf. Sophist 231a7, Statesman 285b6) there is one
logos pervading the whole. In presenting this notion to Glaucon
mathematically, Socrates is signifying that he is presenting him with such
hypotheses about being and becoming as will make thinking itself
possible- and by this he means thinking consistently, namely "in such a
manner that the sameness of logos is preserved" (homologoumenos, 510d2;
cf. Aristotle, Topics 108b8). But if the characteristic dianoetic direction
is downward to conclusions by deductions that win "agreement"
(homologia) because the logoi in different souls have remained in concord,
the discovering dianoia moves upward by an analogia. It is this latter use
that is chiefly required in any search, and is therefore suggested to Glaucon
in this part of the dialogue: "Make an analogy ... " (524d9; cf. 509b2).
An explication of this means of learning is given in the Statesman: When
the teacher chooses some thing about which the learner has right opinion
to "lead him up to" (anagein) as an example, that is, when the teacher shows
the learner a para-deigma, i.e.,. "something to be shown beside" some
unknown, which is able "to lead [the learner] to" (epagein) this unknownthen this unknown may become known to the learner by a recognition of
the analogy (277d9; here Socrates, in the reflexive mode characteristic of
him, explains "example" by giving an example of an example, just as in
the Republic he explains "image" by an image.) The sun, as an image of
the Good, is just such an "example," and since the Good is far above the
sun, the epagoge, the "bringing up," of Glaucon will be a true ascent. In
fact, it will be an ascent-though only provisional-to the source of all
examples, to that paradeigma which is no longer example but exemplar.
We might summarize this exposition from a different point of view by
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MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC-
saying that the Divided Line tells the story of "recollection" mathematically,
by presenting through proportions that "affinity" of all nature (cf. Meno
81dl) which makes it possible to move with a sense of recognition in
unknown places. Aristotle will reduce this upward, or inward, journey to
the "logical" procedure of epagoge or induction, of which he makes Socrates
the inventor (Metaphysics 1078b28).
4f. The first and original affinity, the sun image implies, is that which
the Good as progenitor has with the sun as the offspring made in its image. In other words, the Good itself possesses an image-making power that
it passes down to the eide and that they pass on in turn (cf. Phaedrus
250a6). This "downward eikasia," as it might be called, by making our world
a progression of likenesses, is originally responsible for our own ability
both to make ourselves like to the highest things by homoiosis (500c5,
Theaetetus 176bl) and to recognize likenesses or to make analogies. It is,
we might say, responsible for our "upward eikasia" and for the pleasure
of recognition it gives us (cf. Aristotle, Poetics 1448b8); it is a power so
unobtrusively indispensable that without it we would never "know
ourselves" even in the most superficial sense of having confronted in a mirror our own looks, the eidos of our own face!
4g. We can now see precisely why the criticism of poetry in Book III
turns into that radical "ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry"
(607b5) in Book X. This quarrel, which already engaged Pythagoras, who
descended to Hades to watch Homer and Hesiod suffer for their lies
(Diogenes Laertius VIII, 21), is now given a precise cause. In the light of
the sun image, poets are usurpers and perverters of the power of the Good.
They are more despicable even than that charlatan who, having carried
a mirror through the world, claims to have "made everything" (596c2), when
he has really only borrowed the lowest effects of the power of the Good.
For poets make artificial images, using a perverted power of eikasia, a "low"
(603b4) generation called "mimetic'' or imitative (602all), which produces
images of good and bad things indiscriminately (604el, Sophist 233c; cf.
also 267a) and distracts the listeners from true being (605a9). Such mimetic
products are not natural likenesses but are separated from the true source
of images by the interposition of a human maker, who "makes images
vilely" (Republic 377el). Poetic mimesis makes artificial imitations;" "artists," to speak in modern terms, arrogate to themselves an unauthorized
function of "creativity," while Socratic eikasia makes likenesses in the sense
of observing those that are already there by nature, clothingthem in figures
and putting the figures into words.
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63
sa. We must now go on to see exactly what conjectures about the Good
the sun image allows Glaucon to make on reflection, even though he cannot yet reach a full and sure logos.
In the image the Good is presented in three successive capacities, a triplet
proved to be fundamental by its recurrence in the Philebus (20b8). It is
presented first as the father of the sun (508bl2), then as that which is responsible for knowledge (e3), and last as the source of being (509b7)." The
first of these might be called its cosmogenic function, by which the potent
male Good generates the sun as a male offspring to be lord of the visible
world and an intermediate source of the world of becoming, analogous
to the Good itself as ruler of the world of thought (508c4, 517c3); the obvious question that arises here is whether the sun also has a mother-the
cave image will deal with that. However, although the sun resembles its
maker in its brightness, its continual risings and settings clearly mark it
as a part of the world of becoming and passing away, while at the same
time they bear evidence that the Good is also a source of motion (cf. Alexander on Aristotle's Metaphysics 988all ff., ed. Hayduck, p.59). In its second capacity the .Good is several times called the aitia, the "responsible
cause" (508e3; 517c2), and aitos, "that which is to be called to account"
(516c2) both for the passive state of the so-called nooumena, "beings
known" (508el, 509b6, d8) and for the active knower (508e2), that is, for
the soul in its "act of knowing" (509b6)- this aitia is, however, yet more
beautiful and more honorable than these effects. In its third capacity, the
Good is called king and lord (509d2, 517c4) and arche, "ruling source"
(510b7, 511b7) of the whole, or the "arc he itself" (533c8), "in power and
seniority exceeding the nature of being" (509b9); it gives things both their
"state of being" (to einaz) and their nature as beings or beingness" (ousia,
509b8). The latter two capacities are reduplicated by the sun as source of
sight and becoming.
Socrates presents these functions in the order that will bring Glaucon
up by analogy from the visible many to the invisible one (507b2). In the
order of logical generation, however, the listing should clearly be reversed,
since being itself must somehow precede the confrontation of active and
passive beings and this split must in turn come before the birth of a world
perceptible and perceived by sense. The grandest, most inclusive, most politcally relevant, function of the Good is therefore its rule (arche) over being; next it acts as the "answerable cause" (aitia) for teachers and learners,
while its most private function is that of a father. But in truth neither order
holds, for the Good itself is not hierarchically ordered, being itself the
source and beginning of all order- "the arche itself' (533c8).
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64
5b. The diagram below shows the parts of this order; all its terms except one are taken from the text:
Good
------..
archi
aitia
father
~
~ ';;;wumena
truth
noesis
/'/~'~/arity
genesis doxaston genesis horaton sights sight [dogmata] doxa
This scheme shows the Good as presiding over and bonding a kind of
pervasive duplication: the Good as the reason for knowledge is responsible for the unifying confrontation of knower and known (right side) and
so also for the agent of noesis, the soul (508d4; cf. Sophist 248cll, e ff.).
As direct source, the Good also gives rise to ousia, beingness (left side),
which, by reason of the soul's presence, has a second aspect: it is the "place"
(508cl, 509d2) provided for the soul, the topos noetos, which contains the
"things for thought," the noeta (the -tos ending signifying the capability
of being thought; cf. Sophist 248d4). Finally, as generating source, the Good
puts forth the Sun, a sensible second source that reduplicates the whole
structure of being on the lower level of sense and becoming.
At this point, the diagram brings out an aspect of the sun image that
is of fundamental importance to the human place in the whole. The soul,
which arises in the first instance as a knowing soul (508d6), is in some
way also involved with the world of becoming: some aspects of sense "invite thought" (523bl). Furthermore we do have opinions, that kind of set
mental reaction significantly expressed in the phrase beginning "I feel that .
. . . " Human speech, too, can accommodate itself to becoming, since it
is capable of the same admixture of non-being that gave rise to becoming
(477a; cf. Sophist 260b!O). In other words, the human soul as the moving
agent of knowledge has a faculty, doxa, by which it ranges over becoming
and has a place there. This place contains "that which is to be opined,"
the doxaston, and the name of these things, as apprehended by the soul,
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65
has been added in the diagram-they are the dogmata, a word denoting
both ordinary opinions (cf. Republic 538c6) and their political counterparts, the decrees and ordinances of the city.
Thus from the point of view of the human soul genesis, becoming,
belongs to being as one of its gradations Gust as the representative of the
Good, the sun, is not above but within this world); hence doxa has a certain kinship with knowledge (Meno 86a). But from the point of view of
the body, becoming is the place of "sense perception," aisthesis (507c4,
e6), and, most characteristically, of "things to be seen," the horata, whose
organ of perception is the eye, which is "most like the sun" (508b3), just
as the soul is like the Good. This is why Socrates has two names, doxaston
and horaton, for the segment and realm of becoming (509d), just as each
human being has two "organs": that "by which" it sees, the soul; and that
"through which" it sees, the eye (Theaetetus 184c6; cf. Timaeus 28a2).
Becoming is then, in a sense, "within" being, not an external accretion to
it (cf. M. Heidegger, Nietzsche [Pfullingen 1961] I, p. 207).
5c. However, seen in another way, the diagram brings out a certain
downward doubling, effecting the differentiation, or rather proliferation,
from one to many that Socrates had recalled when he introduced the image. Whence does it arise? Now although no sourc>' beside the Good is
mentioned, the language of the image persistently implies that something
already there is capable of "taking" the gifts of the Good in various ways.
The Good "provides" (parechei, 503el, 509a7; cf. b3, 517c4) what is known
with that truth of which the things known "partake" (metechei, 5lle3, 4);
it "gives" this power to the knower (508e2), makes intelligibility "to be present" (pareinai, 509b7) in things, and causes being "to be added to them"
(proseinai; b8). One might be tempted to think of some underlying
"material" (with which Aristotle, speaking in his own terms, does indeed
equate that in Plato's teaching which "takes" the Good, Metaphysics
988all), except that the Good does not actually differentiate some available
stuff, but rather binds something disposed to come in a two-fold way. For
instance, just as the "yoke" of light yokes two different things, vision and
visibility (507c6), so the truth is the bond by which the Good binds the
disparate knower and known. This dyadic disposition appears also in other
ways: in the "double eide" (509dl, 4, 6) of the visible and the knowable
(cf. the "two morphai of Parmenides' "double philosophy," Diels, · Vorsokratiker, I. fr. 8, 53 and p. 218, 6) and their two-fold subdivisions (534al),
and in whatever makes "division into two," the complement of making
analogies (534a6), possible. We have here an intimation of that secondary
dyadic principle, so often mentioned by Aristotle under the name of the
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MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
Indefinite Dyad, which in Plato's arithmological teaching is the secondary
arche complementing the Good understood as the One.
Although it is only an intimation, it is one that must attend on any
presentation of the whole, because the second principle has "a certain
likeness to the whole" by reason of which it "contains all things" (Aristotle, Physics 207al9). As Speusippus explains: "For they held that the One
is higher than being and is the source of being; and they delivered it even
from the status of a principle. For they held that given the One in itself,
conceived as separated and alone, without the other things, with no additional element, nothing else would come into existence. And so they introduced the Indefinite Duality as the principle of being.""
This second arche of Being is discovered and described in the Sophist,
in pursuing the source that makes sophistical speaking (commonly known
as "Double Thlk," Dissoi Logot) possible. A difficulty had arisen over the
necessary two-ness of Being. This two-ness had been a consequence of the
very fact that plays so pervasive a role in the sun image, namely that there
is both knowing and something knowable; therefore Being, as known and
knowing, possesses a knowing and living soul and is thus in motion, while
as knowable it is steadfast and at rest (248d ff.). Being was thus both in
motion and at rest, and this resulted in a quandary: Being kept cropping
up in speech as "some third thing" beside these irreducibly separate two,
motion and rest, so that neither of them could be said to be (250b-d). The
solution to this quandary was found in the nature of the Other, which goes
"through everything" (255e3), and has a correlative, the Same. For these
make it possible to say that Being can be both motion and rest, since each
of the two is just what it is by reason of being the same with itself and
is not the other by reason of being other than that other, i.e., by participating
in the Other. In this way the deliverances of speech were justified and the
logos was saved.
The eidos of the Other is described in the Sophist as always relative
(255d), effecting Non-being, which is infinite (256e) and cut up into many
parts (257c). But these are exactly the terms associated by Aristotle with
the Indefinite Dyad (Metaphysics 987b19 ff., 1087b13 ff.)." Plato, he says,
made "the other nature" (cf. Sophist 256el, 257c7) a dyad because the
numbers "outside the first" (i.e., after the One and the Dyad) can be "begotten from her just as from a matrix" (Metaphysics 987b34) by the One as
begetter. The first such definite arithmos is the eidetic 1\vo (ibid. 1082all),
Being (cf. Note 35).
This "two-making" arche is precisely one of those "responsible causes
of division" (Sophist 253c3) which is being sought, and, as has been srud,
it is the source of the possibility of that confrontation between knower
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and known which the Good confirms with its illuminating truth. Clearly,
then, such an arche is in the background of the sun image. We shall see,
however, that in the context of the human good, namely that concerned
with the embodied soul, it will appear not as a second source of being
but as something opposed to that good, as the source of evil. But for the
human knowing soul Socrates has coined a special term- it is "like the
Good," agathoeides, or well-formed (Republic 509a3), and so are all its
situations.
Sd .. We must now take a last looli:-at the role of similarity or likeness
in the sun image, not merely insofar as it permits ascent by analogy, but
as a constitutional principle. In the conversation of the Parmenides- which
is, incidentally, recounted to Adeimantus and Glaucon- young Socrates
had tentatively presented "likeness" as a solution to the problem of
methexis, the "participation" of the many sensible things in the one invisible eidos (132cl2). He thought that the eidemight be "patterns in nature"
(d2), patterns to which "the sensible things become like and hence are things
likened [i.e., copies]"; therefore "their participation in the eideis nothing
but this being made in their image" (d4). Parmenides shows him that his
solution is impossible. The eide cannot be "in nature," i.e., among beings,
as patterns since, likeness being reciprocal, the pattern would be indistinguishable from its copy- both would be like and would require yet
a third eidos above them to be like to (e7). This form of the "third man"
argument (cf. Metaphysics 990b17) amounts to saying that patterns, as mere
patterns, are not necessarily above their copies in the scale of being and
need have no originating power, that they have no nature by and in
themselves, nothing that permits them at once to retain their oneness as
eide and to be a source of manyness- they are not sources. (This same
criticism is in fact made by Aristotle of the Platonic eide, Metaphysics
1079b.) At this stage young Socrates does not even suspect that the problem might have to be considered on a higher level, namely that of the participation of the eide in each other, of the communities they form with
each other, and, beyond that, ofthe whole they belong to altogether (129d6),
and hence he does not see that his eidetic solution might after all be usable.
Yet, as we shall see, there is a place for such a solution.
One aspect of the higher methexis problem, the problem of the several
"communities" that the eide have with each other, was, as we have seen,
considered in the Sophist (254b7), where the solution to the question how
both rest and motion can be was given in terms of the correlative archai
of the Same and the Other. Both of these extend throughout Being, for
by being one and the same with itself each eidos remains integral and in-
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MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
dependent, while by being other than another it becomes so related to that
other, namely as another "other," as to be capable of being together with
it in a "community" (256a!O). That is why Otherness is the bond of Being.
Now if the point of view taken is not within but "beyond Being,"
Likeness performs just such a function as Otherness did within Being, and,
in a way, does so more plausibly. For within Being, the secondary, reflexive eidos of the Other was the source of community, the "bond" that ran
"through everything" (255e3; cf. 253a5, cl), while the primary Same was
responsible for the separate and independent oneness of each being
(254d15). But the bonding of the whole is achieved precisely because of
the Likeness of each thing within it to a pattern beyond and so to each
other thing; it is exactly the failing power of "being like" that manifests
itself within Being as the peculiar effect of Otherness called "being an image of" (Sophist 240a8). The fact is that Parmenides' objection fails as
soon as the pattern is really of a different order and sufficiently beyond
reach, as the Good indeed is: " ... [and furthermore] the Good is not being but yet beyond Being in seniority and exceeding it in power" (Republic
509a3, b8). Note that while it was impossible for Being to be "some third
thing" (Sophist 250b-d) beyond its constituent eide, the Good is to be imagined as precisely such a "third kind" of thing (Republic 507dl, el). From
the highest point of view, that of the whole, not otherness but likeness
is the bond; in terms of the knowing soul, not logos but analog/a is required. It is a token of this that the knowing part of the soul, to which
the Other is compared in the Sophist (257c7), is said in the Republic to
be "like the Good" (509a3).
It is precisely this bond by which the Good makes everything one whose
mathematical image takes the form of a proportion: "And the most
beautiful of bonds is that which makes itself and the things bound together
as much as possible into one. Proportion accomplishes this most beautifully. For when the middle term of three numbers ... is such that as the
first is to it, so it itself is to the last, ... then necessarily all will turn out
to be the same. They will all become one with each other" (Timaeus 31c2;
cf. Metaphysics 1016b34). We can now see a second reason for the equality of the middle sections of the Divided Line: the three-term proportion
(i.e., a:b::b:c) "makes one" or unifies by means of the power of the "inbetween," the metaxy-the Divided Line represents a harmonized Whole.
Socrates had already described and named this beautiful union, the
true home of the philosopher, in that "persuasion to the rule of philosophy,"
addressed to Adeimantus and the others, which precedes the presentatiop
of the sun image to Glaucon (487b ff.). His language then was in terms
of man and god; in keeping with his purpose he gave an anthropomorphic
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view of the realm of being, as it were: "For there is surely no leisure for
him who has his thought truly set on beings to look down into the affairs
of men and by fighting with them to be filled with enVy and malice; but
looking at such things as are ordered and always remain set, and observing that they neither do injustice nor have injustice done to them by one
another, all being set in an ordered whole (kosmi5i) and according to logos,
he imitates these and makes himself as like [to them] as possible.... And
so the philosopher, conversing with what is divine and like an ordered whole,
himself becomes as divine and ordered (kosmios) as is possible for man"
(500c-d). Socrates is throughout employing the word used of the visible
world, cosmos, and the man who becomes like a god is presently called
a demiurge, who, like the divine artificer in the Timaeus, uses a "divine
pattern" (Republic 500e3; cf. Timaeus 28a7) in making his work of art,
the city. We see that the interior order of the world of being is to be imagined as analogous to a cosmos, an ordered visible world, having a taxis,
a hierarchical order. The Good is to be understood as the comprehensive
source of this order, which is here presented in the familiar language of
Pythagorean cosmology: Justice is a reciprocal matter, the parts of the
whole are related "according to logos," that is, as in ratios, and participation in the order is by imitation and likening (cf. Metaphysics 1075al2 ff.).
We may conjecture that this is a popular presentation of that taxis (whose
terms are also borrowed from the Pythagoreans) which supervenes when
the Good is understood as the One, the articulating ailia of the eide, which
makes them what they are (ibid. 988al2), and above all makes of the
"greatest eide," motion and rest-which together form being-the eidetic
7Wo. The taxis that thus arises is that arithmological structure of the eide
which is the prototype of all ordered associations, ordinal and cardinal
(see ibid. 1080a ff.; also Note 35).
5e. Although Socrates had introduced the sun image with a reference
to "the things said earlier [cf. 476] and often spoken of at other times"
(507a7), namely the many and how they participate in the one idea that
is "what is" in these many things (476a7, dl, 507b5), yet within the image
he goes, as we have seen, beyond the oneness of each eidos to a still higher
point of view, the way to, which is sung in the "hymn of dialectic." There
he says that "when someone leaves behind all sense perception to set out
for that itself which each thing is (ep' auto ho estin hekastos), and does
not leave off before he grasps in thought that itself which is the Good (auto
ho estin agathon), then he is at the very end of the knowable" (535a5; cf,
507b5, 7). Now the repetition of the phrase in which "the Good" is
substituted for "each thing" is clearly meant to catch Glaucon's attention
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MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
and to convey to him something- actually the most pertinent thing in the
dialogue- about the nature of the community governed by the Good itself.
For upon having grasped what each thing is in itself, one would expect
to learn what all things are together, and it is in place of this expected phrase
that "the Good" occurs. This sentence then hints how the Good as the
"source of the whole" (5llb7) will have to be understood: it is not simply
a different being but precisely the oneness of all beings (cf. 244e ff.), the
All as that Whole which comprises what each partial whole is as well as
what it is not, that within which different things are at one. It is "the source
which is the Whole" (he tou pantos arche, 511b7; cf. the end of Note 35).
As such the Good is indeed the fit pattern of all community, and in the
Republic especially of the political community: "using it as a pattern"
(paradeigmatl), the rulers are "to order the city and private men and
themselves" (540a9); dialectic turns out to be the-eminently politicalstudy of communities (cf. Sophist 253d). Socrates has, in his own efforts,
not only composed the quarrel between philosophy and poetry, but he also
composed the quarrel between philosophy and politics, for he has shown,
in speech and in deed, that the lover of wisdom best knows and most desires
genuine community.
5f. Nothing more direct is said here or in any other dialogue about
that primary dialectical aspect of the Good-that it is the One (cf. Note
35). However, there is a dialogue in which Adeimantus and Glaucon are
shown (on some occasion that must have occurred after Socrates' death)
the reason for Socrates' silence. This is the Parmenides, in which Antiphon,
their younger half-brother who has given up philosophy for horses (the
dialogue itself shows why such things happen), recites from memorythat is to say, without drawing any consequences- an old conversation.
In it Parmenides performs a demonstration exercise for the then young
Socrates, generously taking his own One (137b4), namely that One about
which he himself says that "it is," while others say that "it is not," and
showing Socrates what follows from either assertion. The dialogue ends- as
some think, too abruptly-with the conclusion that "whether the One is
or is not, it and the others, in relation to themselves as well as to one
another, both are all in every way and are not, and both appear and do
not appear.- Most true" (166c). The dialogue has shown that when the
One is conveyed in speech, as Parmenides' One is capable of being conveyed (cf. Parmenides' own poem: e.g., "it is necessary both to say and
to think ... ," Diels, Vorsokratiker Fr. 6), such speech leads to its own denial
(cf. Philebus 15d), while that denial itself cannot stand firm but leads again.
into its opposite. Everything possible to speech has been said about the
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one and has had the wrong consequences, so that nothing remains for
parmenides but to fall silent. Socrates is listening; he knows that one
hypothesis, the very hypothesis that is not possible to rational speech, has
been omitted, namely that "the One is not one," and that that is the crucial
possibililty (cf. Sophist 258d, where the dialectical equivalent, "Non-being
is," is, with apologies to Parmenides, introduced). "Father" Parmenides,
having confronted his own One in speech and having allowed its difficulties
to emerge, is about to engender a new One in the rising generation. Socrates,
recognizing the ultimate powerlessness of logos to convey this One, which
as a true whole has "parts" (Sophist 244d14 ff.) and "rules" an order, remains silent; for, as far as the greatest matter is concerned, Plato thinks
that "it can never be just said, as are other learning matters (mathhnata)"
but requires long and iptimate intercourse (Seventh Letter 341c5).
5g. One last additional observation: What is characteristically Socratic
about the sun image is that it is reflexive, an image of imaging. But more
than that, in presenting the sun as an image of the whole, it shows not
only how imaging itself is possible, but also how that particular kind of
philosophical imaging which makes the whole reappear within itself is
possible- how we can "see" the Good. This aspect of the imagery of the
Republic is reflected in the central visual image in the closing myth.
The place in the Myth of Er where the souls choose their lives (616b)
is not immediately easy to imagine. There seem to be two irreconcilable
images; " the first one consists of the whole of heaven, which has a shaft
of light passing through it and the earth (b5); the second consists of Necessity sitting at the earth's pole whirling a spindle tipped with a spindle-whorl
that represents a planetary system hung on chains let down from the heavenly light encircling the whole (c4). Now if we recall what a spinning woman
actually looks like, these two disparate images become integrated: Necessity
sits spinning. Between her knees she has a long distaff at the top of which
a cloud of white woot is fastened; it feeds into the thread as it is spun.
This thread is twisted into yarn by the spin of the whorl-weighted spindle,
which is tied to the end of the thread; onto it the finished yarn is wound.
In the figure of the myth the axial shaft of light represents the distaff, the
chain of heaven is the thread that is· being spun, and the whorl of the spindle
of Necessity is a miniature planetary system, an orrery, a model of the
Whole, within whose sight the souls choose their lives.
Thus, finally, the same image, now taken as a mythical, magnified and
other-wordly, complement of the cave image, makes evident the ultimate
position of the human soul as an onlooker and therefore, strangely e~ough,
an outsider, in respect to the whole. This placing of the soul is necessarily
�MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
72
glossed in Socrates' philosophical images, for every effort they are designed
to elicit amounts to a de facto mending of this split.
E.
!. Book VII begins with this invitation to Glaucon: "Now, after this,
liken our nature, as far as-education and the lack of education is concerned,
to the following sort of state" (514al).
The sentence is dramatic. "After this" indicates that what has immediately preceded- that is, Socrates' naming of the affections, the
pathemata, of the soul, the last of which is eikasia (cf. also 51la7 for apeikazein)-is the necessary prelude to what is now to come; the word pathos
has a tragic flavor, and the poetic position of the preposition peri after
its noun is surely meant to enhance this (cf. Poetics 1459a2). Glaucon is
now to use his power of eikasia to see (514al) the dark drama of human
nature under an image. This image will show what human beings are and
do within the whole.
Behold, he says, men living as in a cavelike underground habitation
(oikesei, 514a3) with a wide entrance turned toward daylight. From
childhood on, their legs and necks are fettered so that they can only see
straight ahead but are unable to turn (periagein). Their light comes from
a fire burning behind them. Between this fire and themselves runs a road,
alongside of which a screen wall has been built. Behind this wall men pass
back and forth carrying artificial objects. To Glaucon's exclamation "What
an out-of-the way [atopon] image and what out-of-the-way prisoners"
(515a4) Socrates replies with quiet irony: "Like us" (515a5). And, he goes
on, these prisoners see only their own and each other's shadows, which
are thrown on the wall they face, together with the shadows of the things
carried about behind the wall. If they converse it is about these shadows,
which are as truth to them; the echo of words spoken behind the screen
wall seems to them to be the·speech of these shadows. Now suppose a
prisoner was released and forced to stand up and turn around, and was
compelled to answer questions about the things formerly behind him; he
would be "perplexed" (aporein), his eyes would hurt, and he would regard
the shadows as having more being than the things now before him. And
if someone dragged (e6) him up the steep road and out of the cave by force
to look at the light of the sun, his eyes would be so pained that at first
he could see nothing. But after a while he would be able to see "first"
shadows, "after that" "images" (eidOla) of things in water, and ·"at last"
the things themselves. From these he could raise his eyes to see the moon
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N
the stars at night, when the sun itself is absent. And finally he would
the sun in its own place; after that "he would infer" (syllogizoito) that
snn was "responsible" (516c2) for the seasons and years and was
caretaker of everything. Then if he recalled his former habitation he would
feel that he was now happy. The honors given down there to those who
were good at observing, remembering, and giving oracles (c8) about
shadows would be nothing to him and he would do anything rather than
live like that (e2). But if he had to join the competition, his eyes being
still full of darkness from his sudden descent, he would make himself
ridiculous (cf. 509cl). Men would then say that by ascending upwards he
had ruined his eyes and that it was not right to attempt to go up. And
as for anyone who tried to release another, if they could catch him they
would kill him (517a6).
This image (eikona, 517a8) "must now be attached" to what has been
said before: Glaucon is to "liken" the "situation that appears through sight"
to the cave-like habitation: the power of the sun to the light of the fire,
the forced climb of the prisoner into the light of day to the ascent of the
soul and its vision in the place of thought. In a table:
Good
Dialectic
J
:~g:t
sky
~ natural objects
place of thought
shadows and images
Dragging up
Fire
Sun
screen. wall
place of sight
Conversion { prisoners
shadows
2. This correlation of the sun and the cave images seems, though brief,
explicit enough, from the conjecturing about shadows at the bottom up
to the lovely motion of the soul in the upper realm. Yet a certain reservation is expressed. If you interpret the ascent (anabasis) in the former to
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74
be the upward way (anodos) in the latter, Socrates says, "you will not fail
to fulfill my expectations. But perhaps only god knows if that is what truly
is" (517b4).
Let us look independently at the interrelation of the two images. The
sun image shows how the Good has everywhere prepared places for the
soul to know. There is motion within these places but not straight ascent-'the word anabasis is never mentioned. The cave image, on the other hand,
deals with the actual habitation of human nature, that is, of the embodied
soul, and with the painful steps and stations of its slow ascent. Furthermore, in the first the Good itself is not actually represented but is to be
caught by analogy, while in the second the sun represents the Good and
an underground fire is in turn contrived to repr~ent the sun. This means
that in the given correlation of the images our v(sible world comes, curi.
''·
ously, to occupy different levels:
Sun Image
Cave Image
Being
intelligible r e a / sensible world
Becoming
sensible world
underground realm
Still later in Book VII, after the detailed discussion of the mathematical
arts that are to "haul" the soul toward being, Socrates himself blurs this
correlation and seems to maich the upward trek of the soul into the sun's
world with the raising of the bodily eye, the world outside the cave with
the place of sight (532b6). Furthermore, in the sun image the Good is
beyond the realms of being and becoming, while in the cave image its
representative, the sun, is, of course, within and part of the world. And
finally, while the sun image, as explicated by the Divided Line, refers only
to different degrees of the capacity to learn but not to the incapacity of
ignorance (cf. 585b3), the cave image is explicitly about both education
and lack of education (514a2); it is very much concerned not only with
"mindlessness" (aphrosyne, 515c5) and "want of knowledge" (amathia,
518a7) but even with positive deceit. For those who carry "idols" back and
forth as puppeteers manipulate their "marvels" (thaumata, 514b6-Socrates
plays on the double meaning "puppets : marvels") are indeed engaging in
that complex form of dissembling which the orator shares with the sophist
(Sophist 268b; cf. 260c8).
3. Now at the very beginning of their conversaiion Socrates and
Glaucon had determined that ignorance (agnoia) must necessarily be
�75
'a";igt1ed. to non-being, knowing (gnosis) to being (478c3), and opinion
to an unnamed intermediate, partaking of both and later identified
becoming. It must be in order to recall this scheme that the main
segments of the Divided Line are at one point called gnoston and dox,
aston (5!0a9). Thus it is obvious that wherever becoming occurs non-being
·is implied. But since non-being is not explicitly named in either of the images, Glaucon should conjecture that it is present somewhere somehow,
in that manner appropriate to "that which is not." The following new correlation, in which the levels of the "sensible world" in both images are made
to coincide, does reveal it:
Sun Image
Cave Image
Being
iritelligiple reaim
Becoming
sensible world ....,.... sensible world
underground realm
4a. To put in a word the effect ol seeing the cave image in this new
juxtaposition with the sun image: the cave image is intended to complete
the image of the Whole, and that requires taking into account human
badness in all its organized obtuseness and assigning it its place within
being~or rather non-being (Seventh Letter 344b; Plotinus, Enneads I 8,
in fact locates evil in non-being). This is why its presentation ends with
a brusque reference to that most telling crime, the execution of Socrates
(517a6). The introduction Of this factor, namely human badness, and its
management, which is called politics, comes out clearly in the table that
outlines the cave image. As opposed to the main segments of the Divided
Line with their two subsections, each realm here has a third part, the screen
wall with its puppeteers in the lower realm· and the starry night sky with
its moon; bright with reflected solar light (cf. 617al), in the world above.
We may interpret the former as representing the politicians with their laws
and ordinances, their "image-making," their dogmata (cf. Statesman 303c).
(Here we must recall that political deceit is practiCed in any city, even in
the just city, though there "nobly"; Republic 414b8; cf. 382d). The latter
will then be their cosmic counterparts, the "laws of nature" (Timaeus 83e5),
which are best studied in the nocturnal sky-although, Socrates thinks,
better yet not studied at all (529a).
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MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
4b. When Socrates first introduced the source of the visible world as
a son, Glaucon had immediately inferred that as a parent the Good was
a father (506e6). The cave image now provides the answer to the obvious
question: Who is the mother? It is Non-being, the realm in which things
are not in themselves but only in relation to another; in the terms of the
Sophist, it is the realm of the Other (257b), whose human effects are alienation and ignorance (Republic 478c3) as well as privacy in the literal sense,
privation. (The Greek word for a private person is "idiot.") These effects
in turn lead to injustice and all sorts of evil (444al, b8). It is not easy to
imagine, for in its elusiveness (Sophist 237bl 0) it is experienced only as
a bewilderment of the eye, that positive apprehension of darkness which
is felt after the descent into the infinity of "human evil" (517d5; cf. 445c6)
so feelingly described by Socrates (5!7e3). The cave represents non-being
under the guise of a womb, where, as in the Phoenician myth (414c), the
"earth-born" race gestates. From the point of view of the human soul struggling with a body and with other men, the Good is at work throughout
the whole only "in a certain way" (516cl) but not directly. For its light never
penetrates into ihe cave, where a counterfeit takes its place; to the lighted
realm of being on which the true sun shines, there is opposed a dark realm
of non-being (cf. Sophist 254a); between these reahus is the steep road along
which men "come into being," the road of genesis or birth. Socrates' cave
is the very image of that "Indefinite Dyad" whose nature is womb-like,
murky, material, un-substantial, bad (cf. Note 35).
4c. Socrates, however, has a figure of his own for such life as goes on
in the cave. Befme, he had forbidden the poets to slander the underworldnow he himself commits such a slander against our earth. Earlier he had
struck a line from the Odyssey (XI, 489), the one in which Achilles as a
shade among shades laments, saying that he would rather be "a serf on
earth slaving for another portionless man" (386c3) than a king among the
dead- now Socrates himself puts this very line into the mouth of the man
forced to descend once more into the cave, our habitation (516d5)!
Just as in the Phaedo there is proposed a place rather to be taken "as
truly the earth" than the hollow in which we live (IIOal), so in the Republic
Socrates points to a place to be taken as truly the underworld, a truly
shadowy and obscure Hades (508c, 517d)-a new realm distinct from the
underworld of myth, the "invisible Hades," the Aides a-ides of after-life,
which is invisible rather than dark, a place pure of all bodily sight (cf.
Phaedo 79b7, 80d5, Craty/us 404bl), a "divine place" (topos daimonios,
614cl). The new Hades is the realm of living souls, Socrates' mortal Hades.
It therefore adds to the "intelligible" and the "visible" place a third, a
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"sightless" place (cf. Phaedrus 248 ff. for another such myth concerning
the places for the soul). Its inhabitants live in a dream-like isolation (533b8;
cf. 476c4; cf. Heraclitus, Diels, Vorsokratiker Fr. 89) reminiscent of the
mindless flittings of the shades in the traditional Hades; like the shades
in Hades they are incapable of touching each other (Odyssey X, 494; XI,
204), while some go completely to sleep, having, as Socrates puts it, "arrived in Hades before they have woken up here" (534c7). We may conjecture that Aristotle's own cave story, reported by Cicero (On the Nature
of the Gods II, xxxvii, 95), was a counter-image to combat Socrates' scandalous view. For the inmates of Aristotle's cave, a well-furnished
underground apartment, need only a chance to catch a glimpse of the upper world with its sun by day and its stars in their regular courses by night,
to know immediately that theirs is indeed a world ruled by gods. But this
splendid world, Aristotle, contrary to Socrates, implies, whose divinity is
immediately apprehended by anyone with unjaded vision, is precisely, our
own present habitation, toward whose beauty our senses have grown dull.
What is most characteristic of Socrates' moral Hades is the willfulness
of its inhabitants, who resist and mock their liberator (517a). Again Aristotle's cave image is instructive, for its inhabitants are prisoners by nature
and must wait for the "jaws of earth" to open before they can come up.
But for Socrates' men the way is open; the Good has prepared other and
better places for the soul, and there is no necessity to sit below; they seem
to cherish their chains- in a certain engraving of the "Antrum Platonicum"
(1604 A.D.) the huddled prisoners very tellingly wear no visible chains at
all. Perhaps, then, the most important aspect of the cave is that it is not
a natural cavern but a "cavelike underground chamber" (514a3; cf. Axiochus 371a8), clearly an artificial prison made by men for men. The position of the prisoners itself indicates stubborn perversity; they are facing
the wrong way round and have a perverted vew; that is why they must first
of all be "converted" (518c8), or, failing that, must be dealt with by "persuasion as well as compulsion" (519e4). The cave is the human city always
and everywhere, a prison compound within which true community is to
be achieved only at rare propititious moments.
4d. Glaucon should have no difficulty in recognizing the place. He has
some acquaintance with Pythagorean doCtrine (53la4), and the notion of
the world as a prison and life as a lfving death are both well known
Pythagorean teachings (cf. Gorgias 493a), as is also that of the "descent
into Hades." Pythagoras himself is said to have "told how he descended
(katabas) to look on the way of life of those who have gone below, to see
how entirely different were the lives of the Pythagoreans" (Aristophon in
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78
Diogenes Laertius VIII, 38)." In fact, the dialogue of the Republic as a
whole has a Pythagorean setting, for just as the lectures of Pythagoras
were said to have taken place by night (Diogenes Laertius VIII, 15; cf. the
"nocturnal council" of the Laws [961]; also Plato's "night clock," Athanaeus,
IV, 174c), so it must be well into the night when the central part of the
Republic is spoken. What is more, its very form has a Pythagorean cast,
since it seems to be that of a Pythagorean exercise: it was evidently part
of the discipline of a Pythagorean to attempt, before starting the day, to
"re-collect" within himself in its entirety whatever conversation he had had
the day before." This would provide an additional reason why the dialogue
is told by Socrates as having taken place not just recently, but "yesterday"
(327a1), and would explain why he does not address it to anyone: he speaks
it within and to himself- Plato, even more truly than Alcibiades, can "open
up" Socrates (Symposium 216d6). Certainly if we are to take seriously the
form of the Republic as a report of a conversation that lasted the better
part of a day and a night, we shall find it to be a somewhat incredible
feat, which needs to be accounted for by some such power as a special
mnemonic discipline would give. In the Republic, we may infer, Socrates
is shown as a master of the Pythagorean practice that provided a congenial
discipline or askesis, useful in preparing the soul by a kind of habituation
for that inward recovery of truth. which is given a temporal cloak in the
myth of recollection (Meno 81) and is particularly displayed in
mathematical investigations (ibid. 82; cf. Note 27).
F.
Ia. After the cave image Socrates considers with Glaucon the actual
education of the philosophers. He begins significantly: "Would you like
now to see in what way such men will come to be born [in the city] and
how one will lead them up into the light, just as some [e.g., Heracles '"]
are said to have ascended from Hades to the gods?" (52lcl). The sequence
of learning, which follows closely the "pathos'' of the cave drama, has three
stages: "conversipn" (periagoge, 515c7, 515c8, d4, 521c6), the "haul" toward
being, effected by mathematical studies (mathema holkon, 515e8, 521d3,
527b9, 533d2), and the "divine sights"of dialectic (theiai theoriai, 517d4).
"Conversion" is what we are witnessing in the dialogue itself. Since it
precedes all education and is more the effect of meeting a man than engaging in a study, it is not part of the explicit study plan. Nevertheless there
is an "art of conversion" (518d3). Since this first act is largely a matter
of making the soul recognize the shadows on the wall as mere shadows,
�79
it is clearly an eikastic art, namely Socratic music, the persuasive imagery
of truth. As we have seen, it may be said to take the place of that traditional habituating music used in the education of the warrior-guardians
but so emphatically excluded from the philosophical education (522a4).
Note that in the image, as in fact, the city will try to prevent such conversions and will call them corruptions (517a). It cannot be said that these
philosophers-to-be are born and bred in the just city-their upbringing
seems in fact to be conceived against a hostile background that can hardly
be the education provided by the guardian city!
lb. The long "haul" into the light of day is accomplished chiefly by
the "hauling study'' of mathematics (522c5-53ld6). The program appears
to be that of Pythagorean cosmogenic mathematics (530d8)." In arithmetic,
"that lowly little thing" (phaulon), 42 the "one" and the "two" and the other
numbers are distinguished; in plane geometry the surfaces of bodies and
in solid geometry the bodies themselves are studied; in astronomy bodies
are put in motion; and, finally, the audible relations of moving bodies are
studied in harmonics. In this way the cosmos imaged in the Myth of Er,
with its heavenly bodies giving out a harmony as they revolve, is constructed.
There is only one difference between this Pythagorean cosmos and the
Socratic study, but one so deep that it is very hard to grasp for Glaucon,
who loves physical studies, especially astronomy. He immediately identifies
Socrates' phrase about "seeing the things above" with "looking into the
[sky] above" (529a2), and Socrates has to rebuke him: that kind of
astronomy, the "visible music" of the Pythagoreans (cf. Theon,
Mathematical Matters Useful for Reading Plato, Hiller, 5, 17 ff.), in truth
makes its students "look downward altogether" (a7). Socrates demands that
in the serious study of mathematics, that paradigm of every "learning matter" (mathema), not only all practical applications, but even every suggestion of an admixture of sense experience should be put by, and only those
true motions and numbers and figures which are grasped by the logos and
the dianoia alone should be studied (529b). Glaucon, who follows well
enough the early part of the discussion, which is concerned with
demonstrating the dianoetic power of arithmetic, is somewhat puzzled by
the non-physical "dimensional" studies that follow (526d ff.). For indeed
it is the extended effort of actually doing pure mathematics that is needed
to complete the conversion from sense (533d3), and this is still before him.
Ancient commentators, such as Plutarch, Theon, and Proclus, have a
standard way of referring to the use and meaning of the mathematical
course of the Republic: they simply assert the elevating effects of such
studies. One of the reasons why there should be this effect is of far greater
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MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC ·
consequence than the others, since it amounts to a genuine interpretation
of the sequence of subjects. There is a strong ancient tradition that attributes to Plato and the Academy the theory that the whole of being arises,
as it were, in a mathematical way: From the One and the Indefinite Dyad
spring the Ideal Numbers; from tbese the sequence of dimensions is educed,
until first the mathematical solids are attained; and then the sensible world
itself is brought about"- the "dimensional soul" discussed above belongs
to this context. Now aside from the internal difficulties of this view, which
Aristotle discusses at length in the Metaphysics (1080b24 ff., 1085a8 ff.),
and its essentially stultifying character, there is an almost insuperable difficulty in interpreting the mathematics of the Republic along these lines.
For in the Republic mathematical objects, since they are among the images that reflect the realm of being and comprise the realm of the dianoia,
are fitted into a scale of increasing genuineness, within which they lie between natural object and being. In the theory mentioned, however, the
mathematical structure comprises the whole of things arranged in a scale
of decreasing dimensionality and concreteness. 44
It therefore becomes absolutely necessary to go to the dialogue itself
to see why the young philosophers must study Socrates' mathematics, aside
from its generally purifying effect, which amounts to a conversion of the
merely "embodied soul" into an embodied by primarily "knowing soul"
(527d8). We may expect that, as usual, Socrates is quietly presenting
Glaucon with something astounding.
For it turns out, upon inspection, that the mathematical order Socrates
is talking about is indeed a reflection of being and that this means that
it is an inverse of the realm of being. Glaucon must use his imagination
to see why this is so. A diagram (see next page) picturing the realms of
the Divided Line will show what needs to be seen.
The whole realm of natural objects is here pictured as a cone with the
sun at its vertex. It casts a reflection or shadow (510al) which, like most
natural images (as distinct from more deceptive artificial ones), is opposite
or inverted in relation to the original, and "produces a shape (eidos) that
yields a sense perception the opposite of the usual sight" (Sophist 266c3).
This natural fact may now be applied as imagery to the noetic realm, and
the beings of the uppermost realm may be imagined as reflected by the
dianoetic objects in the same way. In the diagram mathematics is then
represented by an inverted cone having its dimensionless vertex at the bottom (representing the elementary study of the unit) and opposing its base
to that of the conical sector of a sphere (representing being), in order to
indicate both that mathematical objects are only a small part of the
dianoetic images of being and that, unlike mathematics, the dialectic as-
�81
Intelligibles
Mathematicals
. ----------
Natural objects
"~-
'
''
'
''
''
'
Reflections
cent within being does not end· in an upper limit but culminates in a kind
of source and beginning which is at once central and encompassing. 45
We must now show the meaning of this inversion of the dialectical order
in Socratic mathematics. One observation does, however, already seem warranted: Such mathematics does not lend itself to institutionalization;
Socrates cannot have been announcing the study program of the Academy
(not to speak of a state education), especially since "no one unversed in
geometry" was allowed to enter there, and the members were evidently left
by Plato to engage in all sorts of advanced study with great freedom."
Let us look, then, at the elements of Socrates' presentation in their order.
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MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC .·
To introduce "the study concerning the one" (525a2), Socrates brings
in one finger, a finger that is simply one and seems to:"have nothing contradictory within itself (523d6). In it, sight sees everything ::poured together,"
confused, indistinct, and for this very reason seif-sufficient; the finger is
"absolute" for the sense of sight (524d!O). -But as soon as two other fingers,
one greater and the other smaller than tl;J.e first, are brought in, sight reports
that the first finger is now both great and small, and the other senses will
report similar oppositions. At this point, the soul in its perplexity calls
on the "counting capacity" (logismos, 524b4) and· the dianoia to determine how many objects it is really dealing with, and thus arises the distinction between the visible and the intelligible (524cl3). For the dianoia
separates out the great and the small as being "each one, both together
two" (524b!O), a formula that, though it does not solve the problem, states
it precisely, i.e., "arithmetically": Tho different items, namely the great and
the small caught in speech, can be together in one, namely the physical
finger. "The whole of number" is gotten analogously (525a6)- whenever
something is no more one than the opposite of one (a plurality), it is an
assemblage of so and so many things taken together, and that defines an
arithmos, a "numbered collection."47 The "second" study, which, Glaucon
knows, is "next in succession," is geometry (526c8). After plane geometry,
which is the study of the "second increase" (i.e., the second dimension),
must follow the study of solids taken "by themselves" (528b ). "Fourth"
comes the study of astronomy, which deals with solids in visible motion.
Since there are at least two kinds of motion, a last, sister study is required,
namely harmonics, which is concerned with motions relative to the ear.
In pure harmonics consonant numbers are studied; these are the numerical
relations presented in a theory of numerical proportion dealing with simple and compounded ratios-such relations bear on genesis, as we know
from the "marriage number" (546). At the end of this course, the "community . . . and kinship" of these studies must be grasped, and what is
peculiar to them must be collected (53!d2). This is the basis upon which
dialectic is finally to be laid, "just like a coping stone" (534e2).
The elements of this study in the order in which they appear are, then:
1. the sensible undifferentiated one,
2. the great and small by comparison,
3. the "hypothetical" ones that add up to two, and every other number,
4. the dimensional structure of the mathematical cosmos,
5. the community or cosmos of all these mathematical objects seen
synoptically.
Although the dialectical way is not explicitly described in the Republic
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(533al), we have collected enough of its elements to name them in the order
in which they would become the center of attention:
5. the community or cosmos of eide seen in a preliminary synopsis,
4. the lowest ranks of eide,
3. the eidetic number-assemblages going back up to the eidetic Two
and its constituent eidetic ones,
2. the arche of the Great and Small,
I. the One.
The dialectical objects are, as can be seen, in fact encountered in the
reverse order of those that have the same name in the mathematical sequence. For the mathematical studies ended with a community of moving
and related solids that had first been set out in terms of their elements
of "growth" (the progress of dimensions), then "by themselves" (solid
geometry), and finally in their "consonances" (astronomy and music). So,
in reverse, the dialectician must survey first and foremost the front presented
by those eide closest to genesis in order to distinguish its elements. He must
try to see at once "which kind is consonant with which" (Statesman 285b;
Sophist 253b, where harmonics had just been used as the type of such
knowledge), and whether any elements extend through all the others; "for
he who can see things together is a dialectician" (synoptikos-dia/ektikos). ·
Note that it was precisely the final phase of the mathematical development that provided the required training and testing of the synoptical ability
(Republic 537c)." After this beginning synopsis (of which Socratic music
is a foretaste) it will be possible to see and order the communities of eide
and to rise among these, attaining the larger eide, or gene (Sophist 254d4).
These higher genera contain more of being but belong to smaller- or rather,
prior-eidetic assemblages or numbers. Finally being itself, the greatest
"genus," (genos) (ibid. 243dl), the eidetic Two, will be reached, together
with the two great gene it comprises, rest and motion (ibid. 250; cf. Note
35). At this point it will be possible to recognize that the eide that run
through all the others are beyond Being and ought not to be called eide
but archai. Thus two sources appear beyond the objects that were first the
hypotheses of mathematics and then the beings of dialectic: the Other (ibid.
259a-b ), called by many names, of which the chief are the Indefinite Dyad
and the Great and Small (e.g., Metaphysics 987b20, 1087b5), and the One,
the non-hypothetical "beginning of the whole" (510b7, 5llb7): in the One.
everything again rests without opposition, just as once before, at the beginning of the road and at the opposite extreme of being, the finger combined in fact that which is incompatible in words.
Socrates himself emphasizes the opposite ways of mathematics and
dialectic at crucial points. The segment of the intelligible, he says, is cut
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MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
"in such a way that in one part of it the soul is forced to search from
hypotheses, using the things before imitated as images, and journeying not
toward the beginning (archif) but toward the end, while in the other, the
one that leads toward the non-hypothetical beginning, she goes [up] from
hypotheses and [proceeds] without the images used in the former section,
journeying by means of the eide and through them" (510b; also c, 511a,
533c). The mathematical way is thus in itself a deduction, moving away
from beginnings. But, at the same time, as a learning process, it is an "elevation (epanagogif) of what is best in the soul to the sights seen among beings" (532c5), though, as Socrates gently and tacitly informs a too enthusiastic Glaucon, it is not knowledge of being itself but only an approach
to it (527b9). How can Socrates imagine that these two motions take place
at once? To begin with, Socrates shows no interest whatever in that
straightforward deduction of mathematical fact which is the pride of
mathematicians, and which, because of its logical rigor, becomes for Aristotle the paradigm of "apodeictic," i.e., demonstrative, knowledge (e.g.,
Posterior Analytics 71a3). This form of proof, in terms of which
mathematical systems like Euclid's Elements are presented, is called "synthetic." Socrates, oddly enough, implies that this form of proof is to be
left to all the non-mathematical arts, which deal with "geneses and syntheses" (533b5). His own approach is "analytical" or, what will be shown
to amount to the same thing, "hypothetical" (cf. Phaedo IOOa, Meno 86e).
The discovery of analysis as a formal method of proof was attributed
in antiquity to Plato, who was supposed to have imparted it to his pupils
as a means of finding solutions to problems." As Pappus explains, it differs from synthesis, which leads from agreed-on assumptions to conceded
consequences, in the direction of its motion, "for in analysis we assume
that which is sought as if it had already come about, and we inquire what
it is from which this results, and again what is the antecedent cause of
the latter, and so on, until by retracing our steps we come upon something
already known or belonging to the class of the first principles, and such
a method we call 'analysis' as being 'solution backwards' [anapalin lysin,
i.e., reduction]." Pappus goes on to distinguish two kinds of analysis,
theoretical and problematical; in the former we assume a hypothesis and
trace out its consequences until we come to something admittedly true or
admittedly absurd (the second is what is known as a reductio ad absurdum or negative proof), while in the latter we assume a solution or a construction as if it had been found, and trace out its consequences until we
come to something known to be possible and obtainable, or the reverse.'"
Analysis is therefore a means both of returning to and thus reflecting
on those beginnings that Socrates calls hypotheses (e.g., 510b). It is also
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a means for achieving "agreement" (533c5) concerning the consistent consequences of any "suppositions" (the precise rendering of the Greek plural
of hypothesis) that happen to be offered. Now whether or not Plato was
really first to recognize in this a formal mathematical method, he himself
certainly regarded it as Socrates' very own mode of conversing, which,
"while he is the man he is," remains his only way (Theaetetus 197al)."
For the most striking form of analysis shown in the dialogues, which
people find "not unpleasant" (Apology 33c4), is the reductio ad absurdum, of which the Socratic refutation or elenchos is the great nonmathematical example. It is used for silencing professional "eristics" by
disposing of their dangerous absurdities, and for producing in those who
are wellcdisposed that perplexity of soul which is the beginning of serious
inquiry; its complement is "Socratic ignorance" (Republic 354b9). Accordingly it occurs in the Republic only in the first book, where it is used in
the provoked and forcible conversion of the violent Thrasymachus and as
a "prelude" to the real inquiry (cf. 349al0, 354); thereafter Socrates uses
the gentler way of his analogic "music." We must now see how the
mathematics he proposes is also, in some sense, "analytical," consisting
as it does of "conversion-aiding arts" (533d3).
To begin with, the mathematical enterprise is analytic in the same way
as is any Socratic "search," in which the object is always assumed as
something known of which the consequences will emerge in the course of
the inquiry (cf. Meno 80e ff.). Socrates regards mathematics as just such
a search (e.g., 523a2, 524e5, 528b-c, 53lc6); in fact it differs from any
Socratic conversaiion only in the greater commonness of its objects (522c).
Thus the question "What ever is a finger?" is transformed in the course
of the mathematical inquiry into the question "What ever is the one?"
(523d4, 524e6), and Socrates gets Glaucon to admit that the power of counting finds in a finger opposites that are "each one, both together two,"
precisely as earlier he had gotten him to agree that since the beautiful and
the shameful are opposite, they are "two, and each one" (524bl0, 476a2).
In other words, Socrates is interested not so much in getting on with the
specific mathematical science as in returning again and again to its
hypotheses; a sign of this is the preposterous name he gives to "arithmetic,"
which he calls "the study of the one" (525a2), as if number science consisted of nothing but its beginning principle, that "source of the whole of
number" (Aristotle, Topics 14lb9), which is not even included among the
numbers (cf. Euclid, Elements VII, Defs; 1-2).
But Socrates intends his young philosophers to practice analysis also
in a more technical sense, namely as "problematic" analysis. Each of the
two final, more or less physical, sciences is to be studied, in Socrates' strange
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MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
phrase, by "rising to problems" (530b6, 531c2). To see what the nature and
purpose of such problems is- besides supplanting observation- we must
look at the order of Socrates' mathematical course. Theon, for instance,
observes that non-sensible harmonics, since it is the study of "pure" number
relations, of logoi and analogiai, should naturally follow immediately after
arithmetic in the mathematical order (Mathematical Matters Useful for
Reading Plato, ed. Hiller, p. 17). It is therefore not surprising that Socrates
thinks it necessary to justify his own different ordering with an appeal to
the very men whose preoccupation with matters sensible and experimental he immediately disowns; harmonics is to be understood as cosmic music,
the sister science of astronomy, "as the Pythagoreans say, and we, Glaucon,
agree" (530d8, 53lb7). By accepting this ordering, Socrates obtains a last
propaedeutic study that is at the same time non-sensible and physical,
namely the unheard music of the unseen heavens underlying the "eye's sky"
(Socrates' pun: horatos- ourimos, 509d3).
Now we can see just what it means to "use problems" in astronomy,
"bidding the things in the heavens good-bye" (530b7). According to tradition it was Plato himself who raised that epochal question of astronomical
hypotheses, setting this as "a problem for those interested in these matters: By what hypotheses of regular and ordered motions can the appearances associated with the motions of the 'wanderers' [i.e., planets] be
saved?" (Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle's On the Heavens 292bl0).
The young philosophers will, presumably, work on just such problems,
contenting themselves with "saving," not too exactly, the more basic ap-
pearances such as the daily motion of the stars and the sun. Here "saving"
the appearances means first of all learning to regard them as mere appearances of something more nearly substantial (namely the hypotheses)
and so "bidding them good-bye." Using, then, the visible heavens as a nicely
made but not very important "pattern" (259d7 ff.), they are in turn to make
a construct such as might be "hypothesized as a pattern" (Timaeus 48e5)
by some mythical demiurge who wants to bring our visible world into being. Note that this mythical demiurge is a requirement of cosmic genesis,
since the mathematical hypothesis itself, being no paradeigmatikon aition,
no responsible pattern, i.e., not having the power of a true source, will never
yield the sensible world by itself- there exists no deductive account of the
sensible world from the mathematical cosmos alone."
The profits from working such problems will be many: The students
will learn to make images that will exceed the visible original in truth, that
is, they will learn to make noetic hypotheses about the whole of appearance
and to deduce their consequences; in attemPting to '~save" the appearances
they will learn what a mere appearance really is; and they will get used
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to Jiving with their mathematical cosmos as a preparation for dwelling with
the invisible and bodiless noeta (cf. Sophist 246b7, Statesman 286a5). It
is unlikely that this study will much resemble the spherical geometry
presented in those dull "Sphaerics" (like that of Theodosius) which are supposed to be realizations of Plato's "pure" astronomy. We must rather imagine that the young philosophers will be asked to reflect on matters such
as the true significance of astronomical notions like "obliquity," "error,"
"anomaly," and their opposites. They will find these studies "useful ...
in the search for the good and the beautiful" (Republic 53lc6), since they
concern equality, symmetry, consonance, and order; they will have regained
the world on a higher level. When their time has come for the pursuit of
dialectic, which "takes up (anairousa) the. hypotheses" (533c8), in the senses
both of "removing" them and of "raising" them to a higher mode, they
will "take up" first their hypotheses about the whole, meaning that they
will convert them into that array of lower eide governing the world of appearances and human excellence within it. These are the eide close to the
world, which the dialectician encounters first (500c, 484c-d, Gorgias 508a)
and which, while least in being, are longest in logos (e.g., Statesman 267a-b).
But we are also told, quite incidentally, that static geometry too is to
be pursued in problems (530b6). Here again the order of studies proves
interesting. The geometry orginally proposed was plane geometry (528d3).
Next, Socrates brought in astronomy, but, right away, with an air of
significance, asked Glaucon to "draw back" (528a6), and delivered a speech
in praise of the study of that missing third dimension which seems "not
yet to have been discovered" (b4). Solid geometry, the study between earth
measurement and the motion of the skies, aiming at objects that lie between heaven and earth, is, he implies, in some special way the city's
business; it is a political affair, which ought to be carefully supervised and
which is even less than the other studies to be pursued privately (b6 ff.;
cf. 525c2). He might, however, have stopped himself sooner, for he had
already interrupted the dimensional development of his mathematical
world, in fact at its very beginning, when he had introduced the "second
increase" of plane geometry even though he had omitted any mention of
the first, the linear dimension. The one-dimensional study, however, so conspicuously missing in the Republic, is solemnly introduced in the Laws
(820a-b), where it is presented precisely as the necessary prerequisite of
stereometry, i.e., of solid geometry. It is the study of irrational lines, the
special interest of Socrates' young counterpart Theaetetus (Theaetetus !47d
ff., 144d8), who is also credited with the first cogent presentation of all
the regular solids called "Platonic."" We happen to know what the classical
problem in solids is: it is the problem of doubling the cube, according to
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MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
legend originally raised by Minos, the underworld judge, and later again
by the Delians, whom Apollo had ordered to double his altar, and who
were said to have brought it to Plato for solution." Socrates himself uses
the plane version of this problem to display the natural knowledge of a
slave boy whose education consists simply in knowing Greek, and who
is able to find, under Socrates' supervision, the side of the double square;
it is the irrational diameter, the single mean between the two squares (Meno
82b ff.). We might conjecture that as the doubling of the square, done in
the sand on the earth, is the slave's problem, requiring for its solution only
the learner's nature, so the doubling of the cube, done in the solid world
of bodies, is the citizen's problem, requiring both nature and nurture, and
that it therefore represents practical politics. For stereometric problems are
solved by finding two means, sometimes called "powers" (Theaetetus
147d3), which are in this case themselves irrational, though commensurable
in cube (Euclid, Elements X, Defs. 1-4). Stereometric analysis then
represents the work of finding ways and means to reconcile that which
has no common measure by going into a higher dimension (cf. l!.pinomis
990d8); mechanical, that is, mere de facto, solutions are considered unacceptable. This is perhaps why Socrates mysteriously tells Glaucon not to
allow his children, who will have charge of the city, to be like "irrational
lines" (534d5); he means they should not be like that which has failed to
rise to the higher dimension in which commensurability and consonance
are possible: There is, indeed, something obvious in taking problematic
analysis as the paradigm of practical planning, and, accordingly, Aristotle
in the Nicomachean Ethics compares deliberation to the analysis of
diagrams, for "every deliberation is a search" (1112b20). Such a use of
mathematics. can be quite a dangerous game (as we moderns well know),
but at its best it articulates terms that serve well in the press of action,
clarifying the nature of tricky inquiries and providing models for solving
complex problems (cf. Meno 86e).
Socrates concludes his exposition of the philosophers' mathematical
education by suggesting to Glaucon that "the experts (dein01) in these matters can't seem to you to be dialecticians" (53Id9). This distinction between
mathematicians and philosophers is ever his theme; for instance, he observes
that "inasmuch as they themselves [the mathematicians] don't know how
to use their discoveries they turn them over to the dialecticians to use, if
they have any sense at all" (Euthydemus 290c3). Socrates again has a special
way of characterizing the helplessness of the mathematicians' arts: "They
dream about being, and cannot behold it as if awake, [at least] as long
as they use hypotheses that they leave undisturbed, unable to give an account ofthem" (533b8). For Socrates, mathematics will always remain a
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dreamlike and "phantastic" enterprise. For instance, in the Philebus, where .
in the course of the investigation of the human good he constructs just
such a "bodiless cosmos" (64b7) as was described above, using principles
like the One, the More and Less, and Number (23c), he always attributes
his knowledge of these to a god, a myth, or a dream (16c, 18b, 20b, 25b ).
For him mathematical objects are shadows or reflections on the surface
of being, catching its mere form; they are more immediately accessible to
the human understanding than being itself bur have no substance of their
own. They are interesting only insofar as they are in turn reflected in the
sensible world, which they divide and collect and shape in a less substantial but more general way than can the more numerous, non-mathematical
eide. (These purer eide, caught by human speech, also appear in the
dianoetic realm as hypotheses.) This ordering function in the world is what
gives the mathematicals their special standing as "the middle things"
(Metaphysics 987bl5, 1090b31), differing from sensible objects in being
eternal and immutable and from the eide in having each a plurality of instance (while each eidos is unique). This function is also why their study
is capable of "hauling the soul from becoming towards being" (521d3). The
mathematical part of the dianoetic realm contains, as it were, the ordering
elements, the taxis, of being, where these element,, including shapes and
numbers and their relations, are taken as independent objects, just as reflections and shadows may be regarded as rendering the precise, albeit intangible, shapes of the bodies to which they belong.
It might be useful to give one example of an attempt to "take up" a
mathematical hypothesis in the double sense of canceling it and raising
it into its eidetic original. Out of the many hypotheses of mathematics,
such as units, numbers, ratios, proportions, "the odd and the even.and figure
and the three kinds of angles" (510c4), let us choose the most fundamental objects, the one and the first number, two.
The senses of sight and touch elicit from us merely the words "a finger,"
but in comparison with other fingers, a greater and a smaller, we have to
say of the same finger that it is both great and small. However, "great"
and "small" are opposites and evidently not capable of being simply thrown
together. We therefore say that the finger comprises both of these objects
intended in speech in such a way that they are "each one, both together
two" (524b), i.e., two things at once in the finger; thus arises the first
"multitude composed of units" (Euclid, Elements VII, Def. 2), the number
two. Since each one object of sense includes oppositions "infinite in
multitude," every number can arise in this way (525a); each unit of sense
reveals itself as numerous. Now let the inquiry concern not some unit in
the world of sense, but the greatest single noetic object, Being itself. After
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MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC .
a survey of the possible opinions (Sophist 242b!O ff.,), it is decided that
Being must comprise two "most opposite" eide, Rest and Motion (250a8),
neither of which is by itself Being but both of which are indeed Being.
Hence that Being appears as "a third thing beside these" (b7). If we now
try to apply the hypotheses of mathematical unit and number to these opposites comprised by Being, that is, if we try to "count up" Being, we see
that they are no longer adequate. For to count up units it is necessary that
they should be mere units "capable of being thrown together and indifferent" (symbletai kai adiaphoroi, Aristotle, Metaphysics !08la6), just as
"great" and "small," being both "determinations of size,, are on that common ground indistinguishable and therefore capable of addition (526a3).
But Rest and Motion have no such common ground, being irreducibly different; in the sight of the whole (where there is no relativity of motion)
nothing can be at once at rest and in motion. Furthermore, if we made
such a reduction we would lose exactly what we are after in dialectic, which
is "the thing itself," in its very nature. Being is not, therefore, a counting-
number and the result of adding two mathematical units, but a community
of incomparable eidetic monads, neither prior nor posterior to their
"number," namely Being, the unique Two (ibid. !08la ff.). We can see that
here the mathematical hypotheses of the one and the two, having taken
us up into Being, must themselves undergo a transformation; naturally this
can never be achieved by the dialogues, which do not leave the realm of
human /ogoi and of the dianoia-within speech Being must be put down
as a permanent perplexity (Sophist 250e5), and whatever solutions are offered must be somehow misnamed. For when in the Sophist the problem
of Being, there pointedly formulated in terms of the Not-being of each
of its "constituent" eidetic ones (25ld ff.), is solved by means of "the Other"
and "the Same" (254e ff.), then these two will, when presented in speech,
appear to be hypotheses exactly like the other three eide, Rest, Motion,
and Being. The Same and the Other will therefore be counted with these
three among the five greatest eide (255c), although they have the nature
not of beings but of that which is "beyond being," of archai. In the context of the Republic the more important of the archai in the Sophist is
that whose eidetic name is "the Same." For this is precisely the One, which,
itself beyond all articulation, is both the wholeness of being and the source
of the oneness of each being-that which makes a being "one and the same"
with itself and thus makes it just what it is. Here the mathematical one,
the uncuttable and indifferent minimal (525e ff.), is, as we have seen, the
total inverse of the dialectical One, which is the Whole and the source of
everything (5llb7; on these disparate functions of the Platonic one, see
Metaphysics !084bl3 ff.)."
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The central purpose of Socratic mathematics, then, is the examination
of the hypotheses provided by human speech, a reflection about speech
carried on within speech. As so often, Socrates' very example is chosen
to express the reflexiveness of the inquiry, for a finger-is a pointer, and
Socrates is pointing at this pointer. The purpose of such reflection is, in
turn, to bring the soul up to that highest internal "power of conversation"
(he tou dialegesthai dynamis, 533a8; cf. 511b4, Parmenides 135c2). In such
conversation the soul, freed from all the senses (Republic 532a6) and raised
beyond the intermediate dianoetic logoi (cf. Phaedo 99e5), confronts being immediately by means of its own noetic logos (Republic 511b4, 532a7,
534b9, c3), which is simply its power of having a direct relation, a "ratio"
to being.
le-d. The activity of this higher logos, dialectic itself, is beyond
Glaucon's present reach and no part of the preliminary survey. To set out
on the dialectical road would be to see "no longer an image ... but the
true itself' (533a3); the "most serious matters" are withheld from Glaucon,
and so from any mere reader of the dialogue (cf. Seventh Letter 344c).
Instead, Socrates chants his "hymn" in praise of dialectic (532al), and with
that Glaucon must be content. The Republic, in which for pedagogical
reasons philosophy appears as the fulfilled love of wisdom, does not resolve
for us this question: Has even one human, embodied, soul has ever been
able to withdraw entirely into the noetic realm to move "by means of the
eidethemselves through them and into them?" Has even one soul ever addressed itself in wordless speech to invisible sights? Or is the human limit
perhaps reached when, while seriously exercising our power of provisional
thinking and speaking, we have a sudden flash of trust in our own
hypotheses?
Glaucon has now been given the necessary preliminary synopsis
(Seventh Letter 340b8) of these propaedeutic synoptic studies in which the
young rulers are to prove their aptitude for dialectic (537c); he has also
been given an intimation of uliimate sights. After this Socrates addresses
him as a fellow law-giver, while he rehearses with him what he, Glaucon,
would do "if he were ever to nurture in deed those whom he is now nurturing and educating in speech" (534d3, 8, 535a3, 537c9)-that is, what
Glaucon will do once he himself becomes a teacher of rulers. (Here it is
interesting to note that Theon, elaborating in great detail Socrates' allusion to philosophy as an initiation into the mysteries in the Phaedrus [250c],
makes the fourth stage of the initiation, which follows the full vision, the
stage in which the initiate is authorized to transmit his knowledge to others
[Hiller, 15, 1 ff.].)
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MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
Together they review once more the virtues required in the nature of :,
the future philosophers. At this point Socrates again brings up the danger
to the "puppies" (539b6; cf. 498) in taking up dialectic too early. In the
last image of this central conversation Socrates likens them to sons who
on growing up discover that their alleged parents are not their true parents
and wbo, consequently, losing trust, begin to ask questions about the traditions in a "eristic" way and to scorn the laws (539a3). Note that in this
cautionary image the cause of disillusionment in the precocious dialecticians is precisely that Phoenician myth (414c4) which contains the faith
of the dog-guardians! We see that philosophical puppies are both more
acute and more dangerous than full-grown watch-dogs. The philosophical
city, as Alcibiades' mentor well knows, is always playing with fire.
2a. This brings them to the final question, which Socrates obviously
considers of acute importance in the serious execution of his program. This
is the matter about which he had before spoken "as an indignant man will"
(536c4); it is the question of age, the fitting of the progress of study and
practice to human growth.
Its significance can be gauged by reference to the Laws. There, where
the purpose of study is the growth of piety, and its objects are tbe gods
revealed in astronomy (966c) rather than the Good attained by dialectic,
the definite and written assignment of ages to studies is said to be useless
(968d). It becomes feasible -and, because of the dangers of premature
exposure, indeed crucial- only where there is to be a genuine ascent of
the soul. We might say that what Socrates is here talking about is the
"biological" development of the human soul and its proper program of
nurture (Republic 492a). Why this is so sensitive a matter is made plain
in the discussion of the human natures suitable to philosophy that both
immediately precedes and follows the central section on the great images
(490-496, 535-536). Man being a conflation of body and soul, the soul
must, at least in the beginning, live its life in conjunction with the body
and exposed to its influence.. But tbe best natures will also be well set up
in body (535a-b), in addition to possessing vigorously the virtues that are
"somehow close to the body" (518d!O). Such vigor, however, is particularly
sensitive to disrupting influences (491b ff.). The schedule of studies clearly
takes account of this obtrusive parallel life of the body: gymnastics occupies the years of greatest sexual vigor, practical politics the prime of life,
and the later years, when the body fails, while also it is no longer possible
to learn "many" things (536dl), are given to the contemplation of the single
highest thing.
The ages Socrates assigns to each stage of growth (539d8) are best seen
in a chart fitting them to the ascent of the cave image:
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BRANN
Sun
Goo·"d'
natural objects
dialectic
shadows
mathematics
50
35 .- 35
Outside
30
till
20
deat h
higher
screen wall
political office
lower
Inside
prisoners
gymnastics
mathematical play
50
17
birth
After fifty, Socrates says, the time has come for the philosophers to
"behold" the Good itself and, using it as a "pattern" (540a9), to order (kosmein, bl) the city and to educate others to live in the city as its guardians.
Thereafter they will spend their lives in philosophy whenever possible, but
when their turn comes they will descend and govern, considering it "not
as something fair but as necessary" (b4).
The last phrase recalls one last time that for the philosophers the chief
thesis of the dialogue, that justice brings happiness, is suspended-they
are just out of mere necessity or, at best, from a Cephalus-Iike sense of
duty owed (cf. 331d2), It also shows why this is: As Aristotle (Politics
1262a35) observes, only incestuous love is not explicitly forbidden in the
"fair city"; all other kinds of lovers are prohibited from being together
because of the disruptive strength of the pleasure involved. The kallipo/is,
the "fair city," has, most deliberately (521a), nothing "fair" for which a
philosopher ntight willingly descend; witness the fact that it is so called
insofar as its citizens study solid geometry (527cl, 528c7). In this city
geometric is substituted for erotic interest (546; cf. 458d5 and Plutarch's
phrase on the ·business of the Academy: "to become happy through
geometry," Dian 14, 2; cf. Epinomis 992a4). Here "love" means primarily
the ascending love of truth (e.g., Republic 490b2), and human eros is
allowed only a subordinate and utilitarian part in it (459-460, 468c; cf.
521b4), though such eros alone can be imagined as sufficiently strong to
bring the philosopher down by his own desire. But it is necessary that the
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MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
commerce of friendship should replace the intercourse of lovers, that private
love should be absent here, where the dialogic community is to be displayed
as the fundamental political community. Thus in the Republic the Good
and not the Beautiful is the theme-correspondingly in the dialogue "About
the Beautiful," set, in contrast to the Republic, without the wails of Athens,
love and philosophy rank above politics (Phaedrus 248d). But Glaucon
receives compensation at another time: it is to him that the speeches made
about eros at that famous symposium are recounted. He hears them in
circumstances that are the direct counterpart of the descent to the Peiraeus
which opens the Republic, namely "going up from Phalerum," Athen's harbor in earlier days (Symposium 172a2, c3).
2b. What is most remarkable about the age chart itself is that the rulers'
education, although initially founded if not in, at least in behalf of, the
city, leads them initiaiiy and recurrently straight out of and beyond it, so
that practical experience comes to them late and episodically. In terms of
the cave, it is conspicuous that no mention is made of a look behind the
scenes of the puppet theater, of something that might be construed as a
political apprenticeship. The counterpart of this lack of practical training
is the absence from their studies of all political theory, of all formulations
that are abstractions from practical polities. In the dialogue called the "Constitution" the study of constitutions is not advocated. The reason for this
is in the nature of such patterns: the pattern of the just city is not an eidos,
a being responsible for what is, but an ideal, significantly located not in
the "hypercelestial place" (Phaedrus 247c2) with the eide, but in the sky
(592b2; cf. 529d7) with Cloudcuckooland. A model, or paradeigma, unless
it be a causative model or paradeigmatikon aition, is only a schema or
a mimesis, having the mode of being of a work of art (50la9, Laws 817b4);
it is not an object of dialectic knowledge. Were it otherwise, nothing would
be necessary for the young rulers but to be trained in the loyal administration of this best constitution; they would undergo "indoctrination," and
the inteiiectuals among them would come to possess what is called an
"ideology." Instead, they are to look to the one effectively responsible pattern, which is that "beyond being"; the political wisdom of the Republic
demands that governing be learned by looking, so to speak, in the other
direction, upward; even in practice the rulers will truly look at affairs "in
the light of the whole" (540a8). The ability to do this, irreplaceable by any
technique or formula, is called human wisdom, phronesis (433dl, 52lb8),
the virtue containing the political virtues (Symposium 209a6). Were it only visible, it would be the loveliest of ail the virtues (Phaedrus 250d5) ....The
best thing is that not laws should be in power but a kingly man with human
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95
wisdom" (Statesman 294a 7). The image of a man possessing phronesis at
work, which might be called "Socrates in the city,'' is to be found in
Xenophon's Memorabilia, which is intended to be the practical record, the
reS gestae, of Socrates. Cut off from its philosophical source, phronesis
becomes Aristotelian "prudence," the independent practical virtue of the
politician (e.g., Nicomachean Ethics, 114la30). The different functions of
prudence are a just measure of the distance between the Platonic Politeia
and the Aristotelian Politika.
2c. Having come to the end of life, the philosopher-kings will at last
be allowed to depart permanently to the Isles of the Blessed, and the city
will honor them with memorials and sacrifices- if the Pythia permits, as
divinities (daimosl), otherwise as happy men (eudaimosi, 540cl). Socrates,
speaking from beyond the grave, as it were, is ending the conversation with
a sly reference to himself: he has indeed just advocated (to be sure, with
the permission of the friendly Delphic oracle) the introduction of "other
new divinities" into the city, exactly as the indictment against him was to
state (Apology 24cl; cf. 21a6; he was also, incidentally, honored in Athens
after his own death very nearly as he here prescribes, e.g., Diogenes Laertius, II, 43; cf. also Xenophon, Apology 15). And he has also, outrageously,
implied that to be an eudaimon is a greater thing than to be a mere middling
daimon (cf. Symposium 202el), for to be happy is to live in the mode of
"the happiest side of being" (Republic 526e3), the Good.
2d. And now Socrates and Glaucon are emerging from their deeply
private dialogue back into the context of that city which had been developed
for the whole company, the "city in speech," the just or guardian city.
Socrates himself recalls this city, a revolutionary community of men and
women, by a smiling rejoinder to Glaucon, who had allusively praised
Socrates' ancestral demiurgic skill as a "maker of men-statues" (540c4; cf.
Euthyphro llb9); he reminds Glaucon that he can shape women too, for
they were to share in this city (540c5). Socrates now founds this guardian
city quickly and with charming offhandedness: All inhabitants over ten
years are to be driven out "into the wilds"; this forced emigration will leave
a clean slate for the lawgiver (54lal; cf. SOla).
Glaucon recalls accurately where they had been when they digressed:
Socrates, like the wrestler he is (Heracles, we recall, is the master of all
wrestlers") is to put himself into his former position so as to continue to
wrestle with the account of the city in its degenerating forms.
Socrates, by descending with Glaucon into the mythical setting of the
Peiraic underworld, has shown him that he lives his life as one imprisoned
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MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
in a mortal Hades. But this demonstration is itself a release, the first step
of the rescue; unlike the poets, who fail to wrest from Hades the shade
they desire (Symposium 179d), Socrates, a new Heracles, knows the way
to bring his Theseus back up to the world of light.
Yet Glaucon's later life is almost a blank for us. He seems to have done
little in his time, and no reputation, either good or bad, has survived him;
certainly he founded no new Athens. We may be sure that this fact,
presumably already evident when Plato was writing the Republic, is meant
to reflect on the dialogue. It forces us to ask whether in the face of this
fact the labor of Socrates must not be considered altogether lost. Then
we ought to remind ourselves that while Socrates is speaking to Glaucon,
the dialogue itself is speaking to us. And consequently it may happen that
Socrates' words are "not fruitless but have seeds, whence others arise in
the soil of other souls," so that Plato's "imitation of Socrates" may succeed where he himself failed.
Notes
1. Plato's Republic, ed. B. Jowett and L. Campbell (Oxford 1894) III,
p. 4; The Republic of Plato, ed. J. Adams, 2nd edition (Cambridge
1963) I, p. 1. For a discussion of the "concentric" organization of the
Republic postdating the present essay, see R. Brumbaugh, "A New
Interpretation of Plato's Republic," Journal of Philosophy 64 (1967),
661 ff.
In this essay, all translations are by the author.
2. Liddell and Scott, Greek Lexicon (Oxford 1958), see Peiraieus, p. 1354b.
It is, however, certainly permissible to omit the article, cf. 439e7.
3. Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopaedie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft (Stuttgart 1937) XIX, i, p. 78.
.
4. Ibid., III, i; see "Bendis" p. 269. The torch race mentioned may be ac- :
counted for by the fact that Thracian Hecate had the epithet Phosphorus, Light-bearer.
'
5. Adams, op. cit. (supra, N. I) I, p. 5.
6. Jowett, op. cit. (supra, N. I) II, pp. 2, 7, and 79, on 368a3.
7. Also Gorgias 461a, 466c; Phaedo 98e; Phaedrus 228b. The scl1toliast
to Wasps 83 says that Sosias is imitating Socrates' oath "by the
Aristophanis Comoediae, ed. Dindorf (Oxford 1837) III, 460; cf.
Gorgias, ed. Dodds (Oxford 1959) p. 262; also Lucian, Ph:ilo.~op•hie'
for Sale 16, who connects Socrates' dog with Anubis, Sirius,
Cerberus.
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97
8. Pauly-Wissowa, Suppl. III, see "Heracles," pp. 1007 ff., 1018 ff., 1077
ff.; also Aristophanes, Frogs 108.
9. See Phaedrus 267c9, and Aristotle, Rhetoric 1400b19, on Thrasymachus's notorious violence.
10. Socrates, having completed the refutation of Thrasymachus, begins
anew and in a new mode: "Socrates no longer comes forward with questions in the character of a man who is ignorant ... , but as one who
has already found what he seeks." Schleiermacher's Introductions to
the Dialogues of Plato, trans. W. Dobson (Cambridge 1836), p. 356.
II. Aristophanes actually compares Socrates to Odysseus, another famous
visitor to Hades. But in the Republic the comparison is, if suggested
at all, made to discredit Odysseus. For the Myth of Er is offered as
an improvement over Odysseus's supposedly boring and false "tales
of Alcinous," that is, as a new Nekyia (614b1, see scholia; cf. also
Kierkegaard, Concept of Irony p. 130, note). Furthermore, his soul,
disenchanted with ambition, chooses the perfectly private (620c6), the
most un-Socratic life.
12. E.g., Plutarch, Against Colotes, 1126c-d.
13. Cf. Hippolytus's wish that human generation could be circumvented
and children's seed could be temple treasure to be bought for "gold,
silver, or a weight of brass" (Euripides, Hippolytus 621).
14. The old saying is used by Socrates in a similar way in the Apology
(34d5). He too, he says, quoting Homer, has a family and is not sprung
"from oak or rock," that is, he too has a private genesis. The original
meaning of the phrase, which occurs in the Odyssey (XIX, 163), was
evidently no longer known to the scholiast on 544d8.
15. See Adams op. cit. (supra, N. I) I, pp. 345 ff.
16. See F. M. Cornford, Plato's Cosmology (London 1937), pp. 4-5. For
a totally different point of view and concomitantly different years for
the dramatic date of the Republic, see A. E. Taylor, A Commentary
on Plato's Timaeus (Oxford 1928), pp. 15-16, 45.
17. A similar case is found in Xenophon's Cyropaedia and is expressed
in the apparent lack of a niatch between the title, which seems to promise an account of Cyrus's upbringing by the Persians (!, ii, 2), and
the content, which turns out to be instead the education Cyrus gave
the Persians. This is because Cyrus, whose name means the "Lord,"
is at once the beneficiary and the source of Persian customs;
Cyropaedia therefore means "The Lord's Education" both in the objective and the subjective sense of the genitive.
18. Cratinus, from a lost play, The Thracian Women. The cult of Bendis
evidently was good for comedy; it seems to have been the subject of
Aristophanes' lost Lemnian Women.
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MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
19. SeeR. Hack forth, Plato's Phaedrus, Library of Liberal Arts (New York
1952), p. 118. Plato founded a shrine to the Muses in the Academy
(Diogenes Laertius IV, I; cf. III, 25).
20. An otherwise silly ancient story to the effect that the whole Republic
was stolen from the writings of Protagoras, in Diels, Fragmente der
Vorsokratiker (Berlin 1954) II, p. 265, seems at least to indicate that
on matters political there were points of apparent similarity, probably
equally shocking to sober citizens, between Socrates and the sophist.
21. Glaucon's Gyges story is a witty transformation of Herodotus's version. In the latter, what is right and lawful is for every man to keep
private things private or "to scan his own" (I, 8, 16); this barbarian
counterpart of justice, a sense of shame, is tacitly transformed into
the definition of what is just in Greek cities, namely "to do one's own,"
i.e., to find one's political place. Furthermore the main fact about Gyges'
crime in Herodotus, that he is forced to do injustice precisely because
he is seen in the act imposed on him by the king, is inverted in Glaucon's
story, where by reason of the invisibility afforded by his ring Gyges
becomes a criminal voluntarily and with impunity.
22. Note that in this context Socrates first acknowledges the natural world
as the setting and source of human nature. The character of peoples
is, as in Herodotean ethnology, dependent on the clime under which
they live: Thracians, Scythians, and northerners in general are lovers
of honor, Phoenicians and Egyptians are lovers of money, and the
Hellenes in the middle are lovers of knowledge (435e; cf. Timaeus 24c;
Epinomis 987d). Even the geographic place of philosophy is the center.
23. See Adams op. cit (supra, N. I) I, p. 144, note on 435b).
24. See Charmides 164d5 for Critias's version of the Delphic background
of this saying.
25. See J. Klein, A Commentary on Plato's Meno (Chapel Hill1965), pp.
112-15.
26. See Meno SOc, The Meno of Plato, ed. E. S. Thompson (Cambridge
1961), p. 112.
27. Throughout the dialogue Socrates' reiteration of themes, such as the
"oft-told" tale of the one and the many, as well as the recapitulations
he often elicits from Glaucon, have the effect of making Glaucon
"recollect" (e.g., 507a7, 522bl, 544b4) from time to time the springs
and the course of the argument. This is, obviously, not genuine Socratic
recollection (see above, IV E 4d) but an exercise of that power of
memory which philosophers must possess as part of their natural endowment (535cl). Such memory-recollection (anamnesis) was especially
cultivated by the Pythagoreans: "A Pythagorean man does not arise
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28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
99
from his bed before he has recollected what happened yesterday. And
he performs the recollections in this way. He tries to recover by means
of the dianoia what he first said or heard ... " (Iamblichus, Life of
Pythagoras 163, 20). The passage goes on to describe the discipline
of completely recalling the logoi and erga of the previous day, a
discipline that was considered part of the training needed for the acquisition of knowledge. It is obviously a technique Socrates himself
had mastered.
The most important ancient reports of the "Unwritten Teachings" are
conveniently collected in K. Gaiser, Platons ungeschriebene Lehre
(Stuttgart 1963), pp. 445 ff. See also J. N. Findlay, Plato, the Written
and Unwritten Doctrines (New York 1974).
Klein, op. cit. (supra, N. 25), pp. 115-25, "The Dianoetic Extension
of Eikasia ."
Klein, ibid. 119 and note 27, where the proof according to Euclid V
of the equality of the middle segments is given.
Cf. Klein, ibid. pp. 191-99 on the "solidity" of the soul in the dialogues.
For further sources on the "dimensional soul" see Gaiser, op. cit. (supra,
N. 28), pp. 545 ff.
See 0. 1beplitz, "Mathematik und Ideenlehre bei Platon," Zur
Geschichte der griechischen Mathematik (Darmstadt 1965), p. 59.
The objects on the Divided Line are only twice referred to in terms
of mimesis (510b4 and 532a2, cf. 507c6).
In the Philebus, the Good as a human good comes to Socrates as a
dream-like reminiscence of a "third thing," other than and above both
pleasure and human wisdom (20b8), i.e., it is a "one" above the other
"two." It has three characteristics: It is "perfect," "adequate," and
"choiceworthy" (20d); its power, again, cannot be "caught" in one idea
but must be captured in three: beauty, symmetry, and truth (65al); their
relation is not unlike that of the three effects of the power of the Good,
namely world, knowledge, and being, in the Republic. Again Eudemus
(Wehrli, Fr. 31; cited by Gaiser, op. cit. p. 480, note) says that Plato
distinguished three ways the Good functions: as productive, as end,
and as exemplary cause; these again correspond roughly to the Good
as father, as end of learning, and as pattern of being. The whole complex is caught in a German word-play: the Good is the "U rsprung,"
that is, the "Ur-sache" of all"Sachen" and their "Sachheit" (M. Heidegger, Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit [Bern 1954], p. 40).
Gaiser, op. cit. (supra, N. 28), p. 531; see F. Cornford, Plato and
Parmenides (New York 1957), pp. 3-11 for further references. For one
playful allusion to the Indefinite Dyad in the Platonic dialogues
�100
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
themselves see J. Klein, "A Note on Plato's Parmenides," in Lectures
and Essays, ed. R. Williamson and E. Zuckerman (Annapolis 1985),
pp. 285-88.
Further terms used of the Dyad in Metaphysics 989bi9 ff.: material,
the great and small, similar to the female, responsible for evil.
For Being as the eidetic 1\vo, see J. Klein, Greek Mathematical
Thought and the Origin of Algebra, trans. E. Brann (Cambridge 1968),
p. 93.
The dialectical name of this or of any other eidetic number is not
given explicitly in any ancient source. On the Good as the "First" and
"the source which is the whole" see Klein, Meno, p. 123 and n. 39.
The homoia and associated terms like paradeigma and analogia, reduced however to mere principles of classification, figure largely in
the work of Speusippus, Plato's successor in the Academy; see PaulyWissowa, III, A. 2, pp. 1641-58. Themistius (Gaiser, op. cit., p. 535)
says that Plato spoke of methexis in the Timaeus but called participation homoiosis in the Agrapha Dogmata.
Cf. Adams op. cit. II, pp. 441, 470 ff.
There is also a curious story about an artificial Hades that Pythagoras
is said to have built- a little chamber under the earth into which he
disappeared for a long time and then ascended, announcing that he
had dwelt in Hades (Diogenes Laertius VIII, 41).
Iamblichus, Life of Pythagoras 165, 12; see Note 27.
See Jowett, op. cit. III, p. 326.
Adams, op. cit. II, pp. 163 ff.
Diogenes Laertius remarks on Plato's special use of the word phaulos,
pointing out that he uses it in the two senses of "simple, honest" and
"bad" (III, 63). Actually, of course, Socrates often uses it ironically
to mean "the great thing that everyone else overlooks."
43. The ancient texts are collected in Gaiser, op. cit., pp. 478-508. The
difficulties in using these sources to reconstruct the A graph a Dogmata
are (I) that they often mention Plato and the Pythagoreans indiscriminately; the longest account (Sextus Empiricus, Against the
Mathematicians X, 248 ff.) even attributes the "dimensional" teaching
to the Pythagoreans alone; (2) that they rarely tell by whom, to whom,
or with what pedagogical purpose such a scheme was proposed.
Aristotle, for instance, refers to the Timaeus in this context (On the
Soul404bl6), which should give one pause-the account there is, after
all, proposed as a myth (29d2). Nor can the frequent references in the
ancient literature to On the Good help here, since no one knows whether
that was a public lecture or a series of lectures or a kind of seminar.
�BRANN
101
In other words, it is not possible to say what Plato himself thought
of "dimensional generation," whether he approved it only for certain
pedagogical purposes or became himself a thoroughgoing Pythagorean.
In any case, since we know that the dialogues often play on certain
differences between the author himself and Socrates, it would, even
if Plato's opinion were well known, still be necessary to investigate
Socrates' understanding of the Pythagorean order within the dialogue
itself.
The locus classicus for such a cosmogenic order is the Epinomis,
a dialogue said to have been tacked on to the Laws by Philip of Opus
(Diogenes Laertius III, 37). Its purpose was to expound that
astronomical theology which was to be the wisdom of the "midnight
council," the rulers of the non-philosophical city of the Laws. Here
the cosmos arises from a continual doubling of the unit, which produces a series of terms, 1:2:4:8, such that each term duplicates the ratio
that the previous term has to the unit. These duplicating logoi express
the relations of the dimensions of the cosmos, from the dimensionless
one, through that doubling of the point which gives rise to the line,
up to the solid that is the cube of the "linear" number two, i.e., eight
(990e ff.). The duplication is to be understood as the effect of the dyadic
arche.
44. Plutarch, in his third Platonic Query (IOOlc ff.), in which he discusses
the (undecidable) qiiestioii which segment of the Divided Line, the uppermost or the lowest, ought to be the longest, attempts to conflate
the opinion that "the dianoia is as nous among the mathematicals,
which are as noeta appearing in mirrors" with the genetic dimensional
theory. The difficulties into which this leads him are instructive. He
first makes Plato induce the mathematical cosmos from the noetic principles: "He leads the noesis concerned with the eide out of its abstraction and separation from body, going down in the order of mathematics
... "; next we reduce that cosmos by abstracting its dimensions until
"we will be among the noetic ideas themselves"; and finally, the sensible world is deduced from these by reading the realms of the Divided
Line roughly downward, as stages of dimensional growth. In this account it is entirely unclear in what way the noeta are the principles
of mathematics on the one hand, and of the sensible world on the other,
and whether the production of mathematicals is the work of human
noesis or of the noeta as sources.
45. A centered sphere (as opposed to Parmenides' partless sphere) seems
at least to convey more of the expressible characteristics of the Whole
than the usual pyramid (cf. Sophist 244e). The center, which in our
�102
MUSIC OF THE REPUBLIC
diagram marks the end of the dialectic ascent, is, according to Aristotle (Physics 265b4), at once the arche, the meson, and the telos of a
sphere, so that, in a manner of speaking, it encompasses the periphery.
This corresponds to the fact that Glaucon's assumption, that the top
of the dialectic ascent is "a rest . . . and an end" (532e3), is quite
wrong- there stiJJ must follow a syllogismos that takes the argument
back again to the periphery, where the power of the center as cause,
aitia, is first fully apprehended (516b9; this noetic syllogismos, which
is preceded by an ascent, e.g., Statesman 267a4, is not to be confused
with the dianoetic deduction, e.g., Republic 510b5). It is, of course,
convenient that all three of Aristotle's terms are also terms used of
the Good. The radial lines may then represent the indefinite dyadic
source, which is doubly delimited by the center and its periphery to
produce the actual finite sphere of Being. But extended attention to
such diagrams always implies that thought has ceased.
46. See Proclus, Commentary on the First Book of Euclid's Elements, ed.
Ver Becke (Paris 1948), pp. 58-62; on the motto over Plato's
"mouseion": "Let no one unversed in geometry enter here," see Elias,
Commentary on the Categories, Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca
(Berlin 1900) Vol. XVIII, Pt. I, pp. Il8, 13 ff.
Socrates' resistance to the advanced and "technical" study of
mathematics is attested also by the Memorabilia (IV, vii). Xenophon
represents him as advocating exactly the kind of mathematics opposite
to that which he repeatedly insists on in the Republic, namely useful
and applied mathematics, such as earth measurement. But when Plato
and Xenophon differ in a deliberately diametrical way there is usually
a vital point of agreement; here it is Socrates' deep objection to
mathematics as an independent study pursued for its own sake by
private experts, a study that would fit into the "doxastic" rather than
the "noetic" segments of the Divided Line. The very mental virtues
required and acquired by such studies, keenness and sharpness
(Republic 526b, 535b5), are regarded by him with a certain suspicion
because they tend to live in a little soul (519a), and his parodies of
professional talk (527a, 531b) are worthy of a "large-thinking" Swiftean Laputa.
47. See Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought Pt. I, 6.
48. Of course, mathematical studies provide practice not only in what might
be called "cosmic synopsis" but also in that preliminary "synagogif"
or collection (Phaedrus 266b4) which consists in "seeing together and
bringing under one idea things scattered everywhere" (265d3), i.e., in
collecting particulars into one eidos.
�BRANN
49.
50.
51.
52.
103
The necessity of "cosmic synopsis" was emphasized by Speusippus, in whose opinion "it is impossible for anyone to define any of
the things that are unless he knows all the things that are" (P. Lang,
De Speusippi Academici Scrip/is, Fr. 31b.)
Sources in Gaiser, op. cit. (supra, N. 28), pp. 461-67. Aristotle
(Nicomachean Ethics !095a32) furnishes the general background by
noting that Plato was concerned with the direction that the road of
inquiry ought to take, whether toward or away from principles.
See The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements, ed. Heath (New York
1956) I, pp. 136-41.
See Klein, Meno, (supra, N. 25), pp. 82-87.
For the Simplicius passage see Gaiser, op. cit. (supra, N. 28), p. 464;
for the ·"pattern cause," p. 480, note; for Theophrastus's comment on
53.
54.
55.
56.
the absence of a deduction of the visible world, pp. 493-94.
See Euclid's Elements (Heath, supra N. 50) III, I ff., p. 438.
See T. L. Heath, A Manual of Greek Mathematics (New York 1963),
pp. 154-55.
Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought Pt. I, 7 C.
Pauly-Wissowa, Suppl. III, p. 1007.
�Eidos and Agathon
in Plato's Republic
Robert B. Williamson
This essay is in two parts. In the first I argue that the "forms" (eide,
ideal) discussed by Socrates in the Republic begin to become intelligible
to us if we think of them as wholes of a certain kind. In so describing
them, l point to several fundamental misconceptions into which the beginning student of Plato may be led and which are sometimes found in
scholarly writings. In the second part I apply the results of the first part
toward an understanding of what is said of the "good" (agathon) in the
images of the sun, the line, and the cave of Books VI and VII.
I. The Objects of Philosophy
After Socrates' long "digression" on war in Book V of the Republic,
Glaucon protests that the company will not release him from his obligation to solve the problem of the possibility of founding in deed the just
city that had been founded earlier in speech (Books II-IV). Socrates reluctantly agrees to ride the third and greate>t "wave of paradox," after warning that "if we do discover what sort of thing (hoion) justice is," we may
find that justice and "the completely just man" are "patterns" (paradeigmata-472c4, d5, 9) which no man or city could perfectly "come to
be" (genesthai- d7). Patterns that are discovered only in speech may,
nonetheless, be those things to which we must first look exclusively
(apob/epontes-c?) if we are to discern how the men and the cities around
us, which imperfectly partake of them, stand in regard to happiness or
its opposite. Is it not the case, Socrates asks, "that it is the nature of acting
(praxis) to attain to less of truth (aletheia) than speaking (lexis)?"
105
�106
EIDOS AND AGATHON
(472b-473a)'. Whereas Glaucon assumes a perfect familiarity with what
justice and' the just city are (extending even to things Socrates has not
mentioned- cf. 47lc4-e5) and asks only after its possibility, Socrates suggests that the pursuit of the question of possibility may require the reopening of the question "What is justice?" and that the answers to both questions may reveal a disproportion between acting and speaking which is not
simply a matter of fact but is grounded in the "nature" of acting and speaking. This suggestion is fortified by Socrates' initial statement of the third
paradox: The "least change" that would bring any of the existing cities into the form of government hitherto described as just would be that "either
the philosophers rule as kings in the cities or those who are now called
kings and potentates philosophize genuinely and adequately" (473b4-d3).
Philosophers can be philosophers whether or not they are kings; but kings
and men of power, if they are to be such in more than name, must
philosophize (cf. Gorgias 466b4 ff.). The highest activity within the city
will be seen to depend on another activity which does not in turn depend
on it.
Before Socrates can explain his paradox, he must make clear to Glaucon
and the others who the philosophers are. As the name itself says, they are
"lovers of wisdom." The word philosophos expresses no qualification: They
are not lovers of one kind of wisdom as opposed to another- for example,
of Homeric wisdom or arithmetical wisdom. Like all true lovers, they yearn
for all of what they love (474b3-cll), all of that eidos''' (475b5). Glaucon
protests that the title "philosopher" will thereby extend even to the "lovers
of sights and sounds," the philotheamones and phi/ekooi, who travel to
the festivals eager for any innovation and are loath to engage in serious
discussion (dl-el). The "lovers of sights" may include not only the idle spectator but the connoisseur, who perceives that there is more than one way
to write a good tragedy and who resists the attempt to reduce those ways
to a univocal definition of tragedy.' Socrates replies with an argument that
is of decisive importance for the remainder of the dialogue and yet of exasperating brevity: "Since noble (kalon) is opposite to base, they are two."Of course."- "Then since they are two, is not each also one?"- "That
also." -"And the same argument (logos) holds for just and unjust, good
and bad, and all eide: Each is itself one, but by community (koinonia)
with activities (praxeis) and bodies and one another each shows forth itself
as a multitude of appearances (phantazomena pol/a)" (475e9-476a7; cf.
402c2-d2). The philosophers are set apart from the "lovers of sights, the
lovers of arts, and the 'practical men'" in that the latter's concern is with
the many things that are noble, just, or good (ta kala, etc.), whereas the
former are concerned with "the noble itself" (auto to kalon) or "nobleness
itself' (auto kallos), etc., each of which is one (476a9-cl).
�WILLIAMSON
107
The argument as it stands seems purely sophistical: Because justice and
injustice are opposed they are two, and because they are two each is one.
Socrates is not above employing sophistries- the Dialogues abound in
them- but his sophistries differ from those of the sophists proper in that
they are psychagogic, that they suggest the possibility of a redirection of
our thinking. In the rest of this section I shall outline what I take to be
the line of thought suggested by Socrates' argument.
When in our ordinary dealings with men and actions we judge them
to be just or unjust, good or bad, noble or base, we refer to a variety of
more or less clearly articulated criteria. Some of these are developed and
examined in Book I: Justice is repaying one's debts, helping one's friends,
rendering what is due, obeying the laws, etc. And there are more: The
distribution of property may be determined justly by need, desert, ability
to use well, prior possession, the wishes of the previous owner, a tendency
to contribute to the common good, existing legal enactments, etc. Yet there
are many practical cases, pragmata,' in which the application of one or
more criteria excludes the application of others. Xenophon tells of how
the young Cyrus was assigned by his teachers to judge a case between two
boys; the larger boy had found the smaller boy wearing a coat too large
for him, had taken it from him by force, and had given him his own coat,
which had been too small for the larger boy but fitted its new owner perfectly (Cyropaedia I, iii, 16-17). The decision and its aftermath need not
concern us here. The case could be decided in only one of two ways; yet
considerations (of what is appropriate, of voluntary exchange, of the laws,
etc.) could be adduced in support of either alternative. One might, of course,
deny the validity of all but one or a few of the criteria of just decision;
however, the unity of justice that Socrates urges against the "lovers of sights"
is not of that kind.' Rather, it is because either decision will satisfy some
criteria and violate others that we can say of either that it is both just and
unjust. This, however, borders on contradiction, and we must, as Socrates
argued earlier (436b8 f.), distinguish between the respects in which a single
pragma is just or unjust. Pragmata of the sort described by Xenophon
are just in one respect and unjust in another respect and therefore neither
wholly just nor wholly unjust. The distinction, however, is effected not
merely through our concern with the praxis (the actual assigning of the
coats) but through our thoughtful comparing of the criteria of judgment
themselves. That it is just to render to each what is appropriate to his nature
is not a principle that is true for some pragmata and false for others; it
is true for all relevant pragmata, though the pragmata may in some cases
demand the violation of that principle because of the impossiblity of
following both it and some other more pertinent principle.' Our way of
�108
EIDOS AND AGATHON
calling a pragma both just and unjust presupposes a permanent opposition between the criteria of just and unjust.
Several more steps are wanting before we can speak of the unity of
justice as opposed to the plurality of dikaia, of just things. First, it is a
premise of Socrates' argument that all relevant pragmata are just in some
respects and unjust in others (479a-d). There cannot be a pragma that
satisfies all criteria of justice. If there were, our judgments of pragmata
that are neither wholly just nor wholly unjust could be referred to it as
a standard. But if this premise in its general form is almost baldly asserted
by Socrates in the course of the argument at 479a-d, it is examined
throughout most of the Republic in terms of the specific question, How
do the possible forms of justice and injustice make their appearance in
the succession of cities that come into being in speech and in the corresponding types of human soul? Do Socrates and the brothers in fact succeed in constructing a city and e<;lucating a class of rulers who fully realize
"what justice is"? I think the answer, intended by Plato and his Socrates
alike, is "no." Here I can give only an outline of my reasons for saying this:'
I. The just man is provisionally characterized as one who "minds
his own business" or does those things that are his own (and
not another's), ta hautou prattein (433a ff.). One's own business
is here understood in terms of the art (technif) to which his
unature" is best suited; hence, each man is to practice the one
art that is his own and to abstain from all other arts. This is
possible, however, only if his art is supported by other arts practiced by other men, that is, only if he is a member of a community of artisans. The justice of one man thus becomes the
justice of the citizen, which is essentially partial, determining
him as part of the whole community of artisans. Thus the just
city, in which each man minds his own business, is the just
pragma within which the justices of the citizens find their appropriate places.
II. The just city, however, is a specious whole. First, though each
art requires the support of other arts and hence of a city, it requires the city only in general. The arts do not of themselves
guarantee that particular attachment to "this" city which is
patriotism. This deficiency is most pronounced in the warriors'
art, which presupposes a distinction between friends md enemies
which it cannot of itself draw but which must be supplied by
an education based on stories (mythoz) that are only partly true.
Second, the city is a whole consisting of potential wholes,
the individual citizens (cf. the analogy between the city and the
�WILLIAMSON
109
soul, 434d ff., and the alternative offered to Adeimantus of each
man performing all the necessary activities for himself369e6-370a4). The cohesiveness of the city requires that each
citizen's nature be understood as radically partial. This is accomplished through the identification of nature with aptitude
for a particular art (see esp. 454c7 -d6), an identification that
is in some cases forced and results in the fragmentation or "chopping up" of human nature (cf. 394e8-395b6 and Symposium
223d3-6). Socrates' "well-bred lie" (414b8 ff.) is designed to lend
plausibility to the city's claim to wholeness: The natures of the
citizens are assimilated to their arts (the artisans and their instruments share a common birth-414d5-el), and both nature
and art are generated in the native soil (chi5ra) of the city. Being
a specious whole, the just city is at best an image (eidolon) of
the justice that Socrates now discovers in the soul of the just
man (443c4 f.). ·
III. The formula ta hautou prattein, "performing its proper activities," now applies to each of the three parts of the just soul,
the reckoning (logistikon) part ruling over the appetites
(epithymim) through the assistance of the spirited part (thymos).
The harmony so attained may often depend on the constraining
. force exercised by the spirited part over the appetites, which are
not of themselves disposed toward measure (439d-442b). Further, the just soul described in Book IV needs the external supports of the just city, for it is a justice founded merely on opinion and habit (see esp. 619b7-d5 and 522a2-5; political wisdom
[sophia] is identified in Book IV with good counsel [eubou/ia]428b6-8). If justice is to stand fast (cf. Meno 97d4-98a8), it must
be founded on knowledge. However, knowledge is not a mere
addendum to opinion, leaving its form and content unaltered,
as I shall argue in the rest of this essay. Indeed, it is doubtful
whether the account given in Book IV of the tri-eidetic soul is
at all adequate for the understanding of philosophic knowledge,
which requires a turnabout (periagi5ge) of "the whole soul"
(508c4-9; cf. 6llel-612a6).
IV. The activity of the philosopher-sage, founded on knowledge and
free from inner constraint, now appears to be the wholly just ·
pragma. In the just city, however, the philosophers must be constrained to rule, that is, to do what is not their own business.
Socrates can justify this "injustice" against the best part of the
city only by reminding Glaucon that the philosopher-sages owe
�110
E/008 AND AGATHON
the city a debt for their education and indeed for thek very
generation (519c8-520el). At the metaphysical peak of theRepublic Socrates is obliged to defend a breach of the principle
of "doing one's own business" by an appeal to the obligation
to pay one's debts- to the justice of Cephalus! The city's justice
(understood as "doing one's own business") is purchased only
with a breach of that same justice in the name of another standard of justice (paying one's debts). The two standards are not
reconciled in practice.
The criteria that are separated by our "thinking them through" (dianoia)
are of a different kind than the pragmata that are referred to them; they
are not analogous to the standard meter, which is like the things of which
it is a measure: an extended body.
A second step is missing, however. Granted that no pragma can be both
just and unjust in the same respect and that from this it follows that justice
and injustice are opposite and separable by our thinking them through,
are we entitled to infer that justice and injustice are each one? May not
the words "justice" and "injustice" refer to two mutually exclusive sets of
criteria, neither of which sets can be reduced to a single common defining
element? But in the very posing of this question we betray assumptions
that are foreign to Plato and are inherited from Aristotle. If Plato thought
of the relation of a superior eidos to the eide beneath it in terms of the
Aristotelian relation between a comparatively undetermined genos (kind)
and the eidethat are determinate actualizations of it, then the chorismos
(separation) thesis leads to insuperable difficulties, as Aristotle argued':
If the superordinate genos is one and separate from its subordinate eidif,
how can it be predicated of the latter in a way that does not destroy its
unity (cf. Philebus !Sa-b)? Further, must not the eideMan, Dog, Horse,
contain each within itself the characteristic of Animal, thus rendering the
superordinate eidos Animal ontologica!Iy and logically superfluous? And,
if the eidos Man includes characteristics of Biped and Animal, how can
Plato insist on the separateness of the eide Biped and Animal, and at the
same time insist on the unity of the eidos Man (Met. H, 6, 1045a14-22)?
These difficulties and more are adduced by Aristotle against the two-fold
claim of separateness and unity. But Aristotle's aporiai themselves depend
on certain assumptions about the Platonic eide: that they are predicated
of one another according to the scheme of genus, species, and differentia;
that the unity of an eidos should exclude any complexity; and that the eide
are irreme\liably separated from one another. Following these assumptions,
we are easily led to conceive of the superordinate eidos as a sort of template
that cannot be put to use, for the eide under it must either always of
themselves or never bear its shape.'
�WILLIAMSON
111
I suggest that the unity of the eidos of justice is not to be expressed
through some formulaic "definition" of justice. Many of the Dialogues,
it is true, begin with what seems a search after a univocal formula that
will serve as an answer to the question ti esti x (What is x?); but those
dialogues relentlessly frustrate that search by the repeated discoveries that
the word "x" is used in a variety of ways. Yet if the search for an answer
to the ti esti question is to make sense at all, if "serious discussion" (to
dia/egestha~· cf. Parmenides !35b-c) is to be possible at all, the "lovers
of sights" must be wrong in their claim that any attempt to understand
any subject matter must dissipate itself into a multiplicity of observations,
however trenchant. Serious discussion and hence the Dialogues themselves
are grounded in the supposition that in matters of our greatest legitimate
concern there is a unity of meaning that underlies the ambiguities of ordinary speech and judgment. Only thus can the Socratic "flight" from the
observation of things to the examination of spoken accounts (/og01) be
justified (cf. Phaedo 99c6-e6). The accidental dramatic structure of the
Platonic dialogue presupposes as the ground of its validity a systematic"
interconnection of the objects of discourse and a pure dialectic that consists, not in a static "gaze" that takes in an utterly simple object, but in
a motion from one of its objects to another. This motion of pure dialectic,
described in Books Vi and VII of the Republic, is associated in the "later
dialogues" and perhaps in the Republic (cf. 454a) with a method of division (diairesis). What seems to be required of the superordinate eide (as
I shall further argue in the next section) is neither a univocal nor an
analogical unity, but a structured unity that includes the subordinate eide
in their systematic interrelations. The question .li esti dtkaiosyne (What
is justice?) must receive its answer, not in a defining formula such as "doing the things that are one's own" (ta hautou prattein), but in a complete
account that encompasses all the valid meanings of justice and vindicates
the presupposition that they are coherently interrelated. (It should be
stressed that the Republic does not provide such a complete account and
thus does not reveal the grounds or lack of grounds for its own guiding
supposition.)
Is there any basis for this presupposition in our ordinary dealings with
issues of justice and injustice? That there is is suggested (but by no means
conclusively) by the way in which we confront situations analogous to that
of the two boys and the coats. In such cases we are unable to apply one
criterion without violating another; we look for the "more just" or "less
just" alternative. In doing so we rank the various relevant criteria, assigning a higher status to one over another. To be sure, our decisions may often
enough be arrived at on the basis of considerations irrelevant to the question of justice and injustice, but by and large each of us lives in accord-
�112
EIDOS AND AGATHON
ance with a hierarchical ranking of criteria: We tend to prefer certain kinds
of legitimate claims over others. These rankings differ from person to person and society to society both in the criteria admitted and in the comparative ranks to which they are assigned. The selection of criteria and
the reasons for ranking them are in almost all (if not all) cases partial.
Such a partial hierarchy of criteria, when it is developed explicitly and
publicly, might well be called an "ideology." Particularly in the past two
centuries, the more theoretically inclined of the "lovers of sights" have
argued that the "concept" of justice vanishes into a multiplicity of ideologies
or, on a less articulate level, "cultures." However, the Dialogues show how
hierarchies of criteria can be put to the test in various ways. Cephalus,
the metic and financier, instinctively gives priority to the virtue of honesty, but he can easily be shown how adherence to honestY in some cases
may require the violation of the principle that one should benefit one's
friends and how the latter is in such cases preferable to honesty. Polemarchus adopts the position that justice is helping friends and harming
enemies, but the first half of his definition becomes trivial when the attempt is made to identify it with a single activity (that of the watchmanthief), and the second half leads to the absurd result that justice is the art
of making men unjust. Thrasyrnachus's identification of the just with
authoritative convention, to nomimon, must be replaced by a notion of
a "superior" who correctly perceives his advantage. In these passages cases
are cited in which several criteria must be brought to bear and the relative
priority of these criteria must be reevaluated. (To take the example of
Cephalus, we normally help our friends- in the ordinary sense of "help"when we repay our debts to them and keep our promises to them; it is
perfectly natural that, given his character and way of life, Cephalus should
treat honesty as the comprehensive form of just dealing, but, as Socrates'
example of the homicidal madman suggests, Cephalus's ranking of criteria
is based on certain assumptions that are normally but not necessarily fulfilled.) In all three conversations, with Cephal us, Polemarchus, and (up
to 343a) Thrasymachus, the need for a reformulation and re-ranking of
criteria is based on the premise, adopted by ordinary opinion and Socratic
dialectic alike, that justice is an excellence, an arete. The complete vindication o( tha( premise, which is the unaccomplished goal set by the
Republic, would require the proof that the criteria of justice are interrelated
in a way that is essentially free of all opposition.
If the foregoing hypothesis is correct, it follows that for Socrates every
(partially) just pragma abstracts from the totality of interrelated criteria
that are "what justice is," 6 eon OtKCUOOUVT]. And if, as Socrates suggests
(596a6 f.), what holds for "just" and "justice" holds for all common names
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and predicates, then a pragma "is" in the way an abstraction "is"; its being
is partial and derivative from that which properly and fully deserves the
names applied to it. Thus, to refer to the eide as "hypostatized abstractions" is to overlook that inversion of the ordinary understanding which
is essential to the "Theory of Ideas." The fact that pragmata can be described in a multitude of ways- as just, tall, three, rapid, sitting, speaking,
human, etc.- if anything, confirms rather than obviates their abstractness
for Socrates. Precisely because of its manifo)d character, a pragma can
be both just and unjust, noble and base, good and bad, etc., but none of
these wholly. Being neither wholly what it is called nor wholly not what
it is called, the pragma occupies a middle position between what in the
strict sense "is" and what simply "is not," between "being" (to on) and
"nothingness" (to medamei on) (476e6-477a8).
We misconceive the relation between pragma and eidos (for example,
between something just, dikaion ti, and the just itself, auto to dikaion)
if we assimilate it to the relation between a "particular" or "instance" and
a "universal." Here again we are tempted to Aristotelianize Plato, but the
Dialogues point in another direction. The young Socrates, when questioned
by Parmenides concerning the kinds of things he admits as eidif, approves
such things as one, many, like, unlike, just, noble, and good and confesses
to having doubts about such things as man, fire, and water; but he refuses
to accept certain "ridiculous" things such as hair, mud, and dirt as having
an eidos separate and different from the things with which we deal
(Parmenides 130b-d). Note that Socrates does not deny that the last group
have eide (that is, distinctive "looks" by which each can be recognized and
not confused with the others); he merely denies that their eide are separate
and distinct from them. The suggestion that Socrates rejects the last group
because its members are "unpleasant" or "trivial," though partially correct, is inadequate." In fact, Socrates gives an explicit reason for his rejection: "By no means . . . but these things are the very things we see"
(00/iai-L(i)~ ... uA.:\.iHaU~a 1-LBV YE ii7ttp oproi-LEV, ~ailta Ka\ ElVUl- d3 f.).
What interests us here is the positive implication of Socrates' reason: If
there is a separate eidos of something, then what that something is is not
what we see (or otherwise perceive through the senses) when we look at
it. What that thing is is its eidos, or "looks," and this "looks," according
to Socrates, is invisible (aeides) and accessible only to our thinking (dianoia,
noesis). But this is not the case with a particular or an instance, of which
we can justly predicate the eidos in question. Even of an imperfect instance
of x we can say that it is partly x. Rather, the similes of the divided line
and the cave in Books VI and VII and the account of the three ranks of
craftsmen in Book X describe the relation between eidos and pragma as
I
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E/008 AND AGATHON
analogous to that of a visible object and its image on a reflecting surface.
Whatever it is, a mirror-like image of a horse is not a "particular" horse
nor an "instance" of a horse.
We can perceive a mirror-image in at least two ways. (i) Most frequently
we see that it is an image of something else (that it both is and is not what
it is -cf. Sophist 240a7 -c6), although from habit we may say of the mirrorimage, "That is a horse." (ii) Less frequently, we may be "taken in" by the
mirror-image and actually take it to be a horse. Now from a Platonic point
of view, (i) is analogous to the way in which pragmata are understood according to the "Theory of Ideas"; (ii) is analogous to what Plato must have
regarded as the crucial mis-identification of common sense, which reaches
its fullest philosophical expression in Aristotle's identification of hekaston
with to ti en einai (Met. Z, 6). Suppose the mirror of our example could
be replaced by a pan-aesthetic mirror capable of reflecting images not only
of color and shape but of weight, hardness, tone, odor, etc. Then, according to (ii) we could say of the horse-image, "That horse is white," that is,
we could predicate white of it. But this is not necessarily the case with
(i): In a perfectly consistent way-perhaps the most natural way-we could
maintain that to say "That is a white horse" of a mirror-image that is
recognized as such is an elliptical way of saying "That is an image of a
white horse." (Compare "That is Abraham Lincoln" said of the image on
a Lincoln penny.) In this way of speaking, we do not mean to predicate
"white" of the image at all, or, if we do, we are guilty of mistaking the
image for its original. 12
Now, if it should turn out upon sufficient examination that all of our
perceptions are "provocative" of noesis (that is, of a thinking that looks
away from them toward that by which they can be understood to be "what
they are")-if no visible thing is what we see-then the mode of being of
a pragma is analogous to that of an image in our pan-aesthetic mirror.
Instead of referring to them as "abstractions," we may better !ikenpragmata
to reflected images, eikones, which are perspectival, which only partially
reproduce their originals. We ·may thus reserve the term "abstract" for our
perceptions and judgments that have pragmata for their objects, that is,
for our doxai. But whether it is true that all of our perceptions are provocative in this way is perhaps a question that cannot be settled by a single
argument but requires that we consider each type of perception separately."
The imperfection of pragmata resides not so much in their lack of
precision- the objects of pure mathematics are precise, but they are not
eide (see note 20 below)- as in their fragmentary character. Pragma stands
to eidos as non-self-subsistent part to permanent whole. Pragmata may
indeed appear to be wholly what we call them (for example, Cephalus can
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console himself as having lived a "just" life on the basis of honesty alone),
but Socratic examination sooner or later brings to light the contradictions
implicit in those ways of speaking and living that misidentify the part with
the whole. It is this distinction between part and whole that permits us
to speak of a "separation" (chi5rismos) of the eide from pragmata in a way
that eludes Aristotle's charge that the eide are ontologically redundant (e.g.,
Met. B, 2 997b8-l2). In the following section I shall argue that an analogous
separation occurs within the realm of intelligibility.
A final remark. I have described pragmata as images of what they seem
to be, and in so doing I have stressed the point that an image is of something
else. Nevertheless, an image cannot be completely referred to its original;
it must contain or be connected with a third thing which is not simply
referable to the original. Otherwise the image would be no image at all,
but rather apart or privative state of the original (as when we look directly
but nonetheless perspectively at a visible object or when we look at it in
near darkness- cf. 508c-d). The third thing is, of course, the medium in
or on which the image is produced, the mirror in our example. Socrates
frequently refers to media in his references to the relation of the visible
object to its reflections, that is, to the relation holding between the
analogues of the eidos and its pragmata-images." But in the Republic he
nowhere develops an explicit or non-metaphorical account of the medium
in which the pragmata-images of the eide are produced. Instead of the threefold distinction between original ( =eidos), image ( = pragma), and medium,
Book V divides all things into fa onta ( =eide= originals), ta metaxy
( =pragmata=images), and to medamei on (what in no way is). The third
class is not the medium but- nothing at all! Thus, the pragmata-images
are ontologically defined by Socrates as being nothing more than mixtures
of being and non-being. As a result they are distinguished from the eide
only in terms of what they are not; they in fact seem to be no more than
privative states of the eide. Our likening of pragmata to abstractions was
not so imprecise after all.
II. The Greatest Mathema
Just before embarking on a discussion of the education of the potential philosopher-rulers, Socrates reminds Adeimantus of his earlier warning
that their determination of "what justice, moderation, courage, and wisdom
each is" was based .on a tri-eidetic division of the soul and that this division fell short of preCision (akribeia), for which another "longer way
around" (makrotera periodos) was required (504a4-b8; cf. 435c9-d7). Now
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E/DOS AND AGATHON
that they are concerned with the education of rulers "in the most precise
sense" (akribestata), the longer way with its greater precision can no longer
be avoided entirely, though in fact it will be indicated only in outline
(hypographe-504d6). Indeed, the satisfaction with which the company had
earlier accepted the easier and shorter way, which consisted in "moulding"
(plattein) the soul through the use of mythical typoi, now appears to be
a kiud of sloth (rhaithymia) rather than something which might satisfy
them "within due measure" (metriOs). For "a measure of things such as
these which falls short in any way of what is (tou ontos) is not a measure
at all (ou pony metrios)"; "nothing incomplete (ateles) is a measure of
anything" (504bl-c5).
The longer way, if traversed in full, must lead through the mathemata
(things that can be learned and hence understood) to the "greatest
mathema, which is most fitting to the guardians." "Are not the former
things the greatest," asks Adeimantus, "or is there something yet greater
than justice and the things we have described?" (c9-d5). Greater than the
study of justice, which is itself in need of greater precision (d6-e3), is the
greatest mathema-the study ofthe "look" (idea) of the agathon (505a2).
The study of the agathon is the precondition of any accurate understanding of justice, for it is the agathon "by which just things ... become useful
and beneficial" (a3 f.). Unless we know the agathon, whatever else we know
is of no benefit (a6-b3). Yet, as Socrates will more than once insist, "we
do not know it adequately" (a5 f.; cf. 506c2 f., 517b4-7; 532d2-533a7).
We are obliged to consider Socrates' words with the utmost seriousness:
The knowledge and possession of justice (including the justice described
in Book IV) will not advance us in the slightest degree (cf. 505bl: ti pleon
einat) unless we possess and know the agathon, and we do not have this
knowledge (a6-b3). Against this most explicit admission of ignorance must
be weighed all passages that appear to settle the problems concerning justice
(cf. 506a).
Socrates' profession of ignorance is mitigated in three respects. First,
he knows what the agathon is not. The agathon is not pleasure, as the many
believe; nor is it intelligence (phronesis), as those who are more clever
believe. The former are compelled to admit that some pleasures are good
and others bad, and the latter, when asked of what the knowledge which
is the agathon is, sooner or later reveal the circularity of their reasoning
with the answer "the agathon is knowledge of the agathon" (505b5-dl).
These negative results are merely sketched here, for in the sequel Socrates
will show the impossibility of identifying the agathon with anything else:
The agathon will be revealed through a "daemonic hyberbole" to be "beyond
being" (epekeina tes ousias) and thus distinct from any of the things that
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are (509b6-c2). Second, he recognizes that the agathon is "that for the sake
of which every soul does everything it does, divining what it is [its ti einml,
while being perplexed and unable to grasp sufficiently what it is"
(505dll-e2). Whereas there are some men who are content to have only
the appearance of justice (cf. Glaucon's story of the ring of Gyges), no
one is content with anything less than the agatha that are (dS-10). Since
pretence (for example, the appearance of being just when one is not) is
for the sake of some ulterior good, the agathon, as the ultimate reason
for which anything is desired or done, is beyond all pretence, all duplicity,
and, as we shall see, all opposition. Thirdly, although the consideration
of the direct question "What is the agathon?" is too much for the present
inquiry, Socrates will speak of the "offspring of the agathon and its closest
likeness" (ekgonos te tou agathou ... kai homoiotatos ekeinoi- 506d8-e5).
This offspring is the sun, and it is an image of a special kind, for it is
an image which is fathered- that is, in part produced- by the thing of
which it is an image (508bl2). The agathon is known to Socrates at once
through an image and as the generator of an image. Thus, the simile of
the sun should account in part for its.elf, perhaps by illustrating the possibility of images in general.
'
At the basis of the simile is the "agreement" reached earlier that
although we speak of many things that are agatha or kala, we may in these
cases as in a/[ "turn about (palin au) and posit one look (idea) of each,
positing it as being one, and call it what each thing is" (507b2-8, following Adam: see his Appendix VII to Book VI). We thus suppose two "places"
containing two different kinds of "object" for the soul: the "Intelligible
Place" (topos noetos), and the "Visible Place" (topos horatos) (509d2 f.),
the one containing the ideai which can be known through pure thought
(noeisthm) but cannot be seen and the other containing the things that
can be seen (and generally the things perceived by the senses,
aistheta-507c4) but not known by pure thought (507b9 f.). Within the
latter place the various kinds of sensing (aisthesis) are correlated with their
special objects (aistheta): hearing with what is heard, etc. However, in the
case of the "power of seeing and being seen" (ten tou horan te kai horasthai
dynamin) there is need of a "third kind" (genos triton) if there is to be
an actual case of seeing and being seen. This is light, which "yokes together"
the sense of sight and the power of being seen. Of the "gods in the sky"
it is the sun that is chiefly responsible for light and thus for seeing and
being seen "in the most splendid degree" (hoti kal/ista- 508a5). Neither
vision (apsis), _nor the eye, "in which vision occurs," is the sun, but the
latter is "most like the sun" (helioeidestaton) of all the organs of sense.
Further, the sun, being the cause of vision, is seen by "this very thing" that
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EIDOS AND AGATHON
it causes (507cl-508bll). Analogously, the agathon presides over the Intelligible Place, yoking together thought (nous) and what is being thought
(ta nooumena). It "provides the things being known (Ia gignoskomena)
with their a/etheia (their "truth" or "revealedness ") and the knower with
the power [of knowing]" (el-3). It is the cause of episteme and a/etheia,
neither of which is the agathon but which are both "like the agathon"
(agathoeide- 508e3-509a5)."
In addition to providing the conditions for visibility to the visible things
(horata), the sun also provides for their coming into being (genesis) and
growth, though it is not itself genesis. Similarly, the agathon provides the
things that are known not only with their being known but also with their
"being" (on) and "beingness" (ousia), "though the agathon is not beingness
but surpassingly beyond beingness in ancestral rank (presbeia) and power"
(509b2-IO).
The multitude of interpretations of the simile of the sun are sufficient
testimony to the elusiveness if not the inaccessibility of the thought behind
Socrates' words. Yet the importance of the passage for our discussion of
the objects of philosophy requires an effort toward interpretation. Such
an effort must, I believe, depend in large measure on Platonic writings other
than the Republic.
In the second part of the dialogue named after him, Parmenides illustrates for Socrates' benefit the kind of "exercise" that must precede any
serious attempt to "define the kalon, the dikaion, and the agathon." With
the aid of young Aristoteles he examines through a series of "suppositions"
(hypotheseis) the implications of saying that "one" or "many" are or are
not (Parmenides 135c-136b). They begin by supposing that "one is" (hen
esli: or, that "there is one thing"-the expression is, perhaps deliberately,
ambiguous) and by insisting to the fullest possible degree on the meaning
of the word "one" in the expression (137c-142a). The results are forbidding. If the one is simply one (or, if there is only one thing), it cannot
be at all many (or, there cannot be many things). Thus the one cannot
admit a plurality within itself; it cannot be a whole having parts. But neither
can it be one of several beings: that is, it cannot be "other than another"
(heteron heterou-139c3-5, e3). For, if there were another than the one,
the one would be both one and other than another. It would therefore be
not one simply but two, since it would not be one by virtue of its being
other than another and it would not be other than another by virtue of
its being one. Nor can the one admit of any relation to itself, such as
sameness, likeness, or equality, for to say that something is the same as
x is different from saying that it is one. Being neither pros heteron nor
pros heauto, the one cannot admit of relation at alL Therefore, it cannot
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be "said," known, perceived, or opined, for the unperishing quality of logos
is that, sometimes dividing and at other times combining, it causes the
one and the many to become the same (Philebus 15d4-16a3). At best the
one could be named. But even here the difficulty recurs. For either the
name of the one would be distinct from the one and thus in relation to
the one, or the one and its name would be identical. In the latter case the
name would not be a name tinos, of something, not even of itself; it would
be without reference and thus not a name at all (cf. Sophist 244b6-dl3).
Finally, the one is unable to admit the relations older than itself, younger
than itself, and of the same age as itself. It is therefore not in time, and
thus it neither was, will be, nor is. The one does not partake in beingness
(ousia) and "in no way is." 16
To be, then, is to be in relation to something else (pros alia t1)- to make
a difference. Thus, the Eleatic Stranger (parting with his master,
Parmenides) can offer as a "boundary (horos) to distinguish the things
that are" the following criterion: "Everything that possesses any power
(dynamis) of any kind either to work any effect (poiein) in anything of
any nature or to be affected (pathein) even in the slightest degree by the
most paltry thing, though it be only on one occasion, really is (ontos einm)"
(Sophist 247d8-e4) .. We may recognize three elements in the Stranger's
horos: (i) that to be is to be pros alia ti; (ii) that the modes of being pros
alia ti are poiein heteron hotioun and pathein hypo tinos, that is, that they
are aspects of an active-passive relation; and (iii) that a being need not
always be actually pros allo ti but need only possess the power (which will
sooner or later be exercised) to be pros allo ti at some time and in some
way not necessarily predetermined. It follows that no being can be solely
responsible for its own being; its being depends in part on there being
something other than it with which it can at some time or other enter into
the active-passive relation. Being is twofold, and, like the number two (or,
in modern terms, "pair"), it cannot be identified with any one of its
members, though- and here the numerical analogy breaks down- it can
be said that each of its members "is" (cf. Sophist 249d-250d and Klein
GMT, pp. 86 ff.). On the other hand, to be cannot consist merely in being
pros allo ti, for each being would thereby vanish into the others to which
it was related. Each being that "really is" (ontos esti) must be something
(einai=einai tl), that is, it must be what it is in and by itse/J, auto kath'
hauto, and prior to any relation with another being into which it may actually enter (cf. Sophist 252d). Every being is at once kath' hauto and pros
allo ti. Or, to employ terms more familiar to the Sophist, the archai of
being (on) are the self-same (t'auton) and the other (thateron), which "is
always other than another (heteron heterou)" (254d ff., esp. 255cl2-e7).
I,
i
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EIDOS AND AGATHON
The kath' hauto and pros a/lo ti aspects of being are unified (that is,
are aspects of one being) when a being, A, affects or is affected by another
being, B, precisely because A is what it is. It would seem that for Plato
this can occur in two exemplary ways. Either A can be known by B to be
exactly what it is, or A can re-produce itself in another than itself- that
is, A can produce an image of itself, B. For the present, let us consider
the former way, which the Stranger discusses in his critique of the "gods"
or "friends of the ideai." Apparently these were the absolutistic proponents
of the theory of ideai (among whom the younger Plato may or may not
have belonged), who insisted on the kath' hauto aspect of ousia to the extent of denying ousid any active-passive relations (Sophist 248a-c). The
Stranger proceeds to set this right (248d-249b). If, as the "friends of the
ideai'' assert, soul knows and ousia is known, soul must in some sense act
and ousia be acted upon. In the Stranger's terms, soul possesses motion,
kinesis, and ousia is moved, kineisthai, "to the extent that it is known."
Thus, kinesis extends even to the ldeai; if the ideai were entirely unaffected
and simply kath' hauta, they would be unknown and irrelevant to everything
else (cf. Parmenides l33b-l34c), and the supposition that the ideai are
would have neither meaning nor explicative value. On the other hand, nous
is possible only if there is an enduring sameness in its objects, that is, only
if ousia partakes of rest, stasis (Sophist 249b8-c5). Thus, the exemplary
pair of beings, "that which thoroughly and perfectly is" (to pante/os
on- 248e7 f.), is knowing soul co-present (cf. pareinai- 249al) with known
ousia. Both members of this pair participate in differing ways and degrees
in the prime eidetic pair kinesis-stasis, which itself is immediately under
(or is identical with) the genos being (250a-d; cf. Klein GMT, pp. 86-91).
The foregoing considerations permit us to discover the affinity of the
two seemingly diverse statements about the agathon: that the agathon provides the noeta with aletheia and nous with the power of knowing, and
that being and ousia attach to the noeta by the agency of the agathon.
Each noeton is and is one thing (i.e., is a monas-cf. Philebus 15a-b)
because it can "at some time·and in some way" enter into the exemplary
active-passive relation, that is, the knowing-known relation. In "yoking
together" nous and the noeton, the agathon is the source of their (copresent) being. Unlike light, which is a "kind" distinct from the visible objects, aletheia is a property of the noeton. The kath' hauto and pros alto
ti aspects of the being of the noeton are united in its capacity to stand
revealed11 to nous.
The agathon is accordingly the responsible source for the unification
of the two aspects of being and thus of the being of all ontic pairs. Indeed, it would seem that in his oral teachings Plato identified the agathon
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with ''the One," which, along with the "undetermined Dyad," is the ultimate
principle of all that is." It is through participation in the One that every
unit is one and every multiplicity of units is yoked together as a single determinate pair, triad, tetrad, etc. As the source of the unity of all antic pairs,
the agathon-One is itself not a being but "beyond ousia." Or, what amounts
to the same, the agathon-One is the exemplary source of all communities
(koiniiniaz) of relata without being itself essentially related to anything else
(i.e., without itself being pros al/o ll)."
There is, however, a further effect for which the agathon is responsible.
The "offspring" and "likeness" of the agathon is the sun. And since the
sun is responsible for the genesis of visible things, the agathon may be
said to be the "grandfather" of all that exists (or, better, "occurs") within
the Visible Place. But the efficacy of the agathon is here diminished in
two ways. First, the grandfather is a necessary but not sufficient source
of his grandchildren; there must be a separate act of generation on the
part of the son-father. Second, whereas the a/etheia and ousia with which
the agathon provides the noeta are interdependent, the same is not the case
for the visibility and genesis that the visible things receive from the sun.
Earlier Socrates observed that the visible things could have color in them
(and hence occur) without the sun's light, which caused them to become
seen objects (507dll-e5; cf. Note 15). Later, Socrates qualified this by
assigning to the sun the additional office of providing the visible things
with "genesis, growth, and nurture" (509b3 f.). Nevertheless, it seems that
the genesis of the visible things is independent of their being seen, although
their visibility is dependent on their genesis and both are dependent on
the sun. This independence of genesis, however, should not be interpreted
as a mark of its excellence. For genesis is not pros aisthesin dynamei in
the way that ousia is pros noun dynamei, because genesis is already pros
al/o ti. The mode of being of the visible thing is that of an image, which
is always an image of something else, i.e., of what is. The visible thing is,
as I argued in the previous section, devoid of any content, any determinations, that can be called strictly its own. Everything it is is derivative; its
being is that of an other. Thus, it has only one of the aspects of being:
It is pros alios ti without being kath' hauto. Because of this the things in
the Visible Place (wherein exist all cities, including the just city) can be
overlooked, mistaken, and misrepresented; and it is because of this that
they are objects of doxa, which can be either true or false, and of lies,
whether well- or ill-conceived.
The diminutions in the efficacy of the agathon can be further explained
by reference to the similes of the line and the cave. Socrates responds to
Glaucon's request to fill in his account of the two "Places" by asking him
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EIDOS AND AGATHON
to consider a line divided into two unequal parts, which are in turn divided
into sub-parts bearing the same ratio to each other as do the initial parts
(509c-d). The line is first employed as a representation of things seen
(horomena) and thought (nooumena) as they are related in degrees of clarity
(sapheneia) and obscurity (asapheia) (509d8 f.). Subsequently the interpretation splits into two corresponding sides: the things that can be seen
or thought (ta eph' hois, ta noeta-511e2, c6, d2) and the corresponding
"pathemata in the soul" (d7), of which the former are graded according
to their comparative a/etheia and the latter according to their comparative
clarity (e2 f.). (The terms employed shift in the course of Socrates' discussion; for simplicity I have chosen, more or less arbitrarily, a stable set of
terms from among them, capitalizing the names of the major divisions.)
The upper main section of the line represents the Intelligible Place, comprising the Noeta ( =gnosta) on the side of objects and Noesis ( = episteme)
on the side of the affections (pathemata) of the soul.. The lower part,
representing the Visible Place, similarly comprises the Doxasta ( =horata)
and Doxa. The lowest sub-section contains what are, in our ordinary way
of regarding things, images (eikones), for example, "shadows, and then
reflections (phantasmata) in water and on dense, smooth, and bright surfaces" (509el-5!0a3); the sub-section above it is composed of the things
of which the things of the lower sub-section are images (animals, plants,
artifacts, etc.). On the side of the pathemata of the soul the lower subsection corresponds to eikasia, thepathema of the soul when it recognizes
a (visible) image as an image and refers it to its (visible) original; the upper sub-section corresponds to pistis, the trust we ordinarily place in the
visible objects around us, believing that they are exactly what they seem
to be (5!0a5 f., 51lel; cf. KleinMeno, pp. 112-14). Over this twofold region
of Doxasta presides the sun, which, as the simile of the cave makes explicit, casts the variegated shadows and reflections that fill the lowest sub"
section (509d; 5!4b). It is the sun that, along with the surfaces on which
the shadows and reflections appear, is the cause of there being a sub-division
of the lower part of the line.
The agathon presides over the Intelligible Place, which is sub-divided
analogously to the lower part and the whole. The higher and lower subsections are referred, on the part of the soul, to noesis and dianoia respectively. The activity of dianoia characterizes the practice of the geometer,
the arithmetician, and indeed the practitioners of all genuine arts (technaz)
that deal with a special subject matter and call into play the faculties of
calculation and measuring (cf. 602c ff.). Here the "originals" of the lower
section are employed as images of objects within the Intelligible Place"the odd and the even," "the square itself," etc.-that are the proper ob-
'.
�WILLIAMSON
123
jects of dianoetic concern (510cl-51la2). These latter are "posited" as the
"very foundational suppositions" (hypotheseis auta- 510c6) of the arts,
requiring no further explanation (logos), and serving as the unquestioned
beginnings for the downward (cf. 51la5 f.) progress ofthought toward "conclusions" (epi teleuten-510b6). Contrary to this, thought may make a
radical "turnabout" (periagoge-518c8-9, d4; 521c6) and, treating the
spurious archai of the special sciences as literally "hypo-theseis" (underpinnings, footings), ascend from them by means of dialectic to what is
anypotheton (supposition-free, needing no support-510b7; 51lb6), "the
arche of the all" (he lou pantos arche-51lb7); thence thought proceeds
downwards to conclusions, this time making no use of images, but proceeding only "by means of the eide themselves, through them, to them,
and ending in eide'' (51lb3-c2; cf. 510b6-9). This activity of dialectic, which
is represented by the "psychic side" of the highest sub-division of the line
(noesis), culminates in a synopsis (537c2, 7) of the entire Intelligible Place,
but one that can. be realized only after thought has reached the arche
anypothetos-the agathon.
How is the ratio between the upper sub-sections the same as the ratio
between the lower sub-sections? Both dianoia and eikasia refer images to
originals without reflecting on the ontological status of those originals,
without asking whether those "originals" truly are (whether they truly are
originals, archm). The hypothetical begininings of dianoia are in fact
derivative from higher archai and ultimately from an arche anypothetos;
the archai (;visible "originals") of eikasia are derivative from those
mathemata to which dianoia refers them. Both dianoia and eikasia can
mistake the character of their "originals," assigning to them an independent and primary status they do not in truth possess. Further, how is the
ratio between the upper sub-sections the same as the ratio between the two
principal sections (Horata!Noeta)? The objects of the lower section
(Horata) are images of the objects of the upper section (Noeta) and thus
of a qualitatively similar but ontologically dissimilar kind. Is this the case
for the objects of dianoia and noesis?'" The objects of the two pathemata
are not given distinct names: at most they are given a common name,
hypotheseis, which can be understood in two ways according to the way
in which they are thought." Yet in the simile of the cave Socrates describes
as an image of the Intelligible Place what is literally the case for the Visible Place: The sun (;agathon) casts shadows and reflections (;the objects of dianoia) of the objects ( ;noeta) in the world outside the cave
(516a5-7; 532b6-dl). Does the turnabout from dianoia to noesis correspond to an antic image-original distinction among their common objects?
and, if so, what role does the agathon play in making the distinction
possible?
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E/DOS AND AGATHON
The two characteristics that mark off the many dianoetic arts from the
single noetic art of dialectic (i.e., failure to recognize the derivative status
of their "archai," and the use of visible objects as images) are, I suggest,
essentially connected. the horata ( = gignomena) are perspectives of the
noifta, as I argued in the previous section. Thus, they cannot serve as images of the noeta in the latter's full concreteness; the noeta, if apprehended with the aid of visible images, are grasped perspectivally. This is indicated by the fact that what dianoia takes as its archai (e.g., the odd and
the even) can serve as archai of a variety of special sciences, that is, can
support the application of thought to a variety of distinct subject matters.
The first principles of the special sciences are in fact abstractions (though
in a sense inverse to that of Aristotle's abstracted genos), for, in setting
the noeta into correspondence with visible images and applying them to
a special subject matter, dianoia disjoins the noifta from the totality of
their relations to other noifta. In so doing it fails to deal with them strictly
as noeta. For, if they are truly noeta, it must be possible for thought to
effect its passage from one to another because each is what it is. The dialectical passage from eidii, through eidii, and to eide-if it is possible at allmust be grounded in a systematic interconnection and kinship
(koinonia, syngeneia-531dl f.) among them. Lacking this, the passage from
the known to the unknown must depend on the interconnections that are
adventitiously suggested, recommended, or verified through aisthesis." It
is the presupposition of the dialectical art described by Socrates thai each
noifton must essentially and selectively determine other noeta and in turn
be determined by them (cf. Sophist 252b-e). If the dialectical progression
of pure thought is at all possible- and it must be stressed that no pure
example of dialectic occurs in the Republic, nor, I believe, in any of the
dialogues"- the structure of a noeton must include a reference to other
noeta. Dianoia abstracts from this necessity, separating its supposed archai from their true archai; it thereby fails to grasp them in their true
character of noeta: "They are, however, noeta when associated with an
arche" (Kahat VOl]nJiV OVT(l)V ~BTU Up:;(ij<;- 5lld2).
The divided line image thus allows us to extend the observations concerning pragmata in the first part of this essay to the dianoetic level and
to entertain a conjecture about the relation of "generality" to "specific-
ity," of genos to eidos. According to Aristotle, the move from the more
specific to the more generic is in a direction of increasing povetty and emptiness. The move from "dog" to "mammal" to "animal" is a move away from
an articulated actuality toward undetermined potentiality and ultimately
to a replacement of univocal meaning by analogy. The genos must be actualized in the eidos, which is the true locus of completeness of being
·.;
�WILLIAMSON
125
(entelecheia). In spite of the numerous modifications the Aristotelian account of generality and specificity has undergone, this notion of generic
poverty has characterized most subsequent thinking. "Be more specific"
is a watchword of the clear-headed. But the divided-line image inverts this
progression: to ascend the generic hierarchy is to move in the direction of
increasing richness. Like a number, which binds its units within a higher
unity while holding them apart in their distinctness as units, the superordinate genos preserves the distinctness of its eidetic "units" in its own
meaning. Virtue is the necessary togetherness and interdependence of its
parts- to borrow a dianoetic analogue from the Protagoras, courage
degenerates into a mere image of a virtue when it is isolated from the other
virtues. Generic richness, it seems to me, is a necessary presupposition of
the Platonic method of division (diairesis), which is alluded to by Aristotle and others and playfully represented in the Sophist and the Statesman.
Pure thought can unravel the articulations of the superordinate gene only
if the former are already and always actually present in the latter.
The fire in the cave (=the sun) does two things. It casts the shadows
( = eikones) on the wall of the cave (though here Socraes may have in mind
the fact that a shadow is caused by the blocking of light), and it is the
source of any true understanding of the shadows. Before the prisoners are
freed, they fail to see the shadows for what they are, images. Only after
being shown the fire and the puppets (=the visible originals) and having
accustomed themselves to the sight, can they understand the shadows and
evaluate them as more or less accurate approximations of their originals.,.
Similarly, the pure dialectical progression through the ideai can begin only
after thought has ascended through the hypotheseis to the anypotheton,
the agathon. Thus, we have a third work of the agathon, the comprehensive unification of the noeta into what was later to be called "the kosmos
noetos." The unification of the pros allo ti and kath' hauto aspects of the
being of each noeton is also effected on a purely eidetic level. And, since
dialectic pre-supposes the kosmos noetos, the unification of the noeta is
in some way prior to the unification of the primary ontic pair of knowerknown." Finally, the agathon is the source of the fragmentary unity of
the objects of dianoia, though here the full work of the agathon is blocked
or eclipsed (cf. Phaedo 99d4-el and Archer-Hind's note) by the supposedly
original suppositions of the special technai.
The usual translation of he tou agathou idea as "Idea of the Good"
is misleading, or at any rate ambiguous, for "agathon" has the special meaning "good-for" and is thus closely associated by Socrates with chresimon
(useful) and ophelimon (beneficial). Something is agathon when itis good
for something else, when it contributes in some way to the enjoyment by
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EIDOS AND AGATHON
that other thing of the manner of being most appropriate to it. We have
seen that the agathon makes things "good-for" one another in three ways:
It is the cause of the yoking together of the primary ontic pair of knowerknown; it is the father of the sun, which yokes together seer and seen and
provides for their genesis and nurture; and it is the unsupported source
of the community and kinship of the ideai themselves.
But are these three ways enough? The difficulty I suggested in likening
the agathon to the "grandfather" of the things in the Visible Place now
comes to the fore. At the top of the Visible Place section of the line is
the sun, illuminating the visible originals and in so doing casting images
of them, and at the top of the Intelligible Place section is the agathon,
analogously relating the two sub-sections. But the two major sections of
the line are in the same ratio as their sub-sections; the visible things stand
toward the noeta in the relation of images to their originals. What stands
at the top of the entire line, corresponding to the sun and the agathon and
causing the noeta to reproduce themselves in the Visible Place? It is tempting to say: the agathon itself. But this is nowhere suggested and is in fact
implicitly denied in the cave simile. The objects in the cave (=visible things)
are utterly cut off from the light of the sun ( = the agathon). 1b be sure,
the objects paraded behind the wall are images, and we may speculate that
some of the image manipulators may have discovered their originals in the
world outside the cave. But even this begs the question again, for the reasons
for the ascent out of the cave and the return to it are not clearly set forth
but ascribed to a mysterious and unspecified necessity (cf. biiii-515e6;
anankasai, etc.- 519c9, e4; 520a8). At any rate, human imitations of the
noeta are attributed to ananke (500d4). Yet one of the distinguishing marks
which set the philosopher apart from the multitude is the former's recognition of "how much the necessary and the agathon really (tfii ontl) differ
in nature" (493c5 f.).
Earlier I observed that in the Republic there is no explicit and thematic
discussion of that "in which" or "on which" the images of the noeta occur. In the Timaeus myth a similar omission (though here not complete:
plen bracheon) is discovered to characterize the first part, dealing with "the
things that have been fashioned through nous." A supplementary account,
concerning the "things coming to be through necessity," must be furnished
if the story of the fashioning of the moving cosmos is to be complete, "for
the genesis of this cosmos was generated as something mixed out of a composition of necessity and nous" (47e3-48a2). It is required that there be
a "fresh beginning" as the result of more divisions (esto dieiremene) than
were made before; in particular, a "third genos" in addition to the
paradeigma and the mimema is needed (48e2-49a4). Just as the latter two
�WILLIAMSON
127
played the roles of father and offspring, so must there be a "mother" which
is a "receptacle (hypodoche) of genesis," itself devoid of all forms (amorphos)-the "in which" (to en hol) the gignomena are generated (49a5 f.;
50c7-d4). This feminine principle, strikingly absent from the Republic,"
is not only the "room" (chora) in which generation takes place; it has, prior
to the generative act of the father, a motion or "sway" of its own, the principal effect of which is the separating of dissimilar proto-elements from
one another (52d-53a).
According to the testimony of Aristotle, the receptacle was associated
(though with a difference) with "the great and the small" of Plato's "unwritten utterances" (Physics IV, 2, 209bll-16, 33-210a2). The phrase "the
great and the small" was one of the ways in which Plato described the latter of his two "elements" (stoicheia) or "ultimate sources (archal) of all
things"-the One (;the agathon) and the "Undetermined Dyad" (aoristos
dyas)." Although the Dyad seems to have corresponded in some respects
to the Pythagorean apeiron, it was peculiar (idion) to Plato that he assigned
a fundamental doubleness to it (Met. A, 6, 987b25-27). Indeed, it is
characteristic of the Dyad that it doubles whatever it has "received"; it is
dyopoios, ''two-making" (Met. M, 7, 1082al3-15; 8, 1083b35 f.). Receiving one thing, the Dyad makes a second, an other, and thus corresponds
to the "non-being" (to me on; thateron, "the other") of the Sophist (Physics
I, 9, 192a6-8; Met. M, 2, 1088b28-1089a6; Sophist 257b-259b; cf. Arist.
De Bono fr. 5, p. 120 Ross). The Dyad "makes being many" (Met. M, 2,
1089al9-22) just as the One, being shared in (Met. A, 6, 987b21), confers
unity on being. Together, the One and the Dyad are responsible for all that
is or comes to be, and Aristotle metaphorically likens them to the male
and female agents of generation (988a2-7; cf. Physics I, 9, 192al4). The
"generation" of all things, however, seems to have required at least two
distinct acts. First the eide are "out of the Dyad by participation in the
One," and, second, the aistheta come to be out of the co-operation of the
eide and the Dyad (Met. I, 6, 987b21 f.; 988a8-l4). As in the simile of
the sun, Plato in his unwritten utterances seems to have likened the relation between the agathon-One and the aistheta to that of grandfather and
grandchildren, though here the filial-paternal role of the sun is taken over
by the eide.
Of the many difficulties that attend this cosmogony two are directly
relevant to our theme. First, although an understanding of the agathon
would entail an understanding of one of the necessary conditions for the
pros allo ti aspect of being, it would not explain it entirely. The agathon
yokes together relata into a single relation, but it is not the source of there
being a plurality of relata to be related. The latter is the work of the Dyad.
�E!DOS AND AGATHON
128
Second and more important, the generation of the horata (the lower section of the divided line) cannot be accounted for in terms of the three similes
of Republic VI and VII. A second act of generation is needed, that of the
noeta and the Dyad; and in this case the work of the Dyad seems to be
that of literally "duplicating" the noeta, of producing visible images of
the noeta, which are other than and yet somehow the same as the noeta.
The agathon therefore fails to explicate fully the relation between the two
major divisions of the line and thus fails to explain why the noeta must
cast images of themselves. And, since "the all" (to pan) includes both the
Intelligible Place and the Visible Place, the discussion between Socrates
and the brothers fails to reveal how, or even whether, the all is a whole.
• •
Let us bear in mind that Socrates' discussion of the agathon is based
on the supposition that there is "one eidos ... for each class of many things
to which we give the same name" (596a6 f.)" and that it relies throughout
on images. At best, the discussion employs dianoia to show the need to
transcend dianoia. In fact, Socrates acceeds to the brothers' insistence that
he clarify his intimation of a greatest mathema only after he has warned
them that all he will offer are "opinions without knowledge," which are
"ugly things and at best blind" (506b-c), a qualification that appears particularly ironic in view of the simile that follows. Both the similes in Book
VI and VII and the interpretation offered above fail to tell us what the
agathon is. At best, perhaps, they suggest the doubtful prospects of any
attempt to make the agathon the object of the ti esti question as we ask
it of other things.
NOfES
I. It can hardly be that Glaucon understands the implications of an affirmative answer to this question, some of which will be traced in this
essay. For the present, we may interpret Socrates' words as simply a
statement of the working assumption of all Socratic conversations: The
answers to such questions as "What is x?" are more likely to be revealed through reasoned discourse than through the observation of
pragmata (see Note 4 below). Socrates' assumption would seem to be
particularly apt in the present inquiry, for the just city in speech is
a paradigmatic pragma, which exceeds in justice all "actual" cities.
2. Eidos (plural, eide) primarily means the visible shape or "look" by
which a thing is recognized as being of a certain kind (horse, spear,
noble, etc.). By Plato's time the word's meaning had been extended
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - · ···----
-·-·
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129
to those recognizable "looks" of a thing which are not always visible,
for example, in the Hippocratic writings, where eidos may mean a
symptom (fever, nausea, etc.) whereby we recognize a disease. In the
Dialogues the meaning of eidos is further developed (often through
an analogy with seeing) to that "invisible (a-eides) look" on account
of which the things we perceive through the senses are what they are,
which is itself imperceptible by the senses, and to which we more or
less knowingly refer whenever we recognize the sensible things as being of a determinate kind. See A. E. Taylor, "The Words eidos, idea
in Pre-Platonic Literature," Varia Socratica, 1911, pp. 178-267, and
Jacob Klein's remarks thereon in A Commentary on Plato's Meno,
p. 49 f., esp. note 43 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1965), hereafter referred to as "Klein, Meno."
3. See J. Gosling, "Republic, Book V: ta pol/a kala etc.," p. 120 f.
(Phronesis, Vol. V, No. 2, 1960).
4. Both praxis and pragma convey the general notion of "to bring about,
accomplish, do, act." Praxis specifies the general notion as a process
("doing," "acting"). Pragma (plural, pragmata) signifies that in which
the process named by praxis is brought to completion; a pragma is
something done or brought about or more generally a thing that is
somehow related to praxis. I have preferred pragma to the more general
gignomenon, "what is (continually) coming to be," because the former
term immediately suggests the relevance of the ontological discussions
in the Republic to the practical questions that provoke them.
5. The attempt to reduce courage, moderation, knowledge, etc., to some
single defining criterion is repeatedly frustrated in those Platonic
dialogues traditionally called "aporetic," a term that, if understood in
the sense given to aporia at Meno 84a-c, would properly apply to all
the dialogues. For example, Meno's first answer to Socrates' question
"What is (human) excellence?" consists in an on-going enumeration
of those excellences appropriate to men, women, children, slaves, etc.
(7lel-72a5); it is rejected because it fails to reveal the "one self-same
eidos ... on account of which [the aforementioned excellences] are
excellences" (72c5-8). Meno's second answer, that excellence is "to be
able to rule human beings," would seem to satisfy Socrates' requirement for "one self-same eidos':· however, it fails to extend to slaves
and children, to whom the words "good" or "excellent" may at least
partially apply (73c7-d5; cf. Odyssey XVII, 322 f.). What Socrates
seems to require in his asking of the question "What is excellence" is
an account of excellence that will (I) do justice to the richness of our
experience of the varieties of human types and activities and (2) reveal
�130
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
EIDOS AND AGATHON
the unity within which, as our use of the single word excellence suggests, the various excellences are held together.
Contrast Socrates' condemnation of falsehood as most hateful to the
divine or philosophic natures (382a ff., 485b!O-d2) with his recognition of the need for lies even in the just city.
That there can be no fully justpragma has been most thoroughly and
persuasively argued by Eva T. H. Brann ("The Music of the Republic,"
above) and Leo Strauss (The City and Man, Univ. of Chicago Press,
1964). My own argument is derived in large measure from theirs.
See especially An. Post. II, 6, 92a27-33; Top. VI, 6, 142bll-32; Part.
An. I, 3, 643a1-6; Met. Z, 12, 1037bl3-27; H, 6, 1045a7-22. Aristotle's solution of the problem of the relation between the eide and the
higher genera consists (i) in associating the differentia with the formal, eidos-making (eidopoios) element and the genus with the material
element, and (ii) in denying simple unity to the higher genera. The
higher genus is "differentiated" in the species and is one only by abstraction or analogy (Met. H, 6, 1045a23-25; Part. An. I, 4 passim; Top.
VI, vi, 143b8 f.).
Cf. Eth Eud. I, viii, 1218a36 f., said of the agathon-itse1f, but applicable
to the higher (superordinate) gene(cf. 1217b35-40). An alternative way
of interpretation has been developed by Jacob Klein, who stresses the
divisibility of superordinate eide. In particular, he has done justice to
Aristotle's repeated reference to the "idea-numbers," which contain
units (Met. M, 7-9 passim), by conceiving the superordinate eide as
analogous to numbers. Just as Socrates and Hippias are each one but
together two, so the eidos Being (to use an example from the Sophist)
may be identical with neither of the eideMotion and Rest and yet not
be some "third thing" in addition to them; rather, it may be that Motion and Rest together are Being, that is, that the eidos Being is the
community (koinonia) of Motion and Rest. See J. Klein, Greek
Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra (M.I.T., 1968;
hereafter referred to as "Klein, GMT''), pp. 79-99. Those who are
familiar with Klein's "arithmological" account of the eidewill perceive
how much this essay owes to him.
By the word "systematic" I mean to describe the way in which many
parts may belong together in one whole while preserving their integrity
as distinct parts. (Compare Plato's use of systema, "what has been
brought to stand together," at Philebus 17d2 and Epinomis 991e2.) The
reader is warned against that more modern use of "systematic" which
characterizes a way of thinking that sets forth in advance (a prion)
the conditions under which beings may take their places as "objects"
�WILLIAMSON
11.
12.
13.
14.
131
within the totality-actual or progressive-of our experience or
thought.
See W. D. Ross, Plato's Theory of Ideas (Oxford, 1951), p. 169, and
F. M. Cornford, Plato and Parmenides (New York: Humanities Press,
1951), p. 83.
See R. E. Allen, "The Argument from Opposites in Republic V'' (The
Review of Metaphysics, Vol. XV, No.2, 1961), and "Participation and
Predication in Plato's Middle Dialogues" in R. E. Allen (ed.), Studies
in Plato's Metaphysics (New York: Humanities Press, 1965); also H.
Cherniss, "The Relation of the Timaeus to Plato's Later Dialogues"
in R. E. Allen (ed.), op. cit. pp. 370 ff. My example of the mirror image owes much to a similar example used by Allen, who has perceived
more clearly than any other recent commentator that the celebrated
problem of the self-predication of the eide requires a complete reappraisal of the status of predication in Plato's thought. The eidos Man
is "What man is" (ho esti anthri'ipos), and not "a man" (anthri'ipos
tis). Hence, it is correct to say "The eidos of man is man" (not "a man"),
or "The just itself is just"; however, "man" and "just" are not predicated
as properties that the eide have, as in "Socrates is (a) man" and
"Aristides is just." Allen and Cherniss interpret such statements, when
their subjects are eide, as identity statements: "What-man-isis man."
See, however, Klein GMT, pp. 79 ff., for arguments leading to the suggestion (p. 99) that an even more radical re-interpetation of predication is required for the solution of the "methexis problem."
The arguments for the eidein the Dialogues-and there are very few
real arguments for them, if any- are too diverse in form and content
to permit us to extract a systematic account of the population of the
realm of eide. Aristotle lists a number of arguments for the eide but
these lead to divergent conclusions as to the kinds of things of which
there are eide (Met. M, 4, 1079a4-13). The broadest principle is that
which admits a separate eidos corresponding to every common name
(Republic 596a6 f.). But this is proposed as a working hypothesis for
the discussion and not as a final statement on the population of the
realm of eide. Elsewhere the Dialogues suggest the inadequacy of the
principle: There are some eidetic distinctions among things to which
no existing names correspond, and some distinctions made in speech
(e.g., Greek/barbarian) are not eidetic distinctions (Sophist 267d;
Statesman 262a-e).
E.g., the surfaces on which images are reflected in the account of the
lowest level of the divided line (509e1-510a3) and the corresponding
wall of the cave onto which the shadows are projected (515a7); also
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E/DOS AND AGATHON
the surfaces on which images are reflected outside the cave (516a). (The
Greek equivalent of "on" or "onto" is en or eis, "in" or "into.") As
far as I know, Eva Brann was the first to remark on the absence of
any thematic treatment of the medium in which images are produced
and to explore the implications of that omission; see note 26 below.
15. Several asymmetries attend this analogy, and it is proper to mention
them here, though they cannot be accounted for at once. (I) Whereas
the agathon fathers one thing, the sun, which is both like it and that
through which it is known, the sun itself is related in these ways to
at least two different things: the eye is "most like the sun" but not caused
by the sun, and sight is caused by the sun and perceives the sun but
is not said to be like the sun. (II) Both a/etheia, which belongs to the
known, and episteme, which belongs to the knower, are said to be "like
the agathon," but it is not said that what are seen, the horata, are like
the sun. (III) The sun is the cause of seeing and being seen, but it is
not the cause of the power of seeing and of being seen (color is said
to be in the horata whether they are seen or not-507dl2). On the other
hand, the agathon is the cause of the power of knowing. (IV) Light
is the "third kind," which yokes together the powers of seeing and being seen, both of which are distinct from light. The analogue of light
in the Intelligible Place is atetheia (508e6 f., where chiasmus is
employed); but aletheia is said to belong to what is known. Aletheia
is not so much a "third kind" as a property of the noeta which they
possess because of the agathon. To generalize, we may say that in the
Visible Place the three groups {visible object-color}, (eye-power
of vision}, and {sun-light} have a certain independence from one
another prior to the act of vision; whereas in the Intelligible Place the
three groups {nous-power of knowing-episteme}, {noetona/etheia}, and (agathon-a/etheia} are more intimately connected both
by multiple relations of likeness and by the extension of causal relations to the very power of the former to be what they are.
16. 141e7 f: "Is it possible for anything to partake in beingness (ousia) in
any other way than these [sc. past, present, or future being]?" "It's
not possible." This passage, seemingly contradictory to the frequent
ascription in the Dialogues of a timeless being to the ideai (e.g.,
Timaeus 37e), has received a number of interpretations, most of which
depend on interpretations of the intention behind the hypothesis section of the Parmenides as a whole. A possible way of resolving the
contradiction is suggested by my discussion below of the kinesis-stasis
passage in the Sophist. G. E. L. Owen, commenting on the same
passage, observes that the ideai, if they are to be known, must be sub-
�I.
WILLIAMSON
133
jects of both tensed and tenseless statements ("Plato and Parmenides,"
Monist, Vol. 50, No. 3 [1966], pp. 336~40).
17. A!etheia belongs prhnarily to the object and secondarily to judgments
(logOl)-cf. 560b9. It is only with Aristotle, for whom the combination (synthesis) and division (diairesis) expressed by logos are "in
thought (dianoia) and not in things (pragmata)," that aletheia becomes
primarily a property of judgments (Met. E, 4). For its ascription to
objects, "revealedness" is perhaps a better translation of a/etheia than
"truth," with its still enduring Aristotelian connotations. On the other
hand, "revealedness" avoids the perhaps too literal "Unverborgenheit"
of Heidegger.
18. For the identification of the One with the agathon see Met. A, 6,
988a14-17; N, 4, 1091bl3 ff.; also Physics I, 9, 192a15. Aristoxenus recounts a story told him by his master, Aristotle, about Plato's lecture
Peri tau agathou, in which Plato is described as progressively discussing the various mathematical disciplines until reaching "as the limit"
(to peras) the statement, agathon estin hen (Harm. elem. II, 30/1). See
also Aetii, P!ac. l, 7, 31 (Diels, Dox. Gr. 304, 2-5/23-26) and Cyrillus,
Adv. Iibras athei Juliani l, 31, A/B (=Gaiser Nr. 52).
19. See Klein, GMT, p. 98, and Brann, supra, IV 5e. Nor is the agathon
an agathon ti, something good. Hence we are able to understand
Aristotle's denial that Plato admitted among his archai a final cause,
a "that for the sake of which" (to hou heneka) or "the good" (tagathon)
for which genesis and kinesis occur (Met. A, 3, 983a31 f.; 7, 988b5-16):
"Shnilarly those who say that the One or being is of such a nature
[viz. the nature of the agathon -cf. 988b9] say that it is the cause of
ousia, but not that it [i.e., ousia] either is or comes to be for the sake
of this; thus it falls out that they both say and do not say that the
agathrm is a cause. For they speak according to what is accidental and
not simply" (988bll-16). The final cause may be either (i) the ousia
in which genesis or kinesis arrives at a state of completeness, i.e., its
te/os (as is the case with natural processes of growth in which the "formal" and "final" causes coincide), or (ii) some good that can be realized
by means of some process of genesis or kinesis (as is the case with
production of all instruments)- cf. de An. B, 4, 415b2, 20 f.; also Met.
A, 7, 1072b1-3. But the agathon of the Republic meets neither of these
conditions. It is not the ousia which is the formal-final cause of genesis,
for it is rather the cause of ousia and is itself "beyond ousia." Nor
is it some good to be realized through a process of genesis or kinesis,
for it is the cause of all being (and derivatively of all genesis), itself
dependent on no conditions (arche anypothetos). Anything that is a
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EIDOS AND.AGATHON
good (agathon It), including justice itself, is necessarily distinct from
the agathon itself. Thus we may observe incidentally that Socrates' account of the agathon evades both the "naturalistic fallacy" of G. E.
Moore and the more recently advertised paradox of the "selfpredication" of the ideai. [Note: In reference to the passages from the
Metaphysics cited above it is important to bear in mind that Aristotle
is discussing the "archai" of all beings, including the ideai; these archai are for Plato the One and the Dyad (987bl8-22, 26, 33 f.; cf.
l08lal4), which are the causes of the ideai and not the ideai themselves
(988a7-J4). Thus it is not the case that Aristotle "ignores the distinctly
teleological view which Plato expresses in some dialogues" (Ross,
Aristotle's Metaphysics (Oxford, 1924), Vol. I, p. 179), e.g., Philebus
53e-54a, where ousia is identified as the hou charin of genesis. Rather,
Aristotle is concerned with the Platonic archai, which are beyond
ousia.]
20. I do not mean to Imply that all objects of dianoia are objects of noesis.
Indeed, Republic 526a conveys a clear suggestion of the "arithmoi
mathematikoi"- "the intermediates" (fa metaxy) -which hold a position intermediate between the ideai and all countable assemblages of
aistheta: "numbers ... in which the unit is such as [the mathematicians] require, each one equal to every other and not differing in the
slightest, having no parts in it ... , things that can only be thought
(dianoethenat)." Cf. Philebus 56c-e; Aristotle, Met. A, 6, 986bl4 ff.;
N, 3, 1090b35 ff. That the mathematicals are not eide appears from
the following consideration: Each eidos is uniquely what it is (Republic
597c) in contradistinction to the multiplicity of mathematicals of the
same kind. In "two and two are four" it is essential that two units be
added to two other units to yield a four; similarly the statement
'"Itiangles ABC and DEF are equal and their corresponding angles
are equal if they have all three sides equal" is trivial unless triangles
ABC and DEF are other than each other. On the other hand, the objects of dianoia are not exhausted by the intermediates; the mathematician is not only concerned with considering "the triangle ABC" or adding "two units to two units," he also employs definitions of what a
triangle is, what en even number is, etc. On the dianoetic level, however,
these may be thought of as mere properties or attributes of the intermediates; the mathematician, more likely than not, fails to understand them as beings, as noeta.
21. Similarly, Socrates gives the same name, noesis, to both the upper section and the uppermost subsection of the line (51ld8 f.; 534a2; cf.
533e8, where the uppermost subsection is given the name episteme).
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135
22. Cf. Meno 81c9-d4: "For, since all nature is akin (syngeniis) and the
soul has learned and understood all things, nothing prohibits it, if it
recollects only one thing (what humans call "learning"), from discovering all the rest, if one is manly and doesn't faint in the search." On
the notion of syngeneia as a presupposition of dialectic, see R. E.
Cushman, Therapeia (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press,
1958), p. 50, n. 47, for a list of relevant passages in Plato and his
commentators.
23. The second part of the Parmenides must be ruled out, for the method
is explicitly "hypo-thetical" in the dianoetic sense; nor are the various
hypotheseis ever co-ordinated, and the whole section is introduced as
an "exercise" propaedeutic to the dialectical method (135b-136c). Nor
will the Eleatic Stranger's method of diairesis do, for, quite apart from
the comic shortcomings of its conclusions in the Statesman, it depends
heavily upon sense experience and hearsay (see esp. Statesman
264bll-d9).
24. The cave simile re-introduces the theme of paideia and thereby acquires
an additional dimension, the political (514al f.). Indeed, the cave is
not strictly a (natural) cave, but an "underground cave-like (spiilaiodes)
dwelling" (a3), within which blazes an artificial sun, casting the
shadows of implements and puppets on the facade (katantikry) of the
cave facing the strangers. These implements and puppets are carried
and manipulated by human beings who parade up and down a "way"
(hodos) along a teichion (=the walls of the polis). The "cave" is largely,
if not fully, the work of men; it is the Visible Place as it is revealed
within the horizon of political life. It has two major parts: the more
comprehensive world of the "opinion-makers" (the politicians, p_oets,
rhetoricians, sophists, and- if the city is fortunate- the philosophers)
and the shadowy world of the ordinary citizen whose objects of concern (the gods, things just and unjust, expedient and inexpedient, noble
and base, lawful and unlawful, genuine and false) are transformed,
if not produced, by the men behind the wall.
25. Whatever the nature of this priority may be, it is not, if the present
argument is correct, an antic priority. Nonetheless, the priority of the
unification of the noeta over that of the primary ontic pair distinguishes
Plato from those neo-Platonists (see esp. Plotinus, V, i, 4, 5; VI, vii,
15) who give a slight priority to "pure thinking" (to noein) over "what
is thought" (to nooumenon). (Plotinus, like Kant after him, prefers
nooumenon "what is thought,"- or theOroumenon, gignOskomenon,
etc.-to the more characteristically Platonic noeton, "what can be
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EIDOS AND AGATHON
thought.") As a further instance of the shift of emphasis that
characterizes much of neo-Piatonism see Thomas Aquinas's doctrine
of the "Divine Ideas": S. T., I, q. 15. One may speculate that the roots
of this shift are to be found in the more fundamental shift, made by
Aristotle, from dynamis to energeia as the primary horos of being,
with the consequent denial of the "separation" (chorismos) of the noeta
and thus the need to locate the unity of the genos in abstraction or
in logos (ana-logia)- cf. Plotinus, V, iii, 5; v, I.
26. The most vivid example of the playing down of the feminine is the
"second wave of paradox," the assigning of the same employments to
both sexes. The conventional practice of assigning different tasks to
each sex, Socrates avers, is based on the assumption that each sex excels the other in certain abilities. However, with the exceptions of parturition and wet-nursing, women are in fact surpassed by men in every
employment- even cooking! Thus, there is no reason to assign women
a special province or activity in the city (454d-456a). Woman plays
a distinctive role in one respect: she brings about the decline from the
aristocratic man to the timocratic man (549c-d). Eva Brann first called
my attention to the way in which Socrates' treatment of the feminine
reflects his mythical treatment of the second of the Platonic archai
("The Music of the Republic," supra, pp. 58-61, 64-67, 76.)
27. See Met. A, 6, 987a18-21, b20-22; 988a26; B, 3, 998bl0; M, 7, l081a14
f., b21, 32; 1082al3, b30; 9, l085b7; N, 2, l088b28; !089a35; 3, !091a5;
Physics I, 4, 187a17; 9, 192a7, 11; also Alexander on Met. I, 9, 990b17
and Klein GMT, p. 97 f. In the Republic (524c) Socrates treats the "great
and small" as a determinate pair, of which we may ask the ti esti
question.
28. In the Phaedo Socrates relates how in his youth, wishing to know the
"causes of each thing" and perplexed by such problems as how a unit
and another unit can each be one and yet together become two, he
resorted to the "investigation of nature" (peri physeos historia) and
the teachings of Anaxagoras (96a-97c). Disappointed, he concluded
that his inquiries could be satisfied by nothing less than a knowledge
of "the agathon, which must bind and hold together [all things, hapanta]" (99c4-6). Finding himself inferior to the task and without a
teacher, he decided to abandon the investigation of "the things that
are" (ta onta) and, as a "second best course" (deuteros pious), to "take
refuge in logoi," just like those who fear to damage their eyes by looking directly at the sun during an eclipse and observe it indirectly through
its reflection in water or something else of the sort (99c6-e6). The new
method consisted in "sup-posing (hypothemenos) on each occasion
�WILLIAMSON
137
whatever logos [he] judged to be strongest" and positing (tithemz) as
true or untrue whatever seemed to him to agree with it or not (100a3-7).
Both in the Phaedo "and elsewhere" the guiding supposition is that
"there is something [that is] kalon itself by itself and [similarly
something that is] agathon and [similarly for] all the rest" (bl-7).
�What Is "The Good"
of Plato's Republic?
David Lachterman
I.
Among the Greek comic poets of the Middle and New Comedy Plato's
"Form of The Good" had become a by-word for ludicrous and impenetrable
obscurity. Am phis, in his play Amphicrates, has a slave say to his master,
about to embark on the conquest of a young lady: "What good you expect to get from her, sir, I understand less than I do the Good of Plato."'
Much later Nietzsche indicted Plato for having introduced into European culture "the worst, most long-lasting, and most dangerous" of all
dogmatic errors: the invention of "the pure spirit and the Good in-itself."
Faith in an absolute or other-wordly Good, a faith fed by Plato's rhetoric
and digested into Christianity, inevitably emasculated the will of Western
humanity, according to Nietzsche. 2
What separates the Greeks' mocking mirth from the baleful assaults
of Nietzsche and his progeny is not only time, but a space densely populated
by a variety of discordant interpretations, as though to confirm in this central instance of The Good what Cicero says with terse wisdom about the
Platonic dialogues generally: Quot lectores, tot Platones.
Within this dismaying variety of readings and readers one polarity in
particular brings into a relief a perplexity with which anyone attempting
to give an account of The Republic must sooner or later reckon. To use,
for the moment, terminology drawn from post-Platonic traditions, I shall
call this the polarity between the exclusively ethical (or moral) and the exclusively metaphysical (or ontological) interpretations of The Good.
For the proponents of the first view, Plato'·s concern is with a fundai39
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WHAT IS "THE GOOD"?
mental principle or "norm" undergirding moral and social judgments,
evaluations, and policies, with what one distinguished proponent, Paul
Shorey, called "the [ultimate] authority by which conduct is sanctioned
... the final source and canon of the knowledge of right conduct for all
who go back of instinct and tradition."' On this view-and here its
deliberate one-sidedness already comes into evidence-passages such as
those in which Socrates talks of The Good as supplementing the intelligibles
with being and essence, while itself beyond essence, must be read as merely
the "poetic vesture" or "rhetorical windowdressing" that has to be stripped
away in order to disclose the supposedly plausible core of Plato's ethical
and social "doctrines." (It might also be noted that this first view faces
the ineluctable challenge posed by Aristotle, who remarks in the Eudemian
Ethics: "Even if there were a form or single look of the good, it would
not be of any use for the [humanly] good life or for practical conduct.'"
On the second, metaphysical, view, which one might also be tempted
to call the "Neo-Platonic" view, the ethical and political concerns of The
Republic and other dialogues recede far into the background while The
Good is the source or ground of the beingness and order of what-is holds
center stage. What for the one-sidedly ethical version was "poetic vesture"
is now the naked truth, while, conversely, the sober-seeming teachings about
virtues and politics play the role of propaedeutic enticements towards a
visionary sight of The Good or The One, beyond essence and even being.
In the words of one recent advocate of this Neo-Platonic reading, words
that smack more of P. G. Wodehouse than of Plato: "It is quite inconceivable that Plato's Guardians, having reached the ripe age of fifty, and having studied all the intricacies of mathematics, should be subjected to the
ethical argy-pargy practised by Socrates on young men and boys.'"
Both readings eventually compromise the integrity of the dialogue; that
is, both turn us aside from the ordered multiplicities of the work itself,
a work that is hot a collection of theses, propositions, and supporting arguments presented more geometrico, but an artfully textured re-presentation
of sustained conversation, an icon (or phantasm) of the interlacings of
seemingly living and lived speed. Both readings correspondingly muffle,
when they do not simply dismiss, what The Republic invites us to hearthe baffling connectedness or kinship within living speech of those preoccupations artificially set apart as "ethical" and "ontological."
An ancient commentator captured the sense of what I am suggesting
when he wrote that "the dialogue is a kind of cosmos. For, just in the way
in a dialogue there are different personages, each speaking in character,
so, too, in the entire cosmos there are different natures uttering different
expressions." The same author gives us an even more valuable clue when
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LACHTERMAN
he treats of the inner organization of a dialogue; borrowing from the terminology of the Divided Line he suggests that the problem of a dialogue
is comparable to nous, to insight or direct apprehension, while its arguments
are comparable to dianoia, discursive, sequential reasoning. The former,
nous, "is thought of as the center of a circle around which the arguments
move as a circumference in pursuit of the answer."6 We might infer from
this that by following out these discursive or argumentative motions we
can locate and, in a sense, exhibit, the central point around which they
turn, without being able to render that point adequately in further discursive speech. My attempt to situate The Good at the noetic center of Plato's
discourse will accordingly consist in a series of movements around the circumferences The Good directs and unifies.
II
Socrates' only explicit remarks about the Good-Itself, the Good without
qualification, occur in a digression from a digression in The Republic.
Digressions, in Plato, are never fortuitous or aimless; rather, they aim at
something vaguely or inconspicuously hinted at by the initial lines of discussion. These digressions carry us further and further from the periphery
towards a so-far uninspected and unsuspected center; or, to improve slightly
on this two-dimensional image, the digressions move us from lower to higher
plateaux, where both the stakes and our sights are raised. At the same time,
however-and this must be emphasized quite strongly-what comes into
view only on a higher plateau, or as we move nearer to the center, gains
its focus and clarity primarily against the recollected backdrop of what
preceded it. Hence Platonic or Socratic "conclusions," however exotic, unfamiliar, or ecstatic they may seem at first blush, draw much, if not all,
of their persuasive strength from their responsiveness to questions and issues
raised or implied early on, often in commonplace settings and always prior
to any detailed scrutiny of their ultimate implications.
Socrates, according to Cicero, was the first to drag philosophy down
from the heavens to the earth;' in more Platonic terms, Socratic conversation characteristically, although not invariably, takes place in the city and
in its central places, the agora, for example; furthermore, it takes place
with men whose interests most often lie elsewhere than in philosophy, even
when they are not expressly inimical to philosophy. If Socratic conversation slowly re-ascends from the earth, or the city, to the "Heavens," it takes
its bearings by what has been said and exhibited on Earth, in the realm
a later philosopher will more solemnly baptize "everydayness." A Platonic
argument or proof, such as it is, cannot be understood apart from this
�I
I
I
i
142
WHAT IS 'THE GOOD"?
subtle and extraordinarily intricate interplay between the ordinary and the
unexpected consequences or underpinnings of the ordinary. This holds
especially true of Plato's "arguments" concerning The Good, which occur
in a dialogue given its sharpest urgency when Socrates, in Book I, reproves
Thrasymachus in these words: "Do you think it is a small thing you are
trying to determine [namely, the nature of justice] rather than the way to
lead a life such that each of us will live most profitably?" (344el-3).
This suggests that everything Socrates will eventually be made to say
on the topic of The Good, as well as all that we might cull from elsewhere
regarding Plato's further conjectures, are somehow, and in multiple ways,
coupled with this initiating concern. Platonic ontology, or metaphysics,
never loses its purchase on the pre-philosophical, the pre-eminently and
inescapably practical, question of the "best human life." Or, in other words,
the radically unfamiliar continues to be grounded in the familiar, even when
it comes to be seen as the latter's own ground.
To say this is one thing; to see how it is worked out "in practice" is
quite another, frustratingly more difficult matter, even with the benefit of
Plato's artful guidance. What I propose to do is to examine, at first in a
loose and provisional way, four lines of "argument" that make their first
appearance in Book One of The Republic and that lead, obliquely and
hesitantly at the beginning, ineluctably towards the end, to the baffling,
exorbitant suggestions Socrates sets forth in Books VI and VII when The
Good comes under imaginative scrutiny.
These four lines of argument exert the pressure that pushes Socrates
towards those climactic claims; accordingly, we must try to see both how
each one comes onto the stage and how all four come to play their respective roles in an ensemble it will be the business, the power, of The Good
to illuminate and to unify.
I shall call these, for the sake of notional convenience, (!) the argument from appearance and being, (2) the argument from opinion and
knowledge, (:i) the argument from desire, and (4) the argument from the
Many and the One, or from Parts and Wholes, although this fourth line
of argument, as we shall see, is not really "on a par" with the first three,
but rather comprehends or is an ingredient in them all.
The argument from appearance and being makes its first, non-technical
appearance in Book I, in the exchange between Socrates and Polemarchus.
Polemarchus has inherited his father Cephal us's argument that justice consists in paying back what one owes; under Socrates' questioning, he amends
this to read: "Justice is benefiting one's friends and harming one's enemies"
(322d5~6).
�LACHTERMAN
143
After admitting the justice of several criticisms made by Socrates,
Polemarchus is forced to change his tack when he realizes that this definition can lead to benefiting the unjust and harming the just, if it happens
that we are mistaken in our judgment of our "friends," that is, if we
mistakenly consider a friend good and thus deserving of benefit, when
in truth he is bad. Polemarchus then emends his account further, requiring that a friend both seem to be and genuinely be "good" or "useful."
The possible disparity or gap between what something or someone appears to us to be and what that thing or person genuinely is initially has
nothing "metaphysical" about it, at least not in our present, rather narrow
use of that term. Each of us has or will have had the painful experience
of being played false by a seeming friend, of discovering that someone is,
as we say, a uralse friend." Now Socrates does not seize on the distinction
or tension between seeming and being at this point; it will, however, be
revived and expanded when Glaucon and Adeimantus renew Thrasymachus's challenge to Socrates in Book II, demanding a proof that the just
life is to be preferred, even when a man seems to be totally unjust while
being "in reality," as modern idiom would lead us to say, thoroughly just.
The same word in Greek, doxa, means both "appearance" and
"opinion."8 For a man to seem to be just (or unjust) amounts as well to
his being opined or considered to be just (or unjust) by others. It is under
these descriptions that he shows up in the eyes and speech of other persons, even when the descriptions do not "in truth" fit him.
It is by way of exploring and exploiting this familiar experience that
Socrates will later turn the discussion in the direction of the so-called
"forms." Attributions of such features as justice, beauty, and so on, to the
items of our ordinary or workday experience are characteristicallY defective, inasmuch as those items seem to be such-and-such without being suchand-such in a complete and genuine fashion. The descriptions will not "fit"
these item~, or will fit them only partially and imperfectly.
Needless to say, this anticipation leaves open the question of what it
is to be such-and-such altogether and genuinely, and not merely to seem
to be such-and-such.' Furthermore, Socrates' own discussion will force upon
us the even deeper issue: Why is there this discrepancy between appearance
and being? What is the ground of that distinction itself? What is the ground
of the community of what it distinguishes?
(2) The second line of "argument" comes into play in Socrates' debate
with Thrasymachus. The latter has insisted that justice is nothing other
than the advantage of the stronger, that is, justice is another person's good,
not the good of the one who is just. The stronger turn out to be the rulers
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WHAT IS "THE GOOD"?
of cities, who legislate with their own benefit alone in mind; the ruled are
just insofar as they obey the laws made by the stronger. Socrates then suggests the following paradox: If a law commanded by the stronger actually
works out to their disadvantage, then it is just, on Thrasymachus's definition, for the weaker to obey that law, even though in doing so they fail
to contribute to the rulers' good, as the definition requires.
At this moment Thrasymachus adds a "rider" to his definition: Rulers
"in the most precise or accurate sense" do not make a such errors (34lb8).
When an agent in power does make a mistake he is no longer entitled to
the appellation "the stronger" or "the ruler." Consequently, ouly someone
who knows unerringly what his true advantage is, qualifies as a ruler, or
for that matter, as a craftsman, or a wise man. It is Thrasymachus who
uses the Greek word for science or true knowledge, i:nt<HllJlTJ, for the first
time in The Republic.
Since so much hangs on Thrasymachus's definition of justice and on
this "rider" or qualifying clause concerning knowledge-since, indeed, the
rest of The Republic hangs on what he says in these passages- it would
make sense to pay the most careful attention to what is taking place in
this exchange. Let me draw attention to just three aspects of this context:
First, Thrasymachus gives the rest of the dialogue its preeminently
political inflection when he accompanies his initial definition with the
following statement: "Each regime lays down the laws with a vfew to its
own advantage: a democracy lays down democratic laws, a tryanny tyrannical laws, and other regimes do likewise. By so legislating they make it
manifest that what is just for those who are ruled is what is beneficial to
themselves, the rulers" (338dl-4).
Thrasymachus here replaces what he regards as the superficial differences among regimes, that is, among their constitutions, with what he
believes to be a deeper-seated homogeneity or identity: all rulers, under
every sort of constitution, are seeking their own benefit. Accordingly, the
various constitutions- democracy, tyranny, and so on- are merely different
instrumentalities for the achievement of one and the same end. We might
be tempted to say that Thrasymachus is here inventing one version of
modern "political science," which by similarly "objectifying" the regimes
it studies substitutes the homogeneity of power for the heterogeneity of
constitutions. Thrasymachus, at any rate, is candid enough to acknowledge
that, on this reckoning, tryanny is the best regime, since the tyrant has the
maximum degree of power.
It is impossible to understand Plato's political theory, even in the narrowest sense of the term "political," unless one grasps that its guiding intention is to make possible that very discrimination among types of regimes ·
�LACHTERMAN
145
which Thrasymachus's position would have us ascribe to foolish innocence.
To fashion the best city, even if only "in speech," is to present criteria by
which those critical distinctions can be drawn.
A second point. Thrasymachus, as we have just seen, appeals to "advantage." What sort of advantages or benefits does he have in mind? Power,
the absolute power to make others one's slaves, to appropriate to oneself
their property and their bodies, thereby to satisfy one's every appetite with
impunity and abandon, he pronounces "happy and blessed" (344b7).
Thrasymachus, who thinks of himself as relying on nature, turns out
to be dependent on one of the most conventional views of what benefits
an individual. Indeed, his whole presentation raises in acute form the twofold question: What is it for something to be beneficial or advantageous?
And what is the self or person or soul who is thereby benefited? Thrasymachus does not address himself to these twin questions; his words,
however, cause them to hover over the remaining nine books of The
Republic.
Indeed, this helps to clarify the remarkable and often-perceived affinity between Thrasymachus's definition and the definition of justice Socrates
eventually proposes in Book IV: Justice is doing one's own business or
one's own things. As the subsequent argument reveals, everything depends
on coming to know what things are genuinely or in truth one's own, and
hence, on knowing what the self or soul truly is.
Accordingly, the ensuing debate between Thrasymachus and Socrates
is not the debate between radical egoism and selfless altruism; instead,
Socrates will be concerned to show that it is only when the "self" or soul
is brought face-to-face with its true nature and thus with what are genuinely
and knowably its own "possessions" that it ceases to be the "possessive
individual" Thrasymachus simultaneously embodies and applauds.
A third and final aspect, in some ways the most important.
Thrasymachus, as I have already indicated, is the first to mention bncr'tljflt]
in the dialogue, although it would be an understatement to say that he
gives us no clues as to how he understands knowledge or science, apart
from maintaining that such knowledge must be, in principle, error-free and
mistake-proof. Viewed from this perspective, the rest of the dialogue will
consist in Socrates' attempt to display both the necessity and at least the
general contours of the knowledge to which Thrasymachus obstreperously
alludes. Needless to say, neither the contents nor the point of this Socratic
"science" are anticipated by Thrasymachus himself; nonetheless, he accepts
as his own the twin theses that (1) opinions or predictions of what is advantageous are not self-verifying, and that (2) the legitimacy of the rulers'
authority derives from their supposed knowledge of what will genuinely
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WHAT IS "THE GOOD"?
benefit them. Socrates' sketch of the philosopher-kings will incorporate
both theses, with this crucial amendment to the second thesis, that only
what is of benefit to the city as a whole can count, somewhat ambiguously,
as beneficial to the philosopher-kings themselves.
In Book I, however, Socrates does not undertake to display even the
rudiments of the science that will fit these requirements. Instead, he suppresses Thrasymachus's term smmlj~TJ- which occurs only once again in
Book I- in favor of the more familiar term, ~exvTJ, art or craft, and couches
the rest of his "refutation" of Thrasymachus in the language of the "arts."
Many contemporary readers have found Socrates' association of questions of justice and of the virtues generally with questions of the arts and
crafts either appalling or absurd: appalling, if this linkage is read as implying that only those who possess some special technique or expertise can
be "morally" virtuous; absurd, if it is taken to mean that knowing how
to follow the rules of some technical discipline is the same as knowing
that moral obligations must be discharged regardless of anticipated outcome or contingent self-interest. Kant gives expression to this second reaction when he distinguishes between hypothetical, or, as he says,
"technical," imperatives and categorical imperatives. 10
Does ~BXVTJ, as Socrates presents it, lend itself to either of these two
outraged interpretations?" We should keep in mind, first, that the model
of ~EXVTJ that dominates the discussion in Book I will be demoted in importance as Socrates comes ever closer to spelling out what a science or
!\mcnlj~TJ is, just as the sciences, in their turn, will be demoted in rank
when the only genuine science, what he will call "dialectic," comes onto
the scene in Book VII. Socrates' earlier reliance on the ~BXVTJ-model is,
then, a function of its position on the periphery, the outermost circle, of
the dialogue. It might be said to steer thought towards the center without
ever replacing or overshadowing that center.
Nonetheless, the ~exvTJ-model can be seen to be the right or fitting one
at the inception of the discussion if we pay due regard to the following
points:
(a) According to Thrasymachus an art or handicraft is essentially
manipulative of its objectives, the practice of such a craft aims always at
securing benefits for its practitioners. For Socrates, on the other hand, the
practice of an art succeeds as art only to the extent that it gives its objects
their due, that is, only to the extent that the manipulations of art conform
to what the objects themselves require for their own part. The.constitution of an object· of ~SXVTJ dictates appropriate and inappropriate procedures. One cannot build a suspension-bridge out of clay, just as one cannot get the best tone from a Stradivarius violin by banging it against a
drumhead.
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(b) Thrasymachus's own phrase "ruler in the precise sense" points
us in this same direction, for the word he uses, O.KptPcO<;, uwith precision"
or "accuracy," belongs to the vocabulary of the crafts, where the noun
&.KpiJ)eta originally designates the result of fitting one thing to another,
for instance, making one piece of wood dovetail with another so that no
gaps are left." An art becomes "precise" only if it takes into account the
nature and limits of its proper objects and this it can do only if it "submits" itself to these objects, tries, in other words, to join itself to them
without leaving any gaps.
(c) Construed in this way, ~EJ(VTJ offers us the first instance of the
human capacity for self-transcendence, that is, the ability to pass beyond
the immediacies of narrower self-interest in order to encounter, in a fitting
way, something other than oneself. TEJ(VTJ, then, is less a matter of following "technical, autonomous rules, and more one of discovering what the
texture of things demands of anyone who sets out to fashion or refashion
things in accordance with a purpose to which they show themselves to be
suited. One might characterize this situation by saying that the artisan,
precisely because he needs these objects for his craft, has to give them their
due; this is the original lesson in the art of respecting, of doing justice
to the Other, even while striving to make it one's own. For Plato, as for
Hegel, eros and science are later and more fundamental lessons in this same
art.
At all events, the theme of knowledge vs. opinion, a theme inaug\]rated
by Thrasymachus's non- or anti-philosophical ambitions, winds its way
through the following books of The Republic; recall, for example, that the
guardians of the luxurious city, soon to be lowered to the secondary rank
of auxiliaries when the philosophers' city is brought into view, are merely
imbued with true opinions, the way a cloth is imbued with a lasting dye,
and that they are called "philosophical" only in the sense of a kind of canine
instinct that makes them friendly to fellow citizens and inimical to strangers.
Let me summarize and at the same time point ahead: The distinction
between opinions that cannot guarantee their own truth and a knowledge
alleged to be incorrigibly "accurate" first comes to hand in Thrasymachus's
speech, in the service of pre- or anti-theoretical purposes; it will be left
to Socrates to articulate that distinction in a more thoughtful way. However,
his articulation will in turn raise the question of the ground or basis of
this distinction itself.
(3) The third line of argument pushing Socrates and ourselves towards
the notion of The Good is what I have called "the argument from desire."
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WHAT IS "THE GOOD"?
I hope to be able to treat this much more briefly, despite its overarching
importance to the entire dialogue.
Let me start by saying that, unlike the first two lines of argument, the
argument from desire is not introduced or adumbrated in the speech of
one single interlocutor; instead, it is implicitly present from the start, in
the following way.
Socrates' initial conversation with Cephalus focuses on the advantages
of old age, more particularly, on the advantages enjoyed when one is both
old and wealthy. Cephalus's recounting of these advantages, from which
the whole debate about justice springs, is at the same time an account of
his life as a whole, or, as we might say, of the point of his life. In all that
follows, the terms of ethical or moral or psychological appraisal, terms
such as "just," "useful," "profitable,"
~'advantageous,"
"desirable," and
"good"- are also or even more fundamentally functioning as terms of
aspiration. In other words, these terms are being used not neutrally, or
as dispassionate, ''third-party," labels for the conduct of others, but as implicit designations for what it is or is believed to be that gives a life and
the activities it subsumes some "point" or "meaning." Conflicts over the
reference and the relative weight of these and similar terms are as varied
and unsurprising as conflicts over what life it is that has true point or meaning. As Aristotle brings home in Book I of the Nicomachean Ethics: Everyone agrees that "happiness" (Euoaq.tovia) is the right name for the life that
they want to Jive; they disagree over which life the name "cuoai!lo:>v" fits
(EN 15, 1095bl4-17).
I want to offer two brief suggestions in connection with this motif:
(i) As I have already implied, these terms of appraisal and aspiration
characteristically have to do with whole lives, rather than with sporadic,
episodic, or atomistically isolated patches of behavior within a life.
This emphasis seems to me central to all Greek ethical thought, whether
we look to Xenophon's rendition of the tale of Heracles, poised at the
crossroads between the Life of Virtue and the Life of Vice, to Aristotle's
reminder, immediately upon giving us his programmatic definition of happiness, that we have to add "in a complete or whole life, for one swallow
does not make a summer" (EN 16, 1098al8-20), or, more pertinently, to
Plato himself, who has Socrates fabricate, at the very end of The Republic,
the Myth of Er, in which denizens in Hades, having reviewed the lives they
earlier led on earth, choose new lives, in toto, for themselves.
(ii) The Socratic argument from desire or aspiration, an argument on
implicit display virtually from the start of The Republic, will be concerned to meet the pre-theoretical question: What way of life has point or sense?
Whereas Cephalus, at the beginning of the conversation, looks back over
I.
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a life already led and then symbolically absents himself, as though the question, in his eyes, is closed, Glaucon and Adeimantus will press Socrates
on this issue with passionate urgency, inasmuch as they have not yet committed themselves utterly to the choices from which the shape of their lives
will grow.
Their more specific demands in Book II show us that two things will
be incumbent on Socrates: He will have to prove (a) that the life that he
takes to make good sense truly does not make sense, instead of merely seeming to do so, and (b) that we have some kind of access to the difference
between the truly good life and the apparently good life; or, in other words,
that we know for sure what differentiates these, rather than having only
opinions on the matter. The interconnections between these two propositions that Socrates has to establish, on the one hand, and the argument
from desire, on the other, begin to reveal in what fashion the set of
arguments leading to the notion of The Good is something more than a
random collection.
(4) The fourth line of thought or argument leading to The Good in
The Republic is not strictly on a par with the first three. It would be much
more precise to say that the argument from Wholes and Parts, Unity and
Multiplicity, comprehends or unifies the first three. Because this is so,
because, that is, this last motif pervades the whole of the dialogue, it would
be exceedingly clumsy and unfitting to discuss it in partial ways, while,
on the other hand, any attempt to speak of it as a whole would amount
to a potentially infinite reiteration of the entire conversation. Let me then
pursue a still awkward alternative; let me try to recollect some of the instances of the motif of the One and the Many in order to see whether they
rest on common ground.
One might say that the dialogue begins on this note- Plato, in the spirit
of playful obliqueness that is his signature, has Socrates confront a group
of men as he returns from the Piraeus. When, at first, he seems intent on
heading back up to the city siraightaway, Polemarchus, one of that group,
reminds him: "Don't you see how many we are?" When Socrates suggests
that he might persuade them to let him go on his way, Polemarchus replies,
"But could you persuade us if we refused to listen" (327b12). In this way
the opening scene contains in germ the major political question of The
Republic: How can a multiplicity of individuals be persuaded to form a
community ·or citizens sharing, in their multiply different ways, a single
purpose?
We might also consider what comes to sight in Book I prior to any
"technical" elaboration suggested later: There are many different desires
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WHAT IS "THE GOOD''?
or aspirations, many different definitions of justice, many different opinions
concerning the best life- the phenomenon of manyness provokes the question whether there is any1hing to unite these many desires, definitions, etc.,
to unite them, not by way of identifying them with one another, at the
price of their relevant and intrinsic differences, but rather by way of bringing
them together, of so fitting them to one another that each has a character
in company with the others that no one of them has on its own.
The pursuit of this goal gains both momentum and clarity as we move
through the successive books of The Republic. Thus, the second, initially
luxurious city, the city led by Glaucon and his ilk, consists of separate
groups who must somehow be "molded" into a unity; the soul has its
separate and often conflicting parts, which have to be brought into a harmonious whole; the many virtues ought not be left hanging loosely together,
as Socrates' sly definition by exhaustion initially suggests, but should rather
be integrated in such a way that each plays its distinctive role only in concert with the rest. Socrates makes the first move in this direction by hinting that justice is not so much the fourth of the four virtues, and hence
on a par with the other three, as it is the virtue that enables the others
to perform their distinctive work. Finally, the many instances and aspects
of, say, justice or beauty, have to be understood as so many perspectival
views or glimpses of a single Form or look, since otherwise the claim that
each is an instance of beauty or of justice would be either unintelligible
or capricious and their ensemble would· be random or fitful.
These considerations will remain "abstract" or merely formal so long
as we fail to see how they are concretely "at work" in Socrates' discursive
practices.
Socrates is presented to us as one capable in deed of "doing justice"
to the partial and thus one-sided opinions, appearances, and desires of
his interlocutors, that is, as one who can find the right or fitting place
for each part so that all can, in principle, be fitted together precisely with
one another. He accommodates disparate theses, not by acknowledging
the right of each man to his own partial opinion, but by showing or suggesting how this disparity is to be understood; in other words, Socrates
works at making plain how a part is falsely inflated into the semblance
of a whole, while, at almost the same time, trying to bring out how the
whole has to find room for that same part, once it has been suitably
deflated.
The city of artisans, which Glaucon, the incarnation of Su~t6~,
spiritedness, renames "the city of pigs," is one example of such a policy,
since it has room only for bnSu~tiu, appetite, one, and only one, part of
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the soul. The two cities that succeed it are meant to put tmeullia in its
place. Socrates' policy of integration is, however, perhaps shown through
his overall response to the definitions of justice offered in Book 1: he
"refutes" them, often with transparently sophistic means, only to recuperate
them as he proceeds. Thus the warrior-auxiliaries act on Polemarchus's
definition of justice as benefiting one's friends-now understood as the
citizens of the just city- and protecting these same friends against their
common and genuine enemies; Thrasymachus's definition of justice as the
other's good, together with his exclusive emphasis on self-interest, are both
rectified and given their due in the official definition of justice as doing
one's own business so as to secure the unity and "health" of the whole
city and the whole soul. Finally, Cephal us's inchoate conception of justice
as making restitution of what one owes is restored to its rightful place when
Socrates compels the philosopher-king to return to the cave of the city for
the sake of paying back the debt he owes it, if not for his true education,
then at least for the nurturing opinions from which his true education is
an ambivalently fitting liberation."
What is Socrates doing in these cases? The unity or whole he is fashioning is an integrative, not an additive whole- a oA.ov, not simply a niiv,
to use the language of the Theaetetus, where this crucial Platonic distinction is expressly drawn (204all). Parts are not simply tacked on to parts,
in linear fashion, but are being made, to the extent this is possible given
the nature of those parts, to dovetail exactly with one another, to fit together
"in the precise sense," 0.Kptj3&c;.
What is it that makes Socrates' success in integrative discourse possible? This question and its most plausible answers take us into the heart
of Plato's thinking and thus within the range of the noetic center around
which the arguments of The Republic revolve.
(I) First, Plato's name for what makes integrative discourse, rather than
additive or eliminative discourse, in each case possible is: the form of
something considered on its own-ai'no <O <!>,where<!> ranges over such
things as Justice, Virtue, and Beauty." A form is not a univocal and
homogenous kind or class, as Aristotle believed it had to be, but a structured assemblage or collection of parts, for which the most reliable icon
is a whole number, an integer, as we nowadays say." Plato thinks there
are forms because he thinks that the disputes and disparities set in motion
when we engage in talk about our most serious concerns and desires both
have a point and point us to something stable; in contrast, the modern
Nominalist, Hobbes or Locke, for example, regards it as the philosophers'
most important task to bring such pointless disputes to a halt.
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152
(2) The Forms, whatever they are, seem to come to light only in the
presence of what Socrates calls eros; the quasi-argument for the Forms
in Republic, Book V, as interpreters tend to forget, begins with Socrates
calling attention to the difference between those who love the whole of
something and those who love only its mutually discrepant or episodic
parts." In the Symposium, Aristophanes characterizes eros as "the desire
and pursuit of the Whole (192e!O). Aristophanes offers a comically
anatomical rendition of that claim; the Platonic dialogues, especially The
Republic, set out its psychic and discursive versions.
(3) The Forms themselves are a multiplicity that needs unity. They, too,
must constitute an integrated assembly or community in which each form
is what it is only by being distinct from other forms. Just prior to his first
mention of The Good, in Book VI, Socrates suggests that justice prevails
among the forms; that is, that each can perform its own task oniy by virtue
of the harmonious ensemble constituted by all the Forms. The question
thereby provoked is: What is responsible for the harmony among the
Forms?
(4) In Books VI-VII Socrates will be made to give a series of indications, often of the most complicated and elusive character, as to the ways
in which something called The Good makes integrative discourse possible
by fitting all the Forms and the knowing soul to one another with the
greatest exactitude or precision. In doing so, or as a result of doing so,
The Good also bears responsibility for the distinctions to which prephilosophical experience bears witness- the distinctions between knowledge
and opinion and between being and appearance, which are, in the end,
two sides of one and the same distinction.
Socrates, by simultaneously studying and encouraging Glaucon to exhibit that most enigmatic and most revealing human activity, learning or
mathesis, will try to bring us to see how The Good can both distinguish
and unite everything altogether. Thus, in learning about learning the soul
will also come to recognize, or so Plato implies, what it is that it really
desires.
These final declarations obviously need to be worked through much
more carefully and in vastly greater detail. In the final section of this paper
I can only try to anticipate some probable results of snch an enterprise.
III.
The four lines of argument and reflection I have been discussing reach
their common destination in Socrates' teasingly oblique, if not opaque,
remarks concerning The Good or "The Idea of the Good" in Books VI
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and VII of The Republic." Let me suggest that the key remark is his very
first one, that The Good is the flB'Y!Cl~ov wiSnwr (504e5; 505a2)-the
greatest topic of learning and study- for the potential guardians of the
Just City. This initial description provides the key to what follows, not only
because the complicity between The Good and mathesis or learning will
turn out to be the heart of the matter, as I shall try to show, but also because
it allows us to anticipate, and make sense of, the tenor and limits of Socrates'
presentation.
Many readers have been baffled or disturbed by Socrates' reticence and
playful evasiveness on the topic of The Good, thinking, understandably
enough, that at this climactic moment of the dialogue, perhaps of his
philosophizing altogether, Plato ought to have had Socrates "deliver the
goods." This expectation, however, is at odds with a crucial feature of
Socratic (and Platonic) teaching, a feature best known to us from the contrast with the teaching of, say, a Gorgias: While the latter purports to
transmit a settled doctrine or technique that it is the business of the disciple to absorb and retain, Socratic teaching is provocative and evocative,
its aim being to turn the soul of the student in the direction of what is
genuinely learnable, so that he may call his own inward resources of
understanding into play." Accordingly, the straightforward presentation
of a doctrine or a technically accessible theory of The Good would have
been singolarly unsuited to the Socratic conception and practice of teaching.
Instead, Plato, with the self-reflexivity characteristic of his writing in
general, has Socrates furnish Glaucon, Adeimantus, and us, his silent but
thoughtful auditors, with a series of provocative indications thanks to which
they (and we) can set about the task of learning what learning requires
when it is most concentrated and self-absorbed. In short, by referring to
The Good, at the outset, as a ~t<iSn~tn, a matter for learning, Socrates puts
us in mind of the one activity through which we can begin to respond fittingly to his subsequent hints and images.
With this in mind we can now turn to Socrates' discussion itself. This
may be divided into three main segments of unequal length: The first contains Socrates' introductory remarks concerning the necessity of coming
to know The Good; the second consists of a sequence of three striking
and deeply inviting images offered by Socrates in response to Glaucon's
demand for clarification: the images of the Sun, the Divided Line, and
the Cave. In the final segment Socrates sets out a program of studies, culminating in dialectic and the apprehension of The Good, which the future
guardians will be made to pursue. The second and third segments thus account, respectively, for the possibility and the actualization of the necessity disclosed in the first segment.
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WHAT IS 'THE GOOD"?
After disposing of two superficial, but enduringly plausible, attempts
to identify The Good with pleasure or with thoughtfulness and knowledge
(506b2-4), Socrates begins to elaborate his initial claim that "if we do not
know The Good, even if we should know other things as well as we possibly
can, nonetheless this is no benefit to us, just as nothing we might possess
is of any benefit to us without The Good" (505a6-bl). His elaboration
goes as follows: "Is it not clear that whereas people would choose to do
and to possess and to be reputed to have things that merely seem to be
just and noble, even though they are not really so, when it comes to good
things, no one is satisfied to possess what merely seems to be good; rather
people seek what really is good and all disdain the mere semblance?"
(505d5-9). Socrates immediately adds that "every soul pursues this and
does everything for its sake, having a presentiment or prophetic mantic
intuition that some such thing really is, although perplexed and unable
to grasp what it is or to achieve the steadfast confidence about it that it
has about other things ... " (505dll-e3).
I have quoted this passage at 505d-e at length, first, because it puts
us on notice that the matrix from which the question of The Good arises
is the soul and its desires and satisfactions, and, second, because in it
Socrates has already started to weave together the first three strands of
argument I distinguished earlier. These two considerations complement one
another, as I shall try to show.
The contrast Socrates draws between the willingness of many people
to be content with the appearance or reputation of justice, etc., and their
unwillingness to put up with merely the semblance of good is not, at least
not initially, a point about transcendent values, moral ideals, or ultimate
sanctions, as many modern commentators assume. Rather, he is making
a more pedestrian, if finally more profound, point about the teleology of
human desiring: The semblance of satisfaction does not count as genuinely
satisfying whatever desire we may happen to have. Consider the case of
a man who bends all his efforts, throughout a lifetime, towards the goal
of acquiring a genuine Rembrandt portrait. Possessing such a painting is
the overriding aim of all his activity, the target of all his aspirations. Suppose, now, that he also knows from the start that the only Rembrandt portrait he will ever acquire will be a "fake," a "forgery"; this knowledge would
surely deprive his life of intelligible sense if he continues to subordinate
everything else to his desire for a genuine Rembrandt portrait. If my overriding aim in life .is to acquire wealth, I do not want to be paid in Monopoly
money, I want the "real thing," "the genuine article." Of course, I can strive
to acquire a bogus substitute, but only if I believe that its possession entails some genuine advantage or benefit. I can, for example, earnestly desire
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to seem to be just, without wanting really to be just, only if I believe that
this appearance will be to my real advantage- that it will afford me genuine prestige, status, power, and so forth, where the latter are believed to
be true goods.
Notice thatin my example of desire, as in Socrates', the twin motifs
of semblance vs. genuineness and opinion vs. knowledge are readily audible. This indicates that the more exotic or remote epistemological and ontological aspects of The Good come into view from the perspective of what
is more familiar or intelligible to us as beings who not only desire, but"
also desire that our desires be truly or really satisfied. The satisfaction of
this "second-order" desire can only come with knowledge of what it is for
something to be "the real thing," uthe genuine article," and with the
knowledge of what things satisfy this condition.
The second main segment of Socrates' discussion of The Good is occupied, as I have said, by three grand and seemingly inexhaustible images.
I would like to propose the following, very provisional, way of understanding their interconnected roles: (1) The image of the Sun pictures the knowing soul yoked together with the items available to its power of knowing,
i.e., the Intelligibles or, more narrowly, the forms." It brings to light the
Good as the ground of the possibility of knowledge in the sense of completely realized knowledge. (2) The image of the Divided Line pictures the
learning soul as it negotiates its way towards the realization or actualization of that latter state. The Line sets out the different ways the learning
soul has of being responsive or open to what comes within its ken; The
Good is responsible here for the fundamental continuity uniting these different responses, these pathemata, as Socrates calls them, as well as their
correlative "objects." (3) The image of the Cave pictures the embodied or
political soul with respect to those conditions of our communal lives that
threaten to make learning and hence knowledge impossible, those conditions that close off the highest or noblest ways the soul has of being open
to the world.
Each image, in its own fashion, offers us a view of a certain whole or
totality articulated into its distinct, yet fundamentally continuous, parts.
Each image is a lesson in contriving, or, better, assembling duly proportioned wholes.
Let me dwell on the first of these, the Image of the Sun, in order to
give some initial substance to this suggestion. Three themes are here brought
to light: first, the relation or relations between The Good and the intelligibles (508a4-c2); second, the meaning and basis of the description
of knowledge and truth as "looking like The Good" (509a3); and finally,
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WHAT IS "THE GOOD"?
156
~----------------------------------
the claim that The Good begets or generates the Sun as its own proportionate counterpart or analogue (508bl3).
Socrates says that The Good gives to the things intrinsically capable
of being known, the intelligibles or noeta, both their capacity for actually
being known, and their very beingness and essence, while "The Good itself
is not essence, but is beyond essence [ousia], surpassing it in dignity and
potency" (509b9-10). This enigmatic, mystifying statement begins to yield
some of its sense if we read it in light of the comparison or simile linking
The Good and the Sun. Just as the Sun is the source of illumination by
virtue of which opaque physical objects can be seen, so The Good "illumines" through the agency of truth, the intelligibles. Now those physical
objects, thanks to their material constitution, e.g., their solidity and color,
are intrinsically visible, although they cannot be seen "in the dark"- the
Sun's light permits their intrinsic visibility to "flourish." Similarly, The
Good enables the intrinsic knowability of the Intelligibles or Forms to show
itself when in company with the knowing soul. This role of The Good as
an enabling source, a source bringing something's capacity to life, has to·
be kept in mind if we are to understand how The Good also provides the
forms with their being and determinate essence (ousia). If we take it as
a settled matter that, for Plato, the Forms are eternally and are, ipso facto,
eternally Forms, then The Good's provision of etvnt and oua(n- beingness
and essence- cannot mean either that it causes the Forms to come into
being, to ''exist,"or that it causes them to be forms, or, finally, that it bears
responsibility for each Form's being the Form that it is, except in a very
special sense, which I shall attempt to explicate.
This notion of enablement or "empowerment" has in fact been on
display since Socrates' concluding arguments in Book I." A virtue, there
more specifically the virtue of justice, is what allows or enables a thing
to perform its characteristic work, its ergon. If the soul lacks justice, so
Socrates claims, it cannot execute the work for which it is naturally or intrinsically suited. Its capacities are, so to speak, activated by the presence
of virtue.
I want to propose that the same relationship can be seen as obtaining
among the virtues themselves, as well as among the Forms generally. The
Good, in other words, will be the "virtue" of the Forms both singly and
collectively, insofar as it enables each and every one of them to do the
work for which it is suited by its own inherent nature."
In the passage at 500b8-c7 to which I alluded in the previous section,
Socrates points out to Adeimantus that the genuine philosopher will contemplate "those things that are set together with one another in an orderly
way, in a taxis, so that they neither commit injustice against one another,
c
::!
~·
'
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nor suffer injustice from one another, but all hold together in a decorous
way- as a cosmos- in accord with logos." If we also recall the "official"
definition of justice in Book IV- justice is each thing's doing what is its
own- then some features of my proposal will begin to fall into place: For
the Forms to do justice to one another is exactly the same as their forming
or fitting into the taxis or cosmos at which Socrates hints in Book VI.
Each form does its job or plays its part fully or supremely well only in
concert with all the other Forms; the self-sameness of each Form stands
out only against the backdrop of its community with Forms from which
if differs, just as each virtue, each part of the soul, each group of citizens
within the city, works well at what it does only in concert with the other
virtues, parts, and groups. Indeed, the cosmos, the decorous array, of the
Forms, is the model and foundation on which those other harmonies and
constitutions rest.
My proposal, then, is that The Good is not one among the Forms, nor
is it a super-form in which all the others participate in order to gain their
status as forms." Rather, it is the source that enables the Forms to fit with
one another in the way that best suits each and all of them. The Good,
I would want to say, gives the intelligible domain its intactness, its integrity; it enables the ensemble of Forms to be well-formed.
This proposal might also throw light on Socrates' statement that truth
and knowledge are ayu6ost8fi, have the same look as The Good, without
being identical with The Good. Thuth, nA.l\Betn, is just that display of the
domain of Forms in its integrated wholeness, for which light or day-light
is the natural simile. Bright daylight allows us both to single out illuminated
objects and to see them in their togetherness with one another." Knowledge,
or its locus, the knowing soul, when most actively at work, is similarly
the display of its "objects" in their emphatic singleness as well as in their
integration.,. Because both truth and the soul put on a display of the same
sort, they are potentially well-matched with one another; The Good, as
it were, arranges and sustains their match, it causes them to dovetail with
one another.
I come to the last of the three themes I want to emphasize in connection with the Image of the Sun, namely, the role of. The Good as the father
or generative source of the Sun, and, therewith, or derivatively, of the sensible world as a whole. (It is only in the Timaeus, that exotic sequel to
a conversation strangely like The Republic, that Plato gives detailed clues
to how this cosmogenetic function might be understood.) In the present
context, what is of decisive importance is that this generative role links
together being and becoming, intelligibility and genesis, in such a way that
their relationship can be determinately understood. Earlier, towards the
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WHAT IS "THE GOOD"?
end of Book V, Socrates was even bolder: "The forms, although each is
in its own right one, by reason of their community with actions, with bodies,
and with one another, show up everywhere in such a way that each appears to be many or manifold" (476a4-7). This passage, when taken in concert with the claim that The Good begets the Sun, seems to suggest that
sensible particulars are somehow the manifestations of the forms, that is,
that the Forms are in some way responsible for their own incomplete, partial, and, thus, confused and confusing images.
The same three themes I have mentioned- The Good as the source of
the integration of the Forms, the match between truth and the knowing
soul, and the status of the sensible realm as an image of the intelligible
realm- are at work in the second image to which Socrates turns in an effort to enlighten Glaucon, the image of a mathematical line divided twice
according to identical ratios such that the resultant "parts" correspond both
to four ways the soul can respond to the world and to the four domains ·
to which these responses are addressed. If the Image of the Sun affords
us a vision of what it is like to be fully in the know, the Divided Line pictures the soul in the course of coming to know, that is, in the course of
learning.
Let me simply point out three considerations that would need to be
studied and discussed in a fuller account:
(I) As important as the divisions of the Line may be, perhaps more
important than these is the unity or continuity of the Line. The cuts
Glaucon makes leave no real gaps between the segments. This makes it
possible to pass "smoothly" up and down the line."
(2) What guarantees this passage is not just the bare unity of the line,
the fact that it is one single line, but, even more crucially, the inner articulation of the line according to the pervasive relation between images
and their originals: What is initially confronted at a "lower" level, as though
it stood on its own, is seen from the next highest level as a partial image
of a more adequate and more precise original. To negotiate the divisions
of the Line is to become practiced in this motion from image and original
and back.
(3) Finally, Socrates and Glaucon do not merely discuss the Divided
Line; their activities over the course of this discussion exemplify the very
divisions and motions on which their words are focused. Glaucon forms
or entertains an image and then proceeds to train upon it that capacity
called dianoia that does its main business with numbers, ratios, and proportions. Furthermore, his relative ease in discharging Socrates' instructions bears witness to his confidence, his pistis, that nothing will block
his access to the higher divisions of the Line. Finally, as Plato seems to ·
�LACHTERMAN
159
indicate by making the first word of Socrates' instruction the imperative
N6T]oov-"grasp by Nous," the final and highest capacity-Glaucon from
the first has to take hold of the line in its unity and wholeness, no matter
how precariously, if he is to make sense of the analytical, divisive, actions
he goes on to perform. Mathesis or learning thus involves the union or
interanimation of all four divisions of the Line, that is, of all four modes
of the soul's responsiveness.
I should have liked to go on to fill out the design I sketched earlier-to
comment on the third image, that of the Cave, showing how the puppeteers
within the Cave, the non-philosophical "opinion-makers," past and present, within the city captivate their prisoners by dissembling images that
bear no illuminating relation to their originals. Afterwards, I would have
wanted to move on to the third and final segment of Socrates' treatment
of The Good- the program of mathematical studies followed by training
in dialectic, set out in Book VII. My emphasis would have fallen where
I think Socrates' emphasis does, namely, on the kinship and community
among these studies. The dialectician is, he says, the synoptikos, the one
who can see things in their togetherness. Guided by this indication, I would
have tried to show that coming to know The Good is not a matter of learning something new over and above the antecedent studies; instead, knowledge of The Good consists in coming to see how those studies are akin
to one another, that is, how their order and array constitutes a complete
whole. 26
Accordingly, The Good founds by gathering five versions of community
(Kmvrovio.) in TheRepublic; it seems fitting to name them in descending
order of comprehensiveness: (I) the community of the forms (their ~6.!;1<;,
from which injustice is excluded); (2) the community of the sciences
mastered by the intending philosopher; (3) the community of the soul's
powers or "parts"; (4) the community of citizens in the three political cities;
(5) the community of the participants in that very conversation Socrates
recollects as a whole the day after it took place- the community, in other
words, of which Plato's text, The Republic, is the written image." Although
last in this series, the fifth community is the only one we are in a position
to witness as it comes into being, as, for instance, Socrates eniists the friendship of the hitherto inimical Thrasymachus (498c8-di). Witnessing, listening to the play of speeches in this fifth community is not a passive affair;
their play stands a chance of generating, but not of guaranteeing, a "collectedness" in the auditor's soul. We might be tempted to say that this is
the good of The Republic.
In lieu of these elaborations, let me bring my remarks to something
like a close. Socrates' three images, together with the guardians' program
�160
WHAT IS "THE GOOD"?
of mathematical study, far from digressing from the central "moral"
question-"How should we lead our lives?"-bring us face to face with
at least an outline or adumbration of an answer. Indeed, in his final comment on The Good, Socrates spells this out quite succinctly: At the age
of fifty when the guardians' education is complete, they should use The
Good as a paradigm from which to order-Plato's word is Kocr].LELV, to
make into a cosmos, a "decorous array"- "both the city and its citizens
and themselves. This means that The Good, as the ground of the integrative
ordering of the Forms, serves as the model for political and psychological
integration. Knowledge of the good is what would allow us to lead, or to
aspire to lead, "wholesome lives, lives in which each part- for example,
each desire- is given its due precisely by being fitted together with all other
relevant parts. What The Republic offers us, then, is not a recipe or
mechanically applicable formula, but a format in terms of which we can
understand what it would mean to lead such a life. Plato's "metaphysics"
is, we might say, an ontology of sanity, a metaphysics of wholesomeness.
I hasten to add that Plato is not blithely optimistic over the collective
or the individual prospects of sanity, unlike many later critics who chided
him for lacking "realism." Nor, on the other hand, is he dolefully
pessimistic. As the dialogues and the career of Socrates both seem to show,
the human condition is poised unsteadily on the shifting margin between
comedy and tragedy. The basis for hope may reside in philosophy, which,
by mediating between the comic and the tragic, proves itself to be, in the
words of the Phaedo, "the best and noblest kind of music."
It would be of some interest to compare Platonic "optimism" in its setting with its modern counterpart, the liberal if not wholly liberating belief
in interminable progress, which begins with the satyr-play or opera buffa
known to us as the Enlightenment.
I have, so I recognize, been immeasurably inexact in the remarks I have
made in this paper. Partial consolation comes to me from the recollection
of a deliciously and enlighteningly ironic passage close to the beginning
of Book V of The Republic: Socrates is apparently eager to push on to
the issue of the types of unjust regimes; his audience is more forcefully
bent on hearing him explain his proposals, made in passing, concerning
the guardians' sharing of women and children. Socrates protests, fearful
of the "hornets' nest" the issue will stir up. Then ThrasymachusThrasymachus, whose impatient, precipitate eruption into the conversation in Book I determined its subsequent course, Thrasymachus, who had
demanded from the penniless Socrates a monetary payment should he fail
to define justice- now says: "Do you think those of us who are here came
to prospect for gold rather than to listen to discussions, to /ogoi?" "The
latter," says Socrates, "at least in some measure." "No," Glaucon protests,'
�LACHTERMAN
161
"for those who have reason the whole of life is the measure of such discussions" (449b3-7).
Let me be, if only for a moment, what Hegel says a philosopher should
never be- edifying: It seems to me fitting that we keep this scale of measurement in mind.
NillES
1. The fragment of Amphis's Amphicrates is printed in T. Kock, Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta (Leipzig, 1880-88), Vol. II, 237. Other
burlesques of Plato's philosophizing are quoted and glossed in Ingemar
Diiring, Herodicus the Cratetean. A Study in Anti-Platonic Tradition
(Stockholm, 1941), pp. 138-43. The two best general treatments of Plato
and other philosophers as targets of vaudevillian satire remain R. Helm,
Lukian und Menipp (Berlin, 1906: Anhang V: "Die Philosophen in
der Komodie') and R. Fenk, Adversarii Platonis quomodo de indole
ac moribus eius iudicaverunt (Jena, 1913). One should, however, recall
that Plato is fully capable of giving tit for tat, as The Symposium
demonstrates.
2. Beyond Good and Evi4 "Preface." Needless to say, this is not Nietzsche's first or his last word about Plato. For two examples, see Nietzsche's early (1864) sketch, "Uber das Verhiiltniss der Rede des Alcibiades
zu den iibrigen Reden des platonischen Symposions," HistorischKritisch Gesamtausgabe, Werke (Munich, 1934, Bd.2, pp. 420-44), and
the transcript of his lecture-course "Einfiihrung in das Studium der
Platonischen Dialoge," Musarion-Ausgabe, Bd. IV (Munich, 1921), pp.
367-443. According to Nietzsche, the essentially poetic Plato was seduced by the legerdemain of Socratic "dialectic."
3. Paul Shorey, "The Idea of the Good in Plato's Republic," University
of Chicago, Studies in Classical Philology I (1895), pp. 187-239. This
"moral" or "axiological" characterization is frequently repeated by
modern interpreters; see, for example, Emile de Strycker, "L'Idee du
Bien dans Ia Repub/ique de Platon," EAntiquite Classique 39 (1970),
pp. 450-67, where The Good is called "le valeur supreme," "the supreme
value." But the very notion of "value" is a distinctively modern contrivance; see the illuminating study by Jean Beaufret, "Heidegger et
Nietzsche: Le concept de valeur," in J. B., Dialogue avec Heidegger,
T. II (Paris, 1973), pp. 182-200. Attention might also be called to the
distinction drawn by the French "Physiocrats" between "biens" (goods)
and "valeurs" (values). The former are inalienable, immobile; the !at-
�f
.
·~
~,'lj
162
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
WHAT IS "THE GOOD"?
ter can be exchanged with and for one another. (Cf. Michel Foucault,
Les Mots et les chases [Paris, 1966], pp. 202-09.) The modern theory
of values is, or so it seems, a surplus product of modern political
economy, projected backwards onto Plato.
Artistotle, Eudemian Ethics !8, 1217b25.
John Findlay, "The Neoplatonism of Plato," in The Significance of
Neop/atonism, ed. R. Baines Harris (Norfolk, Va., 1976), pp. 23-44
at p. 30. For the Neoplatonic identification of The Good with The
One, see the useful study of Carlos Steel, "L'Un et le Bien. Les raisons
d'une identification dans Ia tradition Platonicienne," Revue des Sciences
philosophiques et thlfologiques 73 (1989), pp. 69-85. Plotinus remarks,
however, that The One is unep<iyn6oc;, "beyond the Good," Enneads
VI.9.6, 42.
Anonymous Prolegomena to Platonic Philosophy, ed. L. G. Westerink
(Amsterdam, 1962), pp. 28-35. See, on the topos of a text as a Cosmos,
James A. Coulter, The Literary Microcosm. Theories of Interpretation of the Later Neoplatonists (Leiden, 1976). (Platonic "miming"
should be matched with the cosmopoiesis of the Demiurge.) Whether
all of the Platonic dialogues also constitute a cosmos is considered
by Diskin Clay, "Gaps in the 'Universe' of the Platonic Dialogues,"
Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy,
III (Lanham, Md., 1988), pp. 131-57.
For an ancient, fragmentary, discussion of Plato's dramatization
of Socratic conversation, see Michael W. Haslam, "Plato, Sophron,
and the Dramatic Dialogue," Bulletin of the Institute of Classical
Studies [London], 19 (1972), pp. 17-38, and his edition of the Oxyrhyncus Papyrus 3219 (see Preface, supra., p. i-ii) in Volume XLV of The
Oxyrhyncus Papyri (London, 1977), pp. 29-39.
Cicero, Thsculan Disputations V, iv. On the motif see J. Kerschensteiner,
"Socrates philosophiam devocavit a caelo," in: Festschrift fiir Franz
Egermann zu seinem 80. Geburtstag ... , ed. W. Suerbaum and F.
Maier (Munich, 1985), pp. 41-56.
.1.6~a also means "repute" or "reputation." Reputation is, as it were,
the link between appearance and opinion. On the pre-Platonic,
especially poetic, usage and force of M~n see the difficult but rather
splendid book by Raymond Prier, Thauma Idesthai, The Phenomenology of Sight and Appearance in Archaic Greek (Thllahassee, Fla.,
1989), esp. pp. 36-41.
Cf. Eva Brann, "Plato's Theory of Ideas," The St. John's Review 32
(July, 1980), pp. 29-37.
See I. Kant, Grundlegung der Metaphysik der Sitten, Akademie-
�LACHTERMAN
II.
12.
13.
14.
163
Ausgabe, Bd. VI, p. 222. (Cf. Erste Einleitung in die Kritik der Urteilskraft, ibid., Bd. XX, p. 200 [note], wheFe Kant emends the "problematic
imperatives" of the Metaphysik der Sitten into "technical imperatives,
or "Imperative der Kunst.")
David Roochnik's article, "Socrates' Use of the Techne-Analogy," Journal of the History of Philosophy 24 (1986), pp. 295-310, is a valuable
rebuttal of the conventional complaints against the association of tBXVll
and apetl]. See also Reinhart Maurer, "Der Zusammenhang von
Technik und Gerechtigkeit und seine metaphysische Grundlegung in
Platons Po/iteia," Philosophisches Jahrbuch 82 (1975), pp. 259-84. A
good synoptic study of the semantic interplay between bncrtl\f!ll and
tEXVll is Rene Schaerer's book, 'Emcrtl\f!ll et tBXVll· Etudes sur /es
notions de connaissance et de l'art d'Homere ii Platon (Ma10on, 1930).
On the relation between <'<Kp((\eta and the handicrafts, see D. Kurz,
AKPIBEIA. Das Ideal der Exaktheit bei den Griechen bis Aristoteles
(Giippingen, 1970). Fundamental is J. Klein's "On Precision," in J. K.,
Lectures and Essays, ed. E. Zuckerman and R. Williamson (Annapolis,
1985), pp. 289-316.
Two issues emerge from this conjuncture. First, is rule of the city in
any way the fulfillment of the philosopher's education or nature? AI
Farabi, in The Attainment of Happiness, appears to have given the
most systematically affirmative answer to this question (see AI Farabi's
Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, trans. M. Mahdi [Glencoe, Ill.,
1962], esp. sec. 34, and AI Farabi on the Perfect State. Abfi-Nasr aiFiiriibi's Mabiidi' Arii' Ahl al-Madlna a/-Fiiflila, ed. R. Walzer [Oxford, 1985], pp. 238-50). A more recent case for an affirmative answer
may be found in Joseph Beatty, "Plato's Happy Philosopher and
Politics," Review of Politics 38 (1976), pp. 545-75. Second, what is the
connection, if any, between the philosopher's education to what truly
is and his artful lying to his non-philosophical fellow citizens? In addition to the discussion of the "noble lie" in Rep. III, 414b8-c2 the
key Platonic text is the Hippias Minor, where Odysseus's prowess in
deceitful confabulation appears to excel over Achilles' suppositions
plain-spokenness. It should be noted that artful lying is, in most instances of early Greek poetry, an enviable virtue of the gods and the
Muses. (See, e.g., Hesiod, Theogony 27-28.) The topic of divine and
poetic deceitfulness has been illuminatingly explored by Walther Luther,
"Wahrheit" und "Luge" im iiltesten Griechentum (Leipzig, 1935) and
by Marcel Detienne, Les maftres de verite dans Ia grece archai'que (Paris,
1973).
Essential to an understanding of this recurrent Platonic idiom are the
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WHAT IS "THE GOOD"?
studies of Eduard des Places, "ATTO:E et '0 ATTOE chez Platon,"
iu E.d.P., Etudes Platoniciennes, 1929-1979 (Leiden, 1981), pp. 56-59,
and Richard Jauko, "ATTO:E EKEINO:E: A Neglected Idiom,"
Classical Quarterly 35 (1985), pp. 20-30.
!5. That apt8J,t6c; as "positive integer" is an apt entree into the understanding of the cfOI] might be inferred from the fact that it belongs
to a family of words from the same root apt-, probably including
liptcr1oc;, apc11j, apJ.tovia, and iip8pov, all of which point towards
a fitting-together, a suitably collected assemblage or jointure. (Cf.
Pierre Chantraine, Dictionnaire etymologique de Ia langue grecque
[Paris, 1968], T. I, pp. 101-09.) A Greek number, as understood by
Plato and his mathematical predecessors, is an assemblage, not an aggregate. It is, however, quite a different question whether numerical
assemblages are themselves eidetic assemblages, as Aristotle reports
some "Platonists" as having believed (see, e.g., Eudemian Ethics, I8,
1218al5-32; apart from the "classical" discussion in Jacob Klein, Greek
Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra [Cambridge, Mass.,
1968], pp. 79-99, one should consult Samuel Scolnicov, "On the
Epistemological Significance of Plato's Theory of Ideal Numbers,"
Museum Helveticum 28 [1971], pp. 72-97, and Vittorio Hosie, "On
Plato's Philosophy of Numbers and Its Mathematical and
Philosophical Significance," Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journa/!3
[1988], pp. 21-63). One cardinal difficulty facing any such identification of apt8J,toi with clO'l may be stated, in Aristotelian terms, as
follows: If each single clone; (e.g., "Justice") is itself an assemblage
of "units" taking their character uniquely from their conjunction in
that c!ooc;, what sense can we make of the participation of that c!ooc;
in some more comprehensive dOoc; (e.g., "virtue")? Do the "units" of
the former somehow become assimilable to, or comparable with, the
units of other clOT] conjoined in the latter? Questions of this kind seem
to be at the root of Aristotle's reflections on the so-called aot)J.tJ3A!]1ot
apt8J,toi (see Metaph. M6-8, 1080all-1083b23).
At all events, there is nothing in The Republic (or, I think, elsewhere)
to suggest that the lived-domain of the polis, its citizens, and their
virtues could be straightforwardly "derived" from combinations of
"eidetic" numbers or from mathematical numbers at all. When the text
does seem to make such suggestions, as in the case of the notorious
"nuptial number" in Book VIII, the playfulness is almost transparent.
(Cf. Konrad Gaiser, "Die Rede der Musen iiber den Grund von Ordnung und Unordnung: Platon, Politeia VIII, 545D-547A," in Studia
Platonica. Festschrift fiir Hermann Gunder! [Amsterdam, 1974], pp.
L--·----
'.
�LACHTERMAN
165
49-85, and Jean-Fran9ois Mattei, "La genealogie du nombre nuptial
chez Platon," Etudes philosophiques 1982, pp. 281-303.) A similar
playfulness is in evidence in the arithmetical city-planning of Atlantis
in the Critias. The distinction drawn between two varieties of measurement in The Statesman (283c3-287b2), one attuned to "number,
lengths, breadths and speeds vis-a-vis their contraries," the other attuned to "the mean, the fitting, the opportune and the needful (~o
oeov)," seems to give the lie to attempts to extract political and ethical
lessons from the relations among numbers or geometrical magnitudes.
One must, so to speak, await the seventeenth century before Plato's
captious play is taken in all seriousness, as it is in, e.g., William Petty's
Political Arithmetic (London, 1682) or in Erhard Weigel's Philosophia
Mathematica [sen] Theologia Natura/is So/ida (Jena, 1693); Weigel was
one of Leibniz's influential early teachers. Nor is its surprising that
when npt9!!oi are "reinterpreted" as aggregates (as in modern settheory) instead of assemblages, the calculative art of 1>.oywnK1\ replaces
the theoretical science of npt9!!1l~tK1\ (cf. Howard Stein, "Logos, Logic,
and Logistike: Some Philosophical Remarks. on Nineteenth-Century
'Itansformation of Mathematics," in History and Philosophy of
Modern Mathematics, ed. W. Aspray and P. Kitcher [Minneapolis,
1988], pp. 238-59).
16. Salient here is Socrates' earlier exhortation that Glaucon not allow any
"illiberality (nve1>.w9epin) to escape his notice," for "pettiness of speech
(cr!!tKpo1to1>.oy(n) is most contrary to a soul always yearning for the
whole and the sum of the divine and the human" (VI, 486a5 ff.).
Socratic philosophizing presupposes attentiveness to the whole, just
as Aristophanic eros is "the desire and pursuit of the whole" (Symp.
192bl0-193al). This presupposition is given forceful expression in the
Seventh Letter, where Plato claims that "in learning these [sc. excellence
and ignobility] one must at the same time learn the falseness and the
truth of what-is in its entirety (~ii~ o1>.11~ oucrin~ 344b2)." To anticipate:
The Good is what beneficially preserves what-is in its integrity (see
X, 608e and the Ps.-Platonic Definitions 414e9: 'Ayneov ~o ni·nov
cronllpin~ ~oi~ oucrtv, "Good is the cause responsible for preservation
to the beings''). Socrates is made to take up the same theme, in mythical
garb, when he speaks of the misguided search for a new Atlas in the
Phaedo: "The Good and the binding (lltov) bind and hold together"
(Phaedo 99c6).
Whether or not the soul's desire for the Whole is a reliable index
of the being of the Whole is not readily decided. What Plato does
indicate is the difference between Sophistic unthinking or mimetic "pro-
�166
WHAT IS "THE GOOD"?
ductions" of the Whole and Socratic evocations of the Whole (see Rep.
X, 596c2, 598b7, 598d3-4).
17. The lexical variations among aim'> To U.yn86v (e.g., 507a3; 534c4),
T<iyn86v (506el, 508bl3, 518dl, 52la6), and 1\ TOU uyuSoG iota (505a2,
517cl, 526el, 534cl) occasion both uncertainty and speculation. Morphologically interpreted, the last phrase would mean "the vision of
The Good," while TO ToG U.ynSoG d&o~. which never occurs in The
Republic (pace Proc/us, In Rem Publicam, ed. Kroll, 269, 22 f.: oro
e!&o~ -rii>v U.yn8iilv n<ivTrov) would mean "the visage of The Good."
(The Dutch treatise by P. Brommer, Eidos et Idea [Utrecht, 1940], is
the best source of "information" on this matter; see, as well, C. M.
Gillespie, "The Use of e!&o~ and !&En in Hippocrates," Classical
Quarterly 1912, pp. 179-203.) Dramatic context does not appear immediately to discriminate among the three locutions, since, at VII, 534
cl-4, both TTJV TOG uyn8oG i&tnv and nino TO U.yn86v are uttered.
And yet, the appeal to sight is most marked in those passages in
which The Good is to be captured in a vision. (Compare, too, 532c6:
npo~ TTJV TOU O.ptaTOU EV TOt~ QUO\ etnv.) One is tempted to hear in
these appeals an accommodation to Glaucon's fondness for statues
and sculptures (compare II, 36ld5 [Socrates] with VII, 540c4 [Glaucon]
and note that at IV, 420c5 Socrates mentions how unfitting it would
be to paint the most beautiful part of a statue, the eyes, most beautifully, at the expense of the whole). The visual/visionary images of The
Good may, then, be perspectivally adjusted to Glaucon's predilections.
In any case, it is crucial to recall that Socrates' interlocutors, and we,
are listening to his opinion of The Good; sound predominates in
Socrates' staging of his son et lumiere. So, no express mention of The
Good or of its look is made in the discussion of the Line, where
Glaucon's soul is concentrated on the possibility of mobile and comprehensive learning thanks to ;1.6ym. Compare, too, Aristotle, De sensu I, 437a'ff., especially KUTU OUI!~e~!]KO~ 1\t npo~ <pp6VT]OIV fJ UKOTJ
n;\.eiomv OU!!~Ii;\.A,e-rat I'ZPO~ = "Concomitantly hearing contributes
the largest share to thoughtfulness."
Hans-Georg Gadamer has made a valuable attempt to solve the
enigma of Rep. VII, 534b8 (OuKoGv Kat nepl -roG uyn8oG roonu-rro~).
where the Good seems to be on a par with all other etl\11 (see Die Idee
des Outen zwischen Platon und Aristoteles [Heidelberg, 1978], pp.
53-63). Stanley Rosen, in his book Nihilism: A Philosophical Essay
(New Haven, 1969), pp. 171-72, offers an enticing interpretation of
the different nuances of -r&.yn86v and Ji -raG 6.yu8oii iota.
Whatever further speculations this alternating terminology requires
�LACHTERMAN
167
or warrants, we should take pleasure in the following etymological certainties or likelihoods: The English word "good" is from the IndoEuropean root *ghedh, the source as well of English "together" and
"gather" (see Julius Pokorny, Indogermanisches Etymo/ogisches
Worterbuch [Bern/Munich, 1959], I, pp. 423-24). Is there any discernible link between *ghedh and Greek &.ya96<;? While the matter is inevitably conjectural, Maurizio Harari, "Nuova proposta di etimologia
per &.ya96<;, "Athenaeum, n.s. 57 (1979), pp. 150-53, suggests that the
Greek is compounded from the prefix &.ya- (as in 'AyaJ.lBJ.lVOlV) and
the theme *ghedh. This conjecture lies behind my allusion in the
Preface, p. v, to the Good as the omnium gatherum.
Plato, in his turn, has Socrates playfully derive aya96v from
&.yacr~6v, "admirable," in the Cratylus (412c4).
18. For the general theme of dialogic provocations in The Republic and
elsewhere, see Mitchell Miller, "Platonic Provocations: Reflections on
the Son! and the Good in· the Republic," in Platonic Investigations,
ed. D. O'Meara (Wash., D.C., 1985), pp. 163-93. Miller associates the
provocations enacted in the dialogue with the generosity of The Good.
This, essentially Neo-Platonic, motif finds ambiguous support in the
Timaeus, where the Demiurge is said to be <p96vou ... EK~6<;, "without
envy or jealousy" (Tim. 29e). Otherwise, the notion of the generosity,
of self-diffusiveness of The Good, belongs squarely to the later NeoPlatonists' strategic reworking of Plato in a direction that might fairly
be called quasi-Christian or "creationist"; see, e.g., Proclus, In Platonis
Timaeum Commentarii, ed. E. Diehl (Leipzig, 1903-06), I, p. 359: ~6
J.1Bytcr~6v 6cr~tv ou ~6 &.yaBoctM<;, &.A.A.iJ. 'lJ &.ya9oupy6v. (Cf. the insightful article by Jean Trouillard, "Les Degres du 7totciv chez Proclus," Dionysius 1 [1977], pp. 69-84.)
19. The relations between the dianoetic, principally mathemathical intelligibles and the noetic or eidetic intelligibles requires a more exacting treatment, particularly in light of Aristotle's exposition of the socalled "intermediates" (Metaph. N3). For recent commentary, see Julia
Annas, "On the Intermediates," Archiv fiir Geschichte der Philosophie
57 (1975), pp. 146-66, and Richard Mohr, "The Number Theory in
Plato's Republic VII and Philebus," Isis 72 (1981), pp. 620-27.
20. For a comprehensive inspection of the uses of MVUJ.ll<; in Plato, see
J. Souilhe, Etude sur le terme "dunamis" dans les Dialogues de Pia ton
(Paris, 1919). It is noteworthy that, from the start of the discussion
of The Good until the end of Book VII, "MvaJ.tt<; and its relevant
verbal cognates occur twenty-six times. Platonic ouvUJ.lt<; must be
distinguished from Aristotelian MVaJ.lt<; understood as potentiality.
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WHAT IS "THE GOOD"?
While Aristotelian Mvu~t' points towards the being-at-work of what
it itself is not yet, Platonic Mvu~t,, at least in The Republic, signifies
an empowering of what counts as its own likeness. In Book I, the empowered epyov is a likeness of the empowering UPE'lj; so, too, in Book
VI, knowing (yviiicn') and truth are look-alikes of The Good, which
enables them to be what The Good is already.
21. From responses to earlier versions of this lecture-text, and in the course
of revision, I have been reminded of certain affinities between my account of The Good and Heidegger's. These, however, do pertain not
to his portrait of Plato as the grand villain of the history of metaphysics
and not to Plato's alleged diminution of ii.A.Jj8Etu to op86'1]', but,
rather, to suggestions and allusions too often dampened by Heidegger's more vocal pronouncements. These affinities are most audible
in Heidegger's lectures, now in the course of publication in the Gesamtausgabe, although they may also be heard in his essay "Piatons Lehre
vom Wahrheit" (1930/1; published 1942).
To be as brief as possible: For Heidegger The Good is "what makes
every idea [Idee] fit and suitable [taug/ich] for being an idea"
(Wegmarken [Frankfurt a.M., 1967], p. 133). This account of The Good
as "das Thuglichmachende schlecthin" ("what fits and enables plainly
and simply,"ibid., p. 134) is amplified in his lectures on the Theaetetus
(=GA, Bd. 34), where, in analyzing the simile of the cave, Heidegger
writes "The highest idea is therefore this power of enpowerment [dieses
Ermiichtigende], the empowerment [die Ermiichtigung] for Being,
namely, that Being is as such [dass es sich a/s so/ches gibt] and, together
therewith, the empowerment of unconcea/edness, namely, that it eventfully occurs as such [dass sie a/s so/che geschieht]" (op. cit., p. 99).
The power granted by The Good is, according to Heidegger, the
power of phenomenality, of apparition: "This [sc. the Idea of the Good]
gives a shine to everything shining and is therefore itself what genuinely
shines/appears, what most shines in its shining/appearing" ("Dieses
bringt jedes Scheinsame.zum Scheinen und ist daher selbst das eigentlich Erscheinende, das in seinem Scheinen Scheinsamste," Wegmarken,
p. 134). This emphasis on the power of apparition brings into its wake
two inseparable issues: (I) Is the apparition (of the other dol]) inevitably
visible? (2) Does this power of apparition itself make a visible appearance? Heidegger, who wants to accentuate the visual character of the
Platonic Et.So,, is accordingly reluctant to take stock of the auditory
register in which the EtOI] make their appearance, both as dol] and
as their phenomena. The passage in Book V, to which I have already
called attention (p. 160), attributes to the "community of [the forms]
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169
with activities and bodies and with one another" their making multiple spectacles of themselves (476a4-7). That these spectacles are principally designated in visual terms is, I think, due to the context, viz.,
Glaucon's comparison of the cptA.6oo<pot to the qnA.oeearwvec; (''the
lovers of spectacles," 475d2); yet Glaucon also aligns the latter with
the cptA.l\Kom ("the lovers of sounds," ibid.). The Good, the visual accents notwithstanding, bears a marked kinship to the Heraclitean logos
as construed by Heidegger: it makes for the collectedness of the etoTJ,
it founds their fantastic community and with it, their singular and
plural ability to "show off" both in their distorted look-alikes and in
their muffled vocal impersonations.(cf. Heidegger, Nietzsche I [Pfullingen, 1961], pp. 541-42).
(2) But, does the Good-Itself "show off," make·a spectacle of itself?
Heidegger rightly sets at the focal point Socrates' characterization of
The Good as <Oil 6v<oc; 10 cpuv6<uwv (Rep. VII, 518c9; see
Wegmarken, p. 134). Heidegger construes the genitive as "partitive,"
i.e., the most apparent/phenomenal among the beings; the Greek permits, if it does not compel, another, freer, reading of the genitive, to
denote "what-is at -its most phenomenal."
The parallel usage of n]v <Oil cpuvot<itou [Stuv] in the summary
of the sun-image (532c5-6) does lend support to Heidegger's construction; however, it must be noted that Socrates' remark at 518c9 is
embedded in a theatrical, spectacular metaphor, matching the
1lEptuyro')'1\ of the soul with the shifting of angular prisms at the wings
of the stage (see Shorey's translation ad foe.). Again we hear an accommodation to Glaucon's love of spectacles. More substantially, The
Good, as the gathering of the etOTJ and their phenomena, is not itself
something to be seen, but what is implicitly acknowledged in all learning (see Note 17).
On Heidegger's failure, or reluctance, to take the measure of Plato's
textuality, see the brilliant study by Phillippe Lacoue-Labarthe, "fypographie," in Mimesis des articulations (Paris, 1975), pp. 167-270. For
Heidegger's reckoning with The Good, see Alain Boutot, Heidegger
et P/aton. Le probleme du nihi/isme (Paris, 1987).
22. The most plausible analytical argument that The Good is the form
of forms, i.e., that participation in it secures to each and every form
certain formal features, is set out in Gerasimos Santas, "The Form of
The Good in Plato's Republic," in Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy,
ed. A. Preus & J. Anton (Albany, 1983), pp. 232-63. It might be observed, however, that nowhere in The Republic is the canonical idiom
of participation, f1E<EJ(EW, used.
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WHAT IS "THE GOOD"?
23. On the "moon" and the "night-lights," which appear to occlude the
radiations of the sun, see Seth Benardete, Socrates' Second Sailing.
On Plato's Republic (Chicago, 1989), pp. '160-61. Mention should also
be made here of the designation of the radiant Good as Knl./.iov ("more
beautiful") than both knowing and truth (508e6); Glaucon replies that
this makes of The Good 'AMr1xuvov K<iAAO~ ("an unmanageable
beauty," 509a6). What is the connection between The Good and The
Beautiful?
In the Philebus Socrates speaks of the power of The Good "taking
refuge in the nature of The Beautijuf' (64e4-5). How is this flight or
seeking of refuge to be construed? Is ~o KUAOV the most phenomenal
spectacle of ~uyu96v, the spectacle most appealing to the human soul?
(Cf. note 21 supra and the discussion in Kyriakos S. Katsimanis, Etude
sur le rapport entre le beau et le bien chez Platon [Lille, 1977], esp.
pp. 89-106.)
24. I put scare-quotes around "objects," since, strictly speaking, there are
no objects for Greek thinkers. "Objects" presuppose·"subjects" and
there are no "subjects," as subjects of knowing or of consciousness,
for Greek thinkers. This familiar, Heideggerian point is given
philological precision in Lawrence Dewan, '"Objectum.' Notes on the
Invention of a Word," Archives d'histoire doctrinale et litteraire du
moyen age 48 (1981), pp. 37-96.
25. The integrity of the Line, prior to and together with its proportionate
segmentation, is rightly emphasized by David Luban, "The Form of
tbe Good in the Republic," Journal of Value Inquiry 12 (1978), pp.
161-68, esp. p. 162: "The Good is the logos, the underlying pattern
of the Line.'' On the discursive, geometrical articulations of the Line,
see, in addition to Jacob Klein's discussion in Commentary on Plato's
Meno (Chapel Hill, 1965), pp. 112-25, the studies by Gregory Desjardins, "How to Divide the Divided Line," Review of Metaphysics 29
(1976), pp. 483-96 and Yvon Lafrance, "Platon et !a geometrie: La construction de !a ligne en Republique, 509d-5lle," Dialogue 16 (1977),
pp. 425-50. The incongruities and inconcinnities that appear to issue
from this articulation. are signaled by Seth Benardete, op. cit., pp.
165-70.
26. The community or kinship of the (mathematical) sciences is the theme
taken up in the (possibly spurious) Epinomis, designed as a sequel to
The Laws, especially under the rubric of the cl~ ... liecr!l6~ (99le5) ..
The author of the Epinomis seems to point to the grand aporia of
dimensional progression at the heart of the Theaetetus, the progression, that is, from the linear to the planar to the solid, mobilized and
�LACHTERMAN
made possible by the power (ouvnJlt~) of proportionality (uvuA.o'Yiu).
On the questions raised by this and cognate passages in the Epinomis
see Leonardo Taran, Academica: Plato, Philip of Opus, and the
Pseudo-Platonic Epinomis (Philadelphia, 1975 =Memoirs of the
American Philosophical Society, Vol. 107).
27. On Socrates' Pythagorean exercise of remembering and reciting the
whole of a previous conversation, see E. Brann, supra, p. 78, and, most
recently, Bruce Rosenstock, "Rereading the Republic," Arethusa 16
(1983), pp. 219-46.
�Imitation
John White
Imitation as a theory of poetry makes its first appearance in the
Republic, where it is used to criticize Homer. As a theme for poetry, it
makes its first appearance in the Iliad. On Achilles' shield "the earth looked
like earth that had been plowed though it was made of gold. Such was
the wonder of the shield's forging"; imitation is poetry's "theory" of the
overwhelming presence of visual art.
Imitation has had a long career in both of these incarnations. As a
theory of poetry it has often been repeated and refuted. As a theme of
poetry it has seized the imagination with great power-Aeneas's looking
at the panels of the Trojan war in Juno's shrine or Keats's looking at an
urn. There are as many poetic imitations of the theme as there are refutations of the theory. In order to understand the fascination of a theme so
imitable or a theory so refutable (and thereby so useful to philosophy and
poetry) one must look at the originals- if the notion of an original is not
out of place here.
Both the Iliad and the Republic-two books whose common concern
is spiritedness (thumos)-are difficult to grasp, but the Republic has a
special kind of difficulty: It is full of questions that turn back upon
themselves and answers that somehow cancel or contradict themselves. For
example, when Socrates throws out passages of Homer and also quotes
him at great length, does he want us to hear Homer or not? Or when
Socrates founds the "best city" on a noble lie and also tells us that the
lie is a lie, does he want to fool us or not?
In what the Republic talks about, justice, we can see this odd canceling right from the beginning. Look at what happens (in Book I) when
justice is first brought up. The first definition of justice is "paying one's
debts and telling the truth"- if someone leaves his armor in our keeping,
173
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IMITATION
we should return it. But then Socrates and Polemarchus consider a special
case: A friend has given us his weapons; he goes mad, and asks for their
return. We can't return the arms because the friend might injure himself.
So a second definition of justice is given, to take account of friendship:
"Justice is doing good to friends and harm to enemies." Then this definition is criticized and rejected; but we don't return to the first definition.
What are we left with? Do we return the arms or not? There is no third
possibility.
This same kind of difficulty or ambiguity appears in other ways, too.
The style of the Republic would be classified as "decadent": It is a jumble
of other styles, narrative, lyric, and mimetic; it is comic and tragic; the
style is "realistic" to the point of obscuring the difference between history
and fiction, real and ideal. No one style is employed in its purity. Poetry
and the criticism of poetry are combined in a characteristically artful form.
What is it trying to be? Poetry or philosophy? If poetry, what kind?
These difficulties about "style" are present within the dialogue also.
When Glaucon and Adeimantus enter the conversation (in Book II), they
are as much concerned with the proper way to speak about justice as with
justice itself. Glaucon (358a) thinks that Socrates has not really refuted
those who praise injustice; while Socrates may have punished
Thrasymachus- pushed him around in speech, humiliated him- he has
not refuted injustice. Glaucon thinks that no one has praised justice itself,
so he will praise injustice to give Socrates a pattern for the praise of justice.
And for Adeimantus the greatest difficulty with justice comes from those
who praise it. Parents, lawgivers, and especially poets contradict themselves
when they talk about justice; they try to praise justice, but the style of
their praise, their talk of rewards and the afterlife, really praises the seeming, the appearance, of justice. We should seem just to our judges. This
style of praise (justice in an afterlife) conceals envy. It "exhorts one to be
unjust and get away with it" in this life (367b ). Adeimantus says that "of
all those who claim to be praisers of justice-beginning with those who
have left speeches -there is not one who has ever praised justice other than
for the reputation and honors .... But as to what [justice] itself does with
its own power ... , no one has ever, in poetry or prose" adequately praised
it (366c). G!aucon and Adeimantus think that Socrates understands this
kind of difficulty and can give them the proper praise of justice. Do they
want to hear poetry (praising) or its criticism? Do they want poetry or
philosophy? They want both.
So Socrates must do both: He must criticize poetry and be a kind of
poet. Socrates does both of these things in the Republic. And Book X in
particular is the most compact expression of the ambiguity and difficulty
�WHITE
175
of what he tries to do-oflooking at questions that turn back on themselves
and answers that somehow cancel themselves. In Book X Socrates gives
his most radical (and annoying) criticism of poetry and also becomes explicity "poetic" in the most irritating way, by telling tales of the afterlife
(in the myth of Er).
Socrates gives three arguments against imitation in Book X. In this essay
I will present them briefly and then examine them by looking at their underpinnings, their assumptions. The result of this application will turn out
to be ambiguous: If Socrates' criticism of imitation succeeds, it succeds
in a perverse way, for it not oniy is an attack on the Iliad but also turns
against, "cancels," much that was said in the first nine books of the
Republic. Socrates' criticism of poetry thereby throws doubt on the unity
and coherence of the Republic itself. Why is Book X there at all? Book
IX ends so beautifully, with the best city a "pattern laid up in heaven";
it is uplifting. Why ruin this ending with the cranky, self-contradictory
character of Book X? While I can't argue for the unity of the Republic
on the level of an opinion- for example, that it is for or against poetry,
for or against some particular definition of justice- I think I can give an
image of its unity, an image that is able to guide us to the interpretation
of some of Socrates' own poetry, the images he makes and the myth he tells.
I. Imitation and the Mirror
In Books II and III of the Republic Socrates had given long sober
arguments against imitative poetry: As far as content goes, poetry tells lies
about gods and heroes; it talks of Hades and the afterlife, thereby undermining courage; its talk is neither "holy nor true" (377b-386b). And finally
(397b ff.) tragedy was exiled for its style: Imitation, where one has to jumble
together "all modes and rhythms," encourages a doubleness or ambiguity
in the character of the citizens; it violates the principle of the city, "one
man, one job."
Now in Book X Socrates returns to the topic. His criticism of imitation this time is both more fierce and more respectful, for he says that
poets "maim the thought of those who hear them," but he also says that
"a certain friendship for Homer, and shame before him, which has possessed me since childhood, prevents me from speaking" (595b). This time
when he criticizes poetry, unlike his earlier criticism, Socrates begins with
an image of the imitative artist, a "wonderful and clever craftsman," and
this image rules and guides the arguments that follow.
For this same manual artisan is not only able to make all implements but
also makes everything that grows naturally from the earth, and he produces·
�·r.'.·~l
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176
IMITATION
all animals- the others and himself too- and, in addition to that, produces
earth and heaven and gods and everything in heaven and everything in Hades
under the earth. (596c)
Socrates tells Glaucon that this is not so wonderful, for he too could make
all these things, in a certain way:
You could fabricate them quickly in many ways and most quickly, of course,
if you are willing to take a mirror [not a glass mirror; their mirrors were
sheets of polished bronze] and carry it around everywhere; quickly you
will make the sun and the things in the heavens; quickly, the earth; and
quickly yourself and the other animals and implements and plants and
everything else that was just now mentioned. (596d)
In Socrates' image of the mirror, _who is the "clever man" and what is his
mirror? I cannot answer these questions now, but I will return to them.
Whatever they refer to in particular, this is the imitative art that is attacked
in the Republic and this is the man who is exiled and replaced.
After making this image, Socrates gives three arguments against imitation. The first concerns the being of a work of art (596a-598b). The second concerns the knowledge that the imitator has (601b-602b). The third
concerns virtue (598e-601b; 603e-606d). The conclusion of these arguments
is that poetry needs an apology in its ancient quarrel with philosophy
(607b). Within Book X this restatement of the exile of poetry forms a transition to the discussion of the immortality of the soul (608e ff.) and the
myth of Er.
Here I will present Socrates' first two arguments- those about the being of an art work and the knowledge it contains. They belong together
because they both rely on the same assumptions and they both draw out
the consequences of the image of the mirror. (I'll turn to the third argument, about virtue, later.)
The first argument is about being. In the case of a bed, there are three
artisans concerned with it and there are three kinds of beds. First, there
is one bed "by nature," which, Socrates says, "a god produced." (Notice
the oddity of this phrase: "the bed by nature.") The god makes only one
bed; if he made two beds, it would come to light that they shared the same
"Form." The god is cailed the "nature-begetter." Second is the craftsman.
He doesn't make the ''Form" of a bed, but he does make a certain bed.
In a sense he is both imitative and productive. Socrates says, "If he doesn't
make what is, he wouldn't make the being but something that is like the
being" (597a). Third is the imitator. He is third because he does not imitate the "Form" of the one bed, as does the craftsman; instead he imitates
what the craftsman has made. Thus Socrates says (598b) that the painter
imitates not "being as it is" but the "looking as it looks" of a thing. He
concludes that imitation is three removes from the truth about being.
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Socrates' second argument concerns knowledge. For each thing, there
are three arts concerned with it: the art of its use, the art of its making,
and the art of its imitation. In the case of a bridle, Socrates asks who
understands it best, who knows what he is talking about when he talks
about bridles. In this case first place goes to the user, because "the virtue,
beauty and rightness of each implement, animal, and action [are] related
to nothing but the use for which each was made, or grew naturally." Second place goes to the craftsman, who will have "right trust concerning its
beauty or its badness" (601e). The imitator has neither knowledge nor right
opinion about the bridle- no one can tell him how to paint because there
is no clear-cut use for a painting. The painter has neither knowledge nor
right opinion with respect to the beauty or badness in anything. He can
only paint what looks fair to the many (602b).
The painter, the imitative artist, gets third place in both of these
arguments. Socrates concludes the arguments this way:
Then it looks like we are pretty well agreed on these things: the imitator
knows nothing worth mentioning about what he imitates, imitation is a
kind of play and not serious; and those who take up tragic poetry in iam-
bics and epics are all imitators in the highest possible degree. (602b)
These two arguments have some assumptions, or hypotheses, as their
underpinnings. The first hypothesis is that "god made only one bed by
nature." Socrates Says:
Do you want us to make our consideration according to our customary
procedure, beginning from the following point? For we are, presumably,
accustomed to set down some one particular form for each of the particular
umanys" to which we apply the same name. (596a).
Only with this assumption can Socrates give his analysis of the being of
an artwork (the three craftsmen) and its knowledge (the three arts). These
''Forms" help his argument in another way: Each argument analyzed an
implement or tool (bed and bridle), a work of craft or technerather than
a natural being. The analysis is impossible if there is an important difference between nature and art. For example, if use is the test of our
knowledge, who is the user of a giraffe or an ostrich such that he
understands them for what they are? This difference (between a natural
being and an artful being) is not a serious problem if we follow Socrates'
image of the mirror, which mirrors implements and animals and gods
equally well. Nor is the difference between nature and art a serious problem if a thing is what it is by "participation" in a ''Form," for then we can
understand the presence or "being" of a thing without reference to the
coming-to-be-the path by which it arrived. We can ignore the distinction
�r,
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______________
IMITATION
~-----
between nature and art because the distinction rests on the importance
of becoming, motion.
The second assumption needed for these two arguments .against imitation is that the painter is one of the craftsmen who "mirror" the world,
and that the poet is similar to the painter (596e, 603c, 605a). The arguments
concern painting directly, and we have to trust in the similarity of poetry
and painting in order to connect poetry to the "mirror," the image that
guides Socrates' arguments about imitation.
II. Poetry and Painting: Laokoon
Here I want to examine the second assumption that Socrates makes, the
similarity of poetry and painting. The best examination of the relation of
poetry and painting (and sculpture, too-the plastic arts) is Lessing's
Laokoon. Lessing begins with the Laokoon theme because it exists in two
treatments, an incident in the Aeneid and a sculpture. Laokoon was a Trojan priest who told the Trojans not to bring a piece of sculpture into their
city. It was a wooden sculpture of a horse. 'IWo serpents attacked Laokoon
and his sons for making this warning. In the treatment in the Aeneid,
Laokoon is bitten by a serpent:
All the while his appalling cries go up to heavenA bellowing, such as you hear when a wounded bull escapes from
The altar, after it's shrugged off an ill-aimed blow at its neck. (II, 223 ff.)
In the Laokoon statue, Laokoon is being bitten by a serpent and he is crying out- or perhaps he is calling out, calling on some god, or saying
something. The statue is wordless, so we cannot tell. Laokoon's posture
and the shape of his mouth give this moment of pain a serene greatness
and noble simplicity-a timelessness, a strange and wonderful presence.
This wordless cry is not the awful bellowing of which the poem speaks.
This difference shows Lessing that the way to focus an examination of the
similarity of poetry and painting is to focus on how they express
emotions- in particular, how they portray the experience of pain.
This difference in expression is striking and consistent: If one looks
at Greek poets, there are many examples of heroes and gods expressing
pain with a violence that ruins their "serene greatness" and beauty. When
Achilles first hears of the death of Patroklus, he pours dust and ashes on
his face and "fouls his handsome countenance" (XVIII, 22). Or in one of
the two most terrible and gorgeous moments in the book, when Zeus is
finally faced with the death of his son, Sarpedon, and he cannot save him
again-Zeus has already saved his life twice-Zeus gives up arguing with
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Hera and sits, wordless; Homer says "the father of gods and men ... wept
tears of blood" (XVI, 431).
In general, if one listens to screams of pain in the Iliad, one can see
a progression. Early in the book, the usual way of dying is that a spear
is thrown and it "drives inward through the bone, and a mist of darkness
clouded both eyes and he fell as a tower falls" (IV, 460). As the book goes
on, screams of pain are mentioned as part of the dying. In Book XIII,
when Zeus looks away from the battle, there is more boasting over fallen
enemies, a man roars in pain (393), and another "cried out then a great
cry ... and the spear in his breast was stuck fast but the heart was beating
still and beating to shake the butt end of the spear" (441). A man is struck
between the navel and genitals "where beyond all places death in battle
comes most painfully to pitiful mortals" (568). Another man is struck in
the eye; then his head is cut off, but the eyeball sticks to the point of the
spear and is "lifted high like the head of a poppy" (XIV, 493).
The culmination of this progression of the violent expression (and
presence) of pain is in Book XVIII, the moment that answers to the silent,
bloody tears of Zeus. After the death of Patroklus, Hera sends Achilles
to the wall around the ships. He has no armor. He stands there on the
wall, then goes to the ditch. He is caught between anger and grief. He gives
a great wordless cry, and Athena makes the "unwearied dangerous fire"
of heaven blaze from his head. The cry he gives is "wordless," a piercing
utterance without the possibility of becoming "winged," as words can.
The Greeks were immoderate in their poetry because moderation is not
dramatic. The reason for the serenity of the statue is not the ''moderation"
of the Greeks; the statue is ''moderate" because it is a statue, because of
the limitation of plastic art. The limit and goal of plastic art is physical
beauty and beauty of expression: What is ugly must be veiled and
transformed, and expressions of emotion must be moderated (if we are
to feel something like pity and fear rather than disgust). Since the plastic
arts can portray only one moment in time, they must choose a moment
that most implies the wholeness of an action, and not a moment that expresses it. There is no one moment of expression, for an action is a temporal whole that needs a "before" and an "after," motivation and suffer-
ing, to be complete. The last moment, the suffering and the bellow of pain,
is for plastic art the least useful: The eyeball on the spear becomes disgusting
or funny after a while. So plastic art, when considering an action and its
suffering, must choose the beginning, a moment of transition or choicethe moment where the soul has decided and is just about to move the body.
It may choose the '1ast" moment of Laokoon's struggle only if the struggle is not quite over: We know Laokoon is doomed, while Laokoon is about
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IMITATION
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to know and is about to bellow. Of course, plastic art could choose a moment that is somehow eternal- a moment of contemplation or a moment
that expresses the serene self-sufficiency of the gods.
Poetry does not have these limits. In it we can have wordless screams
(which will stand out as wordless) and tears of blood because we do not
see the ugly gaping mouth, and the moment i~ quickly left behind. In
dramatic imitation, the ugly and disfiguring, the natural display of emotion, may and must be shown.
Poetry has a wider range than painting; much that it imitates can't be
given in a painting. For example, consider the gods. To the painter they
are "personified abstractions" who must remain the same, doing the one
thing that is typical of them, if they are to be identified. To the poet these
"personified abstractions," these timeless entities, must act, must enter time,
and therefore they must have various passions and deeds. (Poetry violates
the god's simplicity, 508d.) In poetry there are many moments when
Aphrodite does not act like the abstraction of love, but the painter can't
portray her then unless he adds some kind of label or sign, a non-visual
element that is a s_ubstitute for a name.
If painters try to use Homer's "pictures" as a model, they will face impossible problems. For example, Homer treats of two kinds of beings, visible
and invisible, men and gods. Painters can't do this. When a painting, on
its visible canvas, portrays gods and men together, it ignores the distinction between the visible and the invisible-a distinction that for Homer
is not a matter of sight. Painting lowers the invisible. For example, if one
wishes to paint the battle of the gods and men in Book XXI of the Iliad,
one needs some visual scale of distinction between gods and men- a scale
that tells you this figure is a god and that one is not because (perhaps)
one figure is ten times as large as the other (XVIII, 518). Homer does say
that the gods are "huge." But for Homer this "size" is not physical; the
gods have stature, greatness. A painting would ignore this difference between gods and men by being so literal-minded about the word "huge."
What the visibility of the gods means for Homer is that they are only
visible to men by an increased power of mortal vision, such as Athene grants
to Diomedes. The gods are not invisible because of mists or clouds
(although Homer mentions them, in a painting they would cease being
merely mists or clouds and would become a "sign"). The gods are visible
only to the greatest of the Greeks, and they are never visible to someone
like Thersites. Visibility has little to do with vision, but a lot to do with
the distinction between the great and the ordinary, the serious and the superficial. Homer's gods are related to men, and distinct from men, in this way:
The gods reveal human life by showing its possibilities and limits. They
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are a kind of scepticism and self-consciousness -limits for us that are not
merely "other" than us, as are cats and crocodiles or stars or any of the
many things that different people see as divine. The gods don't "exist,"
but the idea of human life is beautiful and real, and human life is not the
same without these ideas-without this kind of greatness-even if they are
never "real." Only poetry can give us this kind of limit. These gods are
"other," but otherness has a human form. Painting has trouble showing
us the otherness of the gods- this unique combination of otherness and
sameness.
Poetry and painting are different because they imitate different things:
Painting imitates bodies, silent presences whose parts co-exist in time, and
poetry imitates wholes that unfold and complete themselves in time. When
Homer describes an object, he usually gives it only one characteristic (the
hollow ship, the black ship), but he describes actions in greater detail. When
he does describe an object in detail, the description is not visual and it
serves other purposes. Let's consider three examples of Homer's kind of
description, Homer's "pictures," to see how they work and what they are
describing.
The first example is the description of a scepter. Homer gives two
descriptions of it, and we have to look at them together to understand what
he is describing and how he is doing it. When Agamemnon holds the
scepter, this is what Homer says:
Powerful Agamemnon
stood up hol9-ing the scepter Hephaistos has wrought him carefully.
Hephaistos gave it to Zeus the king, the son of Chronos
and Zeus in turn gave it to the courier Argeiphontes,
and Lord Hermes gave it to Pelops, driver of horses,
and Pelops gave it to Atreus, the shepherd of the people.
Atreus dying left it to Thyestes of the rich flocks,
and Thyestes in turn left it to Agamemnon to carry
and to be lord of many islands and over all Argos.
Here is the second description. It is given by Achilles when he holds the
scepter:
This scepter, which never again will bear leaf nor
branch, now that it has left behind the cut stump in the mountains,
nor shall it blossom again, since the bronze blade stripped
bark and leafage, and now at last the sons of the Achaians
carry it in their hands in state when they administer the justice of Zeus.
(XX, 543-48).
And then Achilles dashes the scepter to the ground. Neither description
gives any visual information; each gives a history. But they are descriptions of a sort. Look at the two descriptions simultaneously, as if they were
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side-by-side. One description calls the scepter the work of Hephaistos; the
other describes the scepter as cut from the mountainside by an unknown
hand. The one talks of an ancient possession of a noble house; the other
talks of a scepter destined to fit the hand of anyone who might chance
to grab it. The one talks of a scepter held by one who is monarch over
many islands and over all of Argos; the other talks of justice, then throws
the scepter down. What is being described is not the scepter; the descriptions are giving us the difference between Agamemnon and Achilles.
Second, when Homer doesn't match up two descriptions of an object,
when he does want to describe something that demands a picture, what
does he do? After all, the symbols of poetry are arbitrary and can be made
to represent a body co-existent in space. How do bodies, whose parts coexist, lend themselves to a description? Since the description is in words
and sentences, the description itself must be sequential. This sequence
obscures the co-existence; by the end of the description, the beginning is
forgotten. Speech never achieves the wholeness or "presence" of a paint-
ing. So when Homer is forced to enter the special province of plastic art,
physical beauty and immediate presence, what does he do? How does he
describe Helen? A "direct" description- "eyes like stars, teeth like pearls"can't help being a kind of arbitrary jumble, a mere sequence-why talk
of eyes first? How does Homer give us the experience of her beauty? He
presents her beauty by describing an action: He has Helen come to the
wall, and he describes how the sight of her affects old men (not young ones):
They were seated by the gates, elders of the people.
Now through old age they fought no longer, yet they were excellent
speakers still, and clear, as cicadas who through the forest
settle on trees, to issue the delicate voice of their singing.
Such were they who sat on the tower, chief men of the Trojans.
And these, as they saw Helen along the tower approaching,
murmuring softly to each other uttered their winged words:
"Surely there is no blame on Trojans and strong-greaved Achaians
if for long time they suffer hardship for a woman like this one.
Terrible is the likeness of her face to immortal goddesses.
Still, though she be such, let her go away with the ships, lest
she be left behind, a grief to us and our children."
We don't know what she looks like. When Zeuxis made a painting of this
scene, Helen was the only figure in it-no old men who have "winged
words" and wrinkles. Which is more beautiful: the looks of Helen or the
looking of the old men?
The third example of Homer's descriptions, Homer's pictures of a "body
co-existent in space," is the deepest and most difficult. What does Homer
do when he invades the realm of plastic art itself? What does he do when
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he describes, not just the object of the plastic arts, not just a body whose
parts co-exist in space-what does he do w,hen he describes the imitating
itself?
Thetis of the silver feet came to the house of Hephaistos.
She found him sweating as he turned here and there to his bellows
busily since he was working on twenty tripods ...
[Hephaistos] took the huge blower off from the block of anvil limping ...
He . . . gathered and put away
all the tools with which he worked in a silver strong box.
Then with a sponge he wiped clean his forehead, and both hands
and his massive neck and hairy chest ...
. . . [Hephaistos then] went to his bellows.
He t'!.Uned those toward the fire ...
And the bellows ... blew on the crucibles,
from all directions blasting forth wind to blow the flames high,
now as he hurried from one place to another.
He cast on the fire bronze which is weariless ...
and gripped in one hand
the ponderous hammer, while in the other he grasped the pincers.
And then the labor and sweat disappear.
First of all he forged a shield that was huge and heavy.
Hephaistos made the earth upon it, and sky, and the sea's water,
and the tireless sun, and the moon waxing into her fullness,
and on it all the constellations that adorn the heavens ...
On it he wrought in all their beauty two cities of mortal
men. And there were weddings in one, and festivals.
The people were assembled in the market place.
Around the other city were lying two forces of armed men
shining in their war gear.
He made upon it a soft field, the pride of tilled land,
wide and triple-ploughed, with many plowmen upon it.
And as these making their turn would reach the end-strip of a field
a man would come up to them at this point and hand them a flagon
of honey-sweet wine, and they would turn again to the furrow.
The earth darkened behind them and looked like earth that has been
ploughed
though it was made of gold. Such was the wonder of the shield's forging.
(XVIII, 369-483, selected)
Homer shows the labor of the imitating- he shows the making of the
shield, its coming-to-be- but then the labor disappears into "the wonder
of the shield's forging." And also, in this example of a description, unlike
the other two examples, Homer does give a "direct" description; the shield
is the greatest "presence" in the poem. Many have tried to draw it. But
the things on the shield are in motion, and no human painting or sculpture
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could show that. However, the shield is made by a god, so that there might
be a divine kind of painting that can show things in motion, in their life.
To see what this might mean, we need to think about Hephaistos for
a moment. He is an unusual god, not a god of "serene greatness," for he
limps and sweats and has a hairy chest. He was important to Achilles at
another time, too. When the river Xanthos attacked Achilles and tried to
give him an anonymous death- to bury him in a waste of mud, bodies,
and blood- Hephaistos saved him with his fire. Now, too; with the shield
Hephaistos says that he wishes he could hide Achilles from death and its
sorrow; he wishes it as surely as there will be a shield to wonder at (XVIII,
463). Again Hephaistos uses his fire for Achilles: He makes him a "shield
of wonder" to replace his lost armor, his Uranian armor, taken by Hector
(XVII, 195). This new Olympian armor is forged by a divine art that shows
things in motion, in their life. The divine art that shows things in winged
motion, the art that forges Olympian armor, is poetry.
III. The Third Argument and Its Difficulties
Socrates gives a third argument against mimetic poetry in Book X. This
argument both sums up the earlier criticisms (about being and knowledge)
and goes beyond them. It has two parts; both parts concern "virtue." I'll
look at the two parts separately and make some observations.
The first part of the argument (598e-60lb) says that Homer must not
himself have been virtuous because he did no "deeds." Homer founded
no cities, conducted no wars, and is not credited with any inventions or
devices; he is not famous for a way of life, as was Pythagoras, nor was
he a teacher of virtue. If one has knowledge about virtue, one is more
serious about deeds than speeches and imitations; one would be "more
eager to be the one who is praised than the one who praises" (599b).
Homer's art produced only. a song, so he produced nothing serious, only
imitations of what is serious.
Either to defend Homer or to understand him better, we have to answer
these questions: What was Homer's deed and what "invention or device"
can we credit him with? Herodotus (II, 50-53) says that while Homer (and
Hesiod) didn't invent the gods, he was the first to give them special honors,
arts, names, and genealogies- a "theogony," a coming-to-be. Homer, by
giving deeds, histories, and preferences to the gods, made them into
characters. No longer are the gods merely the subject for. statues and lyric
poems, "timeless" hymns to Apollo or Zeus (this kind of poetry Socrates
allows in his "healthy" city- 372b ). Now the gods are fit subjects for epic,
for mimetic and narrative poetry ("temporal"). But the gods and the Iliad,
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the book where the gods become characters, were not Homer's deed; they
were the "devices" he needed to perform his deed. Homer devised Olym-.
pian armor, the Iliad, for the Greeks to look at, and this kind of looking
produced the Greeks- they were Homer's deed. The Greeks were the kind
of people they were because they had these gods and the Iliad, instead of
cats or crocodiles or statues of U ranian gods.
Homer's deed, this bringing into being of a certain kind of person, has
an odd timelessness for a deed; it is not over yet; it is still present. When
we read the Iliad attentively, we sit, unmoving and wordless, as if chained
to a ohair in a cave of magic; we are aware only of the images before us.
We are not aware of them as images. Instead, the images convince us that
they are real, that our emotions are only reflections of Achilles' wrath and
grief.
Before we look at the second part of this argument, we have to
remember that Socrates is aware of this kind of cave and this kind of defense
of Homer: "Praisers of Homer say that this poet educated Greece" (606e).
He is aware that Greeks have a kind of "noble lie" in their souls, where
they confuse nature and education: "The inborn love of such poetry we
owe to our rearing in these fine regimes" (608a).
So far, in this "ancient quarrel of poetry and philosophy," I see no
decisive advantage for either side. Homer is beautiful if bloody; the images of philosophy ("patterns laid up in heaven'') are uplifting, if a little
cold. But in most ways the quarrel remains a mere quarrel; uo new
understanding has been opened up by either side, nor have new possibilities
come into view for either side.
But now, when Socrates turns to the second part of this argument
against Homer, he turns away from the ''mirror" and an emphasis on the
object of imitation: "Imitation, we say, imitates forced and voluntary actions" (603c). He explicitly goes beyond the limit and assumption of the
first two arguments, the similarity of poetry and painting: "Let's not just
trust the likelihood based on painting; but let's go directly to the very part
of thought with which poetry's imitation keeps company and see whether
it is ordinary or serious" (603c). We are no longer arguing about "truth"
or "being," questions that tend to become the narrowly technical province
of philosophy in its "coming-to-be"- questions and answers that might
be correct but that miss the point; speeches that are true but petty, without
any greatness or "seriousness."
With this new beginning, Socrates turns to the second part of the last
argument about Homer and virtue: Mimetic poetry does not produce
"seriousness" about virtue in the soul of the spectator. He says that poetry
cannot imitate a serious soul, a soul that is restrained, one that is "self-
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same." Poetry must imitate a soul in conflict. When we see tragic suffering, we give ourselves over to it, and so the best part of the soul, the measuring and calculating part, relaxes its rule over the other parts. Here Socrates
says that he makes the "greatest charge" (605b) against mimetic poetry.
This charge is more serious than those "third remove" arguments, those
technical arguments that relied on the "mirror." Socrates says that mimetic
poetry ufosters and waters desires, pains, pleasures, sex and spiritednessthings which ought to be dried up" (606d). Spiritedness, thumos, ought
to be dried up.
Whatever else one might say about this criticism of poetry, one can't
simply disagree with it. After looking at the Iliad with Lessing's help, we
have to agree that the soul without conflict is not dramatic; it belongs on
a pedestal, not in a poem. But we also have to remember, if we are going
to "dry up" thumos, that it was thumos, spiritedness, that made possible
the Republic and its three-part soul by mediating between reason and appetite. This part of the soul, which conflicts with natural desires and goes
beyond them in wanting relishes, made "guardianship" possible, with its
dog-like combination of the qualities of "being gentle to friends and cruel
to enemies" (375b ff.). The "measuring and calculating" part of the soul,
reason, needs a force naturally allied to it, a guardian, if it is to rule the
soul or the city. And if reason can't rule both soul and city, the image that
guides and rules and unifies the first nine books of the Republic is lost:
The image where "the city is the soul 'writ large.' "
This new attack on mimetic poetry involves another surprise for us,
as Socrates explores the restrained self-sameness of soul which poetry cannot imitate. The surprise is the immortality of the soul. .When Socrates
mentions immortality, Glaucon "looks him in the face with wonder" (608d).
The immortality of the soul depends on the soul's simplicity ap.d unity,
its radical self-sameness. If the soul is "simple," how can it have three parts?
When Socrates tries to explain this difficulty about the parts of the
soul (6llc), that up until now the soul had three parts, he says that, so
far, he has been talking about the "looks" of the soul oniy. But such was
his criticism of mimetic poetry in the first two arguments against it, the
ones based on painting and the "mirror" (that poetry talks about "looks"
instead of being). Whatever else we may think about this third attack on
mimetic poetry, these arguments of Book X are also a kind of "canceling"
and "turning against" much that was said in the first nine books-the most
extreme form of the canceling I mentioned at the beginning.
Why is Book X there at all? Book IX ends so nicely, with the best city
as a city in speech, a "pattern laid up in heaven," and there is a review
of actual cities, cities "in deed." The tyrant has been "stripped of his tragiC
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gear" (577a), which allows Socrates to answer the original question about
the relation of justice and happiness: The just man is 729 times as happy
as the tyrant (587e).
I think we can see the reason for including Book X if we look a little·
more closely at the "degeneration" of the cities in Books VIII and IX,
because we can see the return of mimetic poetry despite its exile in Book
III, and we can see the emergence of a special concern with poetry in one
of the cities, a democracy.
Before the "degeneration" begins, Book VII ends with the description
of the best city and the education of the philosopher-kings. Glaucon
recognizes the completion of the discussion when he says, "just like a
sculptor, Socrates, you have produced men who are wholly fair" (540a).
Then the "degeneration" of Books VIII and IX begins with a tragic,
Homeric invocation: "How will our city be moved ... ? Do you want us,
as does Homer, to pray to the Muses to tell us how 'faction first attacked,'
and shall we say they speak to us with high, tragic talk, as though they
.were speaking seriously?" (545d). So the sculptural climax of Book VII
is insufficient; poetry has returned after its exile.
The "degeneration" must bring back mimetic poetry because the
degeneration involves choices and actions. And conversely, the presentation of a variety of cities demands something like a "degeneration." If one
is going to describe various cities, which city does one start with? Without
a principle of order, the cities are a jumble and the description would be
a jumble (as in the problem of describing Helen; eyes or teeth first?). And
not only does the "degeneration" involve a return to mimetic poetry in its
Homeric beginning, but poetry itself enters at one stage of the degeneration, a democracy.
Democracy enters with a kind of flourish because the transition from
oligarchy to democracy echoes the transition from the first city, Socrates'
"city of utmost necessity" (369d), to the "feverish city" in Book II. In Book
II, Glaucon had objected to the simple, unified "pig city" because it had
no relishes, nothing beyond the necessary- not even sexual desire goes
beyond what is economically feasible ("They will have sweet intercourse
with one another, and not produce children beyond their means"- 372b).
Now, in Book IX, in the degeneration from oligarchy to democracy, an
oligarchic father satisfies only necessary desires; he holds down other desires
by force (554a); he is unable to compete for "noble objects" (555a). The
son feels that this is petty, that his father has no generosity or magnificence
or freedom. The son hears "boasting speeches ... persuading [him] that
measure and orderly expenditure are rustic and illiberal" (560c). He has
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a desire for relishes (559a-b ). Again, with democracy as with the fall of
the "pig city,'' many kinds of relishes and imitators are added to the son's
life, but now there is no desire for a katharsis or purging, as there was in
Book II. So the democratic man becomes overwhelmed by his possibilities,
his freedom and his choices.
For this democratic man, freedom of choice depends on the fact that
no particular choice is serious. No choice is serious because no choice closes
off other possibilities; no choice makes him this rather than that. At his
best, he is intrepid and daring- capable of both action and deliberation.
He can love beauty without softness, and he "needs no lying poet" to make
monuments for him; he will make his own (I am thinking of Pericles' praise
of the Athenians in the funeral oration). But at his worst, this is his attitude toward a choice: He says, "Some say it's good, some say it's badeveryone has his own opinion. We won't know until we try it. If it doesn't
work, we'll change it back. Why not? After all, it's not written in stone."
He can experiment with anything because no choice has serious consequences; there is nothing written in stone for him. The democratic man
is a soldier one day, a flute-player the next, a philosopher the next (56lc).
With these superficial choices, choices that don't touch him deeply, he never
actually becomes anything. He doesn't become, for example, a soldier; he
becomes an imitation of a soldier. He does something for a while-he is
even serious for a while- but then he turns away with a kind of forgetting. He turns to another kind of life; but he is always trapped by the
ordinary.
This kind of man can look for some core of humanity, some kind of
brotherhood, a sameness that exists for humans beneath their differences.
But what he discovers is that all human differences and choices are superficial; no choice is serious. Living in a democratic city, he confronts the
variety of human differences and the jumble of choices every day. He sees
that people follow their strongest inclination or ruling passion as long as
it is strongest, and then they change. When he looks at the cities of the
world, he sees the same kind of thing: Democratic cities have democratic
laws, oligarchic cities have oligarchic laws, etc. In each case the strongest
faction makes the rules and defines justice, as long as it is strongest. What
universal justice does he see? What core of humanity? What truth is hidden beneath the overwhelming variety? In each case, universally and
without exception, justice is the interest of the stronger.
Thrasymachus knows this hidden truth, and he reveals the cynicism
and tyranny beneath the surface. No mere "refutation in words" can succeed in dealing with what Thrasymachus says. For while Socrates may be
able to tie him in knots and make him look foolish in Book I, that might
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only be a sign of Socrates' superior strength and skill in arguments; it might
be a sign of Socrates' superficiality that he accepts tbe "truth in speech"
and ignores the truth revealed by deeds- that he is "more serious about
speeches and imitations than deeds." This would only confirm the truth
"in deeds" of what Thrasymachus thinks about the role of strength.
Socrates' victory over him would be a mere "victory in speech." While a
"city in speech," a "pattern laid up in heaven," might be seen to be an uplifting possibility, a mere "victory in speech" here is an awfu~ fearful possibility. Glaucon and Adeimantus know. this. Despite Socrates' victory "in
speech" in Book I, our souls may harbor a "secret lawlessness," an imperviousness to speech: No speech may touch us deeply. Only an impossible
experiment could help us discover this truth about the soul. We would have
to know what the soul would choose if it had perfect freedom and invisibility. Glaucon proposes this: We don't need to know the soul's opinion about
justice, its opinion about what it would do when it has to return the armor or not (for example); we aren't even sure that there is a correct or "true"
answer. But the soul must act- must either return the armor or not. There
is no third possibility. We need a "ring of Gyges," a magical freedom and
invisibility for the soul, to discover the truth about the soul's choosing.
Glaucon and Adeimantus and the democratic man himself need more
protection than has been offered in the first nine books. A democratic man
needs to be protected not just from making the wrong choice about "returning the armor," for example; he needs to be protected from cynicism and
superficiality. Can mimetic poetry do this? Is it "ordinary or serious"
(603c)?
And not only does the democratic man need to be protected from the
possibility of degeneration; philosophy needs to be protected from this
possibility. Is it "ordinary or serious?" (Most of the world thinks philosophy
to be trivial, as Socrates knows.) Is it only "victories in speech," a continuation of the struggle for victory on a different playing field with words
as weapons? Is it a non-serious possibility thrown onto the world's stage
by democracy and its tolerance for non-serious choices? Is it a continuation of the democratic style, a jumbled and decadent style (debate, oration, and argument, both comic and tragic) with a new content? This is
Socrates' question; this is the greatest challenge to mimetic poetry and to
philosophy's "city in speech." This is why Book X is there.
Let's look again at the result of this third argument against imitation.
What Socrates now says in criticism of mimetic poetry is a criticism of
thumos and the three-part soul, and thereby reveals difficulties in much
of what was said and constructed in the first nine books: the-unity of the
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soul and of the city, and the unity of the guiding image of the first nine
books (the city is the soul "writ large"). The unity and coherence of the
book is in doubt. Book X is the most compact expression of this kind of
"cancelation" and turning against itself, because it contains both the most
austere criticism of poetry and the myth of Er.
IV. Katharsis and the Silver Soul
When we read the Iliad or watch a tragedy, we sit absorbed, as if chained
to a chair in a cave. Socrates says we are to leave that cave and its darkness
in order to see the sun and the world in its light. Education and its "purging" (katharsis is the word Book III uses to describe education) are to take
the place of poetry and its katharsis. We are to give up our Homeric, Olympian armor, even though it has somehow made us what we are.
But in this replacement of one katharsis by another, we must first ask
why we are in the position of having to choose between poetry and
philosophy. Why do we need any katharsis at all? What in our souls finds
purification, resolution, unification in response to speeches about deeds?
Socrates has criticized Homer as one who is more serious about speeches
than about the deeds with which they deal. This understanding of
"seriousness" makes us ask why we want to hear speeches about deeds;
why do we want to hear praise of deeds? Why do Glaucon and Adeimantus want to hear the correct praise of justice from Socrates? Why does
the incorrect praise bother them so much?
To answer these questions we need to look at the "silver" soul (thumos),
the kind of soul that Book X wants to "dry up," not the gold or bronze
soul. The Republic asks us to see the limits of this kind of soul, how it
begins in the desire for relishes and ends in the acceptance of a noble lie.
How can we understand the beginning of the silver soul, the desire for
relishes? At the beginning of Book II Socrates constructs a simple, unified
city, a "true and healthy" city. Glaucon says that it has no relishes; it is
a "city fit for pigs"; it is contemptible. What this city needs is a large dose
of luxury, fever. The occupations that are added to this city when it attempts to become worthy of honor are suggestive: hunters, imitators concerned with figure and color and music, poets, rhapsodes, actors, crafts-men for feminine adornment, servants, teachers, beauticians, barbers, and
cooks. Imitators and poets have been added, along with cosmeticians and
barbers.
The silver in our soul asserts itself and becomes visible by having a
certain contempt for mere nature; it does not begin in simple greed or lust.
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It does not want two pieces of meat; it wants one with relish. It does not
want two coats; it wants one coat with a gold braid on it. It does not sexually desire two women rather than one, or two men rather than one; it
wants a sexual object that is "improved": lipstick, jewelry, perfume, or a
bone in the nose and tattoos- anything, it seems, as long as mere nature
is gone beyond, adorned, transformed. The silver soul is willing to pervert
even the apparent naturalness of erotic attraction. The silver' soul is angry
at the pig city and "mere nature." It wants a kind of revenge, because the
soul and its terrible beauty are invisible and unrecognized. There is no
friendship in the pig city, no relation of souls; there is only an economic
partnership (371e). The justice of the artisan- paying debts and telling the
truth, the first definition in Book I- is contemptible. "Paying debts" is
an economic exchange based on bodily needs; it is not a relation of souls.
So the idea of "paying debts" must get some relish; it must be adorned
and transformed by the silver soul, not just "refuted" or thrown out. "Doing good to friends and evil to enemies" adds relish to "paying debts." This
is the second definition of justice in Book I; the definition comes up when
a friend gives you his weapons, then asks for them back when he has gone
mad. The mere idea of "paying debts" can't handle this situation because
it is an economic definition that does not recognize "friendship." Honor
is the just recognition for this doing of good and evil (to friends and
enemies) because honor is payment adorned with relish, praise (as the "good
and the evil" adorn the idea of "debts").
But there is a difficulty with honor as a kind of payment. Although
honor is a reward for the silver soul, how can the soul arrange things so
that honor does not become a mere payment for services rendered? If honor
becomes a payment, the silver soul falls back to the level of a bronze soul.
And a bronze soul can't give honor; it can only give payment, large as that
payment might be. For example, would you return to the risks of war if
you were offered "seven unfired tripods, ten talents of gold, twenty shining cauldrons, twelve horses, seven women of l.esbos, twenty 1\'ojan women,
Agamemnon's daughter in marriage and seven citadels"? Achilles rejects
this offer; it is offered in the spirit of payment; Agamemnon is incapable
of saying "I'm sorry-we were friends and I violated it." (Later, when
Achilles wants to re-enter battle, Agamemnon insists that he first take the
payment: Achilles is desperate for battle in his rage and grief, and he is
supposed to sit down, admire the presents and eat a meal. He begins to
get angry again.) This kind of payment is an insult. "Friendship" is a.relation of souls that replaces the impersonality of an economic transaction,
its "invisibility of soul."
"Friendship" and its recognition are meant to solve this problem of
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"honor as a payment." But the silver soul is caught by envy, by the clash
of honor and friendship. He believes in friendship and is capable of it,
but honor continually tempts him to stand out alone. (Achilles says to
Patroklus, when honor prevents his return to battle but allows Patroklus
to enter wearing his armor, "0 that you and I conld storm Troy together,
by ourselves," hoping for a union of honor and friendship.)
How can the silver soul avoid this clash of honor and friendship and
solve the problem of honor as a payment? Will the payment become large,
in an attempt to present size as the greatness of honor? The silver soul
can get the recognition he deserves only if he elevates another soul above
himself, one who is beyond competing with him, one who is "friendly"
but not a friend, one who is "objective," one who offers nothing useful,
nothing with cash value. Thus the one who gives recognition, speeches of
praise, is elevated above the doer of the deeds. And the one who praises
but is not a "friend" needs knowledge of what is praiseworthy- knowledge
of justice, souls, and speeches. The silver soul, the doer, must elevate the
one who recognizes him- the one who praises, the imitator in speechabove himself in order to recognize himself as elevated above the bronze.
So only a gold soul can understand the silver, giving him the recognition
in speech or song that he deserves. But now the silver soul, besides being
caught on the point of difference between deeds and speeches, is caught
in another clash: What kind of praise? A speech or song? Poetry or
philosophy?
Now let's look at the end of the silver soul. He begins in the desire
for relishes and ends in the acceptance of a noble lie. This is the last and
the highest thing the silver soul does. He takes the first definition of justice,
"paying debts and telling the truth," and now he adorns the last part, the
"telling the truth" part; he decorates it in the same way he adorned "paying debts." He doesn't take "the truth" to be justice. Instead, he believes
a lie, but it is a noble lie, a lie with relish on it. He believes that his education was a dream and that all men are brothers, having Earth as mother.
He believes in the brotherhood of man despite metallic differences (gold,
silver, bronze) that are of special concern to him. So when the silver soul
believes the noble lie, he is not merely taken in and fooled by it; he believes
it in part because it is a lie, a lie (brotherhood, friendship without its passion and particularity) that demands nobility of soul in one who would
believe it; it is an "elevating" lie. The lie is "noble" in another sense also:
It ennobles the soul that believes it ("brotherhood," despite the differences)
because it takes the viciousness from his anger, his criticism of "mere
nature." The silver soul does these two things at once-he believes and he
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overcomes the belief, in the way. that Socrates both censors Homer and
quotes him at length- because the silver soul knows that the unadorned
truth is not worth having.
These are the limits of the silver soul: Because he loves nature, truth,
and justice only when they are adorned and transformed, he must be
transformed, "purged," given a katharsis. But we can't merely do away with
him when we purge the city, for this part of the soul binds together the
other parts, reason and appetite. If we just "subtracted" him from the city,
wouldn't we return to the pig city? The silver soul not only makes necessary
another city, a "best" city, but it also makes possible the coming-to-be of
that city or any city beyond the pig city. (The best city could not have come
into being in the way taken by the pig city, simple addition without subtraction or katharsis; the standard of "usefulness" in the pig city prevents
this-e.g., "To have a city we need a farmer, a carpenter, and we'll add a
philosopher.") In particular, he makes possible the "best city" by his capacity
for the kind of transformation called katharsis. For him, "subtraction" is
addition and transformation.
The silver soul is not only capable of this kind of transformation and
recognition, katharsis, he also demands it. But the recognition that poetry
offers is, Socrates says, "a hymn to tryanny" (586b), for the songs reveal
only the terrible beauty of the soul; they do not recognize its monstrosity.
For example, Oedipus, at the end of the play, asks to be brought on stage
after putting out his eyes. He won't get off the stage despite Creon's urging, and he says, "Apollo did this to me, but I put out my eyes." This line
gathers and repeats what we have felt about him throughout the play, an
alternation of "He is sinned against" (Apollo does these things and Oedipus
suffers them) and "He is sinning" (Oedipus is bringing this upon himself).
And then Oedipus says, "Only I can bear this suffering." The alternation
of pity for him (as a sufferer) and fear of him (as a doer) that we have
felt is collected together: In claiming as his own the suffering that Apollo
inflicts on him, is he active or passive? This deed, turning suffering into
an action and action into a suffering, transcends the alternatives of pity
and fear; instead, Oedipus becomes an object of wonder. Whether he is
right or wrong, good or evil, in what he did is no longer important. He
has a greatness that goes beyond these questions of right and wrong. He
is the object of our looking, our regard, in a new way, and a new kind
of looking is called for. The play is a hymn to this greatness.
Since poetry grasps the greatness of Oedipus's soul but doesn't see its
monstrosity, the play is a "hymn to tyranny." So philosophy and its
understanding of greatness (491a ff.)-not just its understanding of good
and evil- must take the place of mimetic poetry and its understanding of
human greatness. Somehow the Republic must take the place of the Iliad.
�,.
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IMITATION
194
~----------------------------------
V. Images
Now we can turn to the unity of the Republic. I promised to make or
discover an image of it. Let me return to two passages I referred to at the
beginning of this essay, the passages from Book X where Socrates made
an image that guided his criticism of mimetic poetry:
For this same manual a,rtisan is not only able to make all implements but
also makes everything that grows naturally from the earth, and he produces
all animals-the others and himself too-and, in addition to that, produces
earth and heaven and gods and everything in heaven and everything in Hades
under the earth. (596c).
You equid fabricate them quickly in many ways and most quickly, of course,
if you are willing to take a mirror [not a glass mirror; their mirrors were
sheets of polished bronze] and carry it around everywhere;,quickly you will
make the sun and the things in the heavens; quickly, the earth; and quickly
yourself and the other animals and implements and plants and everything
else that was just now mentioned. (596d)
Who is this craftsman? It must be Homer. And as for the other questionWhat is that mirror? -look again at the Iliad.
So [Hephaistos] spoke, and left [Thetis] there.
He cast on the fire bronze which is weariless, and tin with it
and valuable gold, and silver.
First of all, he forged a shield that was huge and heavy,
elaborating it about, and threw around it a shining
triple rim that glittered.
He made the earth upon it, and the sky, and the sea's
water and the tireless sun, and the moon ... ,
and on it all the constellations that adorn the heavens ...
On it he wrought in all their beauty two cities of mortal men.
Socrates goes to the house of Cephalus, a prosperous manufacturer of armor, and there he forges a new shield from men with souls of gold, silver,
and bronze. The Republic is that shield, that mirror, which will replace
our Homeric, Olympian armor.
Could anyone really make such a shield in "deeds"? Is such a city possible? This best city is not possible in "deed" partly because it is a "pattern
laid up in heaven," something like a ''Form" -something unique which can't
be imitated without distortion. To found the city, one would need to have
gold separate from bronze or silver, silver separate from gold or bronze.
But in so far as the best city is an image of the soul, all of the metals are
present in each of us. No one could fully enter one of the classes without
doing damage to the wholeness, the tri-partness; of his souL
And even if the best city were to exist, it would degenerate (and this
'.
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means that it would inevitably lead to a democracy and its problems)
because of the impossible marriage number (546a), a number that Socrates
constructs and the best city must solve if it is to endure without change.
The impossibility of the marriage number means that the riddle of generation can't be solved: The city can't continue without the founder and his
ability to see clearly the quality of our souls; the founder cannot be "imitated"; he is not a "type"; he is original.
This inevitable degeneration means, on the one hand, that no kind of
soul will be pure; all souls will be at least a bit of a mixture, a jumble.
Even in the best soul there is mixed a deep secret lawlessness, as Glaucon
suspected when he wished for a ring of Gyges. For Socrates says that there
is some ...terrible, savage, and lawless form of desire" in every man if only
in dreams (572b); even the philosopher might dream of incest (57lc).
On the other hand, the necessity for the presence of the founder, the
original, means that the philosopher cannot just "disappear," return to looking at the sun, once he has come on the scene; he cannot disappear behind
a noble lie (i.e., he cannot become an "ideal," a noble lie, for the rest of
human beings in the way that Homer, with the invocation of his poem,
disappears into his style, leaving us alone with the Muse or Goddess).
Whom or what is this new shield designed to protect? What needs and
can use the protection of the impossible city, a city in speech? In general,
the city in speech will try to protect young gold and silver souls from being corrupted, being made cynical and vicious like Thrasymachus, by an
uncritical acceptance of the opinions of the city (49la-495b). The shield
will also work in the opposite direction. It will try to protect the city from
the innocent savagery of unformed philosophic souls (49le) and from the
corrupt savagery of the badly raised golden soul. Socrates points to this
danger most clearly in the Apology, when he makes this prophecy:
For now you have done this to me because you hoped -that you would be
relieved from rendering an account of your lives, but I say that you will find
the result far different. Those who will force you to give an account will
be more numerous than before; men whom I restrained, though you knew
it not; and they will be harsher, inasmuch as they are younger, and you will
be more annoyed. (39c)
This new kind of "shielding" is not equally necessary in all cities. A
golden soul is not the same danger to all cities, nor are all cities equally
dangerous to golden souls (some cities are contemptible-496b; usually
the city ignores philosophers totally). Nor is poetry the same danger to
all cities. Poetry is a particular danger to a democracy because it exaggerates democracy's tendency to tyranny and cynicism; it encourages the
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IMITATION
eros that takes over the soul with its "hymns to tyranny." Poetry is not said
to be a danger to any city other than a democracy. So the shield is designed to protect the soul and the democratic city from each other.
This connection between the new shield and the democratic city allows
us to interpret one final, baffling image of Socrates, and then to look at
the myth of Er. Socrates makes a strange and monstrous image of the soul
in Book IX (588c), an "image of the soul in speech." There is a man outside; inside there is a many-headed beast, a lion, and another man. In this
image of the soul, which of the two men, outside or inside, is the image
and which the original? What unity does this image have, and what does
it mean to make an image of man that includes two images of man, one
being a reflection and purification of the other?
We can understand this image if we think of the relation of the "best
city" and democracy. First, other cities may reflect more correctly than
democracy particular features of the soul and particular understandings
of justice, but only democracy and the "best city" have all the parts of
the soul imaged in some ways- for example, democracy is the only
degenerate city that has philosophy (56ld), even if the philosophy is not
serious. And both democracy and the "best city" degenerate because of
eros: A democracy succumbs to,eros through the tyrannic hymns of poetry,
while the "best city" cannot understand the marriage number and declines.
Finally, for someone who wants to found a city or to understand human
beings, a democracy is the best place to look, for there one will find all
kinds of regimes and all kinds of souls on display (557d). Of all regimes,
on the surface and from the outside, democracy is the most beautiful.
A democracy images the soul, but the parts are all jumbled up. It is
like the "man on the outside," in Socrates' image of the soul. Because of
that jumble, even if democracy is somehow the best city to live in, it is
not the best city to have living in your soul. The "best city," the "man inside" in Socrates' image of the soul, is Socrates' "pattern laid up in heaven"
(592b).
So now, at the end, in the myth of Er, after the return to the criticism
of poetry, Socrates can try to satisfy Glaucon and Adeimantus. When they
began this long conversation, they were suspicious of those who praise
justice-poetry contradicts itself when it tries to praise justice-and they
wanted to hear the correct praise from Socrates. Socrates is ready to give
it to them. He says that "we haven't yet gone through the greatest rewards
for virtue" (608b), and now he will do so, with the immortality of the soul
and the myth of Er. But first he checks with Glaucon: "Will you, then,
stand for me saying about [the just man] what you yourself said about
the unjust?" (613d). Now justice will get back what the argument owes
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it, a speech of praise; the argument is able to "pay its debts and tell the
truth"; it can even "do good to friends" whiie harming no one. Glaucon
and Adeimantus are able to hear a kind of poetry praising justice without
being pulled in two directions by it.
The myth of Er has a harmony of philosophy and myth, of thumos
and mind, but the harmony is not complete or "simple." Immortality has
been connected to the soul by the "desire to know" and the unity of soul
that this desire indicates. But the myth of Er cannot be about this simplicity
or this immortality; it cannot be an "uplifting" presentation of philosophy,
an ideal harmony of knowledge and action, deeds and speeches, where
poetry takes the place of philosophy. The myth emphasizes the soul and
its choices, its doings and sufferings, as all myths and mimetic images must.
And so 'the myth introduces faction into the soul, because there is faction
in the soul whenever it comes to deeds, choices (603d). The myth, because
it is a myth, talks about something that may be deeper than knowing, a
choice. And thereby the myth is about another kind of immortality.
This other kind of immortality is a sign and expression of the soul's
ambiguity, its monstrosity, its "un-naturalness." And so there is another
argument for the soul's immortality in Book X (609a ff.), given just before
the argument about the soul's simplicity. The soul is the only thing in nature
that is not destroyed by its "specific evil," injustice (610e). So the soul has
a strength beyond the natural, a greatness beneath the right and wrong
of its· ordinary choices, in its capacity to survive injustices and evil.
The myth is another look at the range of human possibilities and the
spectacle of choice, a look that complements and echoes the first presentation of that spectacle, the democratic man and his possibilities. In the
myth, however, unlike democratic life, choice doesn't occur in the ordinary
course of our lives. Choice takes place in a strange interval between the
time of rewards and the time of ordinary choices, between a time of immortality (relief from the burden of choosing) and the time of mortal life
(the time of confusing choices). In this odd interval between two kinds
of life, the soul comes to a place where all kinds of lives are scattered about,
with no rank or order, in a democratic jumble. And then the soul is asked
to choose. The soul is alone in a special way-no teachers, no parents, no
law-givers, no poets, no philosophers. The soul has put on the ring of Gyges.
·The first man to choose (619b) was a virtuous man in his previous life.
He comes from heaven to make his choice, but he chooses from habit, not
"philosophy." He chooses a tyranny that involves eating his children. Then
he complains about fate, and he blames everything but himself. He probably says "I didn't mean it," and he wishes that this choice were an ordinary choice, one that he could take back. But-and here we start to see
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IMITATION
the soul's monstrosity-he doesn't blame himself. When he blames circumstances, what he is saying is, "If the same 'circumstances came up, I
would do the same thing again." Despite his tragic lamentation, he is accepting his choice and his suffering. ("Apollo did this to me, but I put
out my eyes. Only I can bear this suffering.") There is something not serious
about his tragic suffering; there is acceptance and even a kind of joy ("I
would do it again, in the same circumstances").
The last one to choose is Odysseus. There aren't many lives left, but
he makes a good choice because he has been cured of his love of honor,
a cure in which philosophy was not needed. (The goal of philosophy is
such a cure-521a, 540b, 592a.) The myth again points to a choice that
might be deeper than knowledge. In the way that Socrates has said that
the soul may include some "terrible, savage lawlessness" (572b ), the soul
may also have some "deep, secret attraction" to virtue. After all, Glaucon
and Adeimantus in Book I say that they choose justice over injustice (347e),
but they do not choose from knowledge or philosophy; they are very aware
of the lack of a ground for their choice. There is something about their
nature that strikes Socrates with wonder (368a).
The choice in the myth is a special kind of choice. It is very serious,
because it determines all our other choices. Ordinary choices, the choices
that we make in the course of our ordinary, mortal lives, are imitations
of this one deep choice. We become what we choose here. This choice is
always there, always made again and again, but it is somehow hidden and
forgotten and covered by our ordinary choices. The danger for us that this
kind of choice reveals is not so much that we will make the wrong choicethe first man to choose in the myth of Er, who chose tyranny, once before
had made a good choice, a life of virtue and decency that took him to
heaven, but he chose a life without "philosophy." (Giaucon and Adeimantus may have made this very choice.) The danger is that we'll choose superficiality, a glorious superficiality, out of habit or honor. Our love for images of glorious choices might betray us.
The myth ends with the waters of Lethe and forgetting; the deep choice
and its moment are overcome by forgetting, the triumph of the ordinary
over the serious. And thereby the myth points to something that is deeper
than knowing: forgetting, Lethe, and ordinariness. Socrates says that we
should spend our lives trying to be capable of making that special choice,
trying to be "serious" and awake. Only philosophy and its peculiar· call
to a kind of human greatness can save us from superficiality, can hold
together thumos and mind, poetry and thinking, the soul's beauty and its
monstrosity. This impossible shield holds apart, and binds together, the
democratic city and the "best city"; it gives the soul a "pattern laid up in
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heaven" and allows philosophy to "come on the scene," stepping out of
a mythical past and artfully arranging its own entrance (as Odysseus did
in Phaiakia-Odyssey VIII, 486-IX, 20). The Republic tries to separate
yet hold together and see in one glance the desire for greatness and the
desire for truth.
This shield, the Republic or Politeia, is impossible, as we have seen.
But it is impossible not to ask what it would be like if this harmony of
thumos and mind were possible? If we could connect becoming and being
in the case of this impossible city, what would it be like? (Socrates has
a similar curiosity iu Timaeus 19b). What comes to mind is a passage from
Aristotle's Politics (which in turn reminds me of another passage, Ion 54lb).
After asking "what equipment the best politeia" (or "republic") needs in
order to come to be, Aristotle asks about the citizens: What kind of nature
would they have? He answers this question by looking at the "whole inhabited world" and the cities or Greece:
On the one hand, the nations inhabiting the cold places and those of Europe
are full of thumos but lack mind and skill, so that they are free but lack
political organization and ability to rule. ... The people of Asia, on the
other hand, have mind and skill ... , but lack thumos, so that they are in
continuous subjection and slavery. But the Greeks participate in both
characters ... for they are both spirited and intelligent; hence ... if they
attain politeia [or "republic"[, they are capable of ruling all. (l327b24)
Note
I bave used the following translations: The Republic of Plato, translated
by Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1968); Aristotle: Politics,
translated by H. Rackham (London: Harvard University Press, 1959); Lessing's Laocoon, translated by Edwin Allen McCormick (Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Merrill, 1962); The Aeneid of Virgil, translated by Allen
Mandelbaum (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1971).
�I A Note About the Authors
Eva T. H. Brann, Robert B. Williamson, and John White are Thtors
at St. John's College, Annapolis. David R. Lachterman is a professor in
the Department of Philosophy at the Pennsylvania State University.
Miss Brann is the author of Late Geometric and Protoattic Pottery:
Mid 8th to Late 7th Century RC.: The Athenian Agora (Princeton: The
American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 1962); and Paradoxes of
Education in a Republic (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1979;
paperback 1989). She is the translator of Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical
Thought and the Origin of Algebra (Cambridge, Mass.: The M.I:r. Press,
1968). Her new book The World of the Imagination: Sum and Substance
(Savage, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield) will appear later in 1990.
Professor Lachterman is the author of The Ethics of Geometry: A
Genealogy of Modernity (New York: Routledge, 1989).
201
�
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Zuckerman, Elliott
Ruhm von Oppen, Beate
Stickney, Cary
Van Doren, John
Williamson, Robert B.
Routt, Deidre
Sachs, Joe
Brann, Eva T. H.
Lachterman, David
White, John
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The St. John's Review
Volume XXXIX, number three (1989-90)
Editor
Elliott Zuckerman
Editorial Board
Eva Brann
Beate Ruhm von Oppen
Cary Stickney
John Van Doren
Robert B. Williamson
Subscriptions Assistant
Deirdre Routt
The St. John's Review is published three times a year by the Office of the Dean,
St. John's College, Annapolis; Donald J. Maciver, Jr., President; Eva Brann, Dean.
For those not on the distribution list, subscriptions are $15.00 per year. Unsolicited
essays, stories, poems, and reasoned letters are welcome. Address correspondence
to the Review, St. John's College, Annapolis, MD 21404. Back issues are available,
at $5.00 per issue, from the St. John's College Bookstore.
© 1990
St. John's College. All rights reserved; reproduction in whole or in part
without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
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�Contents
1 . . . . . . . Antigone: All-Resourceful/Resourcelessness
Joe Sachs
17 . . . . . . . The Nobility of Sophocles' Antigone
Janet A. Dougherty
33 . . . . . . . Hegel's Reading of Antigone
Patricia M Locke
51 . . . . . . . Idealism, Ancient and Modern: Sophocles'
Antigone and Schiller's Don Carlos
Gisela Berns
61 . . . . . . . George Steiner's Antigones: A Review
Eva Brann
67 . . . . . . . The Problem of Place in
Oedipus at Co/onus
Abraham Schoener
79 . . . . . . . Oedipus the King and Aristotle's List of
Categories: A Note
Chaninah Maschler
83 . . . . . . . Depth and Desire
Eva Brann
Woodcut by Emily Kutter
�Antigone: All-Resourceful/
Resourcelessness
Joe Sachs
This lecture has an ulterior purpose. It is a response to the growing chorus
of voices one hears saying that Sophocles is too difficult for our
sophomores to read. Now in some literal sense this is so obvious that it
hardly needs saying. But some people take it to imply that we ought to
stop reading Sophocles in the language tutorial, and this needs denying.
My own opinion is that Sophocles is too difficult for us not to read: too
good to miss, that is, and completely inaccessible unless one makes the
effort to read his own words. That such an effort made with the minimum
of tools is already richly fruitful is one of the things I hope to show. To
that end I promise that this lecture will be amateurish, in fact sophomoric.
I have no doubt that I will make mistakes that could be corrected by anyone
who has read all the scholarly literature on the subject. I have long ago
made the choice that such correctness is not worth its price. The reading
of Antigone presented here will rest on an elementary knowledge of Greek,
an ignorance of its metrics, a lack of fastidiousness about syntax, and a
heavy reliance on Liddell and Scott. I have had the luxury of being a
sophomore more than once, but my heart is in that tutorial, and I will
never graduate from it. Its very ineptitude prevents glibness, and requires
a slow, stubborn questioning of every word. With Sophocles that is not
Joe Sachs is a Thtor at St. John's College, Annapolis. This lecture was first given
at Brock University, St. Catherines, Ontario, in October, 1988. Translations are
the author's.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
a bad way to read. It also has the merit that anyone who wants to do it
can do it. It would be a shame to listen to a lecture of this kind and not
join in with it in the question period.
Sophocles never stopped thinking about the Oedipus story. He was in
his nineties when he wrote Oedipus at Co/onus, which he did not live to
see performed. It was about thirty-five years earlier that he wrote Antigone.
The three Theban plays that we possess are not a trilogy nor in any sense
parts of a whole. They are one story told three times from different points
of view. I do not mean that Sophocles used various characters to give subjective colorings to the events, but that he himself saw the essence of the
Oedipus story in three different acts of poetic concentration. I do not think
he changed his mind from play to play about Oedipus or about what made
his story important, though that would be difficult to show. I think he
saw in the story the most important truths about human life, and kept opening windows into it so that the rest of us could see them too.
But the Antigone seems to be far removed from the center of the
Oedipus story. Oedipus is long departed when it begins. His two sons have
tried and failed to share the kingship of Thebes, brought new misery on
the city, and finally killed each other in battle. Creon, who succeeds them
as king, and their sister Antigone respond to this catastrophe in incompatible ways, bringing on fresh catastrophe. And everyone knows that the
heart of this play is the scene in which the two main characters step forth
and debate the principles on which they have acted. The Antigone is a play
about a disastrous moral collision, one neither faced by nor caused by
Oedipus, who is so far in the background that he might be any dead king
who had both sons and daughters.
This is a false picture of the play, but an almost inevitable first picture.
More than other plays, the Antigone tempts us to single-sentence statements
of moral or theme, and that sentence is always about the conflict between
the laws of the city and the demands of private conscience, which listens
to a higher law. I could quote such sentences from various commentators,
but what would be the point? We can all say the same kinds of things
ourselves, and probably have. Whatever else the play may be, it has within
it a philosophic dialogue of undeniable clarity about a genuine and timeless
dilemma. Sir Richard Jebb does not hesitate to conclude that the conflict
of the play is not between people but between abstract principles, and that
Creon and Antigone move us not as themselves but as vivid personifications of duty. I hope this formulation feels uncomfortable to you, but there
is nothing impossible about it. Poetry is not by its nature hostile to rationality, and part of the power of Sophocles' writing is undoutedly an
�SACHS
3
intellectual power. He might, in this one play, have made everything human
and concrete an outer covering for an intellectual problem.
There is a philosopher, Hegel, who saw the intellectual realm as a living drama enacted by the ideas themselves. It is no accident that he loved
the Antigone. In his Phenomenology he sees the play as exhibiting the splitting in two of the ethical world, the destruction of ethical order by the
emergence of an inner contradiction. Antigone and Creon are both right
but also both wrong. Hegel says, "only in the downfall of both sides alike
is absolute right accomplished, and the ethical substance as the negative
power which engulfs both sides, that is, omnipotent and righteous Destiny,
steps on the scene" (#472). In Hegel's account of the play everything accidental and individual falls away from the characters, even though individuality is itself one of the things at issue. But Hegel writes with a depth
worthy of Sophocles, and his approach to the play cannot be dismissed
lightly.
The only way to achieve a truer perspective on the play is to begin looking at its details, but it is worth noting first that there is another philosopher,
of the same stature as Hegel, who seems to see the play in an opposite
way. Aristotle, in his Rhetoric (III xvi 9), criticizes the orators of his time
for writing too exclusively from the intellect, making it impossible for them
to discern or display moral character or purpose. He recommends that they
follow, instead, the example of the Antigone. This is a wonderful passage,
to which I will refer again. For the moment it defines a challenge for us:
to see how what is peculiar to the Antigone is what is specifically moral,
and does not stem from the intellect.
The debate between Creon and Antigone takes place in daylight. It is
important in many ways that the play begins in darkness. Antigone and
her sister Ismene meet outside the city before sunrise. It is an intensely
visual scene, but the pictures are in the imaginations of the two women.
We begin where they do, trying to assimilate the horror of the previous
day, and with Ismene at least, trying to see into another's inner visions.
There are no formulated principles here, no light by which to see one's
way. Ismene asks Antigone where she is in her thoughts (line 42); what
she sees clearly is that Antigone's thinking is spreading the darkness, like
the purple dye emitted by a certain whelk to make the sea murky (20).
This tiny example reveals the whole art of Sophocles, insofar as I can get
hold of it. Where a translation may have Ismene saying "you seem to be
pondering something," the word Sophocles has used for ponder is ka/khainein, not an invented word, but not a very common one either, and one
still heavily laden with its metaphoric origin. The root of the word is the
name of the purple murex, a sea mollusc which clouds the water when
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
it is threatened. Its secretion is the dye used by ancient kings for their royal
purple. The animal itself was therefore valuable, and worth searching for
through the murk. Thus its name came also to mean the searcher, as for
example Kalchas, the seer in Book One of the Iliad. This is Sophoclean
language: concrete, metaphoric, sensuous, and strong. We who do not speak
his language must read whole entries in Liddell and Scott to hear what
his characters are saying, and never be content to pick out one meaning
that seems to fit the context. But there is still another favorite device of
Sophocles in the line. Not only does Ismene say that Antigone is pondering, with a word that carries layers meaning gloom, royalty, and divine
insight; she says it is clear (deloun) that she is doing so. Sophocles loves
to jam together words whose senses clash. "It is clear that you are in a
murky soup of thoughts of royalty and divinity." The introduction of the
word "clear" serves only to emphasize that nothing here is clear. I will note
later some magnificent examples of this trick.
It is in this scene in and about darkness that the themes of the play
are introduced, and they are not law and conscience. The opening line is
Antigone's: 0 koinon autade/phon Ismenes kara, "Shared self-sister, heart
of Ismene." The word autade/phos means prosaically full-sister, daughter
of the same mother as well as father, but this scene, like the whole play,
is so full of the word autos and its compounds that one must, in retrospect
if not from the beginning, hear it as superimposing the meaning self on
that of sister. Similarly, kara, meaning head, or very summit of what someone is, like our use of heart to mean someone's very core, carries the sense
of Ismene's essential self. Antigone is saying "Ismene, what is most you
yourself is also shared, is my self, so fully are we sisters." The two-sided
question -what is shared? and what is oneself?- is the center of Sophocles'
envisioning of the Oedipus story.
Here, at the beginning of the play, the merging of two sisters into one
self is a pathetic illusion. Before the end of the ninety-nine lines Antigone
is telling Ismene she hates her. This moment when the sisters might be loving
and comforting one another becomes a new division and separation, like
that between their brothers. The image which dominates the whole play
is the one which fills Ismene's imagination in this scene. She describes it
twice. "We two were deprived oftwo brothers, dying on one day by a double
hand" (13-14). And again, "two brothers, in the course of one day, selfslaying wretched ones, working out a common doom with mutual hands"
(55-57). It might be a great misfortune that each brother gave the other
a fatal wound, but the special insight that makes this a nightmare vision
for Ismene is contained, in the first telling, in the singular phrase, "a double
hand," and in the second in the reflexive participle, "self-slaying." We are
�SACHS
5
seeing a combat to the death fought with a mirror, so that the hand one
lifts to strike the other moves backward to kill oneself. Oedipus lifted his
hand against his father, and destroyed himself. Here that deed is doubled,
as both Eteocles and Polyneices strike what seems to be merely a brother,
but for each turns out to be himself. And now in front of us it begins to
be quadrupled, as the sisters too begin tearing themselves apart. We look
at Antigone, and through two mirrors we see Oedipus. And there is one
more reflected reflection still to come.
But why does Antigone's loving greeting of Ismene turn so quickly into
a hate-filled parting? It is easy to blame Ismene. When Antigone tells what
she intends, Ismene replies that those who are women, weak, and subjects
must yield to those who are men, strong, and rulers (58-64). In response
to these arguments Antigone is splendid. In forbidding burial of Polyneices,
Creon has crossed two boundaries that restrain legitimate rule, into the
properly private (48) and into a realm where only the gods can be listened
to (77). As for his masculine strength, that can be put to the test by anyone
who does not fear death, and when Antigone looks at the image of herself
dying for burying a loved brother, she calls it a beautiful thing (72). Ismene
insists three times that the deed is impossible (79, 90, 92), but Antigone
elegantly and succinctly tells her that there is only one way to know that.
She uses the future perfect: "whenever I have no more strength, I shall have
stopped" (19). In the Rhetoric, Aristotle tells us that Antigone acts not
for the sake of what is useful or beneficial, but for the sake of the beautiful,
out of goodness rather than prudence, and in the Ethics he tells us that
the specific telos, or end, of virtue is the beautiful (III vii). There is no
question here, for example, of any superstitious fear that an unburied
Polyneices will be denled access to the other world, but only a clear sight
that burying him is right, fitting, appropriate, and leaving him unburied
deeply wrong, so that even the sacrifice of another life only makes the whole
picture more beautiful. Antigone is a human being in the fullest sense, one
courageous enough to do what needs to be done out of no practical calculation, for no reason other than that it is right. Her choice is beautiful,
Sophocles' picture of her making it is beautiful, and she is beautiful.
But she is also fierce. The chorus will say she is fierce with her father's
fierceness (471). In the first scene she is merciless with her sister. But worst
of all, she does not listen to Ismene. In the first line, she does not mean:
I see you, Ismene, for what you are and take that into myself as part of
me. She means: I look at you, Ismene, and see nothing but myself. The
two can have a shared self only if Ismene is willing to become Antigone.
If she does not feel the same feelings, Antigone rejects her as no true-born
sister of hers (37-38). But Ismene is no coward, but in fact a true match
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
for Antigone in firmness. If we listen to her we hear not a woman afraid
to act, but one strong enough to endure anything, if she is convinced that
any action will make things worse (39-40). Ismene is frozen in horror before
the image of her brothers, not because blood and death and loss are too
painful for her to look upon, but because they brought it on themselves.
In the speech in which Antigone only hears Ismene saying, let's act like
weak women subjects, she in fact is saying much more, that is much more
important. She asks Antigone to remember their father, not only dead but
having died hated, shamed, and having brought it all on himself, and the
mother who was to that father both mother and wife, the two names twisted
like the noose with which she mutilated her own life (49-54). Now their
brothers have added more horror and shame, and Antigone wants to keep
increasing it until they are all wiped out. To Antigone, all the deaths are
the work of enemies, against whom the family must be defended (9-10).
But Ismene keeps hammering at the fact that everything their parents and
brothers suffered was self-inflicted. In Ismene's view, she and Antigone
have no enemies but themselves. What they need now is to forgive the
beloved dead for their crimes, and be forgiven by them for taking no action (65-67). Antigone's deafness to her sister makes Ismene all the more
insistent, and Ismene's insistence makes Antigone all the more determined.
Like the blows struck by their brothers, every attempt to persuade turns
back on the sister who utters it as a new cause of her isolation.
In the course of this first scene, the most important word in the play
has been introduced and become increasingly prominent. That word is
philia. It means Jove which is not from desire, as eros, nor for all human
beings, as agape, nor between unequals, as storge, but for those who are
like oneself, of one's own kind. It therefore names both the love within
a family and the friendly feeling among fellow-citizens. You have all read
the sentence koina ta ton phi/on, the things of friends are common. Aristotle says in the Politics that the proper work of the lawmaker is to produce
this feeling among all the citizens (II v 6-8). The confrontation between
Antigone and Creon is not between conscience and law, but between philia
and philia.
This is part of the last of the mirror images of which I spoke. But the
word has already come under strain between the two sisters. In Antigone's
mouth philia means that which separates us from them, her immediate
family from everyone else, all of whom are therefore enemies. It is after
Ismene says that there is fault on the side of their family that Antigone
begins to say she hates her (86). Antigone's Jove is conditional, and those
who do not earn it feel her hate (93-94). Ismene's love is unconditional,
no matter what Antigone says or does (98-99). Antigone's words are all
�SACHS
7
about philia, and it is genuinely the motive of her deed, but she does not
recognize its presence in front of her. This rejection of her sister's love is
the worst error brought on by the darkness in which Antigone is moving,
and she will pay for it.
Creon, though he acts from calculation and prudence, is looking to
and acting for the sake of the same philia as is Antigone. Like her also,
he has a clouded view of it. His understanding of the friendship that makes
human community possible has an intellectual clarity, and his intentions
are good, but he is acting quickly in a critical situation, and he makes a
bad mistake. The Creon of this play is not the dishonest man he is in
Oedipus at Co/onus. Here he is a fitting antagonist for Antigone in the
stubborn purity of his determination to do what is best. He has inherited
the responsibility for a maimed and miserable city. Though his title to rule
comes through blood-kinship to the ruling family, all of Thebes's long
history of troubles has come from that same family. With the sunrise of
this day, the instant he becomes king, he intends to cut off that family
connection once and for all. His inaugural address to the elders of his city
is meant to show them a genuinely new beginning and show himself as
someone they can trust. They are to watch Polyneices suffer the ultimate
violation, left as a piece of meat for dogs and birds (205-6). They will see
that to Creon this violator of the city is no nephew, but is nothing (182-83).
Creon's true decree is that all bonds of love and loyalty will henceforth
begin with the city; no other bonds precede it, carry over into it, or carry
any weight against it (187-90). When one reflects that the ties within the
Oedipus family are those of a blood-kinship flowing back into itself in
a grotesque way, Creon's attempt to destroy all such ties is understandable.
But as the words for same blood, xunaimon, and common blood, haima
koinon, resound in his speech, we remember that Creon has a son and
that his very name is blood.
But Creon understands philia no better than blood-kinship, and no better than Antigone does. In fact the two misunderstandings of philia are
identical. Just as Antigone has sisterly love before her in Ismene, Creon
has the fellow-feeling of common citizenship before him in the chorus,
and he is equally blind. The chorus, when Creon encounters it, is in the
grip of a strong common emotion which he is preventing from flowing
into action, and he doesn't even know it. For him the sunrise is his entry
into kingship, but for the people of the city it is the moment they discover
that the besieging Argive army has left in the night. Creon is full of his
cleverness in having figured out a way to make them one people again,
and does not see that they are already of one mind, one heart, and one
motion, if he would just leave them alone, if not listen to them and join
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
them. What the chorus wants is to wipe out the war and the fear that have
filled them, with a day and night of feasting, dancing, singing, and
thankfulness to the gods (148-54). Creon is telling them to prolong the
horror by watching the desecration of Polyneices' corpse.
Creon and Antigone are mirror images in many ways. Antigone's imagination in the first scene is dominated by a picture of enemies creeping
up unseen on her friends (9-10). Creon likewise from his first scene keeps
referring to a plot against him fueled by money (221-22, 289-303, 1055).
There is no smallest shred of evidence in the play that this plot exists
anywhere but in his imagination. Both feel the need to act without delay
because of these threats. And having acted, both are inflexible. Creon compares Antigone to the hardest iron, which most easily shatters, and to the
wildest horse, most easily broken by a small bit (474-78), while Haemon
compares Creon to a tree that does not bend in the wind, and so is uprooted,
and to one who keeps a sail too taut, and capsizes (712-17). But the fundamental identity between them is seen in the words which are compounds
of autos. The Chorus tells Antigone that an autognotos orga, a self-willed
temper, destroyed her (875), while Teiresias tells Creon that his authadia,
self-pleasing or self-will, makes him guilty for his own bad luck (1028).
The self-will of Antigone and Creon is the conviction each has of being
the radical originator of his or her own deeds. This is the error of Oedipus.
Oedipus left home to start life fresh, by his own doing. When he lifts
his hand against his father, that is the outward, factual manifestation of
his effort to cut off his own sources and be in the world without
antecedents. Likewise, Antigone must act alone to save the honor of her
family. She cannot run the risk of letting there be any love between her
sister and herself which might dilute her resolution or divert her strength.
The two of them might become a new being, and see the good in some
way other than she sees it now. And likewise Creon as ruler has the whole
world on his shoulders alone. He repeatedly uses compounds of the word
kosmos when insisting that he cannot in any slightest way allow himself
to be ruled by a woman, a subject, or a child (726-27, 734, 746). If the
ruler is ruled there is anarchy (672), and the ordered world is destroyed
(660, 677, 730).
The meeting of Antigone with Creon is thus the confrontation of two
powerful, isolated figures, doing battle for the sake of philia. Faced with
each other, both are at their worst. In their determination to destroy each
other, each destroys himself. The axis of the play seems to me to be the
pair of lines 523 and 524. That is where they stake themselves. Creon has
been arguing that the reverence, honor, and love shown to Eteocles must
�SACHS
9
mean nothing if the same rites are accorded the enemy he lost his life
fighting. Antigone has been replying with immovable certainty that what
Eteocles and all the dead and the gods want is exactly what she has done
(505; cf. 89). They will never agree. Earlier, telling Creon in effect to shut
up and get on with whatever he intends to do, Antigone has said "my words
were born displeasing you" (501). Now, speaking her last words to him,
she says, "I was born not to join in hating but to join in loving." Creon's
last words back to her are, "Well you are now on your way below, if one
must love, love them." Antigone's word symphilein, to join in loving, and
Creon's word phileteon, one must love, are the nooses with which they hang
themselves. Antigone's word is beautiful, but she herself disfigures it.
Creon's word is a grotesque malformation with which not even he can live.
Both Antigone and Creon are far gone in spite when they utter these
words. Antigone is splendid in her courage, but she has been carrying a
contradiction within her since the first scene, and it has now come to the
surface. She has told Ismene that her love is conditional, and that Ismene
has failed to earn it. But she has just explained with scorn that she cannot
make a distinction between her brothers because her love is unconditional.
Which is the truth? At this moment Ismene comes on stage, and all of
Antigone's passionate coldness is turned upon her. Ismene had wanted
nothing to do with the deed, but wants everything to do with the sister
who must now suffer for it. All Ismene's words of desperate love for her
sister are met by Antigone with irony and mockery. When Ismene finally
screams, "Why do you torture me like this, when it does you no good?"
(550), all the fight finally goes out of Antigone. "In pain I am laughing
at you, if laughing is what it is." Antigone makes no effort at reconciliation, but Ismene has stopped her runaway anger. The effect of this stopping is to turn Antigone inward, where she begins facing the death she
has chosen. When she comes back onstage she will be a different Antigone
from what we have seen of her so far.
When Antigone has been led away for now, Haemon enters to plead
for her life. Just as Antigone's anger at Creon missed its mark and hit her
sister, so now all Creon's rage at Antigone lands on his son. In accordance
with his word phileteon, which says that love is a matter of impersonal
necessity, to be arranged by prudent deliberation, Creon first explains to
Haemon that when he thinks well about it he will see that this is not a
woman he wants to love (648-54). But Creon sees with fury that Haemon
fights for, follows, and serves this woman in place of his father (740, 746,
756). Creon knows how to handle proven and incipient treason at one stroke,
as he has done with Polyneices and the city. "Bring her here at once," he
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
says to the soldiers, "and kill her in front of her bridegroom's eyes" (760-61).
Creon has gone momentarily mad, but he has lost Haemon forever. He
is hemorrhaging in front of us, and this wound will not close.
With the device of Haemon's name, Sophocles shows us Creon in confrontation with his own blood. This was already true, more distantly, in
his confrontation with his niece and desecration of the body of his nephew.
And it is a truth implicit in the political principle by which he has chosen
to rule, that only those human bonds will be recognized and honored that
derive from the political one. From the beginning of his kingship, Creon
has been doing violence to himself without knowing it. It must be emphasized that there is no intellectual contradiction here. Creon could live
by his principle if he were a worse man, one whose cruelty was not a
momentary mad impulse but a settled disposition, or if he were a man
of firmer principle, like Brutus, the first consul of Rome, who killed his
own sons for the sake of his city deliberately. But Creon is just an ordinarily
good man, who considers his son and his wife part of himself. By his rules
he has judged Polyneices simply an enemy, with no claim on him or on
Thebes. But in so doing, he has made Antigone a second enemy, on account of sisterly love, and Haemon a third, on account of erotic love, and,
on account of a mother's love for the last of her children left alive, Creon's
wife Eurydice· a fourth. It is not money but love that has produced the
plot against Creon, a widening circle of unruly, ungovernable loves from
which he himself is not exempt. When he returns from seeing his son try
to kill him and then kill himself, to discover that his wife has killed herself,
Creon for the first time sees the truth: "I, I killed you, useless I" (1319-20),
but also "I am dead" (1288), "I am no more than nothing" (1322). His own
self lay outside him, in his wife and son, by way of bonds over which he
had no control. He was not the source of the ordered hierarchy of Thebes,
nor even the free origin of his own life, but part of a shared self, which
he stabbed inward to the heart by striking outward.
There are pictures in the play of lives better ordered. Haemon tells his
father that he can listen to and respect a youth, a woman, and his subjects
and be all the better a father, man, and king (728-29, 737, 739, 741, 749).
The chorus tells Creon that he and his son have spoken well doubly,
mutually (725), even in disagreeing. This means not that these old men
are too witless to make up their minds, but that they see the truth only
in some yielding of both sides to each other. And the loveliest and most
touching moment of the play is Ismene's second entrance. Antigone,
wrapped up in herself, sees only someone who would not act but wants
to share the glory (538-39, 542-43, 546-47). Creon, wrapped up in his mission to restore civil order, sees lsmene's tears, and takes them for an in-
�SACHS
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voluntary confession of treason (491-94). But the chorus, when they see
her, break into a brief lyric passage, the only lines they speak in the play
which are neither dialogue nor part of a full choral ode (526-30):
And now before the gates here is Ismene,
With sister-loving tears dropping down.
A cloud above her brows blood-red
Stains her face,
Wetting a beautiful cheek.
Philadelpha, sister-loving, is here an adjective modifying tears. I remember,
when I first read Antigone with a sophomore language class, asking how
a feeling and its object can be attributed to drops of salt-water. A student
named Ann Tive said simply, "They love her.'' Only the chorus speaks true
words about Ismene, and they are loving words. Though the chorus itself
speaks later of eros keeping watch on the cheek of a maiden, the love present here is not desire, not the remembered lust that moves the old men
of Troy when they look at Helen. These men of Thebes have suffered a
long time for the family of Oedipus, but they love this girl, and because
they love her they can know her. Similarly, in the whole play it is only
Ismene who speaks of Haemon with. love (572). This has confused centuries of editors so much that they often give the line to Antigone, though
every manuscript gives it to Ismene, and it has tempted at least one modern
reader to convict Ismene of desire for her sister's fiance. But Ismene and
the chorus are examples of the ph ilia that the play is all about. They can
love people a step removed from them because they genuinely love those
nearest them.
One of the most striking images in the play is that of Thiresias, the
blind seer. A great point is made of his being led by a boy. He enters with
the words, "Lords of Thebes, we have come a common road, two seeing
out of one" (988-89). Thebes had lords, plural, not a dictator, because
everyone must in some ways be led by others. Later he speaks of things
"I learned from this boy... for to me he is a guide, as I to others" (1012,
1014). Everyone who is unwilling to be led goes astray, misses the mark.
Aristotle's famous word in the Poetics, harmartia, which somehow came
to be misunderstood as a flaw, begins in archery and eventually becomes
the New Thstament word for sin. The English word error has perhaps the
closest range of meaning. Teiresias tells Creon that erring is common to
all human beings (1023-24). That is why he shouldn't be afraid even now
to change his course, but it is also why he should have known in the first
place that Polyneices deserved burial. The city need not have joined in
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the honors, but there is no crime about which it can say that the criminal
went so far astray that even in death he cannot be allowed to be recognized
as human; and that we, the rest of us, are the only ones safely within the
human fold. But Creon's being wrong does not make Antigone right.
Ismene's last speech to Antigone uses the same word, examartia, that
Teiresias will use: "Surely the erring of us two is equal" (558).
Why do all human beings err? The chorus, in the ode pol/a ta deina
(332-83), suggests that the very excellence itself which defines being human
is the source of error. ~~wonders are many," the ode begins, "yet nothing
stranger than a human being walks." Th be human is to find a passage
through anything, sea, wind, or earth, and to find a mechanism to overcome the power of anything, bird, beast, or fish, cold, sleet, or rain. The
characteristic human epithet is pantoporos, all-resourceful, passing through
every obstacle. Antigone has used the verb from the same root in the first
scene to tell her sister, "I will find a way through, heaping up a tomb for
a most loved brother" (80-81). But in one of those magnificent clashings
I spoke of earlier, the chorus's word pantoporos collides with aporos,
resourceless, helpless (360). The meaning of aporos is immediately negated:
"helpless he comes upon nothing that is to be." But the poetic effect of
the line is the shock of hearing pantoporos aporos. In retrospect, or in
reading, the words can be tamed, but the poet is writing for the ear, and
Sophocles' words are wild. Pantoporos aporos cannot fail to confuse, to
disturb. The choral odes are all hypnotic, and this one conveys a dreamlike
sense that the very triumph of overcoming every obstacle is an achievement of helplessness.
That is certainly a description that fits Creon. He becomes the helpless
wreck he is at the end of the play precisely by mastering everyone, overcoming all opposition. In the antistrophe to the pantoporos aporos stanza
the same position has the words hupsipolis apolis, supreme in the city/
without a city. Supremacy destroys reciprocal relations, and destroys the
community. But when the chorus ends the ode in dread of human greatness
it is Antigone who appears before them. Ismene has told her amechanon
eras, ''you lust after impossibilities" (90), and that she is determined perissa
prassein, "to do extravagant things," things that go beyond (68). It is
primarily Antigone who displays the human excellence of refusing to accept
any restraints to her will. Those restraints are outwardly Creon and his
soldiers, but more importantly the inconvenient love and inconvenient
otherness from herself of Ismene. Philia is the power that saves us from
greatness, the acceptance of others into a wider self that can no longer
say "I will not be stopped."
But even though Antigone's defiance earned her death, she does not
�SACHS
13
in the end go to her death defiant. She has one more scene, and in it she
begins to return out of her isolation. The movement of the scene is difficult to understand, but full of truth. The chorus cries when it sees her
being led to dealh, but conceals its tears in her presence. She asks the chorus
for pity, but it gives her honor instead. She cries out that they are mocking her, and they rebuke her. In response to their rebuke, she begins telling
painful and frightening truths about herself for the first time in the play.
She has finally allowed someone to get close enough to break through her
control. It happens harshly, violently, because she has fought so hard to
make it impossible. As with her sister, Antigone has heaped contempt and
scorn on the chorus to their faces. She was certain she knew what they
thought, and that they kept silent like cowering dogs. It is her ugliest insult: "they tuck their mouths between their legs" (509). Then it was false,
but now they do in fact conceal their honest feelings, because she has been
so unapproachable.
Look at me, she says to them now, going to death solitary, unmarried,
choosing to marry death (806-16). They tell her what she seems to want
to hear: You are glorious, autonomous, not a victim, but alone of mortals
in choosing death (817-22). She compares herself to Niobe, turned into
rock, eternally weeping, and they say, Yes, you are godlike (823-38). This
is when she screams out that she is mocked. She wants not praise for her
solitary courage, but pity for her loneliness, not the glory of Niobe but
the pathos of her unending misery. They tell her everything she is suffering is her own fault: "You went out to the extreme edge of boldness, and
crashed into the high seat of Justice" (853-54). But they immediately soften
their rebuke with the thought that maybe it is somehow her father's struggle that she is paying for. And now the lid that she has kept so firmly on
her feelings is finally off. "You have touched my most painful worries,"
she says: Were my parents monsters? What in the world am I that was born
out of such horror? (857-66). We see now why Antigone erupted into such
violent hatred when Ismene suggested there was something wrong with their
family. It was a hatred of her own uncertainties. Ismene was a self-sister,
one that Antigone was trying to expel from herself.
Antigone's earlier certainty was a forcible effort of will in opposition
to her uncertainty. Then she had said, "I know I am pleasing those whom
it is most necessary for me to please" (89). Now she tells the truth: I nourish,
that is, I work to keep alive, a hope that I will be received with love by
father, mother, and brother (897-99). How is she nourishing that hope?
She has fed it by searching out the final, unassailable reason why she had
to act as she did. These lines which we must now consider are much debated.
Most editors and translators cut them out of the play, or put them in
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
brackets. Sir Richard Jebb gives three reasons for doing so: the lines are
inconsistent with things Antigone has said earlier, illogical in themselves,
and ungrammatical. Yet the lines are in all the manuscripts, and they are
quoted by Aristotle. That the lines are inconsistent with her earlier appeals to divine law is true; she has changed now, and stopped pretending
to be doing a duty. That the lines are illogical is exactly what Aristotle
praises them for; it is here that he says Antigone displays that she was acting not for any benefit but for the beautiful, not out of thought but out
of goodness. That the grammar of the lines is strained is a sign that she
is strained; this is understandable since she is facing death with all her
private nightmares coming to the surface of her thoughts. In the Philoctetes,
Sophocles has the main character go to pieces in front of us, with incoherent
speeches and a long scream. And in the fourth line of this play, Antigone
in her passion says there is nothing without doom that has not come to
her, when what she means would have one less negative in it.
What does she say that so disturbed Jebb and Fitzgerald and others?
She says (904-20) that had it been a child or husband of hers lying dead
on the field she would have left it to rot. She could always get another
husband, or bear another child, but with her parents dead, how could she
ever get another brother? This is a repellent thought, and there is no reason
to think for one second that it is true. Imagine trying to take a child of
hers, living or dead, away from Antigone. We have known her for only
part of a day, but it is still obvious that it would be easier to take a cub
from a lioness or a grizzly bear. Why does she tell so ugly a falsehood?
I think it is an exaggerated way of saying, I buried Polyneices for the sake
of Polyneices. Her brother was irreplaceable, but love knows that every
human being is irreplaceable. At the fringes of thought, Antigone finds
an illogic for what has no logic. The immediate sight of love tells love what
it must do. When Antigone said it was not her nature to share in hating,
but symphilein, to join in loving, that was a smug debater's point against
Creon, and a lie made obvious by the presence of Ismene. But Antigone
now in her weakness and misery has made that claim true. She has let go
of everything but love. The murky soup of divine law, her family's blameless
nobility, and the human joy of overcoming all restraint have now ceased
to cloud her sight. In her imagination now she sees Polyneices as the only
thing in the world that matters, and the claims on her from loving him
as the only ones in the world not subject to conditions.
The important thing about ph ilia is that it is natural, given. We find
ourselves in the world loving others who belong to us and to whom we
belong. What we are is a result of whom and what we love. On the other
hand, the defining characteristic of human being is to accept nothing
�SACHS
15
natural as given but to be always overcoming every obstacle to our purposes or whims. Antigone is glorious in her successful defiance of Creon.
He says, "I am no aner, she is the aner" (484) if I let her get away with
this, but he is already too late. She outshines him even when they are at
a standoff. But she has announced that philia was the end for the sake
of which she had broken all restraints. The deed and its end were incompatible. That is the impossibility Ismene had seen from the first. When
Antigone returns before us on her way to die, she has collapsed under the
weight of the contradictions in her soul. But she has made her final choice.
It is love itself with its passivity and uncertainty that she has chosen, rather
than the glory of being its champion.
��The Nobility of
Sophocles' Antigone
Janet A. Dougherty
When Sophocles first presents Antigone to us, she is already determined
to violate Creon's decree prohibiting the burial of one of her two dead
brothers. Each has just died at the hands of the other in a battle for the
kingship of Thebes. Eteocles has been honored in a hero's funeral for
defending the city. Polyneices is dishonored as a traitor, his flesh cast outside
the city walls to rot and to be devoured by vultures and wild dogs.
This is all the background for the drama that Sophocles gives us explicity, but his Greek audiences were familiar with the story of Antigone's
father, Oedipus, the former king of Thebes. They were aware that his two
sons had quarreled over who was to rule the city after their father's death.
Either Eteocles had refused to step down when his turn to rule alternately
with his brother was complete, or Polyneices, the elder, objected to his
brother's ruling instead of himself. Whichever it was, Polyneices then married an Argive princess and marshaled an army of warriors to conquer
and recapture his city. The play begins at dawn on the day after the Theban
army has successfully repelled Polyneices and his allies. Since the civil war
has ended leaving the two contenders for the rule of the city dead, Creon,
the uncle of Eteocles and Polyneices and, at the time, the next in line to
the throne, now has power in Thebes. In one of his first acts as king, he
has prohibited the burial of Polyneices. When Antigone decides to attempt
to bury her brother, she deliberately defies Creon's decree.
Janet Dougherty is a Thtor at St. John's College, Santa Fe. This lecture was first
delivered at the Santa Fe campus in October, 1986. The translations are the author's.
17
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
In her opening speech Antigone refers to the misery and dishonor that
she and Ismene have suffered, evils that have sprung from Oedipus's slaying
of his father and from his incestuous marriage with his mother. These evils
have, as Antigone sees it, continued into the present. Creon's recent decree
prohibiting the burial of her brother is another in a long line of dishonors
to which she sees no end. She cannot view the decree with the detachment
her sister displays. Ismene expresses the hope and expectation that those
under the earth will forgive her for not risking her life to bury Polyneices.
She believes no woman is capable of resisting the power of the king. In
Ismene's view, Antigone's determination to oppose Creon will surely be
the cause of her death, and thus of another in the series of horrible, untimely deaths that have ravaged the family. For Antigone, in contrast, this
deterntination is the evidence that she is truly well-born. She has no choice
but to seek nobility in death- her formulation is kalon moi touto poiousa
thanein (line 72)-there is no splendor in resigned moderation. Thus, in
a final attempt to persuade Ismene to aid her, she says: "You will soon
show whether you are noble by nature, or a base daughter of a noble line."
Antigone believes that both sisters are noble by birth, and Creon seems
to have ignored the nobility of Oedipus's fantily in dishonoring the corpse
of his son. But Antigone also believes that she and her sister must prove
their nobility by burying him. It would surprise me if it were correct to
call any birth noble, but even if it sometimes is, the births of the children
of Oedipus could not be so called. Antigone is confused when she asserts
that if Ismene refuses to help in the burial of Polyneices, she will prove
herself unworthy of her origin. The same birth that is the source of Antigone's shame seems to provide the basis of her claim to honor, but she
nevertheless recognizes that honor depends upon deeds. In her actions
throughout the play she clings to her place in her tainted family. She hopes
to return to loving intimacy with all of its members in Hades. Her hope
is bound up with her conviction that the family is the source of nobility.
We must try to understand both Antigone's conviction and her hope, for
it is her motives that provide the key to the meaning of the play.
Antigone's preoccupation with her genesis and her expressions of concern for her unburied brother seem to most readers excessive. The intensity
of her feelings is all the more striking given the contrast they make with
Ismene's reaction to Creon's decree. It is not inevitable that a daughter
of Oedipus should feel the dishonor of her brother's corpse so acutely,
for apparently Ismene does not. Ismene's response is reasonable: for one
who wants to live, it makes little sense to court an untimely death for (he
sake of a corpse, even the corpse of one's kin. Ismene at least is able to
envision a life for her sister that is not plagued with the memory of what
�DOUGHERTY
19
happened in the lives of their parents and their brothers. She reminds Antigone that she is engaged to be married to the son of the man who has
just acquired power. Ismene believes that Antigone should ignore the fact
that Creon has handed down the hated decree, and concentrate on happier
thoughts. Why is Antigone so closed to this hopeful attitude of Ismene's?
How can Antigone's sense of her duty to bury her brother outweigh the
love of a man as promising and attractive as Sophocles shows Haemou
to be?
For Antigone, the prospect of marriage must take second place to her
obligation to challenge Creon and to uphold the laws of the gods below.
The conflict between Antigone and Creon is really a conflict over the nature
of the city and its needs. Creon's decree exemplifies his understanding of
the city, and Antigone believes that she cannot live honorably there. I shall
argue that her objection to Creon's city is essentially correct and that, when
she errs in her understanding of herself, her errors are due to her sharing
with Creon certain presuppositions that derive from the legendary founding of Thebes. I shall argue further that the founding of Thebes is a model
for the founding of all cities. The conflict between Creon and Antigone
is, then, a conflict of concern for us all.
Antigone is an imprudent, wrongheaded, and perhaps even mad young
woman. Still, she is extremely impressive in her single-mindedness and in
her firm resistance to the power of the king. No sensitive reader can remain
completely indifferent to her haughty dignity and her determination. Her
insistence that the gods below demand the burial of her brother commands
respect, for we cannot without an arrogance that resembles Creon's dismiss
the possibility that the laws of the gods supersede the laws of the city. But
the first three episodes of the play provide no clear evidence of Antigone's
rightness, and the three choral odes separating these episodes are tauntingly
ambiguous.
The hardest evidence of the views of the gods that Sophocles presents
comes late in the play, in the form of Teiresias's testimony to Creon that
the gods will not accept Theban sacrifice as long as Polyneices' corpse lies
rotting. But he also warns Creon of the anger of the cities whose men fought
with Polyneices: Creon has left their bodies to rot, unmourned, as well.
The anger of these cities may be Teiresias's real concern. If so, Thiresias
is warning Creon that he has been a dangerously incompetent ruler rather
than an impious man. Furthermore, although Thiresias's words establish
that Creon's decree was wrong, they do not clearly support Antigone's
rebellion against it. Before we can clarify and evaluate her reasons for
rebelling, we must see the implications of Creon's distasteful decree.
In Creon's view, it is clear that his responsibility for the safety of the
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THE ST JOHN'S REVIEW
city justifies his ruling that anyone who tries to bury Polyneices' corpse
shall die. But his decree has undermined the distinction between men and
animals by treating a man's corpse as though it were the corpse of a dog,
or worse. Teiresias's speech later in the play allows us to speculate that if
the gods exist and wish to be worshiped, they must have an interest in preserving this distinction. Even before 'Thiresias speaks, we must wonder whether
Creon's decree can be justified. Why not allow the two sisters to bury their
brother's body privately, without honor or distinction? Creon thinks that
if he as ruler does not utterly repudiate even the physical remains of the
traitor, he would himself be wounding the city to its heart.
Polyneices threatened the existence of the city not only in the way that
any belligerent enemy would have, but also, and even more dangerously,
in presenting the example of a man violating the city of his birth. Creon
responds by declaring it a crime to bury Polyneices' body, whether in
Theban earth or anywhere at all. There is no question that Creon recognizes
that he is interfering with the established means of disposing of the dead,
for if he did not, the distinction he makes between Polyneices and Eteocles
would have no force. Clearly, in making this distinction Creon intends to
announce that the traditional practice of ritual burial is not applicable to
the corpse of such a monster as Polyneices. He means to show that one
who fights against his own city not only rescinds his citizenship but also
relinquishes his humanity. Creon sees the city as the necessary basis of
friendship (190). He also considers it to be the source of human life, as
contrasted with the life of mere beasts.
Men and women who do not submit to legitimate rule are beasts; or
rather, human beings are beasts but for their submission to rule. Creon
articulates this view over and over again through his constant use of animal
imagery. Antigone is like a spirited horse (477-79), and so are potentially
disobedient subjects. Ismene is an adder who has sucked out Creon's blood
(531-33). Polyneices may be something worse than an animal, for he "came
to feed on kindred blood" (201-2). Creon retains his use of such imagery
even at the end of the play when he observes that a god " ... drove me
into ways of cruelty, overturning and trampling on my joy" (1273-75).
Maybe even the gods are not fundamentally different from animals in his
view. Creon's understanding of the city as crucial to the distinction between men and beasts helps to explain why, in his opening speech, in stark
contrast with the chorus's account in the parodos, Creon is silent concerning
the victory over the Argive army and ignores the disturbing fact that the
two brothers fought each other to the death. There is not much to celebrate
in the victory of the Theban army in battle if the city is about to succumb
�DOUGHERTY
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to bestiality. Fratricide seems not seriously to disturb Creon, but the violation of one's city arouses in him all the horror incest can arouse, if not more.
From the start Creon anticipates that someone will try to bury the body
(219; cf. 289 ff.), and he expects this opposition to come from political
enemies, or from others whom they might bribe. We see no evidence that
anyone is jealous of his power. Creon does not expect Polyneices' sisters
to resist him, partly because they are women, and partly because he is blind
to the possibility that, for some, piety and the tie of blood can be strong
enough to overpower even the desire to live.
This is Creon's view. Now let us examine Antigone's.
As Antigone sees it, Creon bears the primary responsibility for forcing
her to violate his decree, for in promulgating it he has tried to transform
an act of piety- the burial of one's own dead- into an act of treachery.
Antigone does not describe Polyneices as an individual, and we have no
reason to think that there is anything beyond the fact that they are brother
and sister to account for the intensity of her feeling for him. The mere
fact of intimate blood relation matters. In Antigone's case the blood tie
is strengthened by her terrible family history, and the weight of that history
is all the more pressing because she feels compelled to bear that weight
by herself. Antigone's birth determines who she is. Even her name, antiagainst or before, plus gone- birth, suggests how overwhelmingly troubling it is to Antigone that she is the daughter of her own brother. As her
name implies, she wants desperately to undo her birth, and at the same
time to seek the root of her family's nobility, indeed all human nobility,
precisely in this disgraceful birth. She cannot reject her own birth, however,
without rejecting human birth itself.
With respect to erasing the shame of her birth, Antigone's thought is
apparently something like this: In correcting the impiety involved in leaving
her brother's corpse unburied she will act honorably (as, she believes,
Oedipus would have done), and at the same time she will replace the
memory of the hideousness of her birth with the memory of her own fine
act. It is she, and apparently not the city, who is concerned with the shame
of her birth, for there is no evidence that it will affect her future position
in Thebes. Furthermore, Antigone demands that in bestowing its honors
the city acknowledge the difference between what is respectable and what
is shameful in itself. She demands that all of Thebes recognize that,
although the circumstances of her brother's death were not praiseworthy,
the city's behavior in failing to bury him is more shameful. Worse, it is
impious.
Antigone's demand that the city see these things is an appropriate
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
demand. But that she must act out her criticism of Creon in a noble death
for the sake of her brother's corpse suggests more: she must compel the
city in general and Crenn in particular to recognize her worth. Antigone
cannot rest in the private assurance that she can distinguish piety from
impiety. Antigone, like Creon, believes that the difference between the high
and the low will dissolve without the city's support. Her piety must be reinforced by the city's standards. It must assure her nobility as well. It is in
making this demand that Antigone's intention goes beyond an attempt to
cope with her personal history, and becomes an attempt to alter human
history generally. Again, to show how this may be I will begin by developing Creon's position. I shall then return to see where Antigone stands.
Creon's primary fear is that human baseness will destroy his city. But
in leaving the corpse that belongs beneath the earth above it, Creon has
confused at least two sources of baseness. A man may be base in that he
lacks the honors a city may grant, and he may be also be base by nature.
That is, he may lack the human qualities that merit honor. Baseness in
the man, as we all know, does not always coincide with baseness in his
position. Moreover, many of our private and physical acts make our kinship
with the animals undeniable, thus casting doubt upon the nobility even
of the supposedly "best" of us. As long as we live, we must accept that
most of our acts are determined by our corporeal nature. To the extent
that these force us to recognize our similarity to beasts, the city attempts
to treat them like corpses: it conceals them from view. Public institutions
like marriage and legal paternity give us a way to veil such acts under the
guise of choice and agreement, and many cities behave as though nobility,
rather than uncivilized, infant human beings, is propagated within certain
families. Corpses, of course, are always unworthy of the honors of the city.
The city has an obvious interest in recognizing that their proper place is
beneath the earth. But Creon considers even burial an honor (time) that
is his to withhold or to bestow. This is his most glaring mistake. Creon
is unaware, or willfully denies, that his city owes its health to a distinction
between the low and the high that is simply human, and thus independent
of any particular ruler.
Antigone responds to Creon's error with a similar error. She too fails
to distinguish between dishonor that derives from something shameful or
disgraceful in itself (aiskhros), and the unjust deprivation of the honors
and offices of the city (hai timat). Or perhaps it is more accurate to say
that she does not even recognize the latter. The gods, and not the city,
preserve the difference between human beings and animals, in her view.
She insists that the city recognize that the commands of the gods below
supplant its laws and its needs. This insistence accounts for the fact that,
�DOUGHERTY
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even though she is too weak to complete the burial rites for her brother
by herself, she is determined to be discovered in the attempt. Antigone
gets angry when Ismene promises to keep her "crime" secret: she would
prefer that her sister proclaim it out loud.
After Ismene refuses to help her sister, Antigone loses sight of the
distinction between what is merely shameful, or at least unworthy of respect,
and what is impious. For Antigone is weak: she lacks the strength to bury
a corpse properly without help. She never considers calling upon Haemon,
her betrothed, probably because he is Creon's son. Far from being confident that the gods will reward her pious intention and her lonely efforts,
she fears that she has failed altogether. Her incomplete and perhaps ineffectual acts leave her exposed to the charge of impiety. There is no place
in the cosmos she inhabits for generous and forgiving gods.
If it is true that the gods recognize only deeds and not intentions, it
is ultimately impossible to distinguish between what their laws command
and what the city and its laws support, for it is not only isolated women
who need the help of others to act. Without the help of one another, individuals can rarely even survive. When they do, they are generally indistinguishable from beasts. Antigone is consistent in her understanding of the
gods, but her view seems unnecessarily harsh. If the gods take an interest
in humans at all, must not they acknowledge the defects we cannot overcome? Antigone does not consider that the city must fail if it demands
of its citizens all that piety would require, and that even the gods may
recognize this fact. With respect to the city, Antigone is mistaken. To the
extent that the birth of humanity depends upon the city and its diverse
ways of obscuring our bestial character, Antigone rejects and opposes this
birth. She assumes that the family can exist without the city, and in making this assumption, she errs again. But it is not clear that she errs in her
understanding of the gods. What grounds, apart from our wishes, do we
have for believing that they are as generous and as merciful as Ismene
hopes?
Both Creon and Antigone reveal through their behavior that they are
either unwilling or unable to separate what the city considers dishonorable
from what is low or unworthy in itself. The chorus have the distinction
no clearer, for in the first stasimon, where they glorify the various
achievements of man, they repudiate him who fails to honor the laws of
the land. They do not consider that it is sometimes appropriate to question
the validity of a law, and even to rebel. Although they also refer in the
same phrase to "the justice which he has sworn by the gods to uphold,"
there is no evidence that they see the gods as providing guidelines or limits
for human justice. What sort of city would be so sure that the gods always
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
support what the ruler commands? The leader of the chorus does express
dismay to find that Antigone, a woman and a member of the ruling family,
has violated Creon's decree. But no one defends her.
Antigone's behavior reveals that it is in the family that the commands
of the gods, at least those of the underworld, are learned and remembered.
It seems to be especially the gods below to whom the standard of shame
belongs. Experience reveals that human beings develop a sense of shame
nowhere if not in the family. Although Teiresias does not mention it in
his account to Creon of the gods' response to his decree, it makes sense,
I think, to suppose that it is the family who will ordinarily bury their dead
and perform the rituals required by the gods below. But this institution
does more than provide for the disposal of the city's corpses. The passions that allow for one's attachment to others first arise in the family.
Shame is essential to love.
If the city does not recognize both the shame of its citizens and their
private attachments, it becomes an arbitrary order in which all subjects
are slaves. 1b avoid despotism, the city must recognize limits to its authority.
While it imposes a political hierarchy over the hierarchy of the family, the
city must accept the essential similarity of its citizens. That similarity lies
partly in their recognition of the horror of death and of other things even
more horrible, and partly in the fact that each has loved ones by whom
he will be remembered after his death. It is an inevitable fact that these
loved ones can never include the whole city. Those who compose the city,
whether rulers or ruled, are dignified as well as partial in their private attachments, for where we learn shame we also learn awe. In making citizenship identical with humanity, Creon's city both rejects men's need for
privateness and at the same time destroys their ability to look up. He
substitutes force for love, and fear, a bestial emotion, for everything that
would support the noble character a ruler should wish his subjects to have.
Creon ignores all this when he makes his decree. He recognizes only that
no one freely chooses to die.
If all of Thebes has difficulty recognizing a standard for the laws that
is independent of them, this difficulty may stem from the legendary origin
of the city. The original Thebans presumably arose from the earth, their
mother, which Cadmus sowed with the teeth of the dragon he killed. As
legend has it, Ares was the father of that dragon and Athena advised
Cadmus to plant its teeth in the earth. The gods, then, had a part in the
founding of Thebes. More accurately, that founding was based upon a conflict between the two gods-Ares, whose son Cadmus slayed, and Athena,
whose advice he followed. The earth, too, is a goddess; her children are
the ancestors of both Creon and Antigone. The original Thebans are clearly
�DOUGHERTY
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not godlike- most of those who sprang from the earth slew one another.
They are not even fully human, for the human family was not part of
Thebes at its origin. The decrees of the rulers and the conventions they
enforced alone brought the family into being.
While Antigone's resistance to Creon's decree teaches us something
about the family in general, it cannot be denied that hers is no ordinary
family. It is, in fact, more reminiscent of the origin of Thebes than of the
groups of parents and children of which most cities are composed. If the
earth gave birth to the original Thebans, and if all true Thebans arise from
the earth, the city of Thebes can be nothing but a subhuman and incestuous
family. Creon's neglect of the family and all that it stands for implies that
he sees the city as a family, or at least as an adequate substitute for a family.
Moreover, when the leader of the chorus objects that Creon cannot kill
his son's betrothed, Creon responds by remarking that there are plenty of
other fields for Haemon to plow. He speaks as though mere earth were
an appropriate wife for a true Theban. But the citizens of Thebes are no
more able to live decently in a city in which the earth supplants human
mothers than Antigone is. Her inability to tolerate Creon's decree is a sign
of the plight that all Theban citizens ultimately share. Because she alone
understands the plight of the city, she has no city. The daughter of Oedipus
the king stands alone, outside the walls of Thebes.
If the family as we know it owes it origin everywhere to the support
of cities, we must all share the plight of the Thebans, and it is likely that
in our origins we were nothing but beasts. While many species take good
care of their young, they do not have families as we know them. Creon
is correct, then; the city is essential to human life. But government does
not suffice to make our lives human. The city lies between our base beginnings and the gods we revere, and although it can stifle our understanding
of both, it can neither alter our origins nor arouse our awe. Somehow while
providing for the shared life of the community, those who rule must support the shame and the reverence of the individuals who compose it. If
these passions die, the city can count on nothing but fear of death to keep
citizens loyal. In acknowledging the importance of the family, Sophocles
points out a way for a city to support shame and reverence without allowing
private loves and hates to endanger its security. But the task of a ruler in
balancing public against private concerns nevertheless requires a mysterious
skill. Antigone's story reveals only the problem- and Creon's refusal to
confront it.
Antigone upholds the traditional, timeless laws of the gods against
Creon's impiety. More than that, she insists on her attachment to her family
and refuses to be a part of Creon's Thebes. She describes herself as already
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
at home with the dead (590 ff.). Hades is her proper home because the
family whom she cannot forget resides there. This is why she must secure
burial for Polyneices: without it the shade of her brother cannot enter
Hades but must endlessly wander the earth, like a roving beast. Antigone's
attachment to her family is primarily through memory, and so it does not
tie her to the one living member of her immediate family, Ismene, as much
as it does to the dead. Antigone cannot forget whose womb she came from
and which father begat her. She cannot forget that Ismene and Polyneices,
along with the honored Eteocles and even Oedipus himself, came from
the same womb. She cannot forget any of the horrors that stem from the
root of her father, Oedipus, and that apparently will not cease until she
is dead. Her unrelenting memory contrasts notably with the chorus's call
upon Bacchus at the end of the parodos to help them to celebrate the victory of Thebes and "to enjoy forgetfulness."
Antigone's need to remain tied to her family can be restated in the
following terms: Hades is the home of the dead, and she sees it as a home
in which all members of the family may live together in loving intimacy
through eternity. In death, then, there is an acknowledgment that despite
the distinctions among the generations and the difference between the sexes,
each of us alike is held dear. Reverence for one's dead ancestors allows
one to combine respect for the hierarchy among both dead and living family
members with a sense of our unity with them. The family can thus be an
ordered whole in which no one is a slave. Antigone is mad in thinking that
she can enjoy the loving intimacy of the family by joining the corpses of
the dead members of her family under the earth. The family must, of
course, be alive to share in the love that she craves. Still, there is a core
of truth in her feeling.
An Antigone sees it, to marry Haemon and to live in Creon's city would
be to give up her position as daughter of Oedipus, the dead and tainted
but still honorable king, to become Creon's slave. Under his rule, marriage
and childbearing become for Antigone merely bestial acts. This speculation
provides a way to think about Antigone's otherwise bizarre assertion
(906 ff.) that what she has done for her brother she would not have done
for a husband or a child of her own. If the city did recognize the importance of the family and its reverence for the dead, its members could more
easily bear being ruled by one from among them. Even a woman, who
could not participate in ruling in ancient Greece, could remain confident
of her place in a whole bound by blood alone, a tie the city did not create.
Antigone's incestuous family is both her solace and Creon's nightmare.
When the Antigone opens, Creon is no more ready than Antigone herself
to join with the chorus in a Bacchic victory celebration. In his own way,
�DOUGHERTY
27
he is as plagued as Antigone by the memory of the horrors of the past.
His assertion that he alone shall determine who is worthy of honor, and
that he shall do so on the basis of the good of the city and on no other,
is in effect a denial that men and women can be well-born, or that they
are honorable before the city metes out honors. As we have seen, it also
implies a denial that human beings in general are well-born in comparison
with beasts. He undoubtedly feels that this view is borne out by the recent
history of Thebes.
Through his slaying of his father and his incestuous marriage with his
mother, Oedipus confused the generations of his family in a way that can
be permissible only in Hades. In doing so he undermined the subsequent
stability of Thebes, for no city can be indifferent to the disgrace of its ruler,
and the troubles Oedipus began continued in the battle between his sons.
Each treated the city as though it were a private estate that he had the right
to inherit. Creon has gone to the other extreme. In his view, anything private
is a threat to the security of the city. The citizens of Thebes must substitute
honor for the friends of the city and hatred for its enemies for their private
loves and hates. But friendship or fellowship (philia) depends not only upon
the security of the city, as Creon argues in his opening speech (187 ff.),
but also upon the dignity of the individuals who make np the city. Antigone feels that she cannot retain her nobility in marrying Haemon as
long as her marriage depends upon submitting to Creon's decree. Similarly,
any lawgiver who seeks to protect fellowship by legislating what citizens
may love and hate will inevitably fail.
When Creon accuses Antigone of challenging his political authority
and his authority as a man (484 ff.), he is not far wrong. The exchange
between Creon and Antigone once she has been brought forward as a
criminal reflects her sense that his politics destroy phi/ia:
Not to join in hating, but in loving (symphi/ein), was I born
she says. Creon responds:
Go down now and love the dead, if it is necessary [for you] to love. No woman
will rule me while I live. (523-25)
Later Creon says to his son: " ... with loathing and as if she were a foe,
let this girl go to seek marriage in Hades" (654). Antigone's death is described both by herself and by the chorus as well as by Creon as a marriage. In fact, in the opening scene Antigone expresses a similar thought
when she tell Ismene that she will lie with her brother, a friend (or dear
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
one) with a friend (73). How defensible we can consider Antigone's morbid
speech here depends npon whether her sense that Creon's sovereignty would
destroy the humanity of personal attachments is justified. Two dramatic
events in the play powerfully reinforce the sense that it is. One is Ismene's
attempt to implicate herself in Antigone's crime and to die with her. Ismene
reveals her despair when she asks Antigone "What life is dear (phi/os) to
me bereft of you?" (535 ff.). However deep the rupture between the sisters,
Antigone is Ismene's only friend in all Thebes. The other event that supports
Antigone's view of Creon's city is Haemon's suicide in her tomb.
Haemon's suicide seems more difficult to account for than Ismene's
offer to die with Antigone, for he seems to have a promising future in
Thebes. He is the son of the present ruler and is also his likely successor.
Why can't he accept his father's suggestion and find another bride? The
first and most important response to this question is surely that Haemon
loves Antigone, but I believe that the full answer lies as much in Haemon's
exchange with his father, just after he has learned that Antigone must die,
as it does in his love for her. In that exchange, Creon virtually outlaws
his son's passions when he accuses him of treasuring a private and indefensible love for the wrong sort of woman. Haemon claims that his knowledge
of the sympathies of the people and his respect for those sympathies
provoke him to try to reason with Creon. But as long as Haemon wishes
his father to free Antigone, Creon hears nothing but disobedience and
treachery in his words. He repudiates Haemon's advice just as vehemently
as he repudiates Antigone's so-called "crime."
The immediate cause of Haemon's suicide is that he has just found
himself trying to slay his father out of anger for the death of his betrothed.
Haemon cannot allow himself to perform such a heinous act any more
than he can bow to his father's will. This shows that Haemon respects the
claims of kinship even when they conflict with his own desires. The son
is about as unlike his father as he could be.
Just as Creon accuses his son of treachery for the sake of a woman,
so he accuses both the guard and Thiresias, and in fact whoever questions
his absolute authority as ruler of Thebes, of seeking to enrich themselves
at the price of the city's good. But it cannot be the case that any personal
interest that is not identical with upholding the security of the city makes
one a traitor. Not all such concerns are petty and unworthy of respect.
Creon's mistake in thinking so blinds him even to his own motives, for
he is surely as interested in his own glory as he is in the welfare of Thebes.
His error, as we have seen, has its base in a misunderstanding of the horror
of Oedipus's history, and its implications for the city. Creon's fate is no
more enviable than Oedipus's own.
�DOUGHERTY
29
Creon repudiates the passions that reside in and preserve the human
family at his personal peril, and in so doing he exposes Thebes to great
danger as well. This becomes clear in the occasion for his dramatic reversal
towards the end of the play (1092 ff.). When Teiresias tells Creon that to
enforce his decree will mean to sacrifice the life of his own son, he is willing
to bow to the traditions concerning death and burial (Jlll-12), but he is
too late. His personal catastrophe coincides with the danger to the city
about which Teiresias has warned him. Thebes has now witnessed the utter
ruin of a second ruler. Sophocles' Greek audience would probably know
also that the cities whose men died in Polyneices' war against Thebes were
already rearming against her. Creon at least may have learned something,
for he cannot fail to associate his neglect of the laws of the gods with his
loss of all who were dear to him. His suffering is pathetic and terrible.
Like Creon, Antigone too suffers a change of heart in the course of
the drama. In her case it occurs just after she has been condemned.
Although she never repudiates her illegal act, she is suddenly overwhelmed
by the terror of sacrificing the life that she has not yet had an opportunity
to live. Her success in performing a rudimentary version of the rites of
burial for her brother is not enough to console her. Indeed, Antigone snaps
at the chorus when, after she has compared herself to a goddess (824 ff.),
they remind her of her mortality (834 ff.). She accuses them of mocking
her, even though only a few lines earlier (828 ff.) they were clearly admiring
her glory. Their admiration looks like mockery to her because, now that
she has confronted the end of her life, splendor in death looks hollow.
In defending the domain of the gods Antigone exaggerates the claims
of the family and denies a place in her soul to the feelings she could have
had for a husband and children of her own. She is forced to expose the
basis of a tradition in the attempt to uphold it. As she does so, she does
violence to herself. In this sense, Antigone lacks self-knowledge, at least
up to the moment when she is condemned, but her imperfect knowledge
of herself is not a "tragic flaw" that makes her deserving of her fate. No
human being can have perfect self-knowledge and Antigone cannot be
responsible for being limited in a way that characterizes all human beings.
Rather, her situation is an extreme version of a plight we all share: never
fully knowing ourselves, we must continually learn about ourselves through
action and experience. Our need for political structures reflects this truth.
So do both our attachments to our families and the traditions that guide
us in giving due recognition to (God or) the gods.
The change in Antigone's tone when she is aware that she is about to
die provides an approach to understanding the obscure passage in which
the chorus tells her:
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Advancing to the furthest limit of courage [or rashness, to thrasos] up to
the lofty throne of justice (diki) you fell, child, hard. You are paying in full
the penalty of the contest of your father. (852-55)
The passage implies something like the following: Attaining the foundation or throne of justice is not the same as living in the most appropriate
way. If we are to live decently, justice must guide the lives of mortals without
being fully disclosed to us. In forbidding the burial of Polyneices Creon
was the immediate cause of the denial of this possibility to Antigone, but
the real source of the problem lies further back- in Oedipus's incest, and
ultimately in the founding of Thebes, or rather, of the city in general.
Creon has denied Antigone the opportunity to live decently by forcing
her to confront a side of human life that cannot be fully reconciled with
the city. There is no way for a city- any city- to acknowledge fully the
reverence of men and women and the sources of their shame. Rulers are
not inevitably as blind as Creon. Still, Creon's errors merely exaggerate
the errors to which all cities in some way fall prey. Lawgivers must claim
that any act they label criminal is worthy of our disdain, and they must
label as such all acts that seriously endanger the city's security. They must
behave as though nothing that conflicts with the good of the city is worthy
of admiration, and as !bough only what hinders the good of the city merits
disgust.
But without Antigone's challenge to the view of the city, none of us
who are citizens can come to see ourselves as we are. For human beings,
self-knowledge must involve knowledge of the irreconcilable aspects of our
natures. The conflict between our animal nature and the institutions that
attempt to civilize or, if that is too hard, to conceal them, is often hard
to ignore. Creon is preoccupied with this conflict. But we sometimes experience an even deeper conflict between the power to sense what is worthy of reverence and of shame, and the advantages, perhaps the obligation, of submitting to standards that do not acknowledge these. The power
to sense what is above us and what is below is simply human. It consists
in a dim awareness of our inhuman origin as well as of our ability to ascend from that origin, an ability that no city, and probably no science,
can comprehend. Because Antigone's madness is this awareness, I cannot
wish her to have been different, however much I pity her fate. Antigone
conveys to us what she knows through arousing our admiration for her
and, at the same time, our pity and even disgust.
***
�DOUGHERTY
31
Sophocles' Antigone is often said to represent the contest between divine
law and human law, but this is an inadequate account of what is at issue.
After all, Creon claims and probably believes that the gods support his
decree. Nor will it suffice to read the play as a working out of the importance of the family weighed against the concerns of the city. For without
the city there is no family, and without the family, no city. The human
family is not simply natural; it needs the city both to bring it into being
and to support it through law. The city, in its turn, must contain many
families so that their members can associate with one another as similar,
if not perfectly equal, beings, and only then can they willingly submit to
one of themselves. How to combine many individuals who are members
of various families into a single whole is the riddle of the city. Creon seems
not to notice that to rule involves offering one's skill as a solver of the
riddle. He cannot even begin to consider its solution.
Both reverence for the gods and the ties of the family must be important
elements in solving the riddle of how a city, which is a collection of many
separate individuals, can be at the same time a whole. The city must respect
the fact that men and women are more than citizens, that in some sense
they are independent wholes. Rulers are reasonable only superficially when
they insist on the debt all men and women owe to the city. They forget
that the city owes its existence to a human insight that no city can fully
comprehend or sustain. Humans are the beings who sense what lies beneath
the earth and what reigns above them. We are the beings who know that
we are neither the one nor the other, that we are by nature in between.
The smooth sailing of the city sometimes depends upon obscuring this
sense in order to support the authority of rulers. Established procedures
and laws must often take precedence over the insights of individuals into
the will of the gods. But no city can long survive without the shame and
the reverence that lie deeper in human beings than does their political
allegiance. I do not have the solution to the riddle of the city, but I can
say this: The power of the sense of shame and of reverence is a power that
we too would be as vulgar and as foolish as Creon to ignore.
I have entitled this essay "The Nobility of Sophocles' Antigone," and
I do mean to call her noble. Through her daring and wrongheaded acts,
she reminds us all of truths that we cannot afford to ignore. Creon's Thebes
did not acknowledge her greatness in risking her life for a principle that
would make her city more human; we must not follow its example. Even
the perturbed passions of a woman may reveal a deep and weighty truth.
If Sophocles had no more to teach us than this, it would be enough to
justify our calling him wise.
��Hegel's Reading of Antigone
Patricia M. Locke
Hegel thought that Sophocles' Antigone was the "most magnificent and
satisfying work of art of [its] kind."' Repeatedly turning to the character
of Antigone in his writings on art, politics, and religion, Hegel showed
a great admiration for her even apart from the play. His lifelong attraction to Antigone led Hegel into conflicting positions related to her role
as a model for feminine life.
We will consider the two main positions Hegel held, and suggest reasons
for the disparity between them. The first view is discussed primarily in
the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807) and the Lectures on Aesthetics (given
in 1823, 1826, and 1828-29). This aesthetic, or dramatic, reading of the
play focuses on the collision between Antigone and Creon as embodiments
of opposed ways of life. The play hinges on the exploration of the conflict
between elemental oppositions: female and male, divine and human, and
private versus public duties. While the resolution is, according to Hegel,
external, affirming the value of each side, it further shows that a simple
binary opposition has been overcome. The audience has a more complex
realization that each pole needs the other in order to be what it is. Our
heroine has upheld the values of the hearth and the ancestral gods but
suffers for her neglect of the rights of the polis.
Hegel's second position is also found in the Phenomenology of Spirit
and in the Philosophy of Right (1821). It aims at the underlying ethical
Patricia M. Locke is a Thtor at St. John's College, Annapolis. This paper was presented to the Washington Philosophy Club at Georgetown University in March, 1989.
An earlier version was given as a lecture at St. John's College in September, 1988.
33
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
or political meaning of the play. In the earlier work Hegel analyzes the
dnties that flow from the blood ties between brother and sister. In the
Philosophy of Right Hegel concentrates on the relations between husband
and wife as the essential bond that provides a basis for a political order.
It is my contention that this shift from the brother-sister relation to
that of husband and wife is the source of the disparity between Hegel's
views. While brothers and sisters have different functions as male and
female members of their community, they are similarly unself-conscious
in carrying out their tasks. On the other hand, Hegel assumes that in the
case of husband and wife, the man has an independent sense of self while
the woman does not. This assumption is based on the modern concepts
of state and civil society described in the Philosophy of Right. Hegel allows
a development of free self-consciousness to men, while retaining an ideal
of woman as static and ahistorical. This mistake on Hegel's part makes
it impossible to reconcile his aesthetic and ethical readings of the play.
What would salvage Hegel's insights abont the Antigone? If we argue
that Antigone, while fully feminine in character and goals, achieves a sense
of individuality-however limited- by virtue of her actions as an unmarried woman, not merely as Polyneices' sister, then we can claim her as a
dialectical heroine. Antigone's action begins as service for another, but ends
as service for herself. Since she can change, she can remain the magnificent epitome of womankind Hegel imagined her to be.
This essay will examine the aesthetic meaning of the Antigone in detail
and then consider the problems inherent in Hegel's ethical reading of it.
1: Aesthetic Meaning
In the Aesthetics Hegel defines drama as "the presentation, to our minds
and imagination, of actual human actions and affairs and therefore of
persons expressing their actions in words. 'A dramatization' rests entirely
on collisions of circumstances, passions and characters, and leads therefore
to actions and then to the reactions which in turn necessitate a resolution
of the conflict."' There is a dynamic quality to a good drama when the
inevitable collision between opposed characters is anticipated and endured.
According to Hegel, what makes Antigone a good play in a dramatic
sense is the beauty and power of the clash and its resolution. We will examine this collision as it appears in the plot and characterization.
Collisions depend first upon the plot, which is the primary structure
within which the dramatic movement takes place. Creon's edict forbidding
the burial of Polyneices is the presupposition of the conflict. In itself it
is a seemingly neutral command aimed at those who would challenge order
�LOCKE
35
in the polis. However, we hear about this command from Antigone in the
first scene of the play. Coming from this source, the edict is no longer
neutral: it has taken on an ominous cast. The tragedy is fated from this
beginning, when Antigone neglects the warnings of her sister lsmene and
strives to counter what she sees as a violation of a higher, divine order.
Yet one is aware that it is not so simple. As daughter of Oedipus, Antigone
must say "there's nothing grievous, nothing free from doom, not shameful,
not dishonored, I've not seen" (4-5) 3 • She is both innocent and guilty of
the crime she inherits. Antigone has a responsibility towards the polis as
the remnant of its ruling house, and a conflicting duty to her dead brother.
Creon is in a similar position, as both Antigone's uncle and ruler of Thebes.
Thus the situation is full of potential for collision between them and,
ultimately, among their several duties. How can one remain loyal to the
polis and the family in circumstances like these?
The question is a serious one, but one that Antigone does not need
to ask. She feels the compelling claim of the underworld, which grounds
her life. The gods of departed ancestors, of her father, mother, and brothers,
confirm her desire to act. She has no doubt that her action is consonant
with her determinate character and with the will of the gods. Since Antigone has the power to assert the primacy of the family, she rather than
Ismene is the heroine of this play. Ismene pleads with Antigone to remember
that women should not "force law" or fight with men. Antigone will not
compromise her duty to the underworld, and answers harshly that she will
bury Polyneices despite the consequences. Antigone dares the "crime of
piety," and with the act of pouring earth over the body of her brother the
play is set into motion. Her action has a specific aim and expected consequences that reveal the greatness of Antigone's character. She is able to
face death alone, abandoning the wedding plans and the hopes of young
womanhood.
At the same time, the action advances the plot because it demands a
reaction. Creon's expectation that the traitor is male collides with the calm,
knowing demeanor of the violator standing before him. His imagination
is more narrow than Antigone's, since he can envision only profit as a
motive for disobedience. He is confounded by an action based on love.
Their exchange defines the grounds of their differences: One is male, the
other female; one speaks of crime, the other of holiness.
Creon: You are not ashamed to think alone?
Antigone: No, I am not ashamed. When was it shame
to serve the children of my mother's womb? (510-12)
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
They are clearly opposed, even in their ideas about what it is proper
for a woman to do. Ismene's course is proper yet unsatisifying to us. Communal values and the customs that guide everyday life do not set out an
obvious solution to the conflict between Antigone and Creon. What is
criminal to one of the antagonists is pious to the other. I will argue that
the resolution of this dramatic tension lies in Antigone's attempt to find
a connection between these opposing terms. She thinks independently on
behalf of her family. Antigone acts unwomanly and illegally, out of a
woman's loyalty towards her familial gods. In the end her action carries
the double weight of piety and treason.
In his Aesthetics Hegel stresses the importance of action in tragic drama
because it is "with action [that] a man steps actively into concrete reality
where forthwith the most general matters are condensed and confined in
a particular phenomenon."' The step into concrete reality confirms Antigone as one who wills to be who she is. At the same time, Antigone enables
the divine to manifest itself through her. The gods of the underworld are
given concreteness by her willingness to obey them without questioning
the source of the divine laws. Consequently, the most general spiritual
substance appears within a particular visible event. We do not hear soliloquies of doubt, as in Hamlet, for Antigone's action comes naturally to
her. Hegel thinks that the spiritual element in Antigone's act "is perfectly
married and reconciled with the equally justified external aspect, i.e., with
what is seen on stage."5
This tragedy is compelling precisely because what is seen on stage are
self-reliant characters acting out of a particular "pathos" that gives them
each a driving essential power. Each character feels his or her ethical stance
to be internally justified and fully binding. Their views are expressed in
"solid and cultivated objective language," rather than elaborate rhetoric,
for their eloquence is in line with their direct actions. 6 Only that which
is essential to the true character of Antigone is stated. We know very little
about her beyond her terrible lineage. Antigone defines herself at the outset:
"For me, the doer, death is best" (72).
This statement reverberates throughout the whole play, as Antigone
proves herself to be a doer and faces the horror of live burial as her punishment. Creon too experiences the devastating consequences of his actions,
as his niece, his son, and his wife die in rapid succession. These deaths
are dramatically necessary to restore the rights of the gods. Death here
is a negation, or canceling, of the negation that set the play into motion,
the burial of Polyneices.
The opposition of Creon and Antigone is regarded against the
background of the chorus. The choral speeches present the community's
�LOCKE
37
views, alternately commenting on the characters' decisions and placing those
decisions in their proper reference to the gods. Hegel thinks that the chorus,
although it is powerless and afraid of the contradictory gods, is important
as a surrounding universal context for the action. The chorus believes that
Fate destroys people despite their merit, and therefore must conclude that
"any greatness in human life brings doom" (613). Although sympathetic
towards Antigone, the chorus does not offer to help her. The "undercover
talk" in the polis remains undercover because the chorus lacks "the power
of the negative," as Hegel remarks in the Phenomenology. 7 This power
causes changes to occur by negating that which is. Antigone participates
in the movement of negativity when she challenges Creon's law.
In the Phenomenology, Hegel states that the chorus
is conscious only of a paralysing terror of this movement, of equally helpless
pity, and as the end of it all, the empty repose of submission to Necessity,
whose work is understood neither as the necessary deed of the character,
nor as the action of [Spirit] within itself. 8
There are three pertinent interpretations of this dialectical movement.
The chorus sees the hand of Fate, which strikes down even the bravest
heroine. Antigone interprets that fate as her own work, and is therefore
willing to sustain the negative, to hold with the moral rightness of her deed
throughout the play. The third interpretation, held by Hegel, is that we
are witnessing the activity of Spirit.
Spirit, which is difficult to define since it is continually evolving in the
history of consciousness, is here the implicit divinity acting through the
characters. Spirit appears explicitly as the frame within which their actions
have meaning. This frame is language. Thus Spirit is simultaneously in
the foreground and the background of the tragedy.
Spirit joins the three interpretations together. What happens in the play
is equally the work of Fate, of Antigone's will, and of the appearance of
Spirit's power. In this reflective activity Spirit is operating on a higher level
than is immediately evident in the play. The modern dialectical philosopher
is conscious of the interdependence of fate and individual will and of the
universality of their conflict in the life of a person or the life of the human
species. Only with this higher consciousness of Spirit present in the
philosopher can external and internal motivating forces be woven so tightly
together.
Spirit shows itself in a rather limited fashion in the poetic language
of the play, in the chorus as well as the main characters. The choral view
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
is bound to the past. It sees the one-sidedness of Antigone's position, for
its admiration is mixed with criticism of her neglect of Zeus's authority.
Creon too comes in for support and criticism by the chorus. First, he
is praised for upholding law in the daylight world of Zeus, but the fearful
chorus murmurs against him when they consider the dark fate of Oedipus's
house. Creon is as inflexible as Antigone. He will not listen to his son
Haemon, nor consider the feeling of the community when he banishes Antigone to her unusual bridal chamber. He claims that this live burial will
protect him from direct responsibility for Antigone's death, but we know
that such a technical reading of the law will not satisfy the underworld.
The one-sided action of Antigone cannot exist harmoniously with the
equally one-side reaction of Creon. The play turns on our recognition that
these two powers are incomplete without each other. To achieve equilibrium,
Antigone and Creon are destroyed by their complements, which are "intrinsic to their own actual being."' The resolution of the opposition between man and woman is echoed in the union of upper and lower divinities.
Thus the "powers animating action which struggled to destroy each other"
are reconciled at last.
Hegel claims in the Aesthetics that
only with such a conclusion can the necessity of what happens to the
individuals appear as absolute rationality, and only then can our hearts be
morally at peace: shattered by the fate of the heroes but reconciled
fundamentally. 10
There are two components to this reconciliation. First, we must accept
the fate of the heroes as rational, and we must feel "morally at peace."
We come to understand Antigone's death only if we see her initial position as blind towards the claims of public life. Second, we feel a certain
peace when we appreciate Antigone's bravery. She withstood great obstacles
and has given us a sense of the justice of her cause.
Aristotle's notion of catharsis in the Poetics is helpful here. This term
has been the focus of much criticism by commentators on Aristotle. For
the purposes of this discussion, let us adopt a Hegelian understanding of
its meaning. Catharsis is the pleasurable release of tension following pity
and fear. "Pity," Aristotle explains, "concerns the undeserved, while fear
concerns the similar." 11 The play points in two directions, to the past and
to the future. When it points to the past, Antigone's demise is undeserved
and therefore pitiable. She is struck down by fate while demonstrating her
noble character. She is consistent in her loyalty to the underworld, and
therefore suffers rather than learns.
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LOCKE
Ultimately, we do not pity her, as we might the helpless Ismene. The
pity for Antigone is canceled when we see her take responsibility for acting. Since she courageously wills her fate, we come to realize that her death
is best. The same character that brought her to an undeserved punishment
can now be seen as blameworthy. From the opening scene of the play, Antigone displays the "hot mind over chilly things" that marks her as the
daughter of Oedipus. Our fear that she will act like her father, listening
to no one as she draws her fate upon her head, heightens the tension of
the conflict with Creon. This fear is relieved when her death extinguishes
the possibility of future repetitions of the shameful acts of Oedipus's house.
Hegel accepts Aristotle's explanation of pity and fear, yet stresses that
in order to be most compelling, the object evoking these emotions ought
to be the power of Spirit. 12 By this Hegel means that our feelings ought
not to be directed only to finite, limited objects, such as the pity one of
Jane Austen's characters might feel for a young woman who has no dancing partners. This kind of sympathy degrades the sufferer to a helpless
victim of sad circumstances. We feel a deeper kind of pity for unwed
Antigone-a pity that recognizes the profound source of her pain.
At the same time, we must acknowledge the rights of the polis, which
also displays the divine substance. The catharsis that alleviates pity and
fear allows this fact to stand forth: The same substance that showed itself
in Antigone's one-sided action appears in harmony with itself when she
is struck down. In Hegel's view, tragedy is at bottom the conflict and resolu'tion of partial expressions of Spirit. Spirit's power is exercised both through
and upon the heroine of this play.
By focusing on the collision between Creon and Antigone and the difficult necessity of its resolution, Hegel locates the dramatic strength of
the play. For Hegel, the question "What makes this a good drama?" must
be answered in terms of dialectical movement through a fearful opposition.
Plot and characters work together to achieve finally a sense of vitality and
completeness.
II: Ethical Meaning
My objections arise when we turn to the ethical dimension of the Antigone. Hegel's interpretation in the Phenomenology is based on the
primacy of the brother-sister relationship, in which the sister's reality is
mediated by her brother. In the Philosophy of Right the stress is laid upon
the husband-wife relationship. This difference reveals Hegel's assumption
that women lack self-consciousness, remaining natural and unchanged even
when they freely enter the agreement of marriage. If one claims that modern
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
marriage originates in "the free consent of the persons . . . to make
themselves one person, to renounce their natural and individual personality
to this unity," then one must accept that a woman attains her "substantive
self-consciousness" when she goes beyond her former unreflective way of
being. 13 Hegel should not ignore the meaning of her choice when he
describes woman's role in the procreative family. In the moment of
accepting the marriage proposal, woman has an active role in her destiny,
which is not mediated by either her birth family or her fiance.
Hegel fails to do justice to the play when he applies modern social structures, such as marriage arrangements, to it. We will review the argument
in the Phenomenology first and then consider the problem in light of the
Philosophy of Right.
A. Antigone in the Phenomenology of Spirit
Hegel's discussion of Antigone in the Phenomenology comes under
the heading "The True Spirit: The Ethical Order." According to Hegel the
play is an example of the way true Spirit makes its appearance after a series
of inadequate attempts. Now Spirit is present in an unmediated form as
the ethos of a people. Spirit, or mind, is the people. Spirit is conscious,
that is, able to make distinctions, but not yet self-conscious. Thus it is
manifest in custom and habit rather than in a rational decision-making
process like the application of Kant's categorical imperative.
At this stage, Spirit is split into content and consciousness. The content is the folk, the entire community. Actual consciousness is found in
individual citizens. The union of their subjective wills with the objective
order ushers in the specifically ethical life of Spirit. Ethical Spirit is "the
good become alive," embodied in human action. 14 Natural activities give
way to a higher second nature, developed through habitual exercise of the
duties appropriate to one's station in the community. This results in a split
in the content, or substance. Ethical Spirit polarizes into two realms. The
first realm is the world of women, a community that is dedicated to the
needs of particular family members, living and dead. The second is the
world of men, which is located in the polis, a community that raises male
consciousness to universal concerns such as laws. The heart of Sophocles'
play is the conflict between male and female worlds. This conflict is inevitable, since people really belong to both spheres and cannot live without
one another.
The family is a distinctly feminine world, for it is women who bear
and educate children, care for blind fathers like Oedipus, and carry out
the final rites for relatives who have died. The ethical substance is here
�LOCKE
41
at its most immediate, close to nature and to the world beyond this life.
Its gods are those of the underworld and of the hearth, and its law gives
primacy to blood relatives. Hegel describes family life as harmonious
because the members together constitute an individual family. They are
not differentiated, nor do they display a struggle for recognition that might
lead to self-consciousness. One can think of parents, children, uncles, and
grandparents as internal organs of the larger familial organism. "Woman"
especially is defined as being-for-another, because her life is dedicated to
the health and perpetuation of this organism. Although she is dependent
by nature, woman turns the givenness of her sex into an ethical ground.
Her being as part of a family does not require self-conscious action in order
to obey the divine law. Woman endows natural activities with a spiritual significance by being a vehicle for mediation. Working through her, "the gods'
unwritten and unfailing laws ... always live, and no one knows their origin
in time" (455, 457). Nature's sensuous immediacy is canceled in this process.
All living things are supposed to grow naturally, but a male child is
trained for a non-natural end. His mother educates him for a mediated
future as a citizen of the city. By becoming a citizen, her son outgrows
her. 15 His new life requires a negation of the immediacy of home life. With
this, the mother has fulfilled her task. The family whole is broken open
because the son makes the transition to the second realm, the world of men.
The young man who enters adult life finds his actual being as an individual. His self-sufficiency in comparison with his family remains
unreflective and is limited by his participation in the city. His needs and
ideas are shared by other citizens, and find their fulfillment in the law.
Law alters the relation to natural desires by introducing a universal element.
The family, for instance, has been shown to be grounded in consanguinity
and structured in an organic way. The family under law, as signified by
marriage rites, is based on a contract between two people of different blood
who henceforth act as if they are of the same blood. Thus the city substitutes conventional bonds between people for the irrational bonds of
nature. Ethical Spirit is conscious of itself and actual in the offspring of
the marriage relationship.
Between them, man and woman share the substance of the ethical Spirit.
This substance shows itself as a natural sexual difference which they raise
to a universal status by accepting their duties established by convention.
Man is the guardian of the state and respects human laws; woman is the
guardian of the home and respects the laws of subterranean divinities. The
movement of man from private to public life is a development towards selfconscious Spirit, as Hegel outlines the process in the Phenomenology. Hegel
concludes:
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
42
Neither of the two is by itself absolutely valid; human law proceeds in its
living process from the divine, the law valid on earth from that of the nether
world, the conscious from the unconscious, mediation from immediacy-
and equally returns whence it came. 16
A dynamic equilibrium is maintained between these complementary
worlds. However, there remains a final task for woman to do. This is to
prepare for the return of man to the immediate realm of nature upon his
death. Although the major portion of his life may be spent in the public
sphere, at its end he comes home. Woman as mother, wife, or sister
transforms the natural process of decay into a spiritual one. This change
occurs as she gives death a religious meaning. Antigone negates the image
of "a rich sweet sight for the hungry birds beholding," as she pours earth
over the body and says the ritual prayers (29-30). The dead person does
not return to the particular phase of his childhood. Rather, his rest as a
completed being-for-itself is marked by simple universality. Her brother
has achieved a stable being; Polyneices has become an ancestor. The family
is preserved after all, in the memory of those who respect their forefathers.
Woman's primary ethical action, preservation of the family, therefore concerns the dead rather than the living.
It is necessary for Antigone to bury Polyneices both to secure the family
organism and to confirm her identity as his sister. Although woman is
unself-conscious in her being-for-her-family, as sister she has an ethical
substance through her brother. (Hegel entirely neglects the sister-to-sister
relationship between Antigone and Ismene.)
A brother is a bridge to the outside world because he can act as a citizen
as well as a family member. Hegel claims that, unlike other relations between men and women, there is little or no sexual attraction between
brothers and sisters. They are "free individualities in regard to each other.""
Yet in regard to the public world, the sister is not a free individuality. Her
consciousness has not been raised, so her life is essentially tied to her
brother's existence.
Hegel's position in the Phenomenology, somewhat modified in the
Philosophy of Right, stresses that the natural bond of consanguinity has
a higher value to woman than the complementary tie between husband
and wife. This value transcends its physical origin because it is attached
to an awareness of individual selfhood. Hegel states in the Phenomenology:
Consequently, the feminine, in the form of the sister, has the highest intuitive
awareness of what is ethical. She does not attain to consciousness of it, or
to the objective existence of it, because the law of the Family is an implicit,
�LOCKE
43
inner essence which is not exposed to the daylight of consciousness, but remains an inner feeling and the divine element that is exempt from an existence in the real world. 1s
These divinities seem irrational by the standards of the daylight world,
particularly because their demands cannot be articulated in the common
language of the polis. (One can see this most clearly in the treatment of
the Furies in the Oresteia.)
Antigone, then, has two sources of self-identity. She can draw on the
deep strength of familial gods, who honor blood and vengeance. She can
call on these divinities without recourse to an abstract confession of faith,
because she does not feel a distance from them that would require a conscious effort to overcome separation. Antigone can act intuitively, with
the power of the furies flowing through her hands.
Antigone draws on a second source of strength as well. Polyneices is
her link to the real world's rational, civilizing effects. Since the Olympian
deities, particularly Zeus, hold sway over the public realm, Antigone must
come to an awareness of their domination through Polyneices.
Perhaps Hegel's interpretation of the sources of Antigone's sense of
self can clarify her strange speech as she is led to her death. She begins:
0 tomb, 0 marriage-chamber, hollowed out
house that will watch forever, where I go.
Th my own people, who are mostly there;
Persephone has taken them to her. (891-94)
Antigone likens the tomb to the marriage chamber in order to stress
that her loyalty remains with her birth family. She dies unwed, because,
as she laments (referring to Polyneices), "In your death you destroy my
life" (871). She has no life left to give to Haemon or to future children.
Since marriage is within the province of the state, in this speech Antigone
asserts that she would not violate its rights if a husband or child died under
similar conditions. Antigone knows the limits and source of her power,
and remains within those limits.
Or does she? Is her choice really right? One must ask these questions
because of the way in which Antigone carried out her duty. At first, no
one knew who buried Polyneices. "The doer left no sign" but the dust covering the body was apparently sufficient to turn the curse (250). Antigone
appeared again in broad daylight, "with the sharp and bitter cry of a bitter bird," to renew the earthen covering. This time she was captured, calmly
admitted her transgression, and came face to face with Creon.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Why did she perform this action twice? Hegel would not claim that
Antigone was trying to be a martyr, or that she was deliberately trying
to undermine the stability of the polis. Rather, Antigone needed to make
her deed known in order to establish that it was not due to fate or nature
or any other external cause. She chose to accept responsibility for the act
in order to vindicate her brother and to bring him to the gates of the underworld in his universal aspect. In Hegelian terms, she showed the spiritual
meaning in the seemingly uncontrollable event of death, but she could do
this only by transgressing the boundaries of her feminine self. She took
on some of the rebellious nature of Polyneices to act for him and, implicitly,
to act for herself as well. It is my view that by doing this Antigone
demonstrated an expanded definition of womanhood.
Antigone has come to a sense of her own integrity, her being-for-self,
as she steps into the public sphere. Since the significant members of her
family are dead, Antigone is her family. Suddenly she appears as an individual. No longer a passive vehicle of the divine, she mediates the upper
world for her family. Antigone is fully conscious that her public act is both
criminal and holy. Although Hegel does not think that women exert dialectical power in the public realm, in the Aesthetics he praises Antigone as
a heroine greater than Oedipus in her consciousness of the double meaning
of her deed. Hegel is unaware of the conflict between his views.
When Antigone moves away from the natural feminine role to engage
in a forceful debate with Creon, he is visibly disturbed by what he sees
as a subversion of his manhood as well as of the state. "I am no man and
she the man instead" (484). Antigone asserts a new power in the political
world by bringing the vocabulary of familial love to bear on legal relationships. This criterion for judging the worth of a law is not appropriate
generally. However, at this moment it reveals Creon's arrogation of power
to himself. He mistook law for justice and the polis for his possession.
Antigone's challenge opens up the seriousness of this mistake. Human
justice, like self-consciousness, is the result of intellectual and political
effort. The struggle to make the concept of justice actual is accomplished
in a specific historical context.
In the play, Creon acts as if the universal powers at work must bow
to his personal concerns. Further, he ignores the crucial foundation of the
polis in the family by slighting proper burial rites for Polyneices and his
sister. Thus neither Zeus nor the underworld deities receive their due.
Antigone's full consciousness of her deed, and her willingness to appear in public to claim her guilt, is likewise undermining the balance of
universal ethical powers. Ethically as well as dramatically, the play requires
the destruction of Antigone and Creon.
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Hegel's position in the Phenomenology is that the duality of male and
female, of polis and family, is universal and unchanging. There is neither
a dialectical sublation of one into the other, nor a higher synthesis. Thus
the resolution of the conflict restores the previous balance of powers.
Hegel does not see Antigone as a character who is both female and
male, political on behalf of her family and herself. There is an unnecessary
rigidity in his interpretation, since it is logically feasible that dialectical
movement can take place within as well as between the distinct roles of
the sexes. Hegel's limited interpretation is further complicated in the
Philosophy of Right.
B. Antigone in the Philosophy of Right
Hegel discusses Antigone in a section titled "Ethical Life," which is
divided into three parts: the Family, Civil Society, and the State. The family,
of course, is Antigone's domain, but it also must be viewed as the immediate
moment in a dialectical movement culminating in the State. It is this movement which puts the life into "Ethical Life." However, actual freedom exists only as an individual's exercise of duty within the boundaries of one
or the other of these communities.
The family under consideration in the Philosophy of Right is both
natural and artificial. It is the natural union of the sexes for the immediate
goal of perpetuation of the species. This is an external tie, which is made
internal through the artificiality of the wedding rite. In the marriage
ceremony, natural sexual differences are overcome by a self-conscious
"union on the level of mind." 19 Marriage is thus an immediate ethical relationship. Since it is established as a universal bond through their promise,
the sensuous aspect (that is, the changeable side of the relationship) is
subordinated to the unchanging ethical substance. Further, the spouses'
natural attachment to their original families is overcome by the trans formation inherent in ''two become one flesh." Thus it is important, in Hegel's
argument, that the man and woman have no close blood relation. The
priority given to natural consanguinity gives way to "artificial" consan-
guinity, even, I would argue, for a woman. In the acceptance of the marriage contract, a woman participates in a concious decision about ethical
matters.
The substance of the new family is love, a "felt unity" of an ethical
kind. This unity is felt rather than thought, so it remains on an immediate
level. This unity is ethical, that is, the "good become alive," because it is
founded on a rational ground. The implicit rational content of the marriage becomes explicit in property and, most importantly, in offspring.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Children have the potential to be free, and through education can fulfill
that potential. They then take their place in the succession of generations,
inheriting property and establishing their own procreative families.
The transition to civil society is caused by the multiplication of families.
The substantial unity of the birth family is lost in this new moment of
particularity. Civil society exhibits the splitting apart of needs and rights.
Private needs concerning private property bring people into conflict. The
universal principle appears only as the necessity that drives men to form
social ties in order to satisfy private economic interests. The interdependence
of one with all is still an abstract universality, for within the association
the universal and the particular are related but not synthesized. Members
have great differences of property and therefore of freedom.
Finally, the state draws together the felt unity of the family and the
economic differentiation of civil society. The state Hegel means is a constitutional monarchy, where the constitution mediates between the particular interests of citizens and the monarch. The conscious unity of various
classes under law signifies an expansion of freedom. This freedom is no
longer abstract, since it is exercised in political rather than simply economic
actions. Citizens find their true selves in political life.
A nation-state of this kind is significantly different from the polis, or
city-state, which is the setting of the Antigone. Hegel thought that the polis
exhibited a harmony of opposite powers, which remained separate from
each other and unaware of their separation.
According to Hegel, the polis is for us a "thing of the past," not to
be desired as a utopian vision for our future. The externality of the bond
between male and female, human law and divine law, is now apparent.
Ethical life of Spirit no longer fits within these bounds, since Spirit has
become more self-conscious in the Christian era. The polis continues to
have meaning for us as an image of political origin in a beautiful ethical
life. That beauty arises from the articulated harmony of Greek art, religion,
and politics. It is this interpenetration of the beautiful and the true that
gives rise to the tragic drama.
And so we return to the Antigone, a play that somehow speaks to us,
even though we find ourselves in a very different political world. In Hegel's
aesthetic interpretation, the character of Antigone remains the same, still
loyal to the gods of the underworld. He has no difficulty in holding Antigone up as a model for womankind to emulate, even though a harmonious
and beautiful existence within modern religious or political life is impossible. His interpretation in the Phenomenology and the Aesthetics respects
the timelessness of Antigone's plight, but this comes into conflict with the
�LOCKE
47
time-bound constraints of the Philosophy of Right. Hegel shows no sign
that he is using the play in different ways in his aesthetic and ethical interpretations. How are we to make sense out of woman as a complement to
man, when man has changed?
The problem can be summarized as follows. Woman, who is associated
with nature, in both the physical and the unreflective senses, is therefore
ahistorical. Man is, according to the Philosophy of Right, a historical being,
associated with self-conscious Spirit through his political activity. In the
play, Hegel argues, we see the equilibrium between the two disturbed, in
a collision that shows the rightfulness of both sides and a catastrophe that
restores justice. The two sexes remain distinct powers, however, and are
unaware of the distance beween them in this restored harmony.
The goal of Spirit is to become what it immediately is: to achieve
harmony as a result of its own self-conscious activity. Its achievement,
rather than a linear progression, can be seen as the closing of circle. On
the level of man and woman the circle is joined only if there is a movement by each out of himself or herself into the other's world. That implies
a negation of the righteousness of his or her position and a finding of
himself or herself in the other. If this is to be a mutual discovery and
recognition, I argue, both woman and man must be able to develop in
self-consciousness.
The shift in focus from the birth family in the Phenomenology to the
procreative family in the Philosophy of Right shows that the selfconsciousness of man has differentiated itself more completely, while the
consciousness of woman has not. Instead of two worlds, private and public,
there are now three: private, social, and political. The social world of
economic life, as well as the political world, are restricted to man. Freedom
and self-consciousness are generated in these spheres, which continue to
rely on the unconscious support of the feminine realm.
It is clear that there cannot be a public realm without a private foundation, but it is questionable whether a class of people-women-must
be limited to the private sphere. The case of slaves is significantly different
from the case of women, so the extension of freedom to slaves is not a
simple analogy for a solution to this problem.
What is the difference? Slaves can be admitted to be men endowed with
rights, when a political community has a sufficiently aware selfconsciousness. Women, however, can never be admitted to be men, even
if they are considered equal persons in the public sphere. According to
Hegel, this is because they are of a different nature. The fundamental
natures of men and women are complementary, Hegel assumes, and distinct
even when fully developed. Men are self-conscious while women are simply
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
conscious. Thus Spirit seems far from its goal of achieving selfconsciousness in the relations between modern men and women.
We who observe the process of self-conscious Spirit struggling to know
itself, we who are in the know as philosophers, must ask whether Hegel
is telling us everything about Antigone. Can she remain still, a medium
for change without changing? Can she be outside the dialectical process?
Has she become, for us, a thing of the past not to be desired?
Our answer to these questions has to be no. When we recall the dynamic
image of Antigone offered in Hegel's aesthetic interpretation of the play,
we notice that she acted quite naturally, that is unreflectively, in carrying
out her duty. Antigone was portrayed as a doer who willed her fate.
Each of her actions was dialectical: each began as a negation and ended
with positive consequences. In remaining unwed, Antigone denied the
possibility of a procreative family of her own. This was in a simple way
a u~eminine action, for it was anti-generation and, ultimately, a withdrawal
of support for the state. Yet at the same time her virginity was a service
to the state, for she prevented Oedipus's fated blood from continuing to
haunt Thebes. Since her loyalty remained with her original family, which
had vanished into the underworld, Antigone found herself acting positively
as an individual in a public arena.
Antigone was a political being in spite of herself. Her last words were
addressed to the leaders of Thebes. There is a shift from the properly
feminine lament for Antigone's lost marriage to the strong declaration:
Look, leaders of Thebes,
I am the last of your royal line.
Look what I suffer, at whose command,
because I respected the right. (940-44)
While respecting the familial gods' "right," Antigone became quite clear
about her political position, as the last voice of the royal house. This position gives her the authority to directly address the elders as witnesses and,
ultimately, as responsible parties in her death.
Hegel neglected this political speech, which is crucial for an understanding of her character. I think that the speech shows that woman is political,
even when her loyalties seem to undermine the stability of the state. I do
not claim that her feminine world is canceled by her appearance in public
life or taken up by this higher realm. I do claim that feminine nature encompasses more than Hegel allows.
Only when we consider Antigone as a dialectical heroine, who changes
as she changes the world, can we continue to hold her as a model for
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49
womankind. Hegel neglects the historical character of human being when
he limits woman to a passive role as the mirror of a specific culture, as
if that were her nature. This oversight results in the contradictions between
his analysis in the Phenomenology and in the Philosophy of Right, which
includes cultural developments of the Christan era external to the original
Greek context.
In conclusion, I think that the polarities between female and male,
divine and human law, home and city, are eternal ones. The possibilities
for collision- and thus for drama- increase as the opposing terms deepen
and subtly shift in meaning. To allow woman to advance in selfconsciousness perpetuates the dynamic tension between the sexes and permits mutual recognition. Unfortunately, it magnifies the tension between
the demands of private and public life.
Hegel's view of woman is unnecessarily limited by defining her only
in relation to men. Antigone breaks through this limited view when she
acts on her own, without her brother or her fiance by her side. She brings
hidden divinities to bear on human affairs, and causes the spectator to
reflect on Hegel's assertion that the true is the whole. Like Antigone, Hegel
is both guilty and innocent of the past he inherits. Human being embraces
them both. In the end, the two of them might echo Teiresias's words:
We two have come one road,
two of us looking through one pair of eyes.
This is the way of walking for the blind. (988-90)
Notes
I. G. W. F. Hegel, Aesthetics, Lectures on Fine Arts, 2 vols., trans. T.
M. Knox (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), p. 1218.
2. Ibid., p. 1159.
3. Sophocles, Antigone, in Greek Tragedies, vol. 1., trans. Elizabeth
Wyckoff (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960).
4. Aesthetics, p. 1166.
5. Ibid., p. 1187.
6. Ibid., p. 1214.
7. G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1977), para. 734.
8. Ibid.
9. Aesthetics, p. 1215.
10. Ibid.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
II. Aristotle, Aristotle's Poetics, translation and analysis, Kenneth A.
Thlford (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1967), 1453a6.
12. Aesthetics, pp. 1197-98.
13. G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, trans. T. M. Knox (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1967), para. 162.
14. Ibid., para. 142.
15. Phenomenology, para. 451.
16. Ibid., para. 460.
17. Ibid., para. 457.
18. Ibid.
19. Philosophy of Right, para. 161.
�Idealism, Ancient and Modern:
Sophocles' Antigone
and Schiller's Don Carlos
Gisela N. Berns
Almost at the end of Schiller's Don Carlos, the blind, menacing figure
of the Grand Inquisitor, led by two Dominicans, appears before King
Philipp, the ruler of Spain (V, 10). From the outset, the appearance of the
old priest, which is in answer to the death of Marquis Posa, is foreshadowed
in the ominous presence of Domingo, the King's confessor. An idealistic
fighter for the liberation of mankind from tyrannical rule, Posa had been
murdered for betraying the King's trust. Accused by the Grand Inquisitor
for circumventing the authority of the church, Philipp confesses his
vulnerability to the striking radiance of Posa's character. In his emotional
devastation, the King consents to the sacrifice of Carlos, his only son and
Posa's friend, to the Inquisition.
Almost at the end of Sophocles' Antigone, the blind figure of Thiresias,
led by a young boy, appears before Creon, the ruler of Thebes (lines
988-1090). After the fatal battle between the sons of Oedipus, Creon had
issued an order for burying Eteocles, the defender, but not Polyneices, the
invader of the city. Antigone's attempt to bury her brother had been
punished with her own live burial in a cave outside Thebes. Ominous signs
have stirred Thiresias from his sacrifices to come to warn Creon and urge
him to restore the dead to the dead, and the living to the living.
With reference to his portrayal of the Inquisition in Don Carlos, Schiller
Gisela N. Berns is a Thtor at St. John's College, Annapolis.
51
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promises to "revenge prostituted mankind" by "striking to the soul of a
kind of man the dagger of tragedy, so far, had only grazed." 1 Compared
to Teiresias, the priest of a natural religion that acknowledges all powers
of the universe as gods, the Grand Inquisitor, in the service of the universal
power of the biblical God, rises to monstrous heights. Devoid of all natural
human feelings, 2 he is the more terrible as he uses the Christian doctrine
of love, consummated in the sacrifice of God's only son on the cross, to
perpetrate death and destruction. The defilement of sacrifices by birds feeding on an unburied corpse makes Teiresias urge Creon to restore Polyneices
to the dead and Antigone to the living. The defilement of the religious and
political atmosphere by a man's claim to freedom of thought makes the
Grand Inquisitor request the life of Carlos in exchange for the death of
Posa, which had been a murder rather than a sacrifice in the name of the
greater glory of the church.' With the same dramatic development, the two
scenes open up very different tragic perspectives: Where the ruin of Creon's
house, though foreshadowed in his increasing blasphemy against Zeus,
comes as a blow of fate, Philipp himself, in monstrous analogy to the Christian God, wills his only son into the murderous hands of the Inquisition.'
The link between Schiller's Don Carlos and Sophocles' Antigone is not
so far-fetched as it might seem. Schiller's translation of scenes from
Euripides' Phoenician Women, a play about the events that occurred before
those portrayed in Sophocles' Antigone, coincides with his Briefe iiber Don
Carlos, written soon after the completion of his dramatic poem.
However tenuous the chronological link between Schiller's reading Antigone and writing Don Carlos might be, what counts is the thematic link.
While Antigone and Marquis Posa resemble each other in their idealistic
fight for principles of a higher order than the ruling tenets of the day, they
are, at the same time, striking examples of the difference between ancient
and modern idealism. Whether systematic, as in his later plays, or sporadic,
as in the earlier ones, Schiller's integration of Greek archetypes into his
own modern historical drama only accentuates the modernity of his work.'
The purpose of this essay, therefore, is not so much to show Sophocles'
influence on Schiller as to explore paradigmatic forms of idealism within
the given contexts of Greek tragedy and modern historical drama.'
Understanding himself as a representative of all mankind, Marquis
Posa, early in the play, tries to inspire his friend Carlos to help in the liberation of Flanders from the tyrannical rule of Spain (I, 2). Feeling responsible
for her family, Antigone, in the opening scene, tries to persuade her sister
Ismene to help her bury their brother Polyneices (1-99). When their
idealistic expectations miscarry, both Posa and Antigone reveal themselves
as heartless fanatics. In the name of an abstract ideal that blinds him to
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the needs of his friend, Posa exploits Carlos's love for the Queen in order
to further his political goals. For the sake of the dead brother outside the
city walls, Antigone poisons her sisterly love for Ismene with the bitter
shafts of hate.
Though they resemble each other in their expression of idealism, Posa
is concerned about an idea, Antigone about a body. Where the modern
idealist, with a cosmopolitan outlook, transcends all natural and historical
limits, the ancient idealist, with close ties to nature and mythical tradition,
focuses on the family and its conflict with the political order of the city.
As a move in his political game, Posa arranges for a meeting between
Carlos and the Queen in the royal garden (I, 5). Coming upon the queen,
left by Carlos just in time, the King, like the biblical God after the fall
of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, calls her to account for the
absence of her court (I, 6). Appealing to a higher and more enduring law
than Spanish court rules, the Queen tries to defend her womanly virtue.
With a distinction between good and evil that is merely political, Creon
claims the support of Zeus for leaving the body of Polyneices unburied
(162-222). Antigone, after she has been arrested at the burial of her brother
and brought before Creon, appeals to the eternal, unwritten laws of the
gods as safeguards for her action (223-331, 276-581). Like the Queen, later
in Don Carlos (IV, 9, 3759-70), she protests against having to hate where
her heart tells her to love (523).
Schiller's poetic practice, in anticipation of his advice to the modern
artist in Uber die aesthetische Erziehung des Menschen, "connects what
nature separated, and separates what nature connected."' In addition to
explicating a character like Antigone in such correlative characters as Posa
and the Queen, Schiller complicates the traces from Greek tragedy with
traces from the biblical tradition. By highlighting the historical world of
Don Carlos with the biblical intimations of man's past perfection in the
Garden of Eden, Schiller contrasts the Greek notion of nature with the
biblical notion of history and thus exhibits the inherently problematic
understanding of man in modern times.
With the biblical intimations of man's future perfection in a world to
come, Posa's vision of the progress of mankind through history dominates
his great audience scene with the King (III, 10). An implicit condemnation
of the King's despotic rule, Marquis Posa's idealistic picture of an age in
which the natural nobility of man will triumph in the rule of reason,
manifesting itself in political autonomy, at the same time affects and disaffects the King. Posa's confession of his love for humanity echoes the
titanic claims of Prometheus. Despite this anticipation of tragedy, it has
a hollow ring against his later inhuman betrayal of the King's trust.
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Like Posa in Don Carlos (III, 10), the Chorus in Antigone (332-75)
paints a lofty picture of human nature. With its celebration of man as one
of the awesome things in the universe, the second choral ode describes man's
mastery over nature and his attempt at mastering his own nature within
the framework of nature as a whole. Aware of man's tendency to evil as
well as to good, the Chorus warns of overstepping the bounds of mortality.
Though both Posa and the Chorus recognize the creative power of reason
as the differentia of human nature within nature, the Chorus's stylized ode
focuses on the dangers, Posa's dramatic exposition on the glory of its artistic achievements.' The modern hybris of Posa, the artist, of creating a
world in his own image, seems to consist in his willingness to use men as
material in the process towards the perfection of mankind.'
More human than Posa, Carlos, earlier on, had begged the King to
let him share in the political responsibility for Flanders (II, 2). In a similar
encounter between father and son, Haemon, Creon's son and Antigone's
betrothed, tries to sway his father towards a more lenient execution of justice
(635-765). Though Haemon is more diplomatic than Carlos, their arguments, with comparable effects on Creon (766-80) and Philipp (II, 3; IV,
10), follow the same path.
Though they both fail to bring about a final reconciliation, the two
scenes are dramatic turning points in their plays. But where Haemon's
attempt to mediate between his father and his betrothed provides the axis
of symmetry in Antigone, 10 neither Carlos's emotional (II, 2) nor Posa's
rational (III, 10) appeal to the father and king in Philipp marks the center
of Don Carlos. That distinction is given to the threshold between the King's
lonely search for a human being worthy to be his friend (III, 5) and both
Carlos's and Philipp's own expression of humanity in their generous attitude
towards Medina Sidonia, the admiral returning from the defeat of the
Armada (III, 6-7).
After the fateful conversation between father and son in Don Carlos
(II, 2), strands of conflicting love stories are interwoven with the political
texture of the play. With the connotations of Adam and Eve's expulsion
from the Garden of Eden, Princess Eboli's confession of love for Carlos
(II, 8) in the royal palace (the center of Act II) mirrors Carlos's confession
of love for the Queen (I, 5) in the royal garden (the center of Act I).
Inconceivable for our modern sensibilities, Haemon and Antigone never
even mention each other's names, let alone speak to one another. 11 Only
the Chorus, in a passionate ode following Haemon's appeal to Creon, comments on the universal power of Eros and the disaster it may bring to mortals and immortals alike (781-800).
Revealing the darker sides of an idealism that shuns no human risk,
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Posa finally loses his political game. In a highly emotional scene that echoes
the story of the sacrifice of Christ for the redemption of mankind, he
entrusts the Queen with his legacy for Don Carlos (IV, 21; cf. 3). Though
she is moved by Posa's artistic vision of a future new world, the Queen
cannot help accusing him of willful and inhuman ambition. Faced by death
and by an elusive facet of his own character, Posa, in his last moments
with the Queen, comes to realize something about the simple beauty of life.
In a similar mood, though publicly addressing a chorus of elders,
Antigone mourns her approaching death (806-943). In order to console
herself over losing the light of the sun and her own future wedding day,
she conjures up examples of past heroic deaths. Concerned with her natural
fate, Antigone laments the loss of the sunlight; concerned with the fate
of mankind, Posa reflects on the loss of "two short evening hours" (the
King's rule) for the gain of "a summer's day" (the ascendency of Don
Carlos). In Posa's metaphorical language, the historical progress from the
father's despotic reign to the son's enlightened rule supplants the cyclical
movement of the natural powers of the universe. 12
When they are accused of willfully overstepping the bounds of mortality,
both Posa (IV, 21; V, 3) and Antigone (891-943) speculate about how, under
different circumstances, they might have avoided death. But where Antigone's thoughts revolve around different relationships within the natural
realm of the family, Posa's thoughts involve different constellations of
political power with a view to the fulfillment of human nature through
historical progress.
The hybris of such cosmopolitan usurpation reveals itself in the murder
of Marquis Posa, which is the more terrible as it occurs in the middle of
his farewell to Carlos (V, 3). With his arms around the dead body of his
friend, Carlos, in a stupor, witnesses the King's visit to his prison. The
royal gesture of returning his sword, however, reawakens Carlos's sense of
the King's complicity in Posa's murder. As if to kill his father, but restraining
himself, Carlos strikes a more deadly blow by revealing the story of their
friendship and Posa's betrayal of the King's trust (V, 4). 13
In a similar sequence of events, a Messenger tells of Creon's visit to
Antigone's cave, where Haemon, with his arms around the dead body of
his betrothed, laments their fateful love (1155-1243). Creon's pleading with
his son only provokes Haemon's rage to kill him. When the attempt fails,
he turns his sword against himself and dies, embracing Antigone in the end.
In the Riga version of Don Carlos, the play ends with Carlos's attempt
to kill the King, the Queen's dead faint, and, finally, Carlos's suicide. 14
The King's cry of horror, as it were, echoes Creon's wild lament over his
son's death. Even in the full version of Schiller's dramatic poem, Carlos's
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farewell embrace of the Queen, his disavowal of all passion but for the
memory of his dead friend (V, II, 5315-16), and his gathering the Queen
in his arms at the end, might be seen as a modern transfiguration of the
tragic plight of Haemon and Antigone.
Because it is perpetrated in the name of the Christian God, the King's
final act of delivering Carlos out of the arms of the Queen into the hands
of the Grand Inquisitor far surpasses the horror of Creon's last steps when
he enters carrying the corpse of Haemon into a palace full of woe over
the death of Creon's wife who, on hearing the news about her son, had
committed suicide.
In the conclusion to his reflections on naive and sentimental poetry,
Schiller discusses the difference between the realist and the idealist. More
noble in his actions than in his thoughts, the realist moves within a finite
range of human possibilities. More noble in his thoughts than in his actions,
the idealist reaches for infinite heights of human perfection. 15 This difference, which for him is more pronounced in life than in poetry, Schiller
considers representative for the difference between ancients and moderns.
If this distinction is applied to the poetic figures of Antigone, as ancient,
and Marquis Posa, as modern idealist, their difference can be seen to stem
from the nature of their ideals rather than from the nature of their idealism.
Concerned about the fate of the family and its eternal conflict with
the political order of the city, the ancient idealist orients herself according
to the mythical past. Concerned about the fate of mankind and its temporary conflict with the powers of the earth, the modern idealist orients
himself according to the historical future. This fundamental expansion of
man's horizon from the realm of nature, governed by the principle of
necessity, to the realm of history, governed by the principle of freedom,
allows for a greater complexity of dramatic plot as well as of dramatic
characters.
Almost as a rule, two characters in Schiller's Don Carlos correspond
to one character in Sophocles' Antigone: Posa and the Queen to Antigone;
Carlos and the Queen to Ismene; Posa and Carlos to Haemon; Domingo
and the Grand Inquisitor to Thiresias; and Carlos and the King to the
Messenger. Themes of the Chorus are covered in dramatic exchanges between Posa and the King in one instance, and Carlos and Princess Eboli
in another. ' 6 Only the King and Creon, the realists in both plays, correspond
to one another as single characters.
As a curious addition to the list of comparable characters, no character
·in Schiller's Don Carlos takes on the comic role of the Guard called upon
to bring Antigone before Creon. Created in the image of the biblical God,
and in dead earnest about the infinite aspirations connected with that
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origin, modern man seems to have lost his sense of the salutary function
of comic relief. By sustaining the tragic mood throughout Don Carlos,
Schiller indulges his modern sensibilities and thus contributes to the play's
idealistic grandeur. " In comparison with the earthbound idealism of Antigone, the heavenbound idealism of Marquis Posa truly seems to deserve
that name.
A sober commentary on idealism as a fundamental problem of human
nature in any given age, Schiller's Briefe iiber Don Carlos recognize both
the unique glory and the unique danger of its modern manifestation.
Notes
I. To Reinwald, April 14, 1783.
2. Schiller, Geschichte des Abfal/s der vereinigten Niederlande von der
spanischen Regierung, Einleitung, Schillers Werke, Nationalausgabe
[NA], ed. Lieselotte Blumenthal and Benno von Weise (Weimar:
Biihlau, 1943 ff.), XVII, i, 23; I, NA, XVII, i, 56-57.
3. Schiller, Don Carlos, Thalia-Fragment, II, 6, 2026-31, NA VI, 439;
cf. Geschichte, I, NA XVII, i, 59. With watchwords like "miitterliche
Kirche," ''Vatermord," "Pest," "Verwesung," "l..eichen," and "das Grab
selbst ist keine Zuflucht," Schiller's original portrayal of the Inquisition (Schiller, Siimtliche Werke, ed. Gerhard Fricke and Herbert
Giipfert, 5th ed., Miinchen: Hanser, 1975, IV, 83) umnistakably alludes
to the infamous story of the house of Oedipus.
4. Sophocles, Antigone, 184, 288, 304, 486-89, 658-59, 1039-44, 1063-90;
Schiller, Don Carlos, V, 10, 5261-79; 11, 5367-68; cf. Geschichte, I,
NA XVII, i, 54.
5. See Gisela N. Berns, Greek Antiquity in Schiller's "Wallenstein," Studies
in the Germanic Languages and Literatures, Vol. 104 (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1985).
6. Cf. to Siivern, July 26, 1800; to Goethe, April 4, 1797. Exploring a
structural analogy between Sophocles' Antigone and Schiller's Maria
Stuart, Florian Prader (Schiller und Sophokles [Ziirich: Atlantis, 1954,
120]) argues for the poetic effectiveness of Maria Stuart, "gerade wei!
sie nicht griechisch ist und Schiller die dramatisch wirksamen Elemente
der antiken "Ifagodie kunstvoll mitarbeiten lasst, ohne der Nachahmung
verpflichtet zu sein." Objectionable in Prader's notion is merely his
pretense (114), "Der Vergleich mag uns nur zeigen, wie Schiller in seinem
Bemiihen urn die Physik des Dramas so vie! vom antiken Vorbild in
sein eigenes, kiinstlerisches Schaffen aufnimmt, dass von einer Analogie
zu sprechen ist, die dem Dichter wohl nicht bewusst wird."
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7. Schiller, Uber die aesthetische Erziehung des Menschen, Letter 26, NA
XX, 401; Uber das Erhabene, NA XXI, 53, "Nun stellt zwar schon
die Natur fiir sich allein Objekte in Menge auf, an denen sich die Empfindungsfahigkeit fiir das Schone und Erhabene iiben konnte; aber der
Mensch ist, wie in andern Fallen, so auch bier, von der zweiten Hand
besser bedient als von der ersten und willlieber einen zubereiteten und
auserlesenen Stoff von der Kunst empfangen, als an der unreinen Quelle
der Natur miihsam und diirftig schopfen."
8. See Schiller's own reflections on the use of the chorus in connection
with Die Braut von Messina, NA X, 7-15, and Ilse Graham, Schiller's
Drama: Talent and Integrity (London: Methuen, 1974), "Element into
ornament: the alchemy of art: a reading of Die Braut von Messina,"
67-90.
9. For a discussion of the questionable character of Posa's idealism, see
Schiller, Briefe iiber Don Carlos, NA XXII, 138 ff.; Uber die
aesthetische Erziehung des Menschen, Letter 4, NA XX, 317; Letter
6, NA XX 328; Letter 9, NA XX, 334-36; Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung, NA XX, 496-98, 503; cf. Oskar Seidlin, "Schiller:
Poet of Politics," in A Schiller Symposium, ed. A. Leslie Willson
(Austin: University of Texas, Department of Germanic Languages,
1960), 31-40.
10. Their names alone (Haemon/"concerned with blood," Creon/"concerned with power") exhibit the central conflict in Sophocles' Antigone.
II. The line "0 dearest Haemon, how your father humiliates you!" (572),
usually given to Antigone by modern editors, appears in all existing
manuscripts as a line of Ismene. On the emotional shallowness of the
ancients, especially in their portrayal of women, cf. Schiller, Uber naive
und sentimenta/ische Dichtung, NA XX, 432-36, 478, n. I; and to
Humboldt, Dec. 17 and 25, 1795.
12. Schiller, Don Carlos, IV, 21, 4313-14; cf. 4299-301; 3, 3435-39; 6,
3646-50; V, I, 4505-06; 9, 5068-70. See Gerhard Kaiser, "Vergotterung
und Tad: Die thematische Einheit von Schillers Werk," and "Die Idee
der ldylle in der 'Braut von Messina,'" in Von Arkadien nach Elysium,
11-44 and 164-66.
13. Carlos's "Ja, Sire! Wir waren Briider! Briider durch/Ein edler Band,
als die Natur es schmiedet" (V, 4, 4791-92) brings out the crucial difference between Antigone and Marquis Posa. For the inner connection between Don Carlos as "ein Familiengemillde in einem fiirstlichen
Hause" and Schiller's theme of idealism, see Helmut Koopmann, "Don
Karlos," in Schiller's Dramen: Neue Interpretationen, ed. Walter
Hinderer (Stuttgart: Klett, 1979), 99-106.
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14. Schiller, Dom Karlos, NA VII, i, 354-58. For Schiller's dependence on
and independence from St. Real's "Histoire de Dom Carlos," see Gerhard Storz, Der Dichter Friedrich Schiller (Stuttgart: Klett, 1959), 118.
15. Schiller, Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung, NA XX, 500.
16. Cf. Schiller, Uber die aesthetische Erziehung des Menschen, Letter 6,
NA XX, 322-23, 326-27; and lise Graham, "Die Struktur der Persiinlichkeit in Schillers dramatischerDichtung," in Schiller: Zur Theorie
und Praxis der Dramen, ed. Klaus L. Berghahn and Reinhold Grimm,
Wege der Forschung 323 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1972), 351, 361-64.
17. It is interesting to note that this is not only a characteristic ofthe young
Schiller. In as late a work as his translation of Shakespeare's Macbeth,
he drastically changes the Porter scene (II, 5). Cf. Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung, NA XX, 431-35, esp. 433, "Als ich in einem
sehr friihen Alter den letzteren Dichter zuerst kennenlernte, empiirte
mich seine Kiilte, seine Unempfindlichkeit, die ibm erlaubte, im
hiichsten Pathos zu scherzen, die herzzerscheidenden Auftritte im
'Hamlet', im 'KOnig Lear', im 'Macbeth' usf. durch einen Narren zu
stiiren, die ibn bald da festhielt, wo meine Empfindung forteilte, bald
da kaltherzig fortriss, wo das Herz so gern stillgestanden wiire."
��George Steiner's Antigones:
A Review*
Eva Brann
Anyone who has reread the Antigone about as often as is profitable for
the time being might consider turning to this book. The curious plural
of its title is glossed on the cover of the paperback: "How the Antigone
legend has endured in Western literature and thought." While conceding
absolute primacy to the Antigone of Sophocles' play, Steiner brings to
prominence the power of Antigone's story in its apparently inexhaustible
versions. Greek myths, he says, have had an "unbroken authority ... over
the imagination of the West," and among them the Antigone legend is paramount in both shaping and expressing the moral constitution of Western
humanity.
Steiner's thesis is not innocuous. Its explicit consequence is the elevation of Tragedy over Scripture and of Sophocles over Shakespeare. With
respect to the Bible, Steiner asserts, for example, that for German literature
the polla ta deina chorus ("Many awesome things walk the earth, but
nothing more awesome than man," 333 ff.) forms the heart of the "house
of being" (a Heideggerian phrase) much more than does any chapter from
the Luther bible. It is hard to tell how far Steiner means to generalize this
thesis. In Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, to cite a counter-example, the
liberal humanism of the classical scholar Zeitblom pales before the devout
deviltry of the Lutheran musician Leverkiihn. But even if it were only a
literary phenomemon, to me it seems sinister if it is true- as if something
appalling were excessively savored. At any rate, whatever may be the case
*George Steiner, Antigones. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984; Oxford Paperback,
1986.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
for the European continent, for the Anglo-Saxon countries the notion that
Greek myths matter more than the Bible is laughable. But Steiner is an
enthusiast, and his passion is productive enough to make his Hellenic bias
forgivable.
He argues his subordination of Shakespeare to Sophocles more
specifically, by citing Wittgenstein's subversive question: "Was [Shakespeare]
perhaps rather a creator of language than a poet?" The question is meant
to intimate that Shakespeare invented a new species of language but failed
to bring transcendent presence to earth. The index of this lack, which
Steiner connects with Shakespeare's "pluralism and liberality, his tragi-comic
bias," is his intuitive avoidance of myth.
Now it is another of Steiner's theses that "Greek myths are imprinted
in the evolution of our language, and of our grammar in particular," that
"the 'initial' and determinant Greek myths are myths in and of language,
and in which, in turn, Greek grammar and rhetoric internalize, formalize,
certain mythical configurations." "Myths speak themselves in men." For
example, Steiner reads in Narcissus "the long history of the demarcation
of the first person singular, together with the solicitations and menace of
solipsism, of the withering of our utterance to monologue, as these are
latent in the grammar of our ego."
There are two language-mysticisms current that I find-not very
profitably-unsettling because I can't make out what they mean when taken
at their word and because I can't determine whether they are deep or merely
sophisticated. One is the claim that our humanity is linguistic, is not only
enmeshed in, but exhausted by, language- that there is nothing beyond
speech for speech to be about, so that all speech is about speech and speech
is all there is: we are speech. The other is that language speaks, not the
speaker- we may utter sound, but the saying is accomplished by language.
Th these paradoxes Steiner appears to be adding a third: that legends articulate language. To me it seems that to speak responsibly I must believe
that it is I who speaks, and to speak substantively I must think that I speak
about something, and to speak consideringly I must suppose that the tale
is separable from the telling. However, to return to the point: It is in the
light of Steiner's linguistic theory that the demotion of Shakespeare from
poet-the speaker of myth-shaped language-to language-creator-an
autonomous maker rather than a conductor of truthful transcendent
presence-is to be understood. Steiner thinks of Sophocles too as a
humanist, but as one who possesses a pietas, a "haunted humanism."
Sophocles' relation to the gods stands median, between Aeschylus's sense
of neighborhood and Euripides' sophistic uncertainties: For Sophocles the
primal intimacies of god and men have receded, but certain human deeds
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63
are darkly reminiscent of the scandals attendant on their aboriginal commerce. Clearly Steiner accords more gravity to Sophocles' archaic, primordial "scenes" than to Shakespeare's current human condition. Why, really,
I ask myself.
If I have seemed critical of Steiner's thesis so far, let me engage here
in a belated captatio benevolentiae for him. Steiner has acquired a sort
of anti public, readers who expect from him pretentious verbiage and trendy
interests. Antigones is not like that. The language is often apt and sometimes poignant. At worst there are arresting usages that fail to click and
hyperbolic metaphors that discredit their sentence: Oedipus's attempt at
self-perception is called "an incest more radical than that of blood." That's
verbiage too juicy for credibility.
However, I think I understand the cause of the urge to use strong
language. The reason is that people in their capacity as writers of books
about books- or reviews of books about books- are naturally unsuited
to the invocation of elemental and mighty forces, not being themselves
elemental and mighty, and so they are tempted to reach for language that
is a little beyond their format. In fact, I can't help reiterating here my misgivings about the business of cultivating a taste for tragedy: I think our respectable mission in life is to convert tragedy into comedy, to find happy compromises and innocuous resolutions where we can, and then to give unconvertible tragedy the serious empathy that is its due-short of savoring
it. It must be said in Steiner's favor that he has a high respect for drier
readings of the text than he himself engages in. Above all, his own
understanding of Antigone appreciates that very element in her: the "lucid
dryness" of her ethical solitude, which "seems to prefigure the stringencies of Kant." In fact, Steiner's portrait of Antigone is one of the most
admirable features of Antigones. He dwells on the fact of her youth: She
is a young woman, a girl really, whose pure unseasoned will to extremity,
whose gallant, immature resistance to compromise and resolution, give her
at first a desolate satisfaction that turns finally to doubt and despair. This
description brings home the difference (which readers are apt to forget)
between being a tragic heroine and watching one: what looks like demonic
grandeur from the outside is lonely misery from within.
While Steiner's interests in this book are not trendy, they are contemporary: Antigones is a splendid hermeneutic exercise. Hermeneutics was
once the fairly humble art of interpreting texts, particularly the Bible. When,
in half-conscious rivalry with the scientists, who often spoke of reading
the book of nature, the human world began to be construed as a text,
hermeneutics ceased to be mere philology and became philosophy. An influential work in this philosophical hermeneutics is Hans-Georg Gadamer's
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Truth and Method (1960). It establishes a study called "effective-history"
[Wirkungsgeschichte]. Effective-history, or, perhaps better, actual-history,
traces the effect a text has had through time (what might be called its
longitudinal influence). The hypothesis is that the historical conduit is an
actual constituent of our present readings; we live in a world shaped by
previous interpretations, and a properly self-aware approach to the texts
of our tradition requires the recovery of their earlier receptions- one might
say that books bear the patina of their previous readings.
The Antigones is such a recovery: it traces at once the versions of the
Antigone legend and the fate of Sophocles' play-in fact, the two are inseparable. Antigone appears to be the most rewarding subject imaginable
for an effective-history. Steiner begins his book by showing that between
c. 1790 and c. 1905 Sophocles' Antigone was regarded in Europe as the
work of art nearest to perfection. Hence it inspired not only interpretative
commentary but a vast number of translations, adaptations, retellings,
reversifications, and libretti. In sum, it underwent every sort of attempt
at faithful recovery and originative recapture.
Let me say here that the account of these mutant Antigones, to which
much of Steiner's work is devoted, is absorbing throughout, though two
items might be of special interest to us. First, Steiner gives a long account
of Hegel's passionate preoccupation with Antigone, not only in the
Phenomenology but in works not read in the program of St. John's College. Second, he gives an extended analysis of Holderlin's notorious transla. tion of the Sophoclean text, a poetic tour deforce, extreme and deep, which
would surely have been a center-piece of the St. John's language tutorial
had we chosen to do German rather than French.
To return to Steiner's hermeneutic thesis: As he assumes in particular
that our cultural tap-root is in Athens rather than in Jerusalem, so he posits
in general, explicitly and often, that we have this history effectively in our
cultural sap. It seems to me a dubious assumption. I do think that we absorb opinions from our surroundings, and that the roots of many of those
opinions are to be found articulated in the texts of the program- that is,
after all, a chief reason for a "great books" education. But I doubt that
the sort of "cultural literacy" that Gadamer's and Steiner's thesis implies
can be atmospherically acquired. It is rather the result of a deliberate
classical education of the sort that Steiner tells us he received at the French
Lycee in Manhattan and that I could still piece together at Brooklyn College. This is a pedagogic order that has been disrupted. Present-day
students, by and large, come to Greek texts with a pristine nescience that
brings them- in some respects, I imagine- close to the state of mind that
the barbarians of the ancient world were in when they attended their first
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performance of a Hellenic drama. Their cultural history has become as
effectively ineffective for them as it would be if they had none. Consequently they face the textual tradition without tradition. Iu the St. John's
seminar, which is a proving-ground (or rather a disproving-ground) of
hermeneutic hypotheses, the millenia between us and Sophocles are canceled not by a laborious longitudinal recovery but by a simple severance
of the last links in the conduit of time. On the whole, this seems to me
to work very well. I have more faith in the episodic recollections that mark
a renaissance than in the unbroken memory of history.
At any rate, even with its hermeneutic intuition neutralized, Antigones
is full of interest. I would like to conclude with two of Steiner's own reflections, the first his try at an explanation of the unbroken preeminence of
Sophocles' Antigone, the second his own interpretation of the play's
"subterranean" message.
The Antigone, he says, is preeminent because it is the one and only
literary text to express "all the [five] principal constants of conflict in the
condition of man": the confrontation of men and women, of age and youth,
of society and individual, of the living and the dead, and of men and gods.
The play presents each of these as "an equilibrium of fatalities." It is inexhaustible because it is encompassing in its antitheses and evenly poised
in its resolutions. That seems to me a persuasive formulation.
The subterranean significance of Sophocles' play, he suggests, is a judgment on tragedy itself. "Drama," which means literally, "deed," has a built-in
preference for the act over the word, a preference that is a kind of enactment of the opposition so prominent in Greek speech: logOi men ... ergoi
de- "in talk one thing, in actuality another." Steiner suggests that Sophocles
is issuing an implied warning against the domination of accomplished facts
over probing words, against the tragic elevation of Antigone's drastic deed.
I do not know whether Steiner is right in this particular case, but his suggestion points to a paradox that is the saving grace of tragedy in general:
the constitutional inability of even the most artful work to leave intact the
mute uniqueness of the tragic deed.
��The Problem of Place
in Oedipus at Co/onus
Abraham Schoener
The strangeness of this play begins with its name: Oidipous epi Koliiniii.
Let me tell yon what koliinos means: Herodotus and Xenophon use it as
a "heap of stones," but in particular of the stones heaped up in a barrow- a
grave mound. Its sister-word koliine is used by Sophocles exclusively as
a grave mound. It is the word with which Chrysothemis names Agamemnon's grave mound in the Electra. "Oedipus at Colonus" thus means
"Oedipus at the Grave Mound."
When Oedipus and Antigone reach Colonus, the place already bears
this name. A local inhabitant whom they meet at the beginning of the play
traces its name to an ancient knight named "Colonus"; but this etymology
has no support in mythology. There are no tales of this knight's life, but
just the story that he gave his name to the place. It is easy to suppose,
however, that no one would want his or her town known as the Grave Site
or the Corpse Mound; this etymology for the name would have been dismal
and grating. So it is equally easy to imagine how the legend of a founding
knight would arise- a knight who would give the town a glorious and noble
past rather than a morbid and gruesome one.
Yet if we accept this clever and somewhat mean-spirited etymology, we
are still left with a critical question: Whose grave site is it? Whose is the
grave that gives the town its name?
Abraham Schoener is a Thtor at St. John's College, Annapolis. This lecture was
given at the College in the summer of 1990. 'franslations are the author's.
67
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
That is easy to answer. When Oedipus reaches Colonus, he says: "This
is my resting place (line 88)." The town has always been named for him;
his arrival finally makes the name true.
The central question I want to pose is about place: What is the nature
of place and places? I don't think I have even the beginning of an answer
to this, but I know where to look. In the Oedipus at Co/onus, we find
ourselves barraged by questions of place: Where are we? Is this the right
place? Is it permissible to tread here? Where will Oedipus's bones rest?
These questions give way to a kind of certainty about place: Oedipus knows
right away that this is the right place; at the end of the play, in an
astonishing reversal, he guides Theseus and his own daughters to the place
where he knows he must die. But this certainty on his part only engenders
more wonder and confusion on our part. We will never know precisely
where Oedipus leaves this world, for he insists that it must remain secret
to everyone but Theseus. In the end this special place becomes a mystery
to us. We get a fascinating description of the general locale from one of
Theseus's attendants. He says that Oedipus stopped at a katarrhakte
hodos- a "path crashing downwards, with its roots in brazen steps sprung
from the earth (1590-91)." Somewhere near here Oedipus disappeared. Now
what kind of place is this, with roots deep into the earth herself?
I. The Pharmakos and the Bounds of the City.
A pharmakos is a scapegoat, someone chosen from among the inhabitants of the city to be driven out in an exercise of purification. Putting
the scapegoat outside will somehow cleanse the city. This does not seem
so strange at all. If we can imagine the scapegoat as the cause or emblem
of the pollution, it seems easy to purify the city simply by removing the
stain. The expulsion of the scapegoat is no more remarkable than any other
form of cleaning. We wash with water, we rinse away the dirt and stain.
The expulsion of the scapegoat is the means of washing the city. The only
problem, I think, comes from trying to determine what counts as outside
the city. Outside the walls? What if there are none-what if they are incomplete or being expanded? Th the edge of the territory? But where is
this? The ritual of the pharmakos thus implies a problem of place. Where
precisely is the city and what are its boundaries? How far must we expel
the pollution before we are clean? And where is the pollution when it is
no longer among us?
The story of Oedipus seems to be built around this problem. He is expelled, as a baby, from the city, stranded on a hlll in uncertain territory,
imported to a new city, not his own; he expels himself from this new city
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in an attempt to avoid becoming a wretch polluted by the stain of his
father's blood; and at the intersection of two roads- in a no-man's land,
neither in one city nor another- he murders his own father. Later, outside
his native city, he confounds the Sphinx, and is installed in the city as king
and savior. He begins his life as a pharmakos, expelled to avoid a stain,
he grows up apolis, without a city, but he reverses these circumstances as
he reaches adulthood. At his acme, he is at the center of a city, the loved
and revered ruler of the land.
But we know that he ends his life as he began it. In Thebes, his proper
home, he is discovered as twice stained: with the blood of his father, the
king,- and with his mother's sex. The city soon recognizes him as the source
of the pollution that is poisoning the city and so he must be driven out.
He is the perfect pharmakos, both the cause and the visible emblem of
the miasma, horribly mutilated by his own hand. And so he begins our
present play a wanderer, an exile- he calls himself apolis, a man without
a city (1357).
Not only is it easy to map Oedipus's life onto the pattern of the pharmakos, but it is easy to explain why the pattern is appropriate. Oedipus
has crossed certain uncrossable lines; he has violated certain inviolable oppositions. The city depends on these two oppositions. It is clear how quickly
all social and political stability would collapse if the young replaced the
old through force and not through time; and if children mated with their
parents and produced offspring who are neither absolutely children nor
siblings. The city depends upon a certain distance between young and old,
father and son, son and mother. Oedipus violated all of these boundaries
and, whether intentionally or not, thus threatened the order and stability
of his city. Whether he was knowing or not, he is stained with his transgression. He plunged himself twice, in different ways, into the forbidden zones
of his parents' bodies; willing, knowing, or not, he is stained by that penetration and there is no cleansing of the stain. This is the pollution, the miasma,
he both carries and represents, and as such he must be driven from the
city. Once he has penetrated these zones, the city is no place for him.
The model of the pharmakos and his stain helps remove a persistent
obstacle to our reading of the play. The pharmakos need not be guilty in
any sense (some cities simply expelled their ugliest inhabitants)-he need
simply carry the stain out. Thus we need not ask if Oedipus was culpable,
knowledgeable, rash, etc.-we need only ask if he was stained, polluted.
I have been polluted in many ways that were no fault of my own but left
me nonetheless polluted. Every time I have stepped in a dog's mess, every
time I have cleaned shellfish, every time I fill my fountain pen: in each
of these cases I have come into contact with something foreign to me-
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the ammoniac redolence of the shellfish or the blue dye of the inksomething that is both foreign and hard to remove. But there are stains
more powerful than these physical nuisances.
It seems to me there are many occasions when we unwittingly cross
certain borders and are marked forever by that crossing- we round a corner in our car and suddenly see bloody corpses strewn about in a horrible
accident. It seems to me that whether Oedipus is guilty of anything or not,
he is stained in just this way. He has been somewhere terrible, much more
remote from the realm of our comfortable daily existence than the smell
of decomposing shellfish is- but now that he has been there, he is forever
marked by what he has seen, known, and felt. That is his stain, that is
the necessity for his expulsion from the city. What he knows and has felt
is simply too terrible for the city to contain.
II. The Re-integration of the Pharmakos.
This understanding of Oedipus's condition seems too easy to me. We
understand the question of his place as a strictly political problem, a problem for the city. We say that Oedipus is properly apolis-an exile without
a city- because his stain threatens the city's safety. We think of that line
in Aristotle-almost a cliche-"the man who can live outside of the city
is either a beast or a god" (Cf. Pol. 1253a29). Fine, we say, Oedipus is both,
cast out, apolis, he is a wretched beast, deprived of all society- but he
is also a god, super-human in what he has done, what he knows, what
he has suffered and endured. The proof of this is surely in his fate: Why
else would he simply vanish, summoned by a god who says "it is time for
us to leave"? His amazing disappearance would then be simply the ultimate
expression of his political position; as a man who is apolis, his proper place
is not with the dead humans below but with the gods above.
This scheme even lets us understand the most remarkable reversal
presented by this play. 1\vo present kings, one fallen one, and one pretender
to a throne all agree that the outcast, the polluted pharmakos, must be
brought back into the city so that it may prosper. This is not hard to gloss.
It means that the city must face and find a place for the terrible things
that threaten it. The city weakens itself by simply banishing all of its threats;
rather it must embrace them. Thus we not only still talk about Oedipus
and other such polluted citizens, but we celebrate them in the poetry called
'fragedy. And Athens, so wise among cities, celebrates these polluted citizens
in a competition presented for the most part at public expense, attended
by the whole city. This tradition thus welcomes the pharmakoi back into
the city and installs them at its heart. The city grows stronger by gazing
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in wonder at the transgressors who threaten it. The secret boon that Oedipus
brings to Athens is thus nothing more than his legend-his mythos-which
now, because of Theseus's good will, becomes public property. By holding
this story in common, rather than expelling and forgetting it, the city
strengthens itself and grows to high health. Athens, the city of tragedy,
rises to its awesome pinnacle; Thebes, who made Oedipus apolis, stumbles
and fades.
The answer to the question about Oedipus's place thus becomes
paradoxical but fruitful. He is apolis and must be cast out of the city; but
precisely because the city must address what is apolis, his story must be
enshrined at the center of the city. His place as murderer is outside the
city; as legend, it must be at its center.
III: The Final Place
I still wonder whether these are the only considerations for our understanding of this question. Must we address the question of place only in
relation to the city? In other words, does the opposition of polis and apolis
exhaust the question of place? As much as I find the scheme outlined above
both helpful and convincing, I stumble when attempting to apply it to this
play. The play certainly has political concerns, but these concerns are confounded by the persistent strangeness of the play.
The root of this strangeness is surely Oedipus's final disappearance.
To make anything at all of it, we will have to return to our initial question
and investigate the nature of the place where he disappears.
In the first sentence of the play, Oedipus asks: "What region or city
of men have we reached?" (1-2). Antigone is his companion and guide,
but before she can answer, he asks her to find a seat for him- "whether
on ground which may be trodden or within the groves of the gods" (9-10).
This opposition is interesting; it already expands the opposition between
city and no-city with which we began. It is also interesting that Oedipus
is willing to accept a seat within a sacred precinct. This seems to indicate
a deep impiety on his part- he is willing to take a possible altar as a resting
place- and thus emphasizes his alienation from the affairs of men. This
also complicates his relation to the gods: not only is he apolis, an exile,
but he is asebes, insensitive to the traditional bounds of piety.
A local resident soon approaches but refuses to answer Oedipus's questions until the wanderer quits his seat; as Antigone suspected, the ground
is sacred. The local says that "it is impure to tread upon it" (37). Oedipus
does not seem shaken by this; after all, impiety is not foreign to him. He
maintains his seat and asks to whom the place is sacred. He learns that
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the dreadful Furies hold it; but the local refuses to call them by that name.
He appeals to two circumlocutions and finally names them as "The Kindly
Ones (Eumenides) who have seen all things" (42).
The play marks a new beginning at this point. When he learns that
the Eumenides hold this place, Oedipus the wanderer suddenly announces
that "he will never leave his seat in this land" (45). Once the local leaves
to consult a higher authority about Oedipus's violation of the grove,
Oedipus addresses the Furies directly and says that Phoebus "spoke of this
place as my rest after a long time-my final place-where I would find
a seat of the dread Goddesses and a resting place for strangers; and there
I should close my miserable life as a boon to my new hosts and a curse
to those who exiled me" (88-93).
This is the first we hear of the prophecy that determines the' rest of
the play's action. Oedipus claims that Phoebus pronounced it years ago
when he first questioned Delphi about his father; it is interesting that
Sophocles makes no mention of it until Oedipus reaches and recognizes
his "final place." But this ancient and personal oracle has been recently
confirmed; both Creon and Polyneices have just had oracles that proclaim
that they will need Oedipus- or his body- in order to triumph in a current
conflict. These oracles differ in one essential feature from Oedipus's: they
all name him as the source of a benefit to whichever land he rests in; his
oracle names only one place, this place, in which he will close his life and
become a benefit to some- his hosts- and a curse to others.
This place is described at length. It is a lush grove sacred to the Furies,
within a larger plot, all of which belongs to Poseidon. The whole plot is
clearly sacred, but only the precinct of the Furies is so holy that it cannot
be entered without impurity. Oedipus eventually leaves this plot at the
behest of the chorus of local citizens; but at the end of the play, he reenters it, this time as his own guide, leading Theseus and his own daughters
to a destination clear only to him. This second time he makes his way to the
down-rushing path and the brazen steps- near which he finally vanishes.
The chorus's songs add to our knowledge of the place. After Theseus
has assured Oedipus that no one will ever dislodge him from this land,
the chorus sings a beautiful song praising their particular location:
Friend- within this land of fair steeds
you have come to the earth's best home-
where birds sing, ivy and vines grow thick, berries flourish, and the sun
always shines (668-80). I will quote the second strophe of this ode verbatim, for it is remarkable:
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There is such a thing as I
Have never heard of in an Asian land
Nor in the great Dorian Island of Pelops: a sprout-
A plant-untouched by hands, self-madeA terror to the spears of our enemiesThat blooms mighty in this land.
I mean the olive with its silver leaves, nurturer of children. (694-701)
This plant, among the lush vines and plenteous berries, makes the
beautiful grove terrible and strange. An olive, untouched by human hands,
self-created- autopoios? An olive that is at once the nurturer of children
and a terror to enemies? This native plant, so similar to th<rwandering
Oedipus, is the surest sign that he has indeed found his proper place.
We must also consider its other chief inhabitants- the gods who hold
it- in order to grasp how this place can be proper to Oedipus. The first
gods are the Furies whose grove Oedipus has violated. They are so awful
that no one in the play mentions them by name; instead they are addressed,
as the first local does, in a series of euphemisms. The central one of these
is of course "Eumenides," "the kindly ones"- a euphemism that is nearly
a lie. The Furies are hardly kindly but vicious in pursuit of their quarry.
They hound murderers, those who, like Oedipus, are stained with the blood
they have spilled- especially those who are stained with their own parents'
blood. Their fury is so extreme and easily kindled that the chorus says:
We tremble to name them
And pass by their grove
Without a glance,
Without a sound,
Moving our lips (without a word) in silent reverence. (128-32)
The chorus makes clear that the Furies' presence in the grove is almost
palpable-as if its members avert their eyes in passing for fear of actually
catching a glance of them. The Furies haunt this land- it is not only dedicated to them but somehow suffused with them. This seems possible for
these awful forces in a way that would not be plausible for Zeus or Apollo.
We cannot imagine them lurking in or haunting a grove-if Zeus or Apollo
were present, he would not only be manifest but brilliant. Such gods could
not disappear if they were present. The Kindly Ones thus give us a small
clue for understanding Oedipus's final disappearance: When things are
terrible, too terrible to gaze at or even mention, then it is somehow all the
more plausible that they are present even if we cannot see them. We are
disposed to believe that such terrible things can haunt and hold a place.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
The chorus repeats that the whole land in which the grove stands is
sacred to Poseidon. We do not imagine his place in the land in the same
way we do that of the Eumenides in theirs. The chorus is afraid of seeing
the Eumenides, but neither it nor the exceedingly pious Theseus ever betrays
any expectation of meeting Poseidon. The land is his, but he is not there.
What does this mean, that this land is consecrated to Poseidon, god
of the sea? There is a hint for us in a common Homeric epithet that the
chorus applies to him late in the play: they call him gaiaochos- the Earth
Holder (1072). Poseidon's waters encircle the Earth and bound it on every
side. But as they circle the earth, they never fall below it nor rise above
it. There are neither subterranean nor heavenly seas. This banality gains
some importance when we consider the remarkable prayer that Theseus
utters after Oedipus's disappearance. The messenger says that he hears
Theseus "reverencing both the Earth and the Olympus of the gods above
at once-in the same word" (1654-55). This opposition between earth and
sky reminds us of Zeus's trilateral division of the world after his ascension
to power; he reserved the sky for himself, gave the underworld to his brother
Hades, and gave the sea to his brother Poseidon. The earth thus seems
to be neutral territory-uncontrolled by any god. But this appearance is
belied by the common ascription of earthquakes to Poseidon: as earthholder, he is also earth-shaker. This suggests that Poseidon's realm is not
the sea alone but the entire surface of this middle realm between Hades
and Olympus. He would be the god who holds not only this sacred land
but the whole Earth, the common land upon which we all walk.
But this formulation cannot be right: we never walk on Poseidon's paths.
Poseidon holds precisely those grounds upon which we cannot walk; he
holds the shifting waters of the sea and the shifting surface of the earth.
His paths are no paths for us and our feet; they are by nature untreadable.
As Odysseus knows full well, Poseidon is the god who makes travel perilous,
progress disastrous. He is the lord whose realm offers no sure step. This
makes him the perfect lord of the land that contains our last mystery, the
down-rushing path.
Sophocles calls it katarrhakte hodos; many translators blanch at this
paradox and call it a "sheer threshold." Katarrhakte can mean "sheer" indeed, but it is usually more forceful than that; it comes from rhasso- to
rush at or strike suddenly. Theseus uses katarhasso ninety ,lines earlier to
describe the action of hail: it strikes you as a result of rushing straight
down. It is the parent of our "cataract," a lovely word for waterfall. Now
it is hard to understand a katarrhakte hodos. It would seem to mean a
path that dashes straight down, suddenly. Because such a path seems like
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no path, some translators offer "threshold."* A hodos always goes somewhere-as indeed this one does; the messenger says that it is rooted in the
earth, in brazen steps. This is still a very strange path; it seems to be a
hole, or a cliff- a sheer drop from the grove to the roots of the earth. Can
we call such a drop a "path"? We could hardly come and go upon it. Though
it seems to go somewhere, it is still impassable. We could not tread on it.
This path is no path.
This is not the first strange path Oedipus has encountered; he killed
his father and thus initiated his pollution at a crossroads where three paths
met at once. These crossroads portended Oedipus's transgressions and
ultimate exile; after Thebes, he became a man of no city, but lived only
on path after path, crossroad after crossroad.
But this last path is not of the same order. It is not simply a path as
opposed to a city; it is not simply ek poleos or apo/is, as were the crossroads.
As we have seen, it is no road at all; it offers no conveyance but only an
abrupt end in itself. In this way this hodos does not recall his status as
apolis; nor does it contradict it. As an abrupt end, it portends Oedipus's
sudden disappearance, rather than his reintegration into the city. This disappearance thus does not resolve Oedipus's place in the city but displaces
it. In a certain sense, it indicates that from now on he is neither apolis
nor empolis but simply without a place. From this moment on, Oedipus
is nowhere.
IV: No Place
The down-rushing path is itself no proof of this. We hear only that
Oedipus pauses at this path, not that he ever embarks on it. But Theseus's
prayer gives us an indication of Oedipus's current place. In the prayer he
"reverences both Earth and Olympus at once- in the same logos." This
suggests that Oedipus is neither interred in the earth nor raised to heaven.
Nor is he in both. The amazing form of Theseus's prayer seems to suggest
a third possibility.
Theseus does not just join Heaven and Earth but he reverences them in
a single logos. This logos must have somehow overcome their differences-
* This translation depends upon reading ados ("threshold") instead of hodos here
in line 57. The majority of the play's manuscripts read hodos, not ados; moreover
ados is a rare form of the word for threshold. This word is oudos; the Form
ados appears nowhere else in tragedy and in only two or three instances in ariy
other authors. This translation thus seems to be prompted more by the paradox
posed by hodos than the textual support for ados.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
or suppressed them. In any case, it has caught these two opposites in a
single logos. It seems to me that this logos could not, any more, refer to
place. I do not know how to think of a place that is neither heaven nor
earth- or one in which the sharp differences between heaven and earth
are not addressed. In fact, it seems to me that this opposition is the very
foundation for any possibility of place. Theseus has seen something that
does not depend on this foundation.
This something is not a Force but another kind of place; after all,
Theseus does not pray to the gods of Earth and Olympus but to Earth
and Olympus themselves. He is praying to two places.
His remarkable vision (so potent that he must shield his eyes) is thus
not of Oedipus's epiphany, or of the angels who escort him, but of the
final place where Oedipus will rest. This place must be as different from
normal places as Oedipus was from normal humans. As we have seen, it
must be no kind of place we could understand. But just as it does not
depend on the fundamental distinctions that organize and delimit our
world, so this final resting place neither replaces Oedipus within the city
nor sustains his exile from it. Rather it leaves the distinctions of the city
behind. As heaven and earth are joined in one logos, so are joined the
fundamental distinctions upon which society depends. As we have seen,
Oedipus first became an exile precisely for transgressing these
distinctions- but in this place, the distinctions are not transgressed but
simply annulled in their conjunction. In this place, unlike Hades or Olympus, borders, boundaries, limits, order are no longer a concern.
One cannot deny the political concerns of this play. We cannot forget
that Oedipus has blessed Athens in a very political way; his place in their
land guarantees that Theseus and his offspring will always hold the
kingship. Does this manifest political legacy threaten the special place
Oedipus has found, beyond political structures and concerns?
No. I think instead, that Theseus's prayer and the place it reveals gently
chastise us- the city and its inhabitants- for some of the effects of our
political concerns. The play insists that Oedipus disappear. Oedipus himself
insists that we cannot know where his grave is; even his daughters are forbidden this knowledge. The grave can have no kolone- no grave barrow.
He forbids us to look on his resting place, but also to search for it or speak
about it. All trace of him must vanish.
His wishes are a clear prohibition against setting up his grave as a heroaltar. He thus prevents himself from becoming a ritual object for the City.
His prohibitions make him neither a presence in the city nor an exile at
its gates; rather they make him a true shade, a vanishing memory, whose
place is nowhere. This willful disappearance denies the eager city its oppor-
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tunity to gaze at him, to wonder at him, to celebrate him- to gather in
the theater and review his tragic fate. His disappearance is meant to deprive
us of the horrible yet fascinating object we love to consider. It is a disappearance that undercuts the very aims and habits of the tragic theater.
The play is so crafty that we too, the spectators or would-be spectators,
are sympathetic to this undercutting. When the chorus in the play first
learn Oedipus's identity, they subject him to a humiliating and prurient
inquiry into his history. Having already won their respect, he begs them
to desist- but they press on. "Did you really kill your father? And these
lovely children- are they ... your sisters?" Oedipus answers truthfully and
concisely. We bristle with rage at the chorus's base curiosity- but whose
curiosity is this if not ours? Confronted with Oedipus's mutilated eyes,
wouldn't we be horrified but at the same time insatiable in stealing glances
at them? Even we spectators can understand his desire to disappear. This
is the desire to retire from the public's insatiable gaze-whether it be
solicitous or prurient. This is the desire to be nowhere- to be neither iu
the heart of the city nor wandering at its borders, but nowhere.
This desire is caught also in the words of the chorus, who utter one
of the strangest yet plainest lines in poetry:
me phunai ton hapanta nikai logon.
Not being exceeds all speech. (1225)
This is the final place Oedipus has found, his sweet end: not in the city,
not outside of it; not even in the play; but beyond all logos- in not being.
��Oedipus the King and
Aristotle's List of Categories:
A Note
Chaninah Maschler
Substance (ousia)
Quantity (poson)
Quality (poion)
Relation (pros tl)
Place (pou)
Time (pote)
Stance (keisthaz)
Condition (ekhein)
Doing (poiein)
Being done to (paskhein)
-so runs the most famous of all lists of categories! How did Aristotle,
or whoever it was that first supplied the list, obtain it? And what are
categories good for?
I believe the most direct route to an answer is to look at a passage in
Sophocles' Oedipus the King.
Jocasta: What made you turn around so anxiously?
*Categories lb25. As the Becker pagination number shows, the treatise on categories
opens Aristotle's works in their standard arrangement.
Chaninah Maschler is a Thtor at St. John's College, Annapolis.
79
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
80
Oedipus: I thought you said that Laius was attacked and butchered at a place
where three roads meet.
Jocasta: That is the story, and it is told so still.
Oedipus: Where is the place where this was done to him? (pou, paskhein)
Jocasta: The land's called Phocis, where a two-forked road comes in from
Delphi and from Daulia.
Oedipus: And how much time has passed since these events? (pole)
Jocasta: Just prior to your presentation here as king this news was published
to the city.
Oedipus: Oh, Zeus, what have you willed to do to me? (poiein)
Jocasta: Oedipus, what makes your heart so heavy?
Oedipus: No, tell me first of Laius' appearance, what peak of youthful vigor
he had reached. (poios)
Jocasta: A tall man, showing his first growth of white. He had a figure not
unlike your own.
Oedipus: Alas, it seems that in my ignorance I laid those fearful curses on
myself ... (poiein)
(lines 727-45, in the translation of Thomas Gould, Prentice Hall Greek
Drama Series, 1970)
Setting chapter iv of Aristotle's Categories side by side with the cited
lines from Sophocles' tragedy prompts the hypothesis that the nine
categories posterior to ousia may at one time have been the formal headings
under which a person charged with the task of finding the unknown party
responsible for a crime of violence was expected to carry on his investigation. As a result of pressing (like Oedipus or the modern investigative
reporter) for answers to the questions
Where?
When?
What did he look like?
How was he attired?
What was he doing?
What was being done to him?
the "first substance" question "Who?" would be tentatively answered, the
indictment drawn up, and the accused party brought to trial.
It is of course true that ordinary discourse, Greek or English, supplies
the small question words that demarcate and orient investigation. Positioning them in a juridic context, which is the effect achieved by dragging
in Sophocles' Oedipus the King, may seem needless. Yet the pathos of the
king's lines at 844 f.If he [the eye witness to the crime] continues still to speak of many, then
�MASCHLER
81
I could not have killed him. One man and many do not jibe. But if he says
"one belted man," the doubt is gone. The balance tips toward me. I did it.*
-is, I think more justly identified when this last hope is seen to be a hope
for mathematical clarity and exactness, for degreeless truth of predication,
as per Categories 6a20 ff., rather than a hope for innocence.
I seem to have reversed my course. Having promised to throw light on
Aristotle's Categories I end up using that little book to highlight Oedipus.
But wasn't it some progress in the other direction to propose, by way
of quoting the exchange of questions and answers between dialogue partners all too well attuned, that the categories are not primarily ontological
pigeon holes, nor semantical pigeon holes comparable to the grammarians'
"parts of speech," but, rather, shared demarcations of investigative
discourse?
If antecedent to asking particular questions about particular things there
were no kinds of questions for an investigator to ask, and if a person who
knows were unaware that what he or she knows are answers to questions
that might be asked of him or her, there could be no investigating or knowing, whether solo or in concert. The categories are, a grid for speech, perception, and thought that makes it possible for questions to be sufficiently
circumscribed for answers to fit them and to allow answers to generate
new questions. Calling them "schemes of predication" (skhemata kategorias
tou ontos) is just another way of saying the same thing.** My suggestion
is, in short, that "predicating" is the answering of an explicit or implicit
question and that "categories" are as much and as little a priori as are
question-types. Further, that the Greek word for "predicating," kategorein,
which bears the sounds of the word for "marketplace" or "town square,"
agora, within it, retains the memory of Jocasta's lines 849-50-"He [the
eye witness] can't reject that and reverse himself. The city heard these things,
not I alone"- the memory, that is, of public declaration. The fact that an
official "accuser," such as were Meletus and Anytus in the Apology, is called
a kategoros further confirms this.
•
A.t~st '!OV
d !-lEV oiJv En
aUtOv dpt9!J6V, oUK Byffi ~Ktavov·
oiJ yO.p ytvou' liv de; ye -role; 1to/...A.oic; iaoc;.
d 15' livop? ilv' ol61;rovov avo~cret, cracpro<;
[843-47]
'oii'' tcr,lv ~151] 'oOpyov e!c; &~t1: psnov.
** See Chantraine, Dictionnaire etymologique de Ia Langue Grecque, volume 1,
p. 392, on echo.
�82
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Where is the gain in having such antiquarian guess work as was just
laid out? Perhaps it will nudge us to think of informative speech as carrying the weight of vouching for what we say.
The question "What are categories good for?" was, even if sketchily,
at least addressed. Notice that this is by no means the same question as
"What is drawing up a list of them, and such charcterizing of them as
Aristotle offers, good for?"- because the latter question is tantamount to
asking, "Why turn tacit into explicit knowing?"
�Depth and Desire
Eva Brann
By an old tradition the first lecture of the year is dedicated to the new
members of our college, to the freshman students and the freshman tutors.
It is a chance to tell you something about the shape and the spirit of the
Program that governs St. John's College-and not only to tell you but
perhaps even to show you.
I think I am right in this spirit when I begin by examining the classname I just called you by: freshmen. A freshman, my etymological dictionaries tell me, is a person "not tainted, sullied or worn," a still-fresh
human being, where "fresh" means, so the dictionary points out, both
"frisky" and "impertinent." Later on in the year you will learn a weighty
Greek word applicable to persons of frisky impertinence. They are said
to have thymos, spiritedness or plain spunk, a characteristic necessary for
serious learning. This spirited frame of mind is perfectly compatible with
being shy and secretly a little scared. In fact, to my mind, it is a sign of
quality in newcomers to be anxious for their own dignity in the way that
shows itself in spirited shyness. It is our business, the business of the faculty
and of the more responsible returning students, to help your spiritedness
to become serious, to emerge from the shyness, whether it be of the quiet
or the boisterous sort; to help you channel your energy into a steady desire
for learning and to direct your boldness toward the discovery of depth,
and, moreover, to help you without leaving you tainted, sullied, and worn
out. I keep saying "help," because although great changes are bound to
Eva Brann is the new Dean of St. John's College, Annapolis. This is the Dean's
opening lecture of the current academic year.
83
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
take place in you in these next years- do but behold the seniors: unsullied,
untainted, unworn, and transfigured- we none of us know who should
get the most credit besides yourself: the Program, our teaching, your friendship, or just plain time passing.
At any rate, the spirit of the college is invested in seriousness, a certain
kind of seriousness- not dead seriousness but live seriousness, you might
say. This seriousness shows itself on many occasions: in deep or heated
conversations in the noon sun or at midnight, in marathons of effort and
in the oblivion of sleep, in devoted daily preparation and in glorious
goofing-off, in the willingness to try on opinions and in the need to come
to conclusions. What does your school do to induce this very particular
kind of seriousness?
When you chose to come to St. John's you were, perhaps, attracted
by the fact that the mode of teaching normal in higher education is quite
abnormal here. I mean lectures. Only one lecture a week is an integral part
of the Program, on Fridays at 8:15 P.M. Now the chief thing about a lecture is that it is prepared ahead of time. For instance, I began working
on this lecture in March. A lecture ought to be the temporarily final word,
the best a speaker has to give you at the moment. It should not matter
whether the surface of the speech is brilliant or drab, as long as it is a
deliberate and well-prepared opening of the speaker's heart and mind to
the listeners. As such it carries authority. These authoritative occasions
are obviously important to the life of the school.
Yet our normal way is not the prepared lecture but the focused conversation, which is effervescent rather than prepared, provisional rather than
authoritative, and participatory rather than reactive. Your tutors will not
tell you but ask you; they will demonstrate not acquired knowledge but
the activity of learning. One reason why the teaching of new tutors- and
some of your classes will be taught by newcomers- is often most
memorable to freshmen is that their learning is genuinely original and keeps
sympathetic pace with yours. There is an irresistible but false local
etymology of the word tutor as "one who toots," perhaps his own horn.
What the word tutor really signifies is a person who guards and watches
learning. We are deliberately not called professors because we profess no
special expertise.
Since you will not be told things, you will have to speak yourselves.
What will you speak about? The Program will ask you to focus your conversation on certain texts- they might be books or scores or paintings.
These texts have been selected over the years by us because they have the
living seriousness I am trying to speak about. To my mind texts, like people, are serious when they have a surface that arouses the desire to know
�BRANN
85
them and the depth to fulfill that desire. Here, then, is my announced theme
for tonight: the depth that calls forth desire.
Th delineate that depth I must once again distinguish our kind of conversation, the kind associated with such texts, from the kind of fellowship
to be found in other places. All over this country, and wherever the conditions for some human happiness exist, there are people who know all there
is to know about some field that they till with a single-minded love. This
is the blessed race of buffs, aficionados, and those rare professionals who
have had the grace to remain amateurs at heart. They study history or race
stock cars or do biology or fly hot-air balloons. My own favorite fanatic
is the young son of a graduate of St. John's. This boy is persistently in
love with fish, with the hooks, flies, sinkers, leaders, reels, and rods for
catching them, with the books for studying them, with the aquaria, ponds,
lakes, and oceans for observing them. When I first met him he looked up
at me shyly and asked if I knew what an ichthyologist was. Since I knew
some Greek I knew the etymology of the word and could tell him that
it is a person who can give an account of fish, so he was satisfied with
me. This boy may have his troubles but he is also acquainted with bliss.
This kind of concentrated bliss we cannot deliver to you, except perhaps
in limited extracurricular ways. Instead we, or rather the Program, will drive
you through centuries of time and diversities of opinion, while depriving
you of the freedom and the serenity to till and to master a well-defined
field of your own choosing. You will study Greek and invest hours in
memorizing paradigms, but your tutorial is not a Greek class- it is a
language tutorial in which Greek is studied only partly for its own virtues,
and partly as a striking and, for you, a novel example of human speech
and its possibilities. You will study Euclid and demonstrate many propositions, yet your tutorial is intended not to make you geometers but to allow
you to think about the activity of mathematics. In short, you will be asked
to read many books carefully and to study many matters in some detail
only to find them passing away, becoming mere examples in the conversation. And these fugitive texts will almost all bear their excellence, their worthiness to be studied exhaustively, on their face, for we try to pick the ideal
examples. This procedure is practically guaranteed to keep you off-balance,
even to drive you a little crazy, since you will not often have the satisfaction of dwelling on anything and of mastering it. How do we dare do this
to you?
Here is a strange but unavoidable fact: Those who plow with devotion
and pleasure and increasing mastery some bounded plot on the globe of
knowledge often undergo a professional deformation. They lose first the
will and then the ability to go deep. Th be sure, specialists are often said
�86
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
to know their subjects "in depth," but that is not the depth I mean. Let
me illustrate with an example I have a special affection for. I began my
academic life as an archaeologist, and the first thing archaeologists do is
to dig deep past the present surface of the earth, or rather they scrape it
away layer by layer. But with every stratum they scrape away they find
themselves at a new surface, the surface of a former age. They poke into
time- a magical enough activity- but they do not pretend to pierce the
nature of things. For example, there would come up from the depths of
a well-shaft an ancient pot. I would catalogue it by naming its form, say:
kotyle, a kind of cup; by giving its dimensions: h. 0.108 m.; diam. 0.135 m;
by describing its proportions: deep-bodied, narrow-footed; by interpreting
the picture painted on it: a rabbit-this is the pot-painter being funnyjumping a tracking hound from behind; by conjecturing about the provenance and the stylistic influences: made in Attica under Corinthian influence; and by assigning a date: third quarter of the seventh century B.C.
Was I required to consider what I meant by dimensions, proportions,
styles, images, funniness, influences, places? Not a bit-that would have
meant time out and profitless distraction from my business, which was
to know all about the looks and appearances of the pottery of Athens in
early times. What this Program of ours offers you is exactly that time out,
and that splendid distraction. People will say of you, when you have
graduated, that you have acquired a broad background. But your education will have been broad only in a very incidental and sketchy waycertainly not in the fashion of a close-knit tapestry that is a continuous
texture of interwoven warp and woof. Many of the books you are about
to read do tie into one another. Sometimes a book written by an ancient
Greek will (I am not being funny) talk back to one written by a modern
�BRANN
87
American, or the opposite- the strands that connect these books seem to
run back and forth and sideways through time. But some books will stand,
at least as we read them, in splendid isolation, and all in all the texts we
study do not add up to a texture of knowledge: There is no major called
"Great Books." How could there be competence in a tradition whose moving
impulse is to undercut every wisdom in favor of a yet deeper one? There
is not even agreement whether this tradition of ours advances or degenerates
with time, whether Its authors are all talking about the same thing, though
in a different way, or in apparently similar ways about quite incomparable
things.
Here is what the books do seem to me to have in common: They intend to go into the depths of things. All the authors, even those subtly
self-contradictory ones who claim that there are no depths but only surfaces, are deep in the way I mean. This desire for depth, then, is what will
hold your studies here together. There is a word for this effort, to which
it is my privilege to introduce you tonight. The word is philosophy. The
term is put together from two Greek words, philos, an adjective used of
someone who feels friendly, even passionate love, and sophia, which means
wisdom or deep knowledge.
When I say that your school is devoted to philosophy, the love of deep
knowledge, I mean that all our authors want to draw you deep into their
matter, whether by words, symbols, notes, or visual shapes. Incidentally,
in a few weeks a lecturer, a tutor from Sante Fe, will come and contradict
me; he has told me that he will say that what we do needn't bear the name
of philosophy at all.
Let that be a subject for future discussion, and let me come to the heart
of my lecture tonight. It is the question what depth is and how it is possible. I think we are all inclined to suppose that literal, actual depth belongs
to bodies and space and that people or texts are deep only by analogy,
metaphorically speaking.
I want to propose that here, as so often in philosophy, it is really the
other way around: it is the body that is deep merely metaphorically, as
a manner of speaking, while the soul and its expression alone are deep
in the primary sense.
Certainly the depth of a body or a space is elusive. If a body has a
perfectly hard and impenetrable surface, its depth must be forever beyond
our experience-a kind of hard, inaccessible nothingness. On the other
hand, let the physical body have a hollow in it-such caves are powerful
allegories of depth and you will in the next four years come across some
famous holes: the grotto of Calypso, the underground chamber in Plato's
Republic, Don Quixote's cavern of Montesinos. Now ask yourself: Where
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
actually is the depth? The containing boundaries of the hollow are all faces
of the body, and no matter how deep you seem to be inside the body, you
are still on its surface, just as I argued before about archaeological
excavations.
Now consider matterless bodies, geometric solids. Euclid says in Book
XI that a solid has length, breadth, and depth, but he gives us no way
to tell which is which: it depends on your perspective- in fact all three
dimensions are lengths delineating the surfaces that he says are the extremity
of the solid. What is inside that solid, what its inwardness or true depth
is, he does not feel obliged to say. These are questions you might want
to raise in your mathematics tutorials: Can one get inside a geometric solid?
How?
Bodies, I am suggesting, are either too hard or too involuted or too
featureless or too empty to have true depth. Only divine or human beings
and the texts they produce- texts made of words, notes, paint, stones, what
have you- can be literally deep or profound. For I attribute depth or profundity to that which is of a truly different order from the surface that
covers and hides it. And it must be the inside and foundation of just that
surface, so that we can gain entrance to it through that particular outside
and through no other. Every depth must be sought through its own proper
surface, which it both denies or negates and supplies with significance:
the surface that hides its own depth is never superficial.
Human beings seem to me the most obvious example of such depth.
All human beings have a surface, namely the face and figure they present.
I personally think that in real life almost all people also have an inside,
their soul, their depth. But there are some famous novels in which characters
are described who are nothing but empty shells. Facades that hide nothing
often flaunt an insidiously unflawed beauty. Against such nearly impenetrable surfaces the people who are attracted break themselves, but if
they do burst through, they fall into an abyss of nothingness.
However, these are fictions, and actual human beings have by the very
fact of their humanity an inner sanctum. We begin by noting, casually,
their face, their demeanor. As our interest awakens we proceed to read more
carefully, to watch their appearance ardently for what it signifies. If we
are lucky, they may open up to us, as we do to them. If we go about it
right, this interpretative process need never come to an end, for the human
inside, or to give it, once again, its proper name, the soul, is a true mystery.
By a true mystery I mean a profundity whose bottom we can never seem
to plumb though we have a persistent faith in its actuality. I think that
for us human beings only depths and mysteries induce viable desire. For
love entirely without longing is not possible among human beings. Many
�BRANN
89
a failure of love follows on the- usually false- opinion that we have exhausted the other person's inside, that there is no further promise of depth.
It is not only in respect to living human beings that depth calls forth
desire. This college would not be the close human community that it is
if you did not get to know some human beings deeply-which is called
friendship. But such love is only the essential by-product (to coin a contradictory phrase) of our philosophical Program, a program that encourages
the love of certain para-human beings. These para-human beings are the
expressions of the human soul, our texts, as well as the things they talk
about.
Let me take a moment to ask whether this particular desire for depth
I keep referring to is common among human beings or even natural. I say
it is absolutely natural and very common. You will see what I mean when
I tell you what I think is the nature of desire. Desire seems to me to be
a kind of negative form or a shaped emptiness in the soul, a place in the
spirit expecting to be filled, a kind of psychic envelope waiting to be stuffed
with its proper contents.
Now take a long leap and ask yourself what a question is. A question
is a negative form or shaped emptiness in the mind, a place in thought
waiting to be filled, a psychic envelope ready to be supplied with its proper
message. Questions therefore have the same structure as desires. In fact
questions are a subspecies of desire: a question is desire directed upon
wisdom or knowledge. Therefore I might go so far as to say that this school
teaches the shaping of desire- because here we practice asking deep questions. Now I think that very many, probably all, human beings would like
to ask such questions if they only knew how. That is why the desire for
depth is both common and natural.
What we most often, or at least most programmatically, ask questions
about are those texts I have been mentioning. As I have intimated, such
a text, particularly a text of words, is a curious kind of being, neither a
living soul nor a mere rigid thing. What a book might be, such that it could
have genuine depth, is a question that should arise over and over again
in the tutorials and the seminars. That books do have depth is shown by
the fact that they induce questions, the directed desire to open them up.
I want to end by giving a sample of a deep text and a demonstration of
the beginning of a reading, a mere knock at its gate, so to speak.
The text is a saying by Heraclitus. Heraclitus flourished about 500 B.C.
He was early among those who inquired into the nature of things, and
he had a contemporary antagonist, Parmenides. Heraclitus said that it is
wise to agree that "All things are one." Parmenides said things that, on
the face of it, seem similar, but whether he meant the same thing as
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
90
Heraclitus, or something opposite or something incomparable- that is a
matter of ever-live debate. In any case, Heraclitus and Parmenides together
embody the great principle of our tradition that I mentioned before; you
might call it the "the principle of responsive differentiation." However, I
shall not try to talk about Heraclitus's actual wisdom tonight; that along
with the previous questions-"What is philosophy?", "What is a solid?",
"What is a cave?", "What is a book?" -I leave to future discussion. I shall
attend only to the preliminaries with which Heraclitus surrounds his
wisdom.
Heraclitus's book is largely lost, though as far as we know it was not
a treatise but a book of sayings. Even in ancient times it had a reputation
for depth; the tragedian Euripides said of it that it required a Delian diverthe divers from the island Delos (which means the "Manifest" or "Clear")
were evidently famous for diving deep and bringing things to light.
The saying I have chosen goes:
001(
&~ou
a'A'AiJ.
~ou
Myou
UKOOOUVTU~
o~o'Aoy&iv oo<p6v &o~tV !:v nciv~a &!vat
Transliterated it reads:
ouk emou alia tou logou akousantas
homologein sophon estin hen panta einai.
On the surface this saying is in Greek and needs to be translated. Since
I have argued that surfaces are, like traditional Japanese packaging, an
integral part of the contents, they must be carefully and patiently undone.
Now to put Heraclitus's Greek into English is, up to a certain point, not
hard. Your Greek manual will tell you about the use of the accusative and
about various infinitives, and your Greek dictionaries will give you the
meaning of "listening," of "wise" (which you are already familiar with in
philosophy), and of "agree."
But then you look up logos. "Logos" is one of the tremendous words
of our tradition, to which it is, once again, my privilege to introduce you.
Without even looking it up, I can give you the following meanings: word
and speech, saying and story, tally and tale, ratio and relation, account
and explanation (that was the meaning which occurred in the word
"ichthyologist"), argument and discussion, reason and reasoning, collection and gathering, the word of God and the son of God. As you Jearn
Greek you will see what it is about the root-meaning of logos that makes
this great scope of significance possible.
But how are you to choose? You are caught in a vicious circle: Unless
�BRANN
91
you know what Heraclitus means by logos you cannot choose the right
English translation, and unless you discover the right English word you
cannot know what he means by his saying. However, sensible people find
ways to scramble themselves out of this bind. Try a meaning that makes
a good immediate sense: choose "reasoning."
Listening not to me but to my reasoning,
it is wise to agree that all things are one.
This yields a saying that is particularly pertinent to us, since it might
be posted over every seminar door. For though we must look into each
other's faces, we must not get stuck on personalities. Each seminar member
has a right to say: "Never mind me, answer my argument." Heraclitus is
introducing a great notion into the Western world here: Not who says it
matters but what is said.
But there is more signifying surface to the saying. Listen to its sound
and notice that in the second line the word homologein sounds like logos.
"Agree" is a good first meaning but it does not preserve the similarity of
sound. Homologein literally means "to say the same." Let me try that, and
for "my reasoning" I will substitute "the Saying."
If you listen not to me but to the Saying,
it is wise to say the same: that all things are one.
Now what sense does that make? What Saying? Whose saying other
than Heraclitus's own? Suppose the translation did make sense, then
Heraclitus is saying that there is a saying that can be heard beyond his
own, a speech to which we must listen, a speaking that it would be the
part of wisdom to echo in what we say. What impersonal speech could
that be? Heraclitus in fact tells us not what the logos is, but what it says,
for he bids us to say the same: "All things are one." What if this saying,
of which no human being is the author, were a power whose saying and
doing were one and the same? What if its speech were an act? Let me play
with a third, somewhat strange, version:
Once you have listened not to me but to the Gathering,
it is wise similarly to gather all things into one.
Here logos is translated as gathering or collection. It is the power that gathers
everything in the world into a unified whole, the organizing power we are
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
invited to imitate by giving a comprehensive account of the universe in
speech. The logos speaks primarily; our logos becomes deep by imitating it.
I think by now the text has begun to draw us through its surface into
its depth. You can see that it demands of you the playful seriousness I mentioned at the beginning, a seriousness that calls out all your capacity for
careful attention to surface detail as well as your willingness to dive into
the depths.
Here I shall stop. But although I am ending, I am not finished- and
neither, of course, are you. If you have in fact listened not only to me but
also to my argument, and if you are possessed by the proper freshman spirit,
now is your moment, the part of the Friday night lecture that is the true
St. John's: the time for questions.
���
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Zuckerman, Elliott
Ruhm von Oppen, Beate
Stickney, Cary
Van Doren, John
Williamson, Robert B.
Routt, Deidre
Sachs, Joe
Brann, Eva T. H.
Dougherty, Janet A.
Locke, Patricia M.
Berns, Gisela
Schoener, Abraham
Maschler, Chaninah
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Volume XXXIX, number three of The St. John's Review. Published in 1990.
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The St. John's Review
Volume XL, number one (1990-91)
Editor
Elliott Zuckerman
Editorial Board
Eva Brann
Beate Ruhm von Oppen
Joe Sachs
Cmy Stickney
John Van Doren
Robert B. Williamson
Subscriptions Assistant
Deirdre Routt
The St, John's Review is publishet.·~ three times a year by the Office of the Dean, St. John's
College, Annapolis; Donald J. Maciver, Jr., President; Eva Brann, Dean. For those not on
the distribution list, subscriptions are $15.00 per year. Unsolicited essays, stmies, poems,
and reasoned letters are welcome. Address coiTespondence to the Review, St. John's
College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404. Back issues are available, at $5.00 per
issue, from the St. John's College Bookstore.
© 1991 St. John's College. All rights reserved; reproduction in whole or in part without
permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
Desktop Publishing and Printing
The St. John's College Print Shop
�Correction
In the last issue of the Review (Volume XXXIX, number three) the title of the
first essay was printed incorrectly. The con·ect title of the essay by Joe Sachs is
"Antigone: All-Resourceful I Resourceless."
�Contents
1 ...... Bramante and Michelangelo at Saint Peter's
Ralph Lieberman
39. . . . . . Of Lice and Men: Aristotle's Biological Treatises
Linda Wiener
53. . . . . . The God Who Is and the God Who Speaks
Thomas J. Slakey
71 ...... A Meditation on the Present Plight of Philosophy
and the Pursuit of Truth
Monica C. Homyansky
81 . . . . . . Toucan Dreams
James Fox
85. . . . . . St. John's Crossword Number One
Cassandra
��Bramante
and
Michelangelo
at Saint Peter's
Ralph Lieberman
Starting in 1505, and for well over a century after, the church of Saint Peter in
the Vatican was the most important architectural undertaking in Europe. Its
building history is complex, but nothing compared to its diabolically convoluted
design history, which more than one scholar has abandoned in despair. Without
subjecting you to an exhausting presentation of the building's assorted design
stages, I would like to familiarize you with the nature of the problems faced by
the architects of the church, and the architectural historians who choose to study
it.
Donato Bramante was the first architect of new Saint Peter's, but his church
does not exist - in fact a convincing argument can be advanced that it never
did. Nonetheless his first design for it was extremely important. An integral part
of a pivotal moment in Western culture, the Saint Peter's project is a perfect
crystallization of its time, reflecting in its form and scale, among other things, a
dramatic change in the status of the Vatican, a radical break with Christian
architectural tradition, a new attitude toward the Papacy, and a response to the
fall of Constantinople; the design was the culmination of a half century of highly
philosophical architectural theorizing, and the building translated into colossal
scale arrangements that had existed previously only in tiny sketches in which
Leonardo da Vinci wrestled with the most difficult problems of architectural
organization. If we do not consider this complex background, however briefly,
we will misunderstand the building and the accomplishments, as well as the
failures, of its many architects.
Ralph Lieberman is an art historian who lives in North Adams, Massachusetts, and
now teaches at Williams College. This essay is expanded from a lecture first delivered
at St. John's College, Santa Fe, in March, 1988. It will serve as a chapter in a history
of architecture to be called Twenty-Six Buildings.
�2
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
To put the Saint Peter's problem in context, it is necessary to start at the vety
beginning of Christian architecture.
Constantine's first donation to the Church he recognized in 313 was some
imperial real estate at the Lateran. Saint John in the Lateran is the first church in
Christendom and the palace next to it was the first official residence of the Pope
and the headquarters of the Curia. In the course of the Middle Ages, however,
the presence of the Pope notwithstanding, the Lateran slowly yielded its place
as the most important Roman church to the Vatican. There were a number of
reasons for this. One is that the tomb of Saint Peter was a major goal of pilgrims,
and the basilica that enshrines it, built by Constantine a few years after the
Lateran, was the most popular church in the West (Fig. I). The Lateran, on the
other hand, was simply the cathedral of Rome, and could boast nothing to rival
the grave of Saint Peter. Another reason is that the Lateran, on the eastem edge
of the city and well outside the center of the great imperial capital even in
Constantine's day, was farther still from the center of the small town to which
Rome shrank in the Middle Ages (Fig. 2). As the city slowly contracted westward
.77-+ .· ..·::
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(Fig. 1) St. Peter's around 400 (after Krautheimer).
�LIEBERMAN
3
Saint Peter's
()
Pantheon
~mperial
~Fora
Ocolosseum
Palatine
City Walls
city Gates
~
(Fig. 2) Map of Rome showing the Lateran and the Vatican.
into the bend in the Tiber near the Pantheon, just across the river from the Vatican,
the Lateran was increasingly remote, Saint Peter's more and more convenient.
For much of the fourteenth century the Popes lived in Avignon, and without
the Papal presence the eclipse of the Lateran was accelerated. When the Popes
were firmly re-established in Rome about 1420 the Lateran was still their home,
but in the late 1440s Nicholas V officially moved the Papal residence, which in
effect meant all the apparatus of Church administration, to the Vatican. Saint
�4
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Peter, as the founder and first leader of the Christian community in Rome, was
the first Pope, and the decision of Nicholas V reflects a strong feeling that the
most appropriate headquarters for the Popes was at the Saint's church.
With the Pope and the Curia permanently established next door, Saint Peter's
became the Papal palace church. By 1450 the Constantinian basilica was nearly
1100 years old; fifteenth-century surveys of the building revealed weakened
masonry, subsiding foundations, and walls tilted out of plumb. Furthermore, the
church had no choir- only an apse extended beyond its transept- and was
therefore quite old-fashioned (Fig. 3). In the 1450s Bernardo Rossellino began
a project for Nicholas V that was to strengthen the Constantinian church, and
bring it up to date, by jacketing the entire building with new walls, constructing
a larger transept, and adding a choir (Fig. 4 ). Three walls of the enlarged transept
and new choir were to stand outside the old basilica, so work could be started
without requiring the destruction of any part of the Constantinian church. We
can see what was built of the Rossellino project in drawings by Maerten van
Heemskerck that show new Saint Peter's under construction in the early 1530s
•
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(Fig. 3) Plan of Saint Peter's (after Krautheimer).
�LIEBERMAN
5
(Fig. 5). In an unanticipated way the Rossellino transept and choir were to be
determining factors in the design of new Saint Peter's, for the need to make
economical use of available foundations established the dimensions of parts of
Bramante's plan (see Fig. 12).
Work on the Rossellino project ceased with the death of Nicholas V in 1455;
it was taken up again briefly under Paul II in the late 1460s, but most of the Popes
who reigned for the half century after the death of Nicholas V preferred to
concentrate their major building efforts on improvements to the Vatican palace,
and put off dealing with Saint Peter's because it was going to be extremely
expensive, and meant tampering with the Constantinian church.
Julius II, elected in 1503, was not a man to tum from hard challenges; he
thought in very grand terms and he refused to recognize financial limitations.
Around 1505 he decided not to bother repairing or modernizing Old Saint Peter's,
ordered the demolition of Constantine's church, and commissioned a new one.
Driven by an ambitious vision of Papal Imperialism, Julius had as his determined
policy the expansion of the political sway of the Papacy, by the sword if need
•
•
••
..
•
•
•
(Fig. 4) Rosselli no project for remodeling of Saint Peter's
(alter Heydenreich).
�6
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
(Fig. 5) Saint Peter's under construction. Drawing by Maerten van
Heemskerck. Berlin-Dahlem Museum.
(Fig. 6) Istanbul. Hagia Sophia. Exterior.
�LIEBERMAN
7
be, and he saw himself, by no means inaccurately, as the equal of any European
king or emperor. In his reign it was understood that in selecting for himself a
Papal name unused since the mid-fourth century, one that inevitably evoked the
Caesars, Julius was making a declaration of his ambitions. And he wanted the
new Saint Peter's, and for that matter the entire Vatican complex, to be the
unambiguous architectural expression of papal power and authority. There had
been no comparable imperial church construction for nearly a millennium, not
since Justinian's Hagia Sophia (Fig. 6) was built in the 530s. Behind Julius II's
Saint Peter's project there may in fact be the specific influence of Hagia Sophia:
not its form, but its scale. Constantinople had fallen to the Ottoman Turks in
1453, and Hagia Sophia, the largest building in the world, and surely also the
most splendid (Fig. 7), was quickly converted to a Mosque and lost to Christianity forever. It would not have been out of character for Julius II to think that
the honor of possessing the biggest building in the world ought to be restored to
the Church, and that such a building should be in Rome, over the tomb of the
Apostle charged by Christ to found the Church. That the Apostle's church was
also the Pope's was a factor as well, for Julius II identified with Saint Peter's in
a particularly strong way. He had in mind for himself a very elaborate tomb,
commissioned from Michelangelo in 1505, that was intended to stand prominently in the building that was to be his own tomb church as much as Saint
Peter's. Furthermore, it may be that with the fall of Constantinople and the end
of the Roman Empire in the East, Julius felt that the mantle of Constantine, as
well as that of Saint Peter, now rested on his shoulders; by totally replacing one
of the two great Roman churches founded by Constantine, Julius quite strategi-
cally put himself in a small club of imperial church builders.
In many respects the razing of Old Saint Peter's was one of the most fateful
steps ever taken by a Pope. It would be too much to contend that it provoked the
Reformation, but the sale of indulgences to raise money for the ruinously
expensive project antagonized many people, Luther chief among them, and the
increasingly worldly concerns of the Imperial Church, of which new Saint
Peter's was the symbol, inspired the Protestant revolt.
For the design of his new church Julius called on Donato Brarnante. Bam
near Urbina around 1444, Bramante was originally trained as a painter, but we
know little of his early career. By the late 1470s he was in the employ of the
Duke of Milan, and he remained in that city working as a painter - and
increasingly as an architect- until1499, when the French attacked and occupied
the city, bringing to an end the brilliant Milanese court.
Bramante is first documented in Rome in 1500, painting a fresco in the
Lateran. Very soon, however, he turned his attention exclusively to buildings,
and in the years from around 1501 until his death in 1514, he became the most
important architect in the capital.
�8
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
(Fig. 7) Istanbul. Hagia Sophia. Interior.
Nothing in Bramante's Milanese work prepares us for what he built in Rome.
In fact, his emergence as the first great High Renaissance architect at the age of
nearly sixty is one of the major surprises of the epoch. The change in Bramante's
style is often cited as evidence of the power of Rome to stimulate creative artists
and bring out their potential. Had he never come to Rome, Bramante would have
remained a second-rate Milanese architect; in the last fifteen years of his life,
which he spent in the ancient capital, he established, if he did not invent, the
High Renaissance architectural style.
�LIEBERMAN
9
(Fig. 8) Rome. San Pietro in Montorio, Tempietto.
The surviving building with which Bramante gave the clearest evidence of
his new style is the so-called Tempietto (literally "little temple") at the church of
San Pietro in Montorio (Fig. 8), on the spot long thought, inconectly, to be the
place of Saint Peter's martyrdom. It is worth a careful look.
Composed of a two-story domed cylinder surrounded by a single-story
colonnade, the Tempietto is characterized by a bold new treatment of volume.
Niches with scallop-shell inserts reveal the thickness of the cylinder walls. The
dome that caps the cylinder is raised on a drum in an arrangement that has no
precedent in ancient round temples with colonnades. The architect appears to be
thinking here of a miniature Pantheon atop a circular Roman temple, for the drum
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
10
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dJdHJ'. fo. m.J
ue'le kt.11~'1ti1arte /i dhnojhe,.amw. Delle mifitre. diqtu:fiflli4nf~ nc~~ Jico
uj:, .1/tun.t ,_ ma {tJI.vnente io f/Jtl jMt4 perL'i1mtntione ,.dell.~ qul{le l'vlr'fhittt
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(Fig. 9) Plan of Tempietto from Serlio, Cinque Libri deii'Architettura.
�LIEBERMAN
11
(Fig. 10) The Tempietto in a circular courtyard (after Bruschi).
of the second story of the Tempietto is approximately as high as the radius of the
hemispherical dome, the proportions found at the Pantheon. The powerful
interpenetration of the cylinder and the colonnade gives the Tempietto a new and
dramatic sculptural mass, its elements conceived as fully three-dimensional
solids.
As it appears today the Tempietto does not reflect Bramante's intentions either
accurately or entirely, in part because it has been changed (the dome now has a
higher profile than it did originally, and the present lantern is a seventeenth-century addition that is out of keeping with the rest of the building), and in part
because the little temple itself is only the hub of a project that was never
completed. In 1537, nearly twenty-five years after Bramante 's death, Sebastiana
Serlio published a plan of the Tempietto (Fig. 9) that shows it surrounded by a
circular courtyard in which he says Bramante intended it to stand. There was to
have been a ring of columns, half again as thick as the columns in the Tempietto
and therefore higher in the same proportion, that lay on the same radii as the
columns of the temple itself; niches in the encircling wall correspond to those of
the Tempietto. The circular courtyard may be considered the Tempietto turned
inside out; the play of mirrored forms that enclose space on the one hand and
shape a solid object on the other, would have made the completed project
astonishing (Fig. I 0).
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
12
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(Fig. 11) Leonardo da Vinci. Drawing of churches with circular plans.
Paris, lnstitut de France.
�LIEBERMAN
13
The courtyard that appears in Serlio 's plan would not fit in the space between
the Tempietto and the flank of San Pietro in Montorio, which makes one wonder
whether it could ever have been a real project. It is impossible to determine now
what Bramante 's expectations were: perhaps he made a complete design although he knew from the stat1 that only its central element could be built. On the
other hand, as we shall see, it would have been in character for him to expect
that someday the church would be tmn down to make room for his courtyard.
While the influence of ancient Roman buildings was surely important in the
development of BratUante's style after 1500, it does not explain everything, for
his works in the papal city depend in important ways on ideas he brought with
him from Milan, ideas that must have their origin in Leonardo da Vinci's musings
on architecture. In the years that Bramante was in Milan, Leonardo was also
there, engaged in a number of projects, some architectural, for the Milanese
Dukes, and it is beyond doubt that the two men knew each other well. Leonardo
intended to write a treatise on architecture, and for years he collected his
thoughts, making notes and drawings of various building types for it. Certainly
it was he who pondered the possibilities of the centrally planned church more
thoroughly than anyone before him, and in scores of drawings he indulged his
imagination with elegant anangements unassociated with any actual architectural projects (Fig. II). The nature of Leonardo's contribution to the growth of
Bramante 's ideas about architecture is difficult to establish with certainty, but an
excellent case can be made for its having been fundamental. Before Bramante
went to Milan, he seems to have cared little about architecture, and there is no
evidence that he worked at it in any way. After sixteen years in the company of
Leonardo, Bramante was a busy architect. When he left for Rome he was fully
primed with Leonardo's profound ideas; in the Tempietto, and in Saint Peter's,
Bramante reveals himself to have been more than just the principal beneficiary
of Leonardo's thoughts: it fell to him to serve as the instrument of their
realization. In Rome Bramante had a fundamental advantage over Leonardo, the
one thing without which even the greatest architectural ideas are still-born: the
opportunity to build.
When Julius II selected Bramante to design the new church of Saint Peter he
brought into his service an architect who understood his vision. The two men
were ideally suited to each other; a pontiff who was prepared to tear down the
great Constantinian basilica found an architect who was not the least bit sentimental about hallowed buildings or doubtful about the wisdom of replacing
them. A contemporary satirical poem has Bramante trying to convince Saint Peter
to authorize the demolition of Heaven so it could be reconstructed more commodiously and in a better style. In fact Bramante's wild enthusiasm for tearing
down old buildings and constructing new ones in a more lavish and up-to-date
manner outran what even Julius was prepared to do at the Vatican; when the
architect suggested that the bones of Saint Peter be relocated so the new church
�14
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
could be positioned more favorably on the site, the Pope drew the line. Although
Bramante was sometimes reckless in his hurry to replace old buildings with new
ones- several of his buildings, Saint Peter's in particular, had to be strengthened
considerably as work progressed, and some of them actually suffered partial
collapse- his haste reveals the feverish energy and eagerness for the transformation of the Vatican that characterized the ten-year reign of Julius II, who was
notorious for wanting everything done immediately. It was in this hot-house
atmosphere that the High Renaissance style matured; in the same years that
Bramante was at work on Saint Peter's Michelangelo began work on the tomb
of Julius II, then painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and Raphael painted the
Vatican Stanze.
Julius II and Bramante were both over sixty when they began to collaborate
on the new church, and they knew that elaborate and expensive projects such as
theirs had a way of being altered as time went by. Each, for his own personal
reasons, therefore felt the necessity of making a bold and ilTevocable start at
Saint Peter's to guarantee that subsequent generations would be unable to
abandon their grand plan. The start they made was surely dramatic - and if
nothing else the demolition of the Constantinian basilica guaranteed that there
would be a new church- but it failed in its specific aim, at least from the point
of view of Bramante, for the design of the building was altered frequently while
it was under construction, and what was finally finished in the 1620s bears almost
no resemblance to his original project.
Bramante's Saint Peter's is enormously difficult to study in detail. This is not
simply because the church does not exist. Nor is the obstacle that construction
had advanced only very little before both the architect and the patron were dead
and the project altered, for this would not necessarily prevent us from considering
their intentions. The problem is that the architect seems never to have had an
exact and definite idea of what he was going to do, or what he would be permitted
to do. After building had begun Bramante frequently changed his mind (or was
told to change it), modified his earlier ideas, altered the design, and offered new
solutions to the Pope. Although something about the form and character of the
new church was clearly implied at the beginning of its construction, much was
also left vague and unspecified. As a result, students of the most ambitious of all
Renaissance architectural projects must deal with a bewildering welter of ideas
and conflicting interpretations of Bramante's intentions; the fact that many of
them are mutually exclusive is no argument against their authenticity, for the
evidence is clear that the architect tried out many ideas, and when one talks about
"Bramante's design" for Saint Peter's one must be prepared to be asked "which
one?" I shall deal here primarily with his first plan; even though Bramante was
forced almost immediately to give it up, it is more interesting and important than
any subsequent version. While many of its details are vague, it has a significant
place in Renaissance architectural thought.
�LIEBERMAN
15
By the end of the fifteenth century there was a thousand-year-old tradition of
church building in which longitudinal and central plans had firmly fixed places.
As early as the fourth century, domed central-plan churches, which tended to be
much smaller than longitudinal ones, were associated with places of martyrdom
or burial. For parish churches and cathedrals, on the other hand, where the
primary concern was to house a congregation, there was a clear preference for
longitudinal forms.
In the fifteenth century central plans became popular among architectural
theorists for philosophical reasons. Alberti suggested that the circle could be used
to serve as a symbol of the divine in Christian buildings, suggesting that "Nature
delights principally in round Figures," as proof of which he cites the Stars (by
which he means the Sun and Moon) and birds' nests, among other things. Circular
plans nevertheless remained extremely rare, but a centrally planned building may
also be polygonal, or have four equal short arms extending from a crossing that
is usually, but not always, covered by a dome, an arrangement known as a Greek
cross. While the four arms of such a church conespond roughly to a nave,
transepts, and choir of a longitudinal church, their equal size, and the relatively
greater importance of the crossing, give both the plan and the interior of a
centralized church a very different character. In a longitudinal church the
worshiper is drawn down the longer axis and the primary ceremonial approach
to the altar is clearly established, with the clergy in the choir and crossing and
the congregation in the nave. In a Greek-cross church, on the other hand, the
worshiper is not directed in the same way; the interior is perceived equally no
matter which ann is entered, and no major processional axis asserts itself.
The centralized plan was understood to be completely compatible with
Christian theology, in fact to celebrate God in a more direct and obvious way
than was possible in a longitudinal church. Proponents of this view rejected the
notion that the altar should be as far from the church entrance as possible because
God is infinitely far from us, arguing instead that it should be placed at the center,
just as God is at the center of the Universe, with all things emanating from him
and all things returning to him like the radii of a circle. In the late fifteenth century
and the first years of the sixteenth, the central plan was so popular, and so
enthusiastically regarded as the most perfect form of Christian church, that it is
unthinkable that in 1505 Saint Peter's could have been designed according to
any other plan. At the same time, however, there was another highly significant
factor that bore on the choice of plan for new Saint Peter's: Old Saint Peter's.
The church that Julius II tore down had been built to house a major burial
site, but rather than a centralized domed structure Constantine's architects
had designed a longitudinal basilica, positioned so that the Saint's tomb lay
on the chord of the apse, with a transept to accommodate crowds of visitors
(see Fig. 3). It was likely the Emperor's concern to enshrine the spot quickly
and economically that resulted in the choice of a timber-roofed basilica, a
�16
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
much simpler sort of structure than one with a dome, and one that allowed a
large area to be enclosed at relatively low cost. By the time Julius II
demolished Constantine's church, the longitudinal basilica, originally selected for practical considerations, had been firmly identified with Saint
Peter's for over a thousand years, and the ground it covered had become
sacred. Furthermore, there were hundreds of ancient graves in the church; for
several centuries after it was completed Old Saint Peter's served as a covered
cemetery, and by the late Middle Ages was so crowded with the bodies of
Christians who wished to lie near the Apostle that further burials were
permitted only in exceptional cases.
That the most important Christian tomb in Rome had been covered by a
longitudinal church rather than a dome was a rather anomalous situation, and for
more than a century it resulted in strong disagreement over the form the new
church was to be given. Bramante's first designs for Saint Peter's called for a
... ,
... J
(Fig. 12) Plan showing Constantin ian Saint Peter's, the Rossellino
choir and transept, and a centralized plan for the new church
(after Metternich).
�LIEBERMAN
17
·:..n
··~~
(Fig.13) Bramante. Drawing for Saint Peter's. Florence, Uffizi.
centrally planned church, and in favoring such a building he was following the
Christian tradition of domed churches over tomb sites as well as contemporary
ideas about religious architecture that had developed in the course of the
Renaissance; but there were others- the Pope apparently among them- who,
no matter how strongly drawn to a centralized church, felt that new Saint Peter's
had to have a longitudinal plan because the Constantinian church did. With the
dome of the new church to be centered over the Saint's tomb, even a very large
centralized building could not cover all of the original nave; ground once within
Constantine's church would therefore lie outside the new one (Fig. 12). Extending one arm of the new church to form a nave would, on the other hand, cover
all the old ground, and Bramante was under great pressure to build a longitudinal
church. He tried to resist that pressure, however, and from the time construction
on the church began until his death, he continued to hope that the church would
be a Greek cross.
Bramante began the construction of the new church in such a way that he
never really committed himself to a longitudinal plan, first building the parts that
would be included whichever form the church ultimately took. The essential
feature of the new church was the huge dome over Saint Peter's tomb. The first
elements to ris'e were the four crossing piers that carry it, and then these had to
be connected by arches (see Fig. 5). This was required whether the building
would be perfectly centralized, or its eastern arm extended to form the nave of
a longitudinal church. The fact that at a certain point after construction began
�18
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Bramante increased the size of the piers and changed the design of their elevation
does not indicate anything about the plan he hoped to see at the church.
There are three pieces of direct evidence that serve us in reconstructing
Bramante's first project for Saint Peter's. The first is a half-plan drawing in the
Uffizi in Florence, known from its catalogue number there as Uffizi I (Fig. 13):
the only sheet generally accepted as by Bramante's own hand.
The second source of knowledge about Bramante's initial intentions - a
medal by Caradosso struck to commemorate the laying of the cornerstone in
April, 1506 (Fig. 14)- is the pJimary means we have for establishing how the
exterior of the new church was to look. In the reduction of the huge building to
an image only a few inches high, much was surely simplified and lost, but the
medal shows a building that corresponds quite closely to Uffizi 1 in the projection
of the anns of the cross beyond the square fmmed by the corner towers, the
free-standing piers between the towers and the anns, and its general propmtions.
The third major visual source is a pair of woodcuts in Serlio's treatise that
shows Bramante's dome in plan and elevation (Figs. 15 & 16). Bramante is
supposed to have said that at Saint Peter's he wished to place the Pantheon (Fig.
17) over the vaults of the Temple of Peace -by which he meant the coffered
(Fig. 14) Caradosso Medal.
�LIEBERMAN
19
15. Plan of Bramante's dome for Saint Peter's. From Serlio, Cinque
Libri deii'Architettura.
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16. Elevation of Bramante's dome for Saint Peter's. From Serlio,
Cinque Ubri dei/'Architettura.
�20
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
(Fig. 17) Rome. The Pantheon.
bane! vaults in the side bays of the Basilica of Maxentius (Fig. 18). The dome
of Saint Peter's was to be almost exactly the diameter of the Pantheon, and
therefore the biggest built in nearly fourteen centuries. From Serlio 's illustration
it is clear that the architect had the form of the Pantheon quite specifically in
mind, for his dome is essentially the Pantheon with its rotunda ringed with
columns, a lantern placed on its top, and raised high in the air on the crossing
piers. To some extent the design of Saint Peter's is an enlargement of ideas we
have already noted in the Tempietto (Fig. 8), where Brarnante placed a miniature
Pantheon on a circular colonnaded temple.
That Brarnante and Julius II would feel themselves in competition with the
Pantheon is understandable, for the awesome Hadrianic temple was the greatest
ancient building to survive the Middle Ages, and a Pope of imperial ambitions
who used architecture to express the power of the Church would inevitably think
of trying to surpass it. If Julius had in mind a building that would also outdo
Hagia Sophia, it would have been in keeping with his personality to think of
killing two birds with one dome.
When Bramante's autograph drawing is doubled (Fig. 19), the result is a plan
based on a Greek cross contained, except for the apsidal ends of each arm, within
a square. In the four corners, formed by the central cross and the circumscribed
square, are pmtial Greek crosses of a design quite similar to the central one,
�LIEBERMAN
21
(Fig. 18) Rome. The Basilica of Maxentius.
(Fig. 19) Central plan based on doubling of Uffizi 1 (see Fig. 13).
�22
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
(Fig. 20) Raphael. School of Athens. Rome. Vatican Stanze.
square bases for bell towers, and niches open on the exterior of the church. The
plan is very elegant, and the way in which the smaller crosses are placed in the
angles between the anns of the central one is extremely well worked out. While
there were a few Greek-cross churches built in the last decades of the fifteenth
century, none ever looked even remotely like this plan. Bramante 's inspiration
must have been Leonm·do, who frequently sketched central-plan churches with
superbly interlocking architectural forms (Fig. 11).
A visitor to the church in the Uffizi 1 plan would have been in a space
composed of roughly identical units that grow in size toward the center, with the
main cross more than twice the size of the four partial ones. A similar sort of
arrangement is to be found in the design of the Tempietto, where the careful
scaling of the columns of the temple itself and those of the circular colonnade of
the courtyard established compelling resonances between identical forms of
changing size. At the Tempietto it was carried out on a minute scale, at the Vatican
in heroic proportions. In one the forms expand toward the center, in the other
they expand toward the edges- but both are based on the smne idea.
We do not have much direct evidence to suggest how Bramante intended to
articulate the interior of Saint Peter's, but there are echoes of his ideas in Raphael's
School of Athens (Fig. 20), painted in late 1509 or 1510, when Brarnante was hard
at work on the church. The architect appears on the right side of the fresco as Euclid,
holding compasses and leaning over a slate (Fig. 21). Raphael was a friend, and
perhaps a kinsman, ofBramante, and would succeed him as architect of Saint Peter's,
�LIEBERMAN
23
(Fig. 21) Raphael. Schoof of Athens, detail. Rome. Vatican Stanze.
�24
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
(Fig. 22) Michelangelo. Plan for Saint Peter's.
(Fig. 23) Bramante. Drawing for Saint Peter's. Florence, Uffizi.
�LIEBERMAN
25
so he was surely well-infmmed about Bramante 's ideas. Vasari goes so far as to say
thatBramante himself designed the background architecture in the School ofAthens,
but even if he did not, there is little doubt that the deep space covered by a coffered
barrel vault with a large dome over the crossing reflects Bramante's thoughts about
the church interior.
The most startling thing about Uffizi I is that no large church could ever have
been built according to it. While it has a lacy openness that is very appealing in
a design on paper, with virtually every bit of solid masonry hollowed out by
niches and thinned to an extreme degree, it is the plan of an impossible building.
The four central piers were intended to support a dome as large as the Pantheon,
but they could never have done any such thing. Even Serlio, the first and most
enthusiastic publicist of Bramante 's ideas, had to allow that the design of the
crossing piers and dome was not a very great one, saying that it would have been
better to build it on the ground than on piers connected with arches. Nothing
suggests the weakness of Bramante's church so clearly as a comparison of Uffizi
1 with Michelangelo's plan (Fig, 22); the proportion of solid to space makes the
point better than words can. Yet Bramante's plan is much more interesting that
Michelangelo's. If architecture is an art of the possible, then Bramante's design
is absurd; but if architecture is understood also as an abstract discipline of which
the fruits must not necessarily be physically possible to be great, then the Uffizi
I plan is one of the authentic masterpieces of Renaissance thought. In the
superbly coherent interlocking of its principal forms, in the careful shaping of
its supporting units to the spaces they create, in the clear hierarchy of its interior
voids, in the tense balance between the main cross and the slightly smaller square
that nearly contains it, and in the penetration of the exterior by niches between
the apses and the corner towers, Bramante 's plan is a triumph of the imagination.
The most influential element in Bramante 's plan was the design of the four
main crossing piers. Their shape was very carefully studied by Bramante. A
drawing in Florence (Fig, 23) shows that he worked on them on a survey of the
Constantin ian basilica and the Rosselli no choir. Bramante 'spiers are remarkably
effective in achieving the transition from the crossing to the dome, and they were
recognized as a major contribution by all the architects who subsequently worked
on the church, Although it was necessary to strengthen them, their basic form
was consistently retained. Even Michelangelo, who radically altered virtually
everything that was left of Bramante 's design in the late 1540s, did not modify
their plan appreciably.
For a reconstruction of how Bramante intended the exterior of the church to
look we do not have nearly as much to go on as we would like. While Uffizi 1
is fascinating for its organization and sense of developing spaces, what we can
determine of the elevation atop it is another matter. Perhaps the architect's
reputation suffers because the Caradosso medal (Fig. 14) is an inadequate means
to convey to us his ideas for the outside of the church, but even allowing for the
�26
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
(Fig. 24) Agostino Veneziano. Engraving after Caradosso Medal.
impossibility of showing Bramante 's scheme in a very small relief, the medal
presents a building one would not particularly wish to see full size. While the
idea of the Pantheon raised high in the air is very interesting and was eventually
to prove effective, Bramante's organization of the forms that were to have held
it up is not compelling. From the medal, or engravings made after it (Fig. 24), it
is clear that for the exterior of the building his imagination had failed him, and
he could only think in terms of stacking elements one on top of another. This is
most apparent in the ends of the arms, particularly where the half dome over the
apse is fitted under a pediment, its lantern breaking into the triangle above. The
medal shows one of the arms seen straight on, and in this view the array of domes
and half-domes of three different sizes is out of control, especially where the
domes over the subsidiary crosses seem squashed between the corner towers and
the main arm.
�LIEBERMAN
27
The odd dichotomy between Uffizi I and Bramante's elevation reveals
that while he could draw superb designs and marshal spaces in a powerful
way, he was not equally capable of arranging the solids that create them. The
tightly interconnected and related interior spaces do not translate well into
exterior volumes, and had it been built according to Bramante 's intentions,
Saint Peter's would have been a rather unsuccessful building from the
outside. It is my somewhat heretical view that Uffizi I is brilliant because
Bramante had Leonardo's ideas to go on, while for the elevation of the
building he was on his own. This is to assume that Leonardo, who never got
to build any of his circular designs and therefore never had to work out the
elevations over his sketched plans, could have solved the problems to which
Bramante was unequal. I am persuaded that such an assumption is warranted:
Leonardo could accomplish virtually anything he set his mind to.
Nothing reveals the problems of studying Saint Peter's as clearly as the fact
that a plan preserved by Serlio, who attributed it to Raphael (Fig. 25), is very
close to a drawing attributed to Bramante 's circle (Fig. 26) that appears to show
his second design for the church. This design, still in some respects close to
Leonardo, is not nearly so striking as Uffizi I, and the addition of colonnaded
ambulatories around the ends of the arms is the first step in what was to be a
steady process of obscuring the great coherence of the original idea.
When Bramante died in 1514 the construction of Saint Peter's had still not
progressed to the point where a final decision about the plan had to be made, and
disagreement over a centralized as opposed to a longitudinal church continued.
But that was not the only problem. Because Bramante's design was structurally
inadequate, and had to be strengthened by thickening many of its elements, the
proportions of the building began to go awry, and the architects involved with
the church realized that its interior was not going to be very effective. Several of
them struggled bravely to organize the huge building, but there was nobody
gifted enough to accomplish it; some of the ideas that were suggested are the
clearest imaginable evidence of a severe crisis of inspiration, if not of brains.
Bramante was succeeded as chief architect of Saint Peter's by Raphael, but
other architects also submitted designs for the church. Raphael, probably under
pressure, accepted what it seems Bramante never would, and planned a Latincross church. The design that is preserved by Serlio shows that Raphael simply
added a long nave to one arm of Bramante's second design (Fig. 27), to which
he may have contributed. At the same time Giuliano da Sangallo suggested more
radical changes by offering a plan that preserves the Rossellino choir and retains
the transepts from Bramante's design and adding a nave (Fig. 28). Giuliano's
nephew, Antonio da Sangallo the Younger, contemplated extending the church
by the addition of a long nave with a line of domes, at the same time retuming
to something closer to Uffizi I for the transept arms and choir (Fig. 29).
�28
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
(Fig. 25) Design for Saint Peter's. From Serlio, Cinque Libri
deii'Architettura.
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.
(Fig. 26) Circle of Bramante. Plan for Saint Peter's. Collection of Mr.
& Mrs. Paul Mellon.
�29
LIEBERMAN
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(Fig. 27) Raphael. Plan for Saint Peter's. From Serlio, Cinque Libri
deii'Architettura.
�30
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
(Fig. 28) Giuliano da Sangallo. Plan for Saint Peter's.
Florence, Uffizi.
(Fig. 29) Antonio da Sangallo the Younger. Plan for Saint Peter's.
Florence, Uffizi.
�LIEBERMAN
31
(Fig. 30) Antonio da Sangallo. Plan of Saint Peter's. Engraving.
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(Fig. 31) Antonio da Sangallo. Facade elevation of Saint Peter's.
Engraving.
�32
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
When Raphael died in 1520 Antonio da Sangallo the Younger became chief
architect. After a period of uncertainty, he anived at a longitudinal design that
was for nearly two decades the official one. Of this we know rather a lot, for
plans and elevations of it were engraved and published (Figs. 30 & 31 ), and a
huge and very detailed model of it was constructed (Fig. 32), no doubt in an
attempt to bind future generations unalterably to the design.
Sangallo's plan shows Bramante's original piers much thickened, and ambulatories around the transepts and choir that are a variation on Bramante's second
plan. Sangallo tried to preserve the feeling of a centralized church at the same
time he extended one arm to form a nave, for the mass and scale of the building
is greatest in the area where Bramante's first project would have stood, but the
arrangement is not very compelling. The nave is narrower than-the crossing, and
the nave dome therefore smaller than the crossing dome. Perhaps Sangallo was
thinking of Bramante 's sequence of similar shapes that grow larger toward the
crossing, but this plan is not particularly exciting.
A glance at Sangallo's model makes it clear that the difficulty of treating a
large extelior was not a problem for Bramante only. Sangallo too was unable to
exercise control over large exterior forms, which he tended to trivialize by
(Fig. 32) Model of Antonio da Sangallo's design for Saint Peter's.
Vatican Museum.
�LIEBERMAN
33
coveting them with story upon story of columns. As we were with the Bramante
design, here too we should be grateful that the church was never completed
according to the Sangallo scheme.
Sangallo's assistant at Saint Peter's, Baldassare Peruzzi, seems to have been
unhappy with the official design, and constantly studied the various problems
connected with the building. He probably considered more possibilities than any
other architect involved with the church. Although he seems to have hoped to
re-establish the Greek cross, Peruzzi also considered longitudinal groin-vaulted
plans similar to Roman baths (Fig. 33), or vaulted and lined with colonnades like
some Roman basilicas (Fig. 34), or combinations of vaults and domes (Fig. 35).
There is no clearer indication of the difficult situation in which architects of the
1520s, '30s, and early '40s found themselves than the Pemzzi drawings; the
official Sangallo plan was very unsatisfying, but nobody knew what to do about
it.
In an attempt to establish his design for all time, Sangallo spent a lot of time
and money on the model, but work on the church itself did not progress very far,
and as most of the work since the start of constmction had been done around the
crossing, there was still nothing to constitute an irrevocable commitment to a
longitudinal plan.
At the death of Antonio da Sangallo in 1546, Michelangelo received the
appointment as chief architect of Saint Peter's, and with him the church finally
acquired an architect with a vision monumental enough to cope with it. Neither
Bramante nor those who worked on the church in the thhty years following his
death had a clear idea how to combine huge scale and the classical orders;
Michelangelo did. As a sculptor he was the only person capable of achieving the
gigantic form of David, and as a fresco painter the only one whose visionary
figures could grow to fit the dimensions of the Sistine Chapel. In his dramatic
simplifications of Saint Peter's and the enlargement of its elements to suit its
size, Michelangelo reveals the same ease with heroic proportions he had already
demonstrated in two other media.
When he arrived at Saint Peter's Michelangelo was seventy-one, and without
question the most authmitative artist alive. He did not like the Sangallo design
at all- he dismissed the complex interiors as places in which cut-purses would
lurk and nuns be raped. Furthe1more, he loathed Bramante, and was still nursing
a grudge against him in the early 1550s, nearly forty years after his hated rival's
death, when he told his biographer Ascanio Condivi that it was Bramante who
had thwarted his plan for the tomb of Julius II, and who had gotten the Pope to
force the painting of the Sistine Chapel on him. Confounding the expectation
that he would seek to obliterate every trace of Bramante at Saint Peter's,
Michelangelo insisted that the idea of a central plan had been a noble one, and
managed, by the authority of his views, to get a succession of Popes to agree to
reinstating it. Furthermore, he was granted a privilege extended to none of his
�34
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
(Fig. 33) Baldassare Peruzzi. Drawing for Saint Peter's.
Florence, Uffizi.
(Fig. 34) Baldassare Peruzzi. Drawing for Saint Peter's.
Florence, Uffizi.
�LIEBERMAN
35
(Fig. 35) Baldassare Peruzzi. Drawing for Saint Peter's.
Florence, Uffizi.
predecessors: permission to tear down some of what had already been constructed. He had no patience at all with the fussy design into which Sangallo had
weakened Bramante's ideas, and removed the outer walls of the ambulatories
around the ends of three of the mms. With a single stroke of the brush he filled
in the rings of their ineffectual interior piers (Fig. 22), fusing them into exterior
walls and imposing clarity on the arms of the cross.
Michelangelo made his greatest contribution to Saint Peter's on the exterior,
where he supplied the monumentality of vision necessary to make mere size
effective (Fig. 36); Sangallo's tiers of columns were replaced by a single gigantic
order, and the mass of the building revealed by carefully controlled layering of
nearly sculptural forms (Fig. 37).
The history of Saint Peter's before Michelangelo demonstrates that it is one
thing to revive the classical orders and decide to build the world's largest church,
quite another to fuse those two aspirations in a coherent and effective way. It
took more than forty years for the Popes to find an architect who instinctively
knew the appropriate way to use a revived classical language on a colossal
building. Michelangelo's predecessors at the church, even the most gifted of
them, could merely build big; he solved the problem of Saint Peter's because he
could think big.
�36
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
(Fig. 36) Rome. Saint Peter's. Exterior.
Despite his preferences, and the fact that it was he who saved Saint Peter's
from almost certain disaster, not even Michelangelo could establish the central
plan irrevocably; the determination to see all the ground of Constantine's church
covered would eventually prove too strong. Perhaps if Michelangelo had lived
to be 150 he might have seen the church completed beyond the practical
possibility of alteration, but he died too young, in 1564, a few weeks short of
eighty-nine, leaving the attic, the dome, and the facade of the church unfinished.
In the decades that followed, Michelangelo's design for the attic was changed
by Pirro Ligorio (see Fig. 36) and the shape of the dome by Giacomo della Porta.
The commitment to a central plan held for a while, but resistance to it grew
steadily, and because of this very little work was done on Michelangelo's facade:
no sense putting up something that would have to be torn down in the event that
the final decision favored a longitudinal church. After nearly a hundred years,
then, the plan of the church was still being debated.
�37
LIEBERMAN
(Fig. 37) Rome. Saint Peter's. Exterior.
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
38
The matter was finally resolved in the second decade of the seventeenth
century when Carlo Mademo extended the east arm into a banel-vaulted nave
with three aisle bays (Fig. 38), but not to the glory of anyone. As it now stands
Saint Peter's is not on the whole a great church, for it shows too clearly the
debates and uncertainty that marked its long building history. But parts of it are
surely great; the two geniuses who presided there- one in person, the other in
spirit -left their marks. Michelangelo's is much easier to find, but buried deep
in the heart of the crossing is still to be discerned a distant echo of Leonardo's
extraordinary visions.
(Fig. 38) Plan of Saint Peter's.
�Of Lice and Men:
Aristotle's Biological Treatises
Linda Wiener
As a student studying to be a biologist and an entomologist, my only contact with
the biological writings of Aristotle were brief and generally disparaging comments made at the beginnings of my textbooks or at the beginnings of lecture
courses by my professors. They presented Aristotle as a rigid thinker who was
generally wrong and who singlehandedly prevented progress in biology for over
a thousand years with the weight of his authority. I was teaching the freshman
laboratory as anew faculty member at St. John's College in Santa Fe when I first
came into contact with some actual writings of Aristotle. I was very impressed
by the few passages from Parts of Animals that we read there. This stimulated
me to embark on a further study of Aristotle's biological treatises. After more
than a year of this study, I find that I am not in agreement with my biology
textbooks and professors, but am more inclined to agree with the following
statement by Charles Darwin. This comes from a letter that Darwin wrote to
William Ogle upon reading Ogle's then new translation of Aristotle's Parts of
Animals. Darwin wrote: "From quotations I had seen, I had a high notion of
Aristotle's merits, but I had not the most remote notion what a wonderful man
he was. Linnaeus and Cuvier have been my two gods, though in very different
ways, but they were mere schoolboys to Old Atistotle."
I suggest that these very different opinions of Aristotle's biological writings stem from the fact that Darwin had actually read some of them, and my
Linda Wiener is an entomologist who is now a Tutor at St. John's College, Santa Fe.
This lecture was delivered at the Santa Fe campus in February, 1987.
�40
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
biology teachers were working with received opinions. I find it difficult to
believe that a practicing biologist would be unimpressed with the scope and
quality of Aristotle's achievements as a biologist. What I would like to do in
this paper is give the reader an introduction to the contents of Aristotle's
biological treatises, as well as an appreciation of their significance, both from
a modern perspective and from the perspective of his own time, and comment
on how knowledge of the biological writings can help us understand the rest
of his philosophy.
Why should I believe that the biological wlitings are so significant? Fully one
third of the surviving works of Alistotle are biological. These include three major
treatises: Histmy of Animals, Parts of Animals, and Generation of Animals. In
addition, there are some minor biological treatises: Progression of Animals,
Motion ofAnimals, and a collection of short works called the ParvaNatura. Also,
both De Anima and the Physics contain much biological material. There are
references, by Aristotle himself, and other classical authors, to a number of
additional treatises which have since been lost. These include works on plants,
nutrition, and diseases of animals, and a large illustrated atlas of animal anatomy.
I am going to concentrate on the three major treatises here. The contents of
these works overlap quite a bit, but in general, in Histmy of Animals Aristotle
sets out the facts about animals, their parts, their food, and their ways of life. In
Parts of Animals, which is more conectly called the Causes of the Parts of
Animals, Aristotle attempts to account for why the parts of animals are as we
observe them to be. This is largely a physiological work. Generation of Animals
is just what it sounds like, a work on animal reproduction.
On first reading these treatises, I was struck by the diversity of the material
they contained. These works are filled with an enormous number of facts about
all kinds of animals, some of which are correct and some not. They contain some
extremely impressive analyses of biological problems, such as his masterful
argument for epigenesis in book II of Generation of Animals. They also contain
some sloppy and ill-considered arguments, e.g., he reasons that flies have two
wings because they are smaller than other insects and do not need four wings to
fly (PA 682b I 0). 1 The facts blatantly do not support this assertion. There are also
a large number of passages that are so corrupt that it is difficult, if not impossible,
to recover Aristotle's meaning. In fact, the material in these treatises is so rich
and so varied that it is hard to comprehend and analyze them in any neat way.
People who wish to discredit Aristotle as a biologist can flip through these
treatises and come up with some truly horrendous errors. One of the worst is the
statement, repeated several times, that human males cannot reproduce until the
age of twenty-one. I can't imagine why he would make this claim. However,
there are also facts for which Aristotle was ridiculed for two thousand years
before it was discovered that he was actually correct. An example is his descrip-
tion of a kind of catfish which he calls a glanis. In this species the males incubate
�WEINER
41
and guard the eggs. This animal was thought to be pure fiction until Louis Agassiz
rediscovered the species in 1857 and named it Parasilurus aristotelis.
One cannot really judge a biologist by counting up how many facts he got
right and how many wrong. It is much more useful to look at what Aristotle saw
as his task, what sort of assumptions he made, and what it was that he actually
did.
Perhaps the most important thing he did was to collect an enormous number
of facts about animals. Most of these facts did not come from his own observations; he got them by consulting the experts. The experts in this case were hunters,
fishermen, trappers, bee-keepers, horse trainers, chicken fmmers, and anyone
else whose livelihood depended on an intimate knowledge of the ways of
animals. Aristotle recorded what he was told, sometimes commenting on or
checking the accuracy of the facts himself, but often simply recording them.
Aristotle even includes observations on the friendships and hostilities between
different species of animals from what appears to be a soothsayer's catalogue of
animal behavior in the ninth chapter of History ofAnimals (608b27 ff.). He does
not discount the testimony of persons who have practical experience with
animals, even when the information appears questionable. Better to record such
information and later prove it wrong than fail to obtain it at all. Aristotle is not
completely gullible. In the case of Ctesius, a traveler to the Indies who returned
with many fabulous tales about animals, Aristotle records what he says but notes
that Ctesius is "no very trustworthy authority" (HA 608a8).
A second source of facts comes from Aristotle's own observations. It is not
always possible to be certain which observations are Aristotle's own; however,
one can often be reasonably certain from the context of the remarks. Aristotle's
observations are characterized by being detailed and precise. Some of these
observations are of animals in their natural habitats, but most of his own work
is in the area of dissections. He seems to have dissected at least eighty-five or
ninety different species of animals. Many of them were invertebrates, organisms
that were largely unknown in his time. His dissections are also noteworthy for
their precision and detail. I find his embryological work to be especially remarkable. Consider the following account of ovoviviparous reproduction in the
smooth shark:
The so-called smooth shark has its eggs in between the wombs like the
dog-fish; these eggs shift into each of the two horns of the womb and descend,
and the young develop with the navel-string attached to the womb, so that as
the egg-substance gets used up, the embryo is sustained to all appearance just
as in the case of quadrupeds. The navel-stting is long and adheres to the under
part of the womb (each navel-string being attached as it were by a sucker),
and also to the center of the embryo in the place where the liver is situated. If
the embryo be cut open, even though it has the egg-substance no longer, the
food inside is egg-like in appearance. Each embryo, as in the case of quadru-
�ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
42
peds, is provided with a chorion and separate membranes. When young the
embryo has its head upwards, but downwards when it gets strong and is
completed in fmm. (HA 565b2-13)
The observation that young sharks are born alive is marvelous in itself; the
further observations that these creatures first develop from an egg in the womb,
and then attach to the womb itself, and further develop like the young of
mammals is truly extraordinary. I am often amazed at what he could see without
a microscope, although he frequently complains, especially in the case of insects,
that the parts are just too small to be accurately observed.
Aristotle was far more than just an observer. He had a set of a priori principles
which helped to direct his observations and questions about animals. Perhaps the
one mentioned most frequently is "Nature never does anything without a
purpose." If this is so, it is always correct to ask the question "why" about
anything that is observed. Aristotle's questions range from the seemingly trivial
(what is this part for?) to the most important philosophical questions (how is
animal motion related to the motions of the heavenly bodies?).
A second principle that is frequently mentioned in the treatises is "Nature
does the best she can under the circumstances." Nature has to work with matter,
which can be notoriously intractable. One might theorize that an animal that had
to protect itself from predators should have sharp horns and teeth, large claws,
great strength, speed, and intelligence. However, when we look at animals, this
is not what we see. What we see, and what Aristotle also saw, was that animals
generally have only one major means of defense. Natufe has only a certain
amount of matter to work with in each animal and must distribute it as best she
can. In Aristotle's words, "Nature takes from one thing to give to another." Thus,
he notes, we find that bulls have large horns, but only have teeth in one jaw. The
matter that would ordinarily have gone into making the second set of teeth goes
into the horns instead (PA 664a2).
One might think that each organ should have only one function if it is to
perform that function with maximum efficiency. However, when we look at
animals we see that very often one organ serves two or even more functions. For
example, the human tongue must be used for both tasting and speaking (PA
650al). Again we see Nature making certain compromises.
A third major principle in these treatises is that "one cannot make general
statements without first doing an exhaustive investigation of the facts." It is this
principle that Aristotle uses most to bring his predecessors to task. His predecessors in natural philosophy include Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Democritus and
other atomists, and Plato's writings in the Timaeus.
None of these philosophers did anything like an exhaustive investigation of
the facts, although some did make certain observations. In fact, Aristotle did not
�WEINER
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always follow this principle himself, though he recognized its importance and
achieved much through its use.
Some statements of other philosophers were rather easy to disprove with
simple observations. For instance, Plato says in the Timaeus (70c7) that we take
in food through the esophagus and water through the windpipe. Aristotle points
out that this could not be so because simple inspection of the parts involved shows
that there is no passageway from the lungs to the stomach and that fluid clearly
comes from the stomach in the case of vomiting, and therefore both water and
food are taken in through the esophagus, which does afford a passageway to the
bladder (PA 664b8-19). Plato also states in the Timaeus (7ld) that the gall-bladder
is present for the purpose of sensation and to irritate the area around the liver and
make it congeal. Aristotle points out that this could not be true because deer don't
even have gall-bladders and some mice have them and some don't, and in the
case of sheep it depends upon where you look. Sheep in Euboea don't have
gall-bladders and sheep in Naxos have such large ones that "foreigners who
sacrifice there think it a sign from heaven rather than a natural phenomenon" (PA
676b30 ff.). Aristotle stresses that it is necessary to investigate many individuals
and even many individuals from different populations before one can make
general statements about animals.
Let us look at several examples of Aristotle at work on biological problems.
Near the beginning of History of Animals Aristotle states that "to begin with
we must take into consideration the parts of man." He gives two reasons for this.
The first is practical. "Just as all countries reckon other currencies in relation to
their own, because it is most familiar, so we should judge other animals in relation
to ourselves" (I-IA 49lal9). The second is that "man is most according to nature
of all the animals'' because in him ''upper and lower have the same meaning as
when they are applied to the universe as a whole" (J-IA 494a26). He then gives
an exhaustive inventory of the external anatomy of man. Next he turns to giving
an inventory of the internal anatomy of man. Here he runs into some problems
and we see that he is capable of rather easily glossing over a difficult issue. He
states that the internal parts of man are to a very great extent unknown (because
human dissections were not permissible) and so we must know the internal
anatomy of man by reference to other animals that are like us (I-IA 494b21-24).
Not surprisingly he makes many errors in this section. Some of his statements
are true of dogs but not of humans. Interestingly, a few statements are true of the
human fetus but not of the adult, suggesting that Aristotle must have dissected
an aborted fetus.
Next he sets out to do just what he stated, compare other animals to humans.
This is not a very difficult task when dealing with other mammals, nor is it
especially difficult when dealing with other vertebrates, such as birds and fish.
All these animals have backbones, hearts, livers, mouths, etc. It is relatively easy
to recognize the different parts and name their functions. However, one runs into
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ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
real difficulties when dealing with the invertebrate animals. At first glance, a
head louse, clam, or sponge does not seem at all like a human. It is this difficulty
that led Aristotle to develop one of the most important concepts in biology the distinction between homology and analogy.
Homology is what Aristotle refers to as the "difference of the more and the
less" (PA 644b 15). It is a similarity of structure, but a difference in bodily
qualities. The hair on a dog is homologous with the hair on a zebra; the fingernails
of a human are homologous with the claws of a dog. Analogy is a similarity of
function with no similarity of structure. The skeleton of a human and the shell
of a clam are analogous. The skeleton of a human serves to support the body, to
protect the internal organs, and to provide a place for muscle attachment. The
shell of a clam serves all these functions as well, but does not look anything like
a human skeleton, and is on the outside rather than the inside of the animal.
Aristotle can be rather bold with his analogies. For instance, he says that the
earth is for plants what the stomach is for humans. He explains that the roots of
plants take up nutrients and distribute them to the rest of the plant. The earth
contains nutrients in a form that plants can utilize. Humans must first process
their food into a usable form. The food we eat is first digested in the stomach,
and then our blood vessels, which are like the roots of plants, can take up these
usable nutrients from the stomach and distribute them to the rest of the body (PA
650a20-34).
No biologist today would say that man is the standard to which all other
animals should be compared. However, this belief served Aristotle well, even if
it occasionally also led him astray. In fact, Aristotle's views about man's
relationship with the rest of the animal world enabled him to make certain
observations that were not repeated until this century simply because of the way
modem scientists and philosophers regarded man. Far from denying that other
animals used tools or language, Aristotle noticed, e.g., that nightingales have
something like a language (HA 536bl8) and that woodpeckers sometimes use
tools to split nuts (HA 614bl4). He seemed to take delight in finding these
man-like qualities among the lower creatures.
Aristotle believed that all nature was akin because all living things have souls.
Plants have only nutritive soul, they can grow and reproduce. Animals have
sensitive soul in addition to nutritive soul. They have at least the sense of touch,
and may have one or more of the remaining four senses. Humans are distinguished by also having rational souls. He was convinced that organisms like
scallops and jellyfish had sensation, and therefore were animals. He was led by
this conviction to look for ce1tain features in them. For instance, he was sure that
jellyfish, like humans, must have a way of taking in food and getting rid of
wastes, a reproductive system, and a heart and circulatory system, or something
analogous to these. He looked for and often found these systems in invertebrate
animals even though they appear very different from the analogous systems in
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the human body. Occasionally he "found" things we now know are not actually
present, such as a dorsal nerve chord in insects (they actually have a ventral nerve
chord which he missed).
Aristotle had some favorite animals which he returns to again and again.
These are the cephalopods (octopus, squid, cuttlefish, and paper nautilus), the
cartilaginous fishes (sharks, skates, and rays), and the bees. Why was he
particularly fascinated with these creatures? I believe it is because all these
animals share certain features with humans which they do not share with other,
more typical members of their groups. Octopuses have brains, clams do not.
Sharks bear their young alive, most fish lay eggs. Bees not only build the complex
architectural structures we call hives, they also have a beautifully organized
political system in which there is never any dispute over who rules and who
works. In fact, Aristotle says that the bees have something divine about them
(GA 76la8), a statement he otherwise makes only in the case of man.
A second, and at first glance rather puzzling, example of Aristotle's work on
a biological problem is his conviction that the heart is the seat of sensation and
intelligence. Most of Aristotle's contemporaries, including Plato, held that the
brain had this function. But Aristotle had his reasons.
In his observations of the chick embryo he noticed that the first organ seen
was the heart, already beating on the third day (PA 666a20). The heart could be
seen pumping blood to the rest of the body. In this way the heart certainly seems
primary; the brain does not develop until much later. He further noticed that it is
only the parts of animals that are supplied with blood that have sensation (HA
489a26). Fingernails lack both blood and sensation, and so does the brain (PA
652bl-6). The thought of the blood flowing from all the sense organs into the
"common sense" in the heart, which he speaks of in De Anima (lll, ii), must have
been very strong to him. It was difficult for Aristotle to believe that the bloodless
and sensation-free brain could really be the seat of reason and sensation.
He did not see the brain as a useless organ. In fact, he connected it intimately
with the heart and believed it functioned as a cooling organ for the rest of the
body (PA 652b16 ff.). If something went wrong with the brain, it would affect
the heart and cause a malfunction.
He had other reasons as well. He had dissected many invertebrate animals
and noticed that they generally had something analogous to a heart and blood,
but lacked a brain (PA 652b26). He noted that certain invertebrates, particularly
bees and spiders, certainly had intelligence, but he claimed they did not have
brains. They do have hearts. He noted that when animals were sacrificed they
often had lesions or tumors in the brain and other organs, but not in the heart.
However, when an animal died naturally and was dissected it was often found
to have something wrong with its heart. Thus, any damage to the heart seemed
fatal, thought this was not true of the brain (PA 667a34 f.).
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ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
For all these reasons Aristotle held that the heart was the seat of sensation and
intellect. I do not believe that he convinced his contemporaries, but neither could
they reply to his objections.
The last example is a problem Aristotle struggled long and hard with: the
reproduction of bees. The bees have been a serious problem for biological
themists from Aristotle's time through the present, and they are certainly very
odd animals.
To give some idea of what Aristotle was up against, I will relate some facts
we now know about bees. There are three castes in a bee colony. The queens are
female and do all the reproduction for the hive. The workers are all sterile females
and do all the work; they gather nectar and pollen, build the hive, take care of
the queen and the young, and guard the hive. The third caste are the drones, which
are reproductive males. They are produced only at the end of the season, and
their only function is to mate, after which they die.
New queens are also produced only at the end of the season. The new queens
and drones go on a nuptial flight. Mating takes place high in the air and is not
something that can be observed. Each queen mates only once in her entire
lifetime and can store and use the sperm from that one mating for the rest of her
life, which may last eight or ten years.
In humans, half the chromosomes come from the mother and half from the
father. Among these chromosomes are two that are called sex chromosomes. An
"X" is always received from the mother and either an "X" or a "Y" from the
father. If the newly fertilized egg is "XX," it will develop into a girl, if "XY" it
will develop into a boy. This is how sex is determined in all mammals. It works
differently in bees. When a queen wants to produce a female, she lets some sperm
through when an egg is in the reproductive tract. The fertilized egg will be "XX,"
a female. However, when she wants to produce a male, she doesn't let any sperm
through and lays an unfertilized egg. It is "XNothing" and develops into a male.
Aristotle didn't know all this, but he consulted the beekeepers. Some of them
told him that bees didn't reproduce at all. They said that the reason bees visit
flowers so frequently was that they were collecting their young and taking them
back to the nest (HA 553al9). Aristotle did not believe this. Some of the
beekeepers told him pretty much what I have just related, that the queens and the
workers are female, the drones male, and that the queens did all the reproduction.
Aristotle didn't believe this either (GA 759b5).
Given his views of a woman's virtues and role in society, he was not very
much inclined to conclude that these beautifully organized societies that he
admired so much were ruled by females. Also, in his observations of animals he
noticed that it was the males which had weapons for defense, and if the females
had them at all, they were considerably smaller than the males' (GA 759b6). In
the bees, the queens and the workers have stings and the males are defenseless,
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leading him to believe that the queens, which he calls either kings or leaders,
were male.
Aristotle reasoned further. Nobody had ever seen bees mate. Maybe the
leaders are neither male nor female, but hermaphroditic. He knew of some fish
that were apparently hermaphrodites (GA 759b26-32), so why not bees as well?
This theory presented two problems. If the leaders are hermaphrodite, then what
function did the drones have? If nature never does anything without a purpose,
what was the purpose for the drones? Also, hermaphrodite fish produce other
hermaphrodite fish just like them. Like produces like. This did not seem to be
what happened in the case of the bees. It seemed that the leaders were producing
both new leaders and workers, like producing unlike.
After many pages of struggling with this issue, Aristotle concludes that the
leaders are neither male nor female, that they produce both new leaders and
workers, and that workers produce the drones. This is reasonable, because in the
absence of the queen workers will sometimes lay unfertilized eggs, which
develop into drones (HA 553a30).
After reaching this conclusion, Aristotle makes the following statement:
This then appears to be the state of affairs with regard to the generation of
bees, so far as theory can take us, supplemented by what are thought to be the
facts about their behavior. But the facts have not been sufficiently ascertained;
and if at any future time they are ascertained, then credence must be given to
the direct evidence of the senses more than to theories - and to theories too
provided that the results which they show agree with what is observed. (GA
760b28 ff.)
This is a very strong statement. It epitomizes the Aristotelian spirit of
biological investigation. However, what modem biologists have received of
Aristotle's work is not the pages of struggle which went before his conclusion
nor the strong statements of doubt which often come after, but the conclusion
itself. And, as we all know, Aristotle was wrong about the reproduction of bees.
Hence his undeservedly low reputation amongst today 's biologists.
I don't wish to praise his work to such an extent that I ignore its deficiencies.
Certainly many of his theories have been proven wrong, e.g., spontaneous
generation. Some seem hopelessly naive and deserve the obscurity into which
they have fallen, e.g., his explanation that the heart is on the right because the
right is better than the left. Many of his facts have been corrected, although he
knew this would happen as more observations were made. However, there is still
something to be gained from reading Aristotle's biological works today. Many
of his suggestions and theories are incisively reasoned and have stood the test of
time. Others, having long lain in obscurity, seem very fresh and promising today.
It is here, in the biological writings, that we can really see Aristotle at work.
He does not seem uncomfortable with his lack of knowledge and understanding.
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48
In fact, he seems to delight in the wealth of contradictory information, the many
unknowns, and the loose ends. He sometimes suggests four or five possible
solutions to a difficulty and then leaves the problem for future investigators to
solve. We see him working on a problem from many angles: dissecting and
observing animals, collecting writings from the past, consulting experts, and then
reasoning through the whole question. He is comfortable and confident with this
work.
From a modem perspective, Aristotle seems justified in his confidence.
Almost every major principle of biology which can be discovered using one's
hands, eyes, and mind is found in the biological treatises, sometimes in a very
sophisticated form. These include principles of animal organization, development, evolution, and ecology.
Aristotle was not an evolutionist. Some of his predecessors, particularly
Empedocles, did espouse theories that sound somewhat like modern mechanistic
evolutionary thought. However, Empedocles' theory was based more on a poetic
vision than on biological observation.
Aristotle has often been brought to task for changing others' opinions to fit
his system. Here are some lines from Empedocles often construed as supporting
a theory of organic evolution:
There budded many a head without a neck, and arms were roaming shoulderless and bare, and eyes that wanted foreheads drifted by. (Fragment 57)2
In isolation wandered every limb, hither and thither seeking union meet.
(Fragment 58)
But now as God with God was mingled more, these members fell together
where they met, and many a birth besides was then begot in a long line of ever
varied life. (Fragment 59)
Here is Aristotle's restatement of Empedocles' ideas in a discussion of explana-
tion in the natural sciences:
Hence, why should not even bodily parts like teeth have developed in the
necessary course of nature- sharp front teeth suited for the tearing of food
and flat back teeth suited for the crushing of food? May they not have been
produced, not to some end, but by coincidence? And may it not be so with
all bodily parts supposedly having some inherent end or purpose? Those
organic structures, then, which came into the world as if they had been
produced to some end, survived because they had been automatically
organized in a fitting way; all others, like the rnan~faced offspring of oxen
in the theory ofEmpedocles, have perished and continue to perish. (Phys.
198b28-30)
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This statement sounds more modern and certainly has a more definite
meaning than Empedocles' poetry. Aristotle has rephrased it in such a way that
he can discuss something definite. He goes on to criticize Empedocles on the
grounds that eyes, shoulders, etc., must be part of a whole integrated organism,
and cannot live separately.
However, it is in Aristotle's treatise that we find the observations and
principles necessary to support modern evolutionary theory. These include the
very important distinction between homology and analogy discussed earlier. He
also made some outstanding observations of embryo development in which he
noticed that embryos can first be recognized only as animals, later still as
members of particular species, and lastly as unique individuals of those species
(GA 736a35). These observations are identical with those that support the modern
principle that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.
Aristotle was the first to recognize many significant ecological principles. He
wrote about animal territoriality and accounted for why and how various animals
establish and defend tenitories (e.g., HA 613a8 ff.). He made observations about
the distribution and abundance of animals in different environments (e.g., HA
543b24, 605b28), and noted their various reproductive strategies. For instance,
he remarked that some animals, especially fish, lay literally millions of eggs,
which are mostly destroyed or infertile (GA 755a33). This strategy is compared
to that of sharks, in which a few large young are produced after incubation in a
womb (HA 571a). The two reproductive strategies are referred to today as rand
K selection.
He also spoke of the dangers of overpopulation. He mentioned the destructiveness of overfishing and of dredging for shellfish (HA 603a). All these
principles are familiar to ecologists and environmentalists today.
Despite the errors, uncertainties, and unknowns, Aristotle was able to discern
important patterns in the natural world. His achievement as a biologist is
genuinely impressive from a modem perspective. It was no less impressive in
his own time.
He differed fTom his predecessors in several impmtant ways. He was intensely involved with the study of many individual organisms at a time when
sweeping statements about species and biological principles were the rule. He
was interested in the individual animal because it is only in an individual
organism that one can see all of the forces of nature working together. When
final, formal, efficient, and material causes converge just the way they should,
the result is an individual louse, or goldfish, or human. The individual is the only
thing that actually exists. Species and other groups lack material cause, and are
only abstractions (PA 64lal9 ff.).
A second important distinction between Aristotle and the other natural
philosophers was that Aristotle used the knowledge of the common people to
great advantage. It is not an exaggeration to claim that his achievement rests, to
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a very great extent, on the enormous amounts of information that the common
people were able to give him.
He also had a great deal of faith in the common sense of people in general.
For instance, when he speaks of animal classification, he clearly prefers the
groupings that the mass of people use to those devised by theorists (PA 643b 15).
Most people divided animals into the major groups which we refer to today as
mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, etc. The theorists of Aristotle's time devised
dichotomous classification schemes which, for example, first divided animals
into tame and wild, then into land and water, etc.
Aristotle pointed out that such schemes would only obscure real patterns in
nature because some birds are land animals, some are water animals, and some
are both. Also, domestic animals are often found in the wild (PA I,ii). It is true
that the folk classifications made certain enors, classifying bats as birds and
whales as fish, but these errors were easily corrected by Aristotle. The overall
scheme of the common man's classification was sound.
The third feature that distinguishes Aristotle is that he got physically involved
with his subject, performing dissections and field observations. The importance
of this should not be underestimated. Anyone who has ever attempted to dissect
a frog or cat in biology class knows that there is an art to it. One must train one's
hands and eyes. It requires practice and dedication to become proficient, and all
evidence suggests that Aristotle was a master of this craft. He got to know his
subject with an intimacy which his contemporaries and predecessors never
experienced.
How is it that Aristotle was able to approach the study of biology in this new
way? It is known that he came from medical families on both sides and that his
father was court physician at Macedon. Certainly he had some medical training
and his writings show a familiarity with the medical literature and techniques of
his time. A physician must have many of the skills we see Aristotle employing
in his studies of animals. He may have theories about the course of a disease or
causes of illness, but he knows that each patient is unique and must be treated as
an individual. "For the physician does not cure 'man' except in an incidental way,
but Callias or Socrates or some other called by some such individual name, who
happens to be a man" (Met. 981a17). Clever theories alone do not cure patients.
A physician must look, listen, touch, and think when treating a patient.
Add this practical medical background to twenty years at Plato's academy
and we can see how a man with Aristotle's intellectual breadth and depth was
able to address questions of natural philosophy fruitfully and at many different
levels.
At the most basic level he describes parts of animals and asks what they are
used for. He also deals with questions which are a step more abstract, e.g., the
grouping and classification of animals. However, his biological studies also led
him to the highest and most difficult philosophical questions, such as the nature
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51
of the soul and the causes of animal and heavenly motions. Aristotle was able to
make biology into a respectable study in its own right as well as establish it as
an important philosophical discipline.
We can see Aristotle employing the methods that were so successful for him
in biology in other disciplines as well. In the Politics we see him reviewing
various utopian theories (Bk. II), but finally saying that what is needed is to see
how things actually are. He collected 158 constitutions of states as well as the
oral laws and customs of numerous tribes. He used these as the source of facts,
as the actual individual things, which he could study and analyze along with
theories (Bk. Ill).
Again, in the Ethics we see him going to the beliefs of the people as the
starting point of his investigation of proper human behavior (e.g., EN 1098b23).
He quotes common aphorisms and uses these as the basis from which to reason
about ethics. Once again he was able to tap and use to advantage a source of
information and inspiration which was largely ignored by philosophers.
His accustomed empirical approach gets him into trouble when he tries to
account for such physical phenomena as bodies falling through various media
and the movement of objects that have been thrown or shot. If one were to do as
Aristotle suggests in the Physics and throw a rock into the air ten thousand times,
the same thing will happen every time. No new information will be learnt about
the laws of falling objects. The method of investigation that has proven fruitful
for these sorts of phenomena is to throw the rock into the air once or twice, time
it, perhaps take a strobe photograph, and then go inside and write an equation
that describes the rock's movements. These phenomena do not offer the kind of
complexity or abundance of information common in biological problems. They
require a rather different art, that of mathematization, which Galileo and others
discovered many years later.
One can't throw a chicken into the air and then go inside and write an equation
for it. In fact, to this day it is wmthwhile for biologists to watch chickens. In
contrast to the movement of rocks through the air, there is still much to learn by
simply watching the movements of birds. There is almost always something more
to learn from dissecting ten more squid or spending ten more hours watching a
flock of geese. It seems that biological and physical phenomena require rather
different means of investigation.
It is certainly true that Aristotle was interested in answering the most sublime
sort of philosophical questions through his biological studies. However, he spent
the bulk of his time asking the most basic questions about animal anatomy and
behavior. There are not many people who would dissect dozens of squid simply
to answer these sorts of questions. There is a wonderfulness about the animals
themselves that repeatedly brings one back to them. They are worthy of study in
their own right and for their own sakes.
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Aristotle recognized this quality in animals. He wanted to convince his
students of the worthiness of studying the natural world. It is not often that we
see Atistotle waxing eloquent in his treatises. Thus, this passage from Parts of
Animals I,v is particularly remarkable. I will end by letting Aristotle entice all of
you into the study of biology with some of the same words that he used with his
own students some 2300 years ago. He tells a story about some visitors who
wished to meet Heraclitus:
... and when they entered and saw him in the kitchen, warming himself at the
stove, they hesitated; but Heraclitus said "Come in; don't be afraid; there are
gods even here." In like manner, we ought not to hesitate nor to be abashed,
but boldly to enter upon our researches concerning animals of every sort and
kind, knowing that in not one of them is Nature or Beauty lacking.
*****
Notes
1. The following abbreviations are used: PA, Parts of Animals; HA, History of
Animals; GA, Generation of Animals; EN, Nichomachean Ethics; Phys.,
Physics; Met., Metaphysics. Translations from PA and GA are from the Loeb
editions (Harvard University Press); those from HA are from the Oxford
edition (Clarendon Press).
2. Translations from Lombardo, S., 1982. Parmenides and Empedocles: the
Fragments in Verse (San Francisco: Grey Fox Press).
�The God Who Is
and the God Who Speaks
Thomas J. Slakey
0 my soul, seek not immortal life, but exhaust
the realm of the possible.
- Pindar, Third Pythian
For whose sake is it that the proof is sought?
Faith does not need it; aye, it must even
regard the proof as its enemy.
- Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific
Postscript
Introduction
Discussions of the existence of God meet with resistance from, so to speak, both
the left and the right. On the "left" are those from Pindar through Hume and Kant
and beyond, who tell us to confine our reason to those matters within our reach,
namely practical affairs and empirical science. On the "right" are those Christians, and many other devout believers, who tell us that arguments for God's
existence can only undermine proper reverence toward God, that the appropriate
response to God is not argument but worship.
Nevertheless there are within the Bible itself suggestions of a kind of
inference from the physical universe to the existence of God, as in Psahn 19: l,
"The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his
handiwork." 1 St. Paul expands this notion. He says that the Gentiles should have
known better than to worship idols.
For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown
it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely,
his etemal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have
been made. So they are without excuse. (Romans 1: 19-20)
Thomas Slakey is a Tutor at St. John's College, Annapolis, and former Dean. This
lecture was first delivered at St. John's College, Santa Fe, in January, 1989. In April,
1986, an earlier version was submitted to the Basic Issues Forum at Washington and
Jefferson College, in a call for papers on the Existence of God.
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The crucial claim here is that invisible things, ta aorata (translated "his
invisible nature") can be seen in things made, if those things are properly
understood, that is, so to speak, seen with the mind's eye, nooumena kathoratai.
(RSV translates this phrase merely as "clearly perceived.") St. Paul is asserting
that the Gentiles should have been able to infer the existence of an invisible God
from the visible things around them.
On the other hand, the Psalmist and St. Paul, and I would say all other writers
in the Bible, take for granted not only that God exists but also that He is a person
who acts, and who sometimes acts in our world. Nowhere in the Bible is the
existence of God questioned. Even Job, who suffers terribly at the hand of God,
never questions whether God exists. Rather Job questions only whether God is
just:
It is all one; therefore I say, he destroys both the blameless and the wicked.
When disaster brings sudden death, he mocks at the calamity of the innocent.
The earth is given into the hand of the wicked; he covers the faces of its judges
-if it is not he, who then is it? (Job 9: 22-24)
Even the fool who says in his heart, "There is no God" (Psalm 14: I), is really
only questioning whether God will punish those who do abominable deeds, as
becomes clear from the context.
Thus even though in the Bible itself there are suggestions of inferences to the
existence of God, those inferences are made by those who do not need convincing
that God exists, unlike the contemporary context of this lecture, where the
existence of God is widely questioned and is usually held to be a matter of
something called "faith." In the Bible "faith" does not mean belief in the
existence of God, but means trust in God's promises. Thus Abraham is the model
of faith because he believed God's promise of a son in his old age, a son who
would be the father of a mighty race (Genesis 15: 5-6). Throughout the centuries
of oppression and exile, "faith" meant trust that eventually God's promises would
be fulfilled.
A similar difficulty besets those Christian writers, such as Thomas Aquinas,
who have constructed philosophical arguments for the existence of God. Though
Thomas is often careful to distinguish matters of faith from matters of reason,
and though he holds that the existence of God can be rationally demonstrated
without reliance on revelation, nevettheless throughout the Summa Theologiae,
on almost every page, he mixes references to both pagan and Christian authors.
Thus when he argues not only that the existence of God can be known through
reason, but also that God is a person, that He is just and merciful, that He created
the universe and provides for it, that He knows each of us as an individual, and
so on, it is extremely difficult to separate the sources of his arguments, and to
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know to what extent he could have reached such conclusions had he not grown
up with a constant experience of the Scriptures and of daily prayers.
We do, however, have some clues. We have the results, in Plato, Aristotle,
and Plotinus, of a long tradition of philosophical speculation which strove to
reach the divine. Although this speculation itself began in the midst of a powerful
tradition of very personal gods, gods with human faces, gods to whom one prayed
and who answered prayers, sometimes by themselves descending from Mount
Olympus to a battlefield where they deflected spears, healed wounds, and even
fought directly, nevertheless Plato, Aristotle, and Plotinus largely left behind
such apparently primitive and merely poetic notions. Thus Plato's "Good" is
strictly impersonal (see especially Republic VI, 504-11), and in his account of a
fashioner of the world, that "Craftsman" is described as at best having a certain
likelihood (Timaeus, 29). Aristotle's First Mover is an object of love and
veneration, but itself knows nothing of us and does not act in our world; its only
object of thought is itself (Metaphysics, XII, 9, 1074b 33-34). Plotinus's One has
some relation to our world but only through a series of intermediaries (see, for
example Enneads V, para. 6).
This lecture consists offour parts. I first consider attempts to speak about God
as Transcendent Being, the God who is. I next consider attempts to speak about
God as Himself speaking to us, the God who speaks. Thirdly, I consider to what
extent these two different attempts are compatible. Finally I briefly consider
prayer, the action by which we speak to God.
Part I. God as Transcendent Being
Instead of beginning with any of Thomas Aquinas's well known "five ways"
of demonstrating the existence of God, I want to start out from his discussion of
"The Names of God," that is, from the way in which we human beings speak
about God. 2 Following Aristotle, Thomas holds that all our knowledge, and the
language we use to express it, derives from sensation and therefore from our
experience of physical things in the world around us. How can any language so
derived be applied to God?
Thomas distinguishes words that are applied to God "metaphorically," as in
"God is my rock" or "God is a lion," from words that are applied to God
"properly," such as "good" and "living" (Q.13, a.3). Although our understanding
of"good" derives from, for example, good human beings, and our understanding
of "living" from, for example, plants and animals, Thomas claims that the
perfections signified by these words are not limited to bodily things, whereas
"rock" and "lion" specifically mean something bodily. Therefore when "rock"
and "lion" are applied to God, it can only be in some metaphorical sense. A word
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like "rock" is not only learned from bodily things, but it points precisely to the
bodily aspect of what it names. Hence when it is applied to God the meaning can
only be by a kind of implied comparison, as to suggest that God's protection is
firm and unchanging. "The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer"
(Psalm 18:2). On the other hand, a word like "good," even though it is learned
from its application to, for example, good food, good tools, and good men, has
a meaning that can be separated from those bodily things and applied "properly"
to God, that is, as if it belongs to God and is not merely applied to Him by
comparison with some bodily thing.
Thomas goes even further. He makes the bold claim that words like "good"
not only properly apply to God but apply to Him "more properly than to creatures
themselves, and are said of Him primatily" (Q.13, a.3). How can this be? The
best explanation comes from Plato, from the ladder of love in the Symposium
(210-12), even though Thomas did not have this passage available to him and
knew Plato's writings chiefly as they came to him through St. Augustine,
pseudo-Dionysius, and others. Socrates says that we can ascend from the love
of a single beautiful body to the love of beautiful bodies generally, then to the
beauty of souls, then to the beauty of those customs and laws which bind men
together in cities, and then to the beauty found by study and speculation. Finally,
those who ascend the ladder in the right way will be struck with wonder as they
see
... the final object of all those previous toils. First of all it is ever existent and
neither comes to be nor perishes, neither waxes nor wanes; next, it is not
beautiful in part and in patt ugly, nor is it such at such a time and other at
another, nor in one respect beautiful and in another ugly, nor so affected by
position as to seem beautiful to some and ugly to others. Nor again will our
initiate find the beautiful presented to him in the guise of a face or of hands
or any other portion of the body, nor as a particular description or piece of
knowledge, nor as existing somewhere in another substance, such as an animal
or the earth or sky or any other things, but existing ever in singularity of form
independent by itself, while all the multitude of beautiful things partake of it
in such wise that, though all of them are coming to be and perishing, it grows
neither greater nor less, and is affected by nothing. (21 0-11) 3
Even though our experience of beauty begins from particular physical things,
and even though the word "beautiful" is leamed from those things -beautiful
flowers, beautiful houses, beautiful women, beautiful days - the word itself
leads us beyond them to a beauty that is in no way deficient and in no way
changes. The word itself suggests that the beautiful things we see "partake" in
such a beauty, that is, that their beauty is not truly their own but something shared
from some higher source, which Socrates calls "beauty itself' (auto to kalon,
211 d) or "the divine beauty" (to the ion kalon, 211 e).
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In the Phaedo (74a-75c) Socrates argues the even stronger thesis that words
like "equal," "just," and "good" not only lead us beyond sensible things around
us, but could not have been derived from those things, and in the Theaetetus
( 185-86) he argues a similar strong thesis with regard to "being." But for Thomas,
and for my present pmpose, the weaker thesis is sufficient, that words like "good"
point beyond our world to something higher and that they are applied more
properly to it than to anything we can perceive with our senses.
This thesis is in turn the root of Thomas's doctrine of "analogy," a doctrine
based on Aristotle's Metaphysics, Book IV, Chapter 2, even to the use of
Aristotle's example of "healthy." A certain diet might be called "healthy" and a
urine sample might be called "healthy," each by relation to "healthy" as applied
to a living animal, the diet as the cause of health and the urine as the sign of
health. Any such "analogous" use of a word always points to some one primary
meaning. Similarly a word like "wise," as applied to creatures, points beyond
creatures toward God, "in whom all the perfections of things preexist excellently" (Q.13, a.S).
The most important such concept will be the concept of being itself. God
exists in the fullest possible sense. He never came into existence, He never
changes, and He will never go out of existence. It is simply His nature or His
"essence" to exist (Q.3, a.4). We, on the other hand, are born, we are constantly
changing physically, emotionally, and mentally, and finally we die. We exist only
in some lesser sense.
Elsewhere in the Summa, Thomas discusses the widespread custom among
religious peoples of making offerings or "sacrifices" to God or gods:
Nat ural reason tells man that he is subject to something higher, because of the
deficiency which he feels in himself, so that he needs to be helped and directed
by something higher. And whatever that is, it is what among all men is called
God 4
Thomas is here describing what I would call the fundamental religious sensibility, the sense most men have had in most times and places that man "is subject
to something higher." It is the sense most profoundly resisted by Nietzsche,
Sartre, and others. On the other hand it finds a new contemporary expression in
the sense of obligation toward preserving other species of animals and plants,
whenever that obligation is understood not merely as serving human purposes,
but as respect or "reverence" for species that have evolved over millions of years.
It found expression among the Romans in the concept of pietas, which extended
from duty to family, through duty to country, to duty toward the gods. The hard
question is whether the religious sensibility is reliable, especially if it points
beyond the physical world toward a Being which transcends that world. The hard
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question is whether one can move from our sense of God and our language about
God to the conclusion that God exists.
Thomas makes this very move in the fourth of his "five ways." Let me quote
the argument in full: 5
The fourth way is taken from the gradations which are found in things. For
there is found in things something more and less good, and true, and noble,
and similarly with other qualities of this sort. But more and less are said of
different things according as they differently approach some maximum, as
more heat more closely approaches maximum heat. There exists therefore
something which is truest, and best, and noblest, and consequently maximum
being, since maximum truths are maximum beings as Book II of the Metaphysics says [Chapter 1, 993b 28-31]. But what is said to be maximum in any
genus is the cause of all things in that genus, as fire, which is maximum heat,
is the cause of all heat, as is said in the same book [lac. cit., ll. 24-25]. Therefore
there exists something which for all beings is the cause of being, and of
goodness, and of any perfection whatever. And this we call God. (Q.2, a.3)
This passage is fraught with difficulties. To start with, there is the confusing
example of heat. The point of the example is not to suggest that any kind of
quantitative variation points to a maximum, but to find a case where differences
of degree do point to some outside source of the quality mentioned. Consider
stones in the shade and in the sun. The stone in the sun is hotter than the stone
in the shade. The gradations of heat in the stones suggest that the heat derives
not from the stones themselves, but from something else, such as the sun. The
sun is "maximum heat" in the sense that it is a source of heat, a cause of heat, in
things like stones.
Can this example be applied to the kind of qualities Thomas here has in mind,
namely "the good, the true, the noble," and other qualities of this sm1? To focus
on the example of "good": Is the goodness of things such that it suggests an
outside source, a maximum goodness? Consider first things good as means to an
end, such as good tools. Clearly their goodness derives from the ends they serve.
Consider next things good as ends in themselves, such as good human beings. Is
their goodness their own? Is it partial, temporary, and constantly changing? Does
it point to a "maximum goodness" that could be the source of goodness in other
things, a goodness that is complete, permanent, and unchanging?
We are back in the Symposium and the Phaedo. We start from experience of
things in the world around us and from language and thought that develop in
relation to those things. We experience "goodness" as embodied in physical
things. But the experience itself, and the language and thought that express it,
drive us beyond physical things to something that transcends the kind of realities
we directly experience.
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It is far beyond the scope of this paper to defend such reasoning against
practically the whole of modern philosophy. Kant states the essential point of
difficulty succinctly in the Critique of Pure Reason, with regard to the principle
of causality:
This principle is applicable only in the sensible world; outside that world it
has no meaning whatsoever.... The principle of causality has no meaning and
no criterion for its application save only in the sensible world. 6
We can, however, briefly examine Kant's objection in relation to an argument
combining the first and second of Thomas's five ways, an argument derived from
the extended argument in Aristotle's Physics VIII. Basing himself on the obvious
phenomenon of "motion" or change in the physical world, Thomas asserts that
since nothing simply changes of itself, whenever anything does change, we look
for a source or cause of change. Moreover, there could not be an infinite series
of such causes or the result would never occur. 7 Therefore there must be a first
cause of change. It does not cause itself to change, since this would contradict
the whole thrust of the argument. Rather it is unchanging, an "unmoved mover"
(Q.2, a.3).
Kant does not challenge the principle of causality as applied to the physical
world. He grants that whenever something changes within the physical world,
we do in fact look for a cause of change. The principle of causality is in fact a
principle of investigation within the physical world. Kant's objection is to
extending that principle toward something beyond the physical world. When we
do so, we argue for the existence of something whose nature is totally different
from anything we observe or even "can" observe, something that produces
changes without itself changing. Kant claims that the principle of causality so
extended is not merely unreliable but "has no meaning whatsoever."
But Kant's objection cuts two ways. While restricting the principle of causality to the physical world, and therefore to the strictly "scientific" investigation
that it expresses, Kant leaves a question that physical science cannot answer,
namely the question about the origin of the physical universe as a whole.
Whatever scientific cosmology tells us must start from a certain given state of
matter or energy. Is it unreasonable to suggest, though not in a strictly "scientific"
way, that something must have given rise to that state in this first place, and that
it must be of a nature totally different from the matter and energy that "science"
can measure?
Let me turn also briefly to Thomas's fifth way, which is taken from the
presence of purposeful order in natural things:
For we see that some things which lack cognition, namely natural bodies, act
toward an end; which is apparent from the fact that they always or frequently
act in the same way so that that which is best may follow; whence it is plain
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that they reach their ends not by chance but intentionally. But those things
which lack cognition do not go toward an end unless directed by something
which knows and understands, as the anow is directed by the archer. Therefore
there is some intelligent being by whom all natural things are ordered toward
their ends; and this we call God. (Q.2, a.3)
This argument was widely regarded as conclusive through the eighteenth and
early nineteenth century, and has since been equally widely regarded as refuted
by Darwin. The crucial point in the argument is, however, not simply the
appearance of orderly structures in natural organisms, but the fact that orderly
structures are repeated "always or frequently" in the same way. In his discussion
of chance in Physics II 5-6, Aristotle makes it a defining property of chance that
there is an appearance of order, as when a tripod tumbles down stairs and lands
on its feet in an appropriate place, as if it was placed there on purpose (197b 17).
Hence it is not the appearance of order that argues against chance, but the regular
recurrence of order.
Aristotle himself entertains the Darwinian hypothesis:
... if a man's crop is spoiled on the threshing floor, the rain did not fall for the
sake of this - in order that the crop might be spoiled - but that result just
followed. Why then should it not be the same with the parts in nature, e.g. that
our teeth should come up of necessity- the front teeth sharp, fitted for tearing,
the molars broad and useful for grinding down the food- since they did not
arise for this end, but it was merely a coincident result; and so with all the
other parts in which we suppose that there is purpose? Whenever then all the
parts came about just what they would have been if they had come to be for
an end, such things survived, being organized spontaneously in a fitting way;
whereas those which grew otherwise perished and continue to perish ... 8
Aristotle here argues that the Darwinian hypothesis is insufficient because,
for example, the teeth "either invariably or normally come about in a given way"
(198b 35). Aristotle could perhaps accept Darwin's analogy between natural
selection and the controlled breeding of animals, but he would still argue that
some explanation is needed for the nearly uniform succession of characteristics
from generation to generation. This is the fact that Darwin takes for granted both
with respect to natural selection and to controlled breeding.
On the other hand, Thomas's argument is subject to a different objectionone of two that he himself raises against the general conclusion of the whole set
of five ways, the conclusion that God exists- namely that if there is a God, and
if He produces order in things, and if He is also good, how can there be so much
evil? Thomas's reply to this objection is drawn from Augustine: God would not
allow evil "unless He were so omnipotent and good that He can make good even
out of evil" (Q.2, a.3, objection 1 and reply). It seems to me that on this particular
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point the evidence can only be moot. Much that is good and beautiful in the world
might suggest that there is a benevolent deity ordering the universe, but then one
has to confront that conclusion with evil and suffering.
Moreover, Aristotle himself does not argue from order in nature to the
existence of an intelligent being outside of and ordering nature. He assigns the
order in natural things to nature itself (physis), as a principle working within
things (192b 22). And this suggests the second objection that Thomas himself
raises against the conclusion of his five ways:
... What can be completed through fewer principles does not occur through
many. But it seems that everything which appears in the world can be
completed through other principles, supposing that God does not exist .. , (Q.2,
a.3, obj. 2)
Thomas replies only that "everything in nature reduces also to God, as to its first
cause" (Q.3, a.3, reply to obj. 2).
On this general conclusion also, the evidence seems to me to be moot. I
certainly cannot claim to have proved the existence of God. Yet I have argued
that much in our experience drives us toward something beyond physical things.
We like to scoff at medieval man, who was so arrogant as to place himself at the
exact center of a rather small universe. Is it any less arrogant for us to think that
we are the highest form of life in an infinite universe? Or that if there are other
intelligent beings, they have brains and bodies something like our own? Is it
unreasonable to suppose that there might exist a Being utterly different from
ourselves and from any physical thing, eternal and unchanging? Is it unreasonable to think of that Being as the "cause" of the universe we know, however much
we have to strain the word "cause"?
Part II. God as Speaking to Us
In Part I we followed Socrates' progress from seeing beautiful things to a
vision of beauty itself. Moreover it should be noted that the metaphor of the
Platonic eidos, which comes from a verb meaning "to see," is visual, a "form,"
whether seen with the eye of the body or the eye of the mind. Though spoken
oracles play a prominent role in Greek religion, Plato's own progress toward God
is primarily through sight.
Throughout the Bible, on the other hand, God is heard:
Now the Lord said to Abraham, "go from your country and your kindred and
your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you
a great nation ... " (Genesis 12: 1-2)
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Though God's power is often visible, and though visions occasionally reveal
something of God, as in Isaiah 6: 1-3, and Revelation 4: l-11, it is primarily
through a voice that God is known, whether that voice is heard directly, as by
Abraham, or indirectly, through a prophet.
The voice speaks in a human language, but Abraham never questions whether
the voice he hears is the voice of God. Even when the voice commands the
murder of Isaac, the child of the promise, through whom Abraham was to be the
father of the Lord's chosen people, Abraham proceeds without hesitation to the
execution of the divine command, at least so far as the extremely spare account
in Genesis tells us (22: 1-4 ). Most often the later prophets also simply state, "Thus
says the Lord." How Abraham and the prophets know that it is the Lord who
spoke to them, we are not told. They simply know. It is perhaps impossible for
one who does not share such an experience to enter into it. The certainty
possessed by Abraham and by the prophets can only remain mysterious. And
even though it has become almost fashionable for contemporary Christians to
hear the voice of the Lord, their certainty must also remain mysterious.
On the other hand, when Moses hears the voice from the burning bush, he is
given a sign of divine presence, since the bush, though it is burning, is not
consumed (Exodus 3: 2-3). When the Lord orders Moses to speak to the children
of Israel in His name, Moses asks for a sign, and the Lord gives him three: the
rod that can turn into a serpent and then back into a rod, the hand that can tum
leprous and then be healed, and the Nile water turning into blood (Exodus 4:
1-9). And though the Pharaoh's magicians themselves perform such wonders,
greater wonders follow which they cannot match, so that finally even they say,
"This is the finger of God" (Exodus 8: 19).
Similarly, in the time of Elijah, when worship of the Baals was overwhelming
the worship of the true God, God sends a sign of fire (I Kings 18: 20-40). And
in the gospels, Jesus is shown to be the messenger of God by the signs that he
works. When Jesus brings to life the son of the widow of Nain, men exclaim, "A
great prophet has risen among us!" and "God has visited his people!" (Luke
7: 16). When the Pharisees accuse Jesus of blasphemy for presuming to forgive
sins, Jesus says, "But that you may know that the Son of man has authority on
earth to forgive sins"; he then said to the paralytic, "Rise, take up your bed and
go home" (Matthew 9:16). Elsewhere Jesus says, "These very works which I am
doing, bear me witness that the Father has sent me" (John 5:36), and finally he
even says, "Even though you do not believe me, believe the works" (John I 0:38).
A long line of rationalist critics has attacked such miracle stories in the Bible,
such stories of "signs" and "works," first by challenging their credibility and
second by challenging their importance to the central religious message of the
Bible. The first challenge is beyond the scope of this paper, but let me speak to
the second. Consider the relevance of miracle stories to the belief in a personal
God. By a "personal" God I mean a God who acts, following the root sense of
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the word persona as deriving from the mask worn by a stage actor. How are we
to conceive of a personal God if not in somewhat human terms?- a God who
speaks, a God who chooses, a God who does things, in short, a God who acts.
Furthermore, why would we say that God is acting if it were not for events called
"miraculous," that is, "wonderful," "remarkable," events so extraordinary that
they seem to exceed the possibilities of"natural" causes and effects? Such events
suggest the direct intervention of a God who chooses in a particular instance to
act in an unusual way. I do not assert that the belief in a personal God could arise
only in the context of such stories, but it is at least clear that such stories have
had a prominent part throughout the world in traditions about personal gods or
God.
On the other hand, even in the story of Elijah, after the episode of the
miraculous fire in I Kings 18, there is the remarkable passage in I Kings 19,
where Elijah seeks God on Mount Horeb. At first there was a mighty wind,
... but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the
Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord
was not in the fire; and after the fire a still small voice. (I Kings 19: 11-13)
It is in that still, small voice that the Lord speaks to Elijah. Also when Jesus is
asked for a sign, he refuses to give it, saying, "An evil and adulterous generation
seeks for a sign" (Matthew 12:39).
Finally, it must be said that miraculous signs are relatively rare, even in the
history described in the Bible. From Abraham through the life of Jesus, that
history extends over a period of perhaps 1800 years. Only at very infrequent
intervals are miraculous events repmted. More often God is described as acting
through natural causes, such as disease, and through human instmrnents, especially through foreign rulers and their armies. This is the way in which God first
destroys the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, and then restores the exiles. For
example, in Isaiah 41 the reference is to Cyrus, King of Persia, who conquered
Babylon and allowed the Jews in Babylon to return to Jerusalem:
Who stilTed up one from the east whom victory meets at every step? He gives
up nations before him, so that he tramples kings under foot.. .. Who has
performed and done this, calling the generations from the beginning? I, the
Lord, the first, and with the last; I am he. (Isaiah 41: 2-4)
As Isaiah understands it, God has arranged for Cyrus to conquer Babylon and
thereby set free His own chosen people. Thus for most people most of the time,
not only in our own world but in the world of the Bible, God's hand is not
apparent. Men must believe that God is acting even when He is hidden. However
terrible the sufferings of the chosen people at the hands of Egyptians, Philistines,
Assyrians, and Babylonians, the children oflsrael must believe that God is active,
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perhaps punishing them for their own sins. They must believe that the promises
of special protection and a unique destiny made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
will somehow be fulfilled.
Part III. God as Both Transcendent and Speaking
Isaiah's view of history has further implications, staggering implications, and
Isaiah himself does not hesitate to draw them. The God who hears the prayers of
the children of Israel and who frees them from exile is not simply a local god,
powelful in the region of Jerusalem. He is a God who uses distant nations and
peoples as His instruments. He is in fact the Lord of the whole earth and even of
the heavens, because he brought them into being.
Why do you say, 0 Jacob, and speak, 0 Israel, "My way is hid from the Lord,
and my right is disregarded by my God?" Have you not known? Have you not
heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary, his understanding is unsearchable. (40:
27-28)
For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens ... who fotmed the earth and
made it. .. "I am the Lord, and there is no other." (45:18)
Thus we get that double aspect of the Bible which makes for both its difficulty
and its power. On the one hand, God is, if it is not blasphemous to say so, in some
way like the gods of Homer. He speaks to men in a human voice, He knows
individual men by name, He hears their prayers and acts to help them. On the
other hand, God does not have parents, like Homer's gods. He does not reside
on Mount Olympus. Instead, when Solomon builds the first magnificent temple,
he says in prayer,
But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest
heaven cannot contain thee; how much less this house which I have built. (I
Kings 8:27)
And there are many other passages that emphasize how mysterious God is. His
act of making is simply by a spoken word:
And God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. (Genesis 1: 13)
His knowledge is beyond our comprehension:
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Even before a word is on my tongue, lo, 0 Lord, thou knowest it altogether.
Thou dost beset me behind and before, and layest thy hand upon me. Such
knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain it. (Psalm 139:
4-6)
God is unchanging:
Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hast formed the earth
and the world, from everlasting to everlasting thou art God. (Psalm 90:2)
Fidelity to the Bible demands fidelity to the God who both speaks to Abraham
and exists from everlasting to everlasting. The conflict is not between the God
of the philosophers and the God of the Bible. Our difficulties in speaking about
God do not arise just from philosophical speculation but arise within the Bible
itself. The God of the Bible is a person who acts, but in a way different from any
action we know. God acts without Himself changing:
Every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above, coming down
from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to
change. (James 1:17)
Finally God exists in a way different from anything we know. When Moses
asks God to reveal His name, God answers in words variously interpreted as "I
am Who I am," "I am what I am," or "I will be what I will be" (Exodus 3:14).
Thomas takes these words as saying that God's nature is to exist. All other things
have a partial and borrowed existence. God alone simply is (see Q.3, a.4: Q.l3,
a.ll). Any other conclusion would imply change in God and would violate the
conclusion of the five ways, that God is the source of all change but is Himself
unchanging. For Thomas the Bible and the philosophers here come together.
We saw in Part I that Thomas argued that words like "good" could be properly
applied to God, and even more properly to God than to things around us. Thomas
acknowledges, however, that the modum significandi, the "way of signifying,"
of such words is different when applied to God (Q.13, articles 3 and 6). Thomas
is referring, I think, to the same point as in his claim that existence belongs to
God by nature. Any qualities we ascribe to God, such as goodness, must also be
His by nature. To be God is to be good. Moreover, it is even misleading to think
of "qualities" ascribed to God. Like existence, goodness is God's nature. God is
utterly one and utterly undivided (Q.3, articles 3, 6, and 7). Our language,
however, is developed from things that are divided, things whose qualities are
not identical with their natures. A human being may or may not be good, and if
he is good, goodness is not identical with his nature. Therefore the "way of
signifying" of "good" is different when applied to human beings and when
applied to God.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Thus our language is constantly straining. Thomas says that we attempt to
speak about God by using two very different kinds of words: abstract words, to
signify His undivided nature, and concrete words to signify what Thomas calls
"His subsistence" (Q.l3, a.l, reply to obj.2). Thus we use abstract words in
sa)ring that God is Goodness and Wisdom and Truth, and we use concrete words
like the Tetragrammaton, a proper name, and words like "The Lord" and "He,"
to signify that God is, "if it is permissible to speak in this way, an individual"
(Q.l3, a.ll, reply to obj.l) Thomas recognizes strain on both sides, both when
speaking about God as goodness and when speaking about God as an individual.
The strain also shows when Thomas attempts to ascribe intellect and will to
God. The divine intellect never learns anything, or comes to know anything. God
simply knows. Like any qualities we ascribe to God, His act of understanding
must be considered as simply what He is, eternally and unchangeably (Q.l4, a.4).
Similarly God's act of choice must be understood as simply what He is, eternally
and unchangeably (Q.l9, a.l). All the actions of God described in the Bible must
be understood as identical with His nature even though manifested to us in time
as distinct events.
How can an unchanging God hear and answer prayers? In attempting to
answer this question, Thomas refers to God's actions in the natural world. Just
as God's action as primary cause does not remove the whole order of secondary
causes that function as instruments in God's hands, so God can use even our
prayers as contributing to the effects that follow (Q.23, a.8).
How then can our prayers, or indeed any of our actions, be freely perlormed
by ourselves? Here again Thomas relies on the conception of primary and
secondary causes, and on a distinction among secondary causes. God effects
some things through causes that act without thinking, like falling rocks and rain,
and some things through causes that think, deliberate, and decide. God's action
as primary cause does not change the nature of those secondary deliberating and
deciding causes. To say that men deliberate and decide is to say that they are free
(see Q.22, a.4).
But still, even if we are "free" in the sense that we deliberate and decide, are
we "free" in the sense that we could have acted differently than we do? If all our
actions go back ultimately to God as first cause, is it not God who ultimately
decides? And if so, why has not God made me better than I am, and made me
act better than I do? In considering these questions, St. Paul, who stressed at the
beginning of Romans that man can approach God through reason, later in the
same letter stresses the limits of reason. Paul discusses God's choice of Jacob
over Esau, of Jews over Gentiles, and finally of some for the grace of Christian
belief. Paul says that God
... has mercy upon whomever he wills, and he hardens the heart of whomever
he wills. (Romans 9:18)
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The question immediately arises for Paul:
Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will? (Romans 9: 19)
Paul's reply is as follows:
But who are you, a man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded says to
its molder, "Why have you made me thus?" Has the potter no right over the
clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for beauty and another for
menial use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his
power, has endured with much patience the vessels of wrath made for
destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for the vessels of
mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom he has
called, not from the Jews only, but from the Gentiles ... (Romans 9: 20-24)
In dealing with man's relation to God Paul is driven to consider man as a lump
of clay in the hands of God, the potter. The metaphor is not Paul's own. It is
suggested by Genesis 2:7, where God makes man from the dust of the earth, and
it is used by both Isaiah and Jeremiah as an image of God's relation to his chosen
people (Isaiah 29:16; 45:9; Jeremiah 18: 1-11). But as Paul goes on, he breaks
off in mid-sentence. He does not even finish stating his question, let alone answer
it. He gets led away into his favorite theme, that God's salvation extends to
Gentiles as well as Jews. The question as to why God chooses some Jews and
not others, or some Gentiles and not others, is not even stated in a grammatically
complete sentence.
Unsatisfactory as Paul's reply is, I believe that no Christian writer has
improved upon it. Dante says that even the blessed in Heaven who see God face
to face will not understand why God has chosen one particular man for a certain
grace and not another (Paradiso, Canto XXI, 52-102). This is the unfathomable
mystery that lies at the heart of man's relation to God. I do not wish to explain
away this mystery. I wish only to say that the mystery arises not from philosophical speculation alone, but from the Bible itself. The God who speaks to Abraham
is also the unchanging creator of all things.
Part IV. Prayer: We speak to God
I have stressed throughout the difficulty we have in speaking about God, and
even the apparent contradictions toward which we are led. If this were mathematics, the contradictions would force us to reject the hypothesis from which the
contradictions arose, but the language of mathematics is more adequate to its
subject matter than the language of theology. Even the language of physics is not
fully adequate to its subject matter, for example, to the phenomena of light. The
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
difficulties of reconciling wave and particle hypotheses of light are well known,
and yet we neither ignore the phenomena nor reject altogether the language of
wave and particle. 9 If in physics, should we not in theology strive to be true to
our experience, and frankly acknowledge the difficulties to which it gives rise,
without expecting that the strains on our language will ever entirely disappear.
Such strains need not be destructive of religious belief, provided they help us
realize the infinite distance between our speech and the reality it attempts to
reach. Isaiah says, "Truly, thou art a God who hides! thyself, 0 God of Israel"
(45: 15), and Thomas prefaces his long discussion of the existence and nature of
God, a discussion that includes the five ways of demonstrating the existence of
God, with the statement that we can not say how or what God is, quomodo sit,
but only how or what He is not, quomodo non sit (Introduction to Q.2).
Kierkegaard stresses two dangers for Christianity, which can perhaps be
considered as dangers for religious belief generally. One is conventional Christianity, being a Christian simply by birth or upbringing because one lives in a
"Christian country" like Denmark, and never making Christianity one's own. 10
The other danger is characterized as "superstition" and "fanaticism." By these
words Kierkegaard means thinking that one can reach "objective truth" about
Christianity, that one can know the truth about Christianity in the way that one
knows simple and obvious facts. 11 Tills implies superstition, because it lowers
God to something within our grasp. And it implies fanaticism, because the fanatic
will think that everyone should believe in precisely the way he does and will be
intolerant of those who do not. The protection against both dangers is the conect
understanding of "faith." If we realize that our belief in God is a "leap" beyond
our ordinary knowledge, we will realize also that the habits of our family and
nation are not enough to sustain our belief, that our belief demands strenuous,
constant, and lifelong effort. Our sense of the mystery of God will also protect
us against making God less than He is, and against hostility or contempt toward
those who cannot make the leap of faith.
I contemplate the order of nature in the hope of finding God, and I see
omnipotence and wisdom; but I also see much else that disturbs my mind and
excites anxiety. The sum of all this is an objective uncertainty.... If I wish to
preserve myself in faith I must constantly be intent upon holding fast the
objective uncertainty, so as to remain out upon the deep, over seventy thousand
fathoms of water, still preserving my faith. (Postscript, p. 183)
I do not know whether anyone in our time and place can return from Kierkegaard's
conception of faith, where even the existence of God is a matter of faith, to the
Biblical conception of faith, which applied only to God's action, to His fulfillment
of promises, to His response to prayer. But then as now those who pray cannot be
convinced that their sense of speaking to God is merely an illusion. I do not here
refer to prayers offered on public ceremonial occasions, prayers couched as ad-
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SLAKEY
dressed to God but often really exhortations addressed to ourselves. I speak of
prayers that are genuinely spoken to God.
In the European languages that distinguish between familiar and formal
address, God is addressed with the familiar fonn, as in French with tu instead of
vous. That is, Frenchmen address God in prayer with the word used toward close
friends, not with the word used toward superiors. The same was true in English
when "thou" and "you" reflected a similar distinction, and when English religious usage was first established. Unfortunately, by a curious reversal, the use
of "thou" now seems to many English speakers appropriately formal in English
prayers, and the use of "you" excessively familiar, so that the direct and
immediate sense of intimate friendship with God is now less explicit in our
language. But though the beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord (Proverbs I :7),
and though much can be said of the majesty of God and the mystery of God, and
of the believer as "out upon the deep, over seventy thousand fathoms of water,"
one can still pray with the Psalmist:
One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in
the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord,
and to inquire in his temple. (Psalm 27:4)
As Augustine expressed it,
Thou hast made us for Thyself, 0 Lord, and our hearts are ever restless until
they rest in Thee. (Confessions, I, I)
That rest begins in prayer.
*****
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Notes
1. All quotations from the Bible, unless otherwise noted, are from the Revised
Standard Version.
2. Summa Theologiae, I, Q.l3, Marietti edition (Rome, 1950). All translations
are my own.
3. The Symposium, translated by W. R. M. Lamb, Loeb edition (London, 1953).
4. Summa Theologiae, Second Part of the Second Part, Q.85, a.l.
5. For an extended and excellent discussion of the "fourth way," see R.
Garrigou-Lagrange, 0. P., God, His Existence and His Nature (St. Louis and
London, 1934), Vol. I, pp. 302-45.
6. Page B637 in the Norman Kemp Smith translation (London, 1953).
7. It should perhaps be noted that the infinite regress Thomas and Aristotle
"reject" is not an infinite regress in time. Neither Aristotle nor Thomas saw
anything impossible in an infinite series of father and sons extending
backwards in time. Aristotle in fact held that the world had existed through
infinite time and Thomas held that there was nothing impossible in such a
supposition, even though we believe from revelation that the world has
existed only for a limited time. The infinite regress both reject is an infinite
regress of causes where each cause depends on the one before it, as for
example if a stone is moved by a stick, the stick by the hand, the hand by a
muscle in the arm, the muscle from energy from food, etc. If such a series
does not reach a beginning, the final result will never occur. (See Q.46, a.2,
especially reply to objection 7.)
8. Physics II, 8, 198b 22-32, Hardie and Gaye translation in the Oxford edition,
as selected in The Basic Works of Aristotle (New York, 1941). Darwin
himself quotes this passage as having "shadowed forth" the principle of
natural selection (The Origin of Species and the Descent of Man) [Modern
Library, New York, no date, p.3]).
9. See Ernest Nagel, The Structure of Science (New York, 1961), pp. 293-305.
10. Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript, translated by David F.
Swenson and completed by Walter Lowrie (Princeton, 1968), p.19, pp.
29-50.
11. See the Postscnpt, pp. 32, 35, 325.
�A Meditation on the
Present Plight of Philosophy
and the Pursuit of Truth
Monica C. Hornyansky
This is what I think should properly be called an occasional paper, because it was
occasioned by two recent experiences - one the invitation to be part of a
symposium of ex-students of a university department of philosophy, and the
other my reading of Richard Rorty's recent book, Contingency, Irony, and
Solidarity. As ex-students we had been asked to contribute a meditation on the
future of philosophy at the turn of the millennium: We should consider where
we were, if anywhere, in our own philosophical thinking, and at the same time
consider where philosophy itself might be heading at the turn of the millennium.
And Rorty's book had just forced me, as a teacher in a Great Books program, to
rethink the claim, which such a course implicitly makes, that some books,
including philosophical works, have a lasting validity and authority, for although
Rorty acknowledges the social usefulness of literature, he concedes enough to
the deconstructionist temper of the time to throw doubt on the possibility of valid
public criticism. Both occasions, then, imply some kind of crisis in thinking is philosophy in trouble at the end of this century, and if so, why? And do any
books have the kind of lasting relevance that makes them worth reading for what
they intend to say, rather than as a kind of Rorschach test or trainer of individual
subjectivity?
These questions, I think, require a theoretically founded response, and as a
Sartre scholar I shall couch mine in terms of Sartre's theory of value, the most
recent and perhaps the last consciously comprehensive such theory. So what I
shall do first is give a brief picture of the way in which, some fifty years ago now,
Sartre both understood and responded to these questions, and then I shall consider
whether Rorty's response is an overreaction which risks throwing the baby
Monica C. Hornyansky teaches in the Department of Philosophy and the Great Books
Seminars of the Liberal Studies Program at Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
(mainly the philosophical, but also the critical, pursuit of truth) out with the
bathwater (metaphysics).
My preliminary response to the first question -Is philosophy in some
kind of crisis?- is that I think perhaps it is, but only because philosophy is
always in trouble, as a special case of what Sartre called "the desire to be
God." In his book Rorty argues that philosophy has been haunted by a Drang
nach Metaphysik, and in particular by a hopeless quest for a founded ethics
which would solve the tension between private autonomy and the requirements of citizenship. I shall come back to Rorty later; what I want to say now
is that if we take what he says at face value, we would have to admit that
while his diagnosis is plausible, his solution- which amounts to substituting
literature and idiosyncratic commentary for philosophical analysis or description - would mean the end of philosophy as it has been classically
understood.
First of all, then, Sartre's use of the phrase "the desire to be God" easily
accommodates philosophy as merely a special case of that desire, which he
thought was a universal human condition, the result of the fact that consciousness
and the world we are conscious of are both run through and through with
contingency. Our reaction to the fact that contingency prevails in eve1y aspect
of our day-to-day experience leads to misgivings about the past, nervousness
about the future, and anxiety in the present, to overstate the case but make it in
short order. The constant questions, What do I think? What shall I do? Wbat
should I think? What should I do?, are the questions that have no necessary
answers for us, leaving us with an ineradicable desire for some sense of a
necessary structure for existence - the forms of culture we arrive at are
manifestations of this primary need to endow our actions with necessity, and our
understanding with certainty.
Sartre summed up this ontological predicament in the phrase "the desire to
be God" because it is our religious imagining of what God is like that expresses
most clearly the values we would like to have ourselves as a nature, or to find
embedded in the world. They are the values that would, if we had them, put our
constant questioning of ourselves to rest, and give us a quiet conscience, because
they would be inarguably necessary. Isn't this what God is like after all? He
creates everything, knows everything, and does what he wills knowing that it is
good. This is our idea of what it would be like to have a self-sufficient and
self-satisfied consciousness, and this, Sartre thought, is the source of all the
conventional, religious, societal, personal, aesthetic, and philosophical values
through which we attempt to symbolize that consciousness.
So now, back to philosophy - we can see that the values the philosophical
enterprise has promulgated in the Westem tradition are par eYcellence manifestations ofthe desire to be God. As an escape from contingency, philosophy has
been drawn from the beginning by the lust for metaphysical necessity, rational
�HORNYANSKY
73
certainty, or final definitions of the good. If you think "lust" too strong a word,
remember the siren song that Odysseus heard - "no life on earth can be hid
from our dreaming" 1; philosophy has always dreamed of precise, necessary, and
complete truth, as the fulfillment of its values.
We have tried to achieve this with endemically inadequate means. Logic,
observation, imagination fail to reach the ideals of rational certainty, consistency,
and wholeness which would satisfy our epistemological longing.
But perhaps, one might think, all those attempts to find foundational truths
and deductive consequences of foundational truths are in the past, and the
twentieth century has been exempt from all that. Thanks to Kant on Reason and
the Ding an sich, Kierkegaard on Hegel, and Nietzsche on any number of things,
the skeptical antithesis has been thoroughly aired.
Of course this is true, but the fact is that it is still aired from the point of view
of philosophers, whose besetting problem is the desire to be God in his epistemological aspect. So Kant still insisted on the a priori, Kierkegaard on the
exigencies of the Eternal, even Nietzsche on the overman and an eternal recurrence of the same. And still in our century desperate measures have been taken.
In spite of what Nietzsche from time to time said about language, there has been
on the one hand the idea that language is a system of logical relations or a body
yielding empirical reliability, and on the other hand, in Heidegger 's thought, the
claim that man, as the shepherd of Being, enfolds Being in speech- in itself a
wonderful metaphor, but is it true?
Well, while the ideal of rational certainty, whether produced by idealist
construction or empirical observation, was still the form in which philosophers'
desire for divine justification was accepted and practiced, there was no crisis.
And while language served as the empirical body or the locus of wisdom, the
evil day for philosophy was staved off. But now at the end of the century we do
seem thoroughly to have absorbed - after all, Rotty includes it in his title what Satire thought of as his great discovery in the 1930s, the pervasive
contingency of everything in our experience. What Sartre feared then- Simone
de Beauvoirdescribes him nervously scanning a book ofL€vinas, rnutteting that
his fhunderon contingency had been stolen- has become belatedly true: Almost
everyone thinks everything is contingent and has forgotten or never noticed
Satire on the subject. Now contingency is all about us, we are in the age of the
paradigm shift and the deconstruction of metaphysical thinking. Read Kuhn, read
Derrida, read, in patticular, Richard Rorty's new book, to which I now retum, as
apparent evidence that philosophy is getting over the desire to be God, epistemologically defined.
Rorty proposes that the word he would like to use for the hitherto foundational
thinkers, i.e., philosophers, is "theorists," because philosophy has given up or
should give up the attempt to think metaphysically, or to anive at what he calls
a "final vocabulary" for the description of basic concepts such as the good and
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the self, what I have been describing as the peculiarly philosophical form of the
desire to be God.
Let me quote part of Rorty's discussion of the new kind of philosophizing
that he recommends in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity:
Hegel's criticism of his predecessors was not that their propositions were false
but that their languages were obsolete. By inventing this sort of criticism, the
younger Hegel broke away from the Plato-Kant sequence and began a tradition
of ironist philosophy which is continued in Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida.
These are the philosophers who defme their achievement by their relation to their
predecessors rather than by their relation to the truth. 2
Would Hegel have thanked Rorty for this recommendation, I wonder? After all,
he said that philosophy wasn't philosophy if it was content to remain in the
contingent. However, let's concede for the moment that Hegel started this
movement towards the substitution of, as it were, reference to the words of others
for reference to a putative truth. Rorty emphasizes his view of this when he
substitutes for Hegel's notion of "dialectic" his own, as follows:
I have defined "dialectic as the attempt to play off vocabularies against one
another, rather than merely to infer propositions from one another and thus as
the partial substitution of redescription for inference. 3
Furthermore, Rorty does not think of his definition of dialectic as being
particularly foreign to Hegel's practice, for he adds:
... Hegel's so-called dialectical method is not an argumentative procedure or
a way of unifying subject and object, but simply a literary skill - skill at
producing surprising gestalt switches by making smooth rapid transitions
from one terminology to another.4
It is this manipulation of vocabularies that Rorty now recommends as a prime
philosophical method, especially as he is mostly concerned with the unbridgeable gap as he sees it between the ethics of the person and questions of public
justice. Rorty divides philosophers according to which of these is their major
topic; paradigmatically Nietzsche is interested in the individual, Dewey in the
social. He suggests that the former are in particular the practitioners of an ironist
philosophy on the following understanding of the difference between metaphysical theorizing and ironism:
For the ironist theorist, the history of belief in, and love of, an ahistorical
wisdom is the story of successive attempts to find a final vocabulary which is
no mere idiosyncratic historical product but the last word, the one to which
�HORNYANSKY
75
inquiry and history have converged, the one which renders further inquiry and
history superfluous. 5
On the other hand, he says:
The goal of ironist theory is to understand the metaphysical urge, the urge to
theorize, so well that one becomes entirely free of it .... The generic trait of
ironists is that they do not hope to have their doubts about their final
vocabularies settled by something larger than themselves. 6
But these general requirements ofironist theory seem to have resulted, in Rorty's
account of Derrida, in what he himself calls "private fantasy." He praises the
later Derrida for increasing the bounds of "possibility," for having created a new
kind of philosophical thinking, especially in his book Envois. And this is what
Rorty says about that book:
The later Derrida privatizes his philosophical thinking, and thereby breaks
down the tension between ironism and theorizing .... Falling back on private
fantasy is the only solution to the self-referential problem which such theo-
rizing encounters, the problem of how to distance one's predecessors without
doing exactly what one has repudiated them for doing.?
So perhaps it is the case that late twentieth-century writers are proving Sartre
wrong -for if what Rorty says about Derrida is true, and he approves it, then
he certainly advocates giving up, and has himself given up, the desire for rational
certainty about necessity as an intellectual form of the desire to be God. That is,
the anti-principles, as it were, of paradigm shift and intertextuality are to be
pressed to show that because there is no way in which we can preserve a reference
to reality (for all the usual reasons) we should give up on truth itself as a
regulative ideal.
So now I come to my principal objections to Rorty's position, and will
describe both how Sartre recognized the problem and how he went about solving
it. My objection to Rorty's view of what he calls "ironist" philosophy- that is,
a philosophy fully conscious of its own tentativeness, and the so-called intertextuality that he praises in Derrida- is that although it does not claim to have
abandoned the ideal of truth to reality as the touchstone of philosophy as opposed
to art or to mythos, it is close enough to doing so to intensify the present
difficulties of philosophy to the point of crisis.
It is here, as is rather usual with philosophy, that a quite sensible ape1-,·u is
being elevated into a principle, just because at least one of those desideratacertainty, consistency, completeness - is still exerting its siren call. Ironically
enough, the idea that contingency is the order of reality apparently obliges the
ironist to such diffidence of his ability to say anything true about reality that he
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
must retreat into "private fantasy," an idiosyncratic expose of his relation to the
philosopher against whom he measures himself. Here then we have perhaps
nothing more than another example of the tendency of philosophers to inflate a
partial truth and tly off with it into a larger sublunacy.
Let me oppose to those who are happy in, even advocate, taking refuge in private
worlds, George Steiner, lectming in Cambridge several years ago, on what he called
Real Presences. 8 In the literary context he ctiticizes deconstmctionist method as
illegitimately claiming to be the equivalent of the texts which occasion it. But he
insists that there is a difference- not the shot silk of DeiTida 's dijf<france, but an
ontological difference- between an original work of art and any criticism of it or
any loosely related associative ramble through the critic's or the author's psyche,
however well-stocked. He is pmticularly incensed at a teacher's judgment, which he
quotes, that to read Derrida on Rousseau was more interesting than to read Rousseau
himself. What Steiner insist<> is that the text is substance, and commentary on it
accident; to maintain otherwise is, he says, "a perversion not only of the calling of
the teacher, but of common sense where common sense is a lucid, concentrated
9
expression of moral imagining." So here Steiner is insisting on an ontological
difference - an instance, perhaps, of what Rmty would call "a final term" between a work of literature and a work of criticism.
What I want to consider now is the question, What would be the equivalent
distinction one would make in philosophy, whether we call it theorizing or
whatever we call it? The equivalent distinction would be, I think, that philosophy
aims at saying something true about reality, leaving aside whether it is a truth of
coherence or of correspondence; the distinction would still be between logos as
a rational account and mythos, or the goal that Rorty thinks is satisfactory, that
is, the defining of one's thought not against a putative truth, but against the
thought of one's predecessors. Taking Steiner's cue, one who wished to make
the distinction between philosophy and Ratty's ironism would insist- and here
I return to Smtre- on the difference Sartre notes between God's creation and
our own, that it is there whether we will or no (or as Sartre argues the point at
the beginning of Being and Nothingness, the being of appearances is indeed
being, it is not itself appearance). This implies a strong denial of the pervasiveness of what postmodernists call simulacra - the ubiquity of likenesses,
imitations of imitations, in all cultural manifestation, there being no original
bedrock of"presence"; we are never, according to this vision of the world, in the
presence of being rather than of symbol, sign, or word.
Now I would like to retum to Sartre's descriptions of God, especially those
in his Cahiers pour une Morale, to see whether there is any way of bridging the
gap between philosophizing in the old sense, and theorizing in the Rortyan sense,
since Rorty is undoubtedly right to insist that the old metaphysical longing must
be abandoned - I am not defending it. The question for me is only, must we
then just retreat into p1ivate worlds more like belles lettres than like philosophy
�HORNYANSKY
77
(or literature, which claims, as Thucydides claimed for his History, to be "a
possession for ever")?
Sartre believes that God the creator is just as much of a metaphysical illusion
as God the all-knowing, but that that illusion - one of our most strongly
imagined myths - does have importance for us. Indeed Sartre recommends a
threefold reflection on God's creativity in order that we may discover what it
means for our understanding of ourselves and human existence. Such a reflection
would, he thinks, first, reveal creation "under the activities of appropriation and
identification 1110 - that is, it would show that we ourselves ought to appropriate
and identify with our own creativity; second, it would clarify the distinctions
between the metaphysical myth of the Creation and creativity as an ontological
structure of our own; and third, it would lead us to use the myth as a guiding
thread to interpreting the meaning of that structure: What do we imply about
ourselves in inventing the myth of God the Creator?
What Sartre immediately points out as he pursues this reflection is that the
first thing we have to acknowledge is that we are not the inventors of the
contingent world into which we erupt as consciousnesses, and so ours is always
a dependent creation, accidental upon the substantiality of the natural world into
which we are born. So although our secondary task of creation is not one about
which we have a choice~ the human world exacts our shaping just because of
its inherent contingency~ nevertheless we have to take account of the inalterable aspects of the natural world just because we are not its creators. Isn't there
here, then, in substituting God's creativity for his knowledge, a value for
philosophers? And isn't it something they have been in the process of integrating
into their epistemological theory for a couple of centuries, ever since Kant made
his fruitful use of the imagination as the condition, through the schema, both of
knowledge and of art?
This matter of the adoption of the idea of imagination into the philosophical
armamentarium is worth a detour, as an example of how we might interpret our
own creativity as underlying the myth of Creation. It was one of Sartre 's avowed
methods to take a word that was not particularly precisely defined and use it as
an instrument of thought in the sense that its metaphorical properties could be
exploited to throw imaginative light on something hitherto obscure~ this is how
he used the word "nothingness" to throw light on the consequences of consciousness. So in a way he himself was an exemplum of what Rorty recommends, that
a theorist express his originality in the invention of a vocabulary to say what is
new in his thought. But the common-sense aspect of this is that the less he invents
the better, if the resultant thought is to be understood and incorporated into the
thought of an age, rather than degenerate into a recondite vocabulary that risks
never gaining public cunency. A very few neologisms arrived at methodically
can wrench the mind into a new way of thinking and with a minimum of
disruption of the normal vocabulary. Here lay part of Sartt-e 's genius. And Kant
�78
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
did something like it with the word "imagination" itself, when he expanded its
creative function in a philosophical context in the Critique of Judgment. Rorty
acknowledges this in his book, and points out how Coleridge took off from Kant's
theorizing, thus showing, incidentally, that here philosophy fecundated literature, rather than the other way round.
Taking Sartre as the theorist of contingency, then, I want now to see how
many of Rorty's desiderata for a late twentieth-century practice of ironist
theorizing have already been supplied by Sartre, and very nearly in the spirit of
irony which Rorty recommends but with an important difference. This is a
particularly interesting exercise because Rorty himself calls Sartre a metaphysician, and therefore dismisses him a priori from the roster of ironists. Rorty says:
A metaphysician like Sartre may describe the ironist's pursuit of perfection as
a "futile passion," but an ironist like Proust or Nietzsche will think that this
phrase begs the crucial question. The topic of futility would arise only if one
were trying to surmount time, chance, and self-redescription by discovering
something more powerful than any of these. For Proust and Nietzsche,
however, there is nothing more powerful or important than self-redescription.11
Now my intention in pointing out what I believe are misapprehensions in this
little excerpt is not to accuse Rorty, but to make clear that Sartre was already
there as a theorist of time, chance, and self-redescription, and yet managed to
combine these facets of his philosophy with a desire to come to grips with the
real as the reference point of his thinking. He was not content with truth as- to
use Rorty's intriguing phrase- "a fuzzy but inspirationalfocus imaginarius." 12
First, Sartre described the individual as "a futile passion" for exactly the same
reasons as Rorty ascribes to himself- in Sartre 's terms, because the desire to
be God is a futile aim for an inescapably contingent being. The whole idea of
describing the ontological origin of human values as "the desire to be God, is to
highlight this as the temptation to metaphysics which, if accepted unreflectively,
is an invitation to futility. And he offered an alternative, just as Rorty does, of
self-redesc1iption, which would do full justice, however, to the unique individuality of persons as a reality of experience. It was not that Sartre was hoping to
find something more powerful than self-redescription, nor did he claim to be
doing more than giving the fullest description of human existence that he could.
He managed this specifically philosophical aim- of giving a general description that accounted fully for the unique individuality of persons- by contrasting
the ontological given of human existence, the fact that we are conscious bodies,
with the situational individuality of each person. In Being and Nothingness he
devoted long passages to the description of consciousness as a product of
temporality, chance, and self-redescription, and he described in some detail a
hermeneutic he called comprehension, which amounts to the self-redescription
�HORNYANSKY
79
of a reflective ironist. In particular, the space he devoted to the idea of "the
situation" covers the contingent emergence of consciousness from the contin-
gency of non-conscious being, i.e., the natural world. He pointed out as well that
the concept of God as causa sui was incoherent, since all it showed was that if
God existed he too would be contingent. I don't know what more would fulfill
Rorty's requirements for an ironist theorist.
But this all shows also, I believe, how Sartre differs from the ironist in not
giving up on the main philosophical job - that is, of producing an account of
reality which aims to be true in a philosophical sense, i.e., one that is reasoned,
evidential, and general. But Sartre would not happily have accepted the term
ironist for his advocacy of increasingly conscious self-redescription. Sartre
distrusted irony because it leads to a reductive attitude towards reality that
emerges typically in a withdrawal of commitment, and I believe that this would
apply no less in the philosophical commitment to truth as an ultimate aim of
thought, than it would in any other sphere of what Steiner calls "moral imagining," and specifically, for Sartre, in a morally committed literature. I would say
I sense this withdrawal of commitment in Rorty's description of truth as a "fuzzy
but inspirational focus imaginarius," although his position on the relation between public solidarity and private existence leads him to a liberalism much like
Sartre's. Where Sartre bases his ethics on the idea of the preservation of freedom,
as an ontological condition that applies to all persons, Rorty bases his on the
public fact of pain as the criterion of harm. And Sartre would identify the
metaphysician Rorty wants to leave behind as the man in bad faith because he
believes that his own prejudices are founded either in the past or in heaven, while
the man of good faith is always conscious that he is the origin of his values, and
therefore fully capable of the ironist stance Rorty advocates. But according to
Sartre, the problem is that the ironist tends to be paralyzed by his double vision
and to rest idle rather than commit himself in directions that may turn out to be
mistaken. He risks being a theoretical Hamlet, whose theorizing is without
practical effect either on himself or his world. Sartre as a moralist holds that
action in the world requires of the ironist that he consciously and fearfully unify
his double vision from time to time, that while irony is the inevitable point of
view of the fully reflective individual, it is something that he must be able to put
aside if he is to take his place as co-creator in his contingent world, in whatever
sphere he acts. And what he creates is not a pretext for intertextual commentary,
but his own existence as both individual and citizen, and whether he is a
philosopher or a writer, or whatever he is. So it is here that my reservations as a
result of reading Rorty's book crystallize. Rorty distinguishes between the
skeptically ironist activity of the philosopher as essentially local, even private,
and thinking about questions of public justice, which he thinks are influenced
more readily by literature because it can arouse and widen our sensitivity to the
suffering of others. The implication that sympathy is the basis of moral concern
�80
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
and that imagination is the form of consciousness through which it is activated
I do not quarrel with. But that philosophical imagination is to abandon its goal
of general, evidential truth as the ideal challenge to philosophical imagination is
the sticking point of my disagreement. To those for whom the complexities and
difficulties of human existence cry out both for explanation and for action,
pondering the interplay among individuality, creativity, and the world as given
is still as much a task for the evidence-gathering, generalizing, theory-making
mind of the philosopher as for the particularizing, situation-making mind of the
story-teller; and recognizing the end of metaphysics does not entail the decay of
philosophy, any more than of criticism, into relations among texts and private
fantasy rather than relations among beings and to the real, however inadequately
and tentatively defined.
*****
Notes
I. Homer, Odyssey, trans. Robert Fitzgerald (New York: Doubleday Anchor
Books, 1963), p. 215.
2. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, (Cambridge University Press,
1989), pp. 78-79.
3. Ibid., p.78.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid., p. 125.
8. George Steiner, Real Presences, The Leslie Stephen Memorial Lecture,
1985 (Cambridge University Press, 1986).
9. Steiner, Real Presences, p. 16.
10. J.P. Sartre, Cahiers pour une Morale (Paris: Gallimard, 1983),
pp. 530-31.
11. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, p. 99.
12. Ibid., p. 195.
�I
Toucan Dreams
James Fox
The Zoo at the Sault had a pygmy elephant, Archibald, named in memory of a
local high-school basketball player. Although at only five foot two he was not as
big as a buffalo, Archibald was the brightest resident. He could count to five and
he knew a couple of simple card tricks that he learned when he traveled with a
magic act.
"All right, Archie, what do I have in my hand?" the clown would ask. "Is it
an ace or a deuce?"
The elephant would shake his head and take a card out of the clown's sleeve.
Always it was the ace.
On gloomy Saturday afternoons I spent many moments watching Archibald
eating hay and dusting himself. I loved his rough, hairy sweet smell, but there
was more to him than aroma and card tricks. Archibald took an interest. When I
talked to him about my loneliness and fears, he looked back at me with baleful
eyes and sometimes shook his head. I felt understood.
That's one of the reasons why I loved our local zoo. It's gone now, but I still
think about it. The zoo was converted into a mental institution in 1977, and I
have no desire to ever return: caged people are not nearly as interesting as caged
animals.
It was hardly a zoo at all, I suppose, but our town was proud of our skimpy
herd of mangy buffalo, our curious caribous, our single lame kangaroo. The
buffalo and the caribou no longer graze in front of the scraggly white birch trees
at the front of the zoo, nor are there visitors who pass them by in favor of the
more exotic animals inside.
Pierre, the six-foot alligator, swam in a small moat most of the time. Sometimes he lay on the cedar wood bank dreaming. He must have been dreaming-
otherwise, why would he have been so still for so long with his eyes half open?
James Fox is a free-lance writer and photographer who lives in Northampton,
Massachusetts.
�82
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Someone once started the rumor that "Lucky Pierre" was no longer a living
exhibit because he had been stuffed. However, one day Pierre slowly dragged
his tail over the sand bar and ascended a log. I stood amazed. He pointed his
snout at a small moth that floated above his nose. The alligator opened his jaws
and waited for the moth to settle. The insect fluttered just out of snapping range
and then flew up to the glass ceiling. Pierre waited patiently for his prey to return.
When I left the reptile house, PietTe's jaws were still open and they probably
stayed open for hours.
The special exhibit of three exotic birds included Maurice the full-grown
toucan, a scruffy myna bird named Harry, and Mr. Lee, the ostrich. Mr. Lee was
less intimidating than Maurice.
"Hisssss," I hissed at Mr. Lee. "Whissssst! Look out, look out! Your house is
on fire ... Run, run!" And he ran. The next time I saw him, I apologized to Mr.
Lee, and he ran away.
Maurice, the yellow-black-backed toucan greeted visitors at the entrance of
our little zoo with his terrible whistle- "Hello, Ha-a-a-a-a-r-ry!"
It was impossible to have a real conversation with him, but I tried. "Welcome
to the zoo at the Sault!" I said, mimicking his birdie voice. Maurice cocked his
head and looked at me sidewise and shifted a little on his perch.
"Wanna talk dirty?" I asked falsetto. Maurice seemed to nod, but even then I
knew that in cmrupting him I would also be corrupting myself.
In May the wild geese return to the northland to settle for a brief time in their
old nests on the tundra, but the second smallest zoo in the world is no longer at
Sault Ste. Marie. I wish visitors could still encounter my dear friend Archibald
who, although only a pygmy pachyderm, sees us as we truly are. They would
also discover Pierre in his watery den waiting forever for feeding time- a pound
of ground chuck or just a foolish carp, what does it really matter?
They would see only part of Mr. Lee, whose head is buried in a gopher hole.
And if they were lucky they would meet Maurice, still shifting back and forth
on his stick, making those ridiculous steamboat whistles. But who truly understands the secret of a toucan's heart?
I sometimes wondered what happened after all the people went home and the
zoo was closed for the night. Other children dreamed about ax murderers in the
house or imagined the creaking tread of ghosts coming up the stairs or planned
how they would win at cats-eye marbles the next day. But I was not normal. I
spent most of my free time at the zoo.
I used to fall asleep dreaming about night life at the zoo in Sault Ste. Marie:
Somebody had to say good night to the animals. Somebody had to feed all tln·ee
snakes. Somebody had to water the small African elephant and pet him gently
on his trunk. Somebody had to comfort Mr. Lee, the nervous ostrich. Did the
animals really fall quietly to sleep?
�FOX
83
There were old stories to tell, grievances to vent. Only old Pierre the alligator
fell asleep when they turned the lights out, but he was usually dreaming about
his next carp or about the good old days in Belize.
What did the animals think about when they were alone in their cages? I
imagined myself being invisible and staying inside the zoo after they have locked
the doors and gone home. Just me and my friends. I am standing next to Mr. Lee
when suddenly he looks up into the sky and I follow his gaze. Canadian geese
heading south in the long V formation. Honk-honk-honk. I can just make out
their forms against the darkening sky. I have never before watched geese with
an ostrich by my side. Mr. Lee is fascinated. He makes a small gurgling noise in
his throat.
Does he want to fly with them down across the gulf of Mexico and then skirt
the isthmus of Peru and fmally to bear north-north-east all day and night until at
last they arrive in Egypt where Mr. Lee sees for the first time the tombs of the
fallen pharaohs? ... Of course, maybe he was just curious about an unfamiliar
noise in the sky.
Pierre remains stationary in his moat, neither nocturnal nor diurnal. I have
come to believe that he is just an unambitious alligator. But what if! were invited
to read his mind? ... Something terrible is coming out ofa cave, a komodo dragon
breathing fire and green smoke. Pierre holds his position. The dragon comes up
to Pierre and hideous gas pours thmugh his nostrils. There is a hiss and his
forked tongue flickers a challenge at the peaceful reptile. The alligator suddenly
springs forward and the battle begins...
The dream fades and Pierre stirs his tail in the brackish water full of cmp
parts.
What about Maurice the toucan?What are his nights like when the zoo is dark
and the wild life begins? During the day he was a shy clown, tilting his head and
rolling his eyes, and making that loud, almost terrifying whistle. But he is more
of a deep-feeling bird than that brainless myna bird would ever be. Like Pierre
I think he remembers life in the savage, joyous tropical rain forests and never
really made a spiritual connection with the town of Sault Ste. Marie. At night in
the almost empty bird house, I believe his shrill ear-splitting whistle is transformed into a mournful serenade about missed opportunities and painful memories of his young birdhood.
It is my belief that when my soul returns to a new life in a different form, I
will be given a place in the exotic bird house. I will share my space with some
newly acquired hummingbirds. On cloudy nights I will look up through the
skylights and my caged heart will soar with the geese returning south again to
their winter home. I can hear them calling: "Come away - come away with
me."
And I will.
*
��St. John's Crossword Number One
by CASSANDRA
Introduction
This is a British-style cryptic crossword. Examples are published in the U.S.A.
in Atlantic, Harper's, and Games Magazine. Every clue contains two elements
in random order: a literal definition and a cryptic indication based on word-play.
Some typical word-play types are the anagram, component parts, sound-alike,
word within word, hidden word, and word reversal, or a combination of these.
Examples of the cryptic part of the clue:
Tries a lot, gets mixed up (anagram= ARISTOTLE)
Thus, boxes (component parts= SO-CRATES)
Sound of artifical digit (sound-alike =PLATO, i.e. PLAY TOE)
College official swallows bug (word within word= DANTEAN, i.e.
ANT in DEAN)
Lurks within some novice (hidden word= MENO)
Backward (reversal= DRAW)
Thus, full clues based on some of the above might read:
Philosopher tries a lot, gets mixed up (9)
Pull backward (4)
College official swallows bug belonging to poet (7)
NOTE: The answer to 5 down is an unusual proper noun.
Senders of the first three correct solutions opened at random (on a date six weeks after
the mailing of this issue) will receive book tokens worth $35 at the St. John's College
Bookstore. Address solutions (photocopies accepted) to Crossword Number One, St.
John's Review, St. John's College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404.
�ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
86
Across
1. Sicilian eccentric reads about
sound of bell (l 0)
6. Put money on a Spartan Number
Two? (4)
9. A measure against intemal progress (7)
10. Push Attila into the street (5)
11. Crest of free gravity and energy
(5)
12. Offshoot of Niobe's first offspring (5)
14. Relationship between small mammal and Gadfly victim (5)
16. Age of empty electron shell (3)
17. One foredoomed to die
wretchedly in Great Book (7)
19. Deduce number of Book of the
Dead (7)
22. Shakespeare's work encountered
setback with vermin (7)
26. Tough problem: leading the
French, or sitting back in the bath?
(7)
27. Hydrogen-like residue (3)
28. I complain about famous motherin-law (5)
29. Second addition to weekly magazine: back issues (5)
32. Note about a 55-gun salute (5)
34. Take Virgil's things and start
again (5)
35. Rave about two forms of egoclothing (7)
36. In ancient house, third son (4)
37. Man embittered by dog-filth
gone astray (l 0)
Down
1. A mother is primal parent (4)
2. Cold Lucretian greetings in
shadow realms (5)
3. Nine bad rhetoricians beginning
to get spiritual (5)
4. Crops up when ancient uncles
take bit of work to heart (7)
5. Belonging to constellation that is
about opposite the zenith, in the as~
cendant (7)
7. Big circle, a torque with a twist
(7)
8. Ptolemy displays anomaly of star
and moon with some hesitation ( 10)
10. Part of letter bums up (5)
13. Fix one's appearance, very soft
around the edge (5)
15. How one might use tin cups in
Hamlet? (10)
18. High points for country digestw
ing opening of Persuasion ... (3)
20. And not some other Austen
novel's start (3)
21. Clean-up time for spout (5)
23. Criminal's usual practice: begin~
ning when nightlight goes out (7)
24. Be headless chauvinist (5)
25. Still life: fee not high, they say
(7)
26. More trouble under the head of
Euclidean demonstration (7)
30. War story: flanks take initial
damage (5)
31. Part of 22 ac. seen, heard (5)
33. Star with tritium core can have
stupefying effect (4)
�CASSANDRA
87
�����I
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Zuckerman, Elliott
Brann, Eva T. H.
Ruhm von Oppen, Beate
Sachs, Joe
Stickney, Cary
Van Doren, John
Williamson, Robert B.
Rout, Deirdre
Lieberman, Ralph
Wiener, Linda
Slakey, Thomas J.
Hornyansky, Monica J.
Fox, James
Cassandra
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The St. John's Review
Volume XL, number two ( 1990-91)
Editor
Elliott Zuckerman
Editorial Board
Eva Brann
Beate Ruhm von Oppen
Joe Sachs
Cary Stickney
John Van Doren
Robert B. Williamson
Subsc1iptions Assistant
Louis Lucchetti
The St.John's Review is published three times a year by the Office ofthe Dean, St. John's
College, Annapolis; Christopher B. Nelson, President; Eva Brann, Dean. For those not on
the distribution list, subscriptions are $15.00 per year. Unsolicited essays, stmies, poems,
and reasoned letters are welcome. Address correspondence to the Review, St. John's
College, P.O. Box 2800, Annapolis, MD 21404-2800. Back issues are available, at $5.00
per issue, from the St. John's College Bookstore.
©1991 St. John's College. All rights reserved; reproduction in whole or in part without
permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
Desktop Publishing and Printing
The St. John's College Print Shop
��Contents
St. John's "For Ever"
Charlotte Fletcher
m
Editor ',s Preface
IV
Author's Preface
I
One: King William's School
and the College of William and Mm-y
15...... Two: An Endowed King William's School
Plans to Become a College
29. . . . . . Three: King William's School
Survives the Revolution
43. . . . . . Four: 1784: The Year
St. Jolm's College was Named
59. . . . . . Five: John McDowell, Federalist:
President of St. John's College
69
Notes
87
Results of St. John's Crossword Number One
89. . . . . . St. John's Crossword Number Two
Trout
��Editor's
Preface
Charlotte Fletcher was the Librarian of St. John's College from 1944 to 1980.
The five essays that appear in this issue are somewhat revised versions of essays
that were first published separately in the Maryland Historical Magazine, as
follows:
"1784: The Year St. John's College was Named."
Vol. 74 (1979), pp. 133-51.
"King William's School and the College of William and Mary."
Vol. 78 (1983), pp. 118-28.
"King William's School Plans to Become a College."
Vol. 80 (1985), pp. 157-66.
"King William's School Survives the Revolution."
Vol. 81 (1986), pp. 210-21.
"John McDowell, Federalist: President of St. John's College."
Vol. 84 (1989), pp. 242-51.
We thank the Mmyland Historical Magazine for permission to reprint them. It
is, we think, useful to have them all within one set of covers.
E.Z.
iii
�I
Author's
Preface
There was a time when those of us who were expected to answer queries about
the early history of St. John's College depended on undocumented histories and
on two articles by Tench Francis Tilghman that appeared in the Maryland
Historical Mal',azine in June 1949 and June 1950. Tilghman's book, The Early
History of St. John's College, was not published until 1984. He refers often to
the Archives of Maryland, the Minutes of the Visitors and Governors, the
Maryland Gazette, the Maryland Senate Journal, and the House Journal. His
research led him to question the connection between King William's School
and St. John's College. He found no answer to the persistent question of why
St. John's was named St. John's; nor was he sure about the details of John
McDowell's early appointment to the faculty and the presidency of the College.
He raised questions that I hoped to answer.
During the tricentennial celebration of Anne Arundel County in 1949, Mr.
and Mrs. Robert G. Henry had allowed the College to exhibit a series of letters
written by John McDowell that were among the Goldsborough papers at "Myrtle
Grove." (There was no McDowell correspondence in the College archives.)
Later, at the time of the constitutional bicentennial in 1976, I was ei1couraged by
Rebecca Wilson, then Director of Public Relations at the College, to wiite an
article on McDowell; and in the summer of 1977 President Richard Weigle
granted me two months' leave from my library duties for research and writing.
I found that the project was more extended than I had anticipated. Before I
could understand the circumstances leading to the appointment of McDowell I
had to know more about the politics of his era. For background I read Douglas
Southall Freeman's biography of George Washington. Cumulatively, through
day-by-day entries, Washington emerges as a man head and shoulders above his
contemporaries. I chose to adopt Freeman's technique of examining day-by-day
accounts. I read the Maryland Gazette and the house and senate journals covering
the days of the November 1984 session of the Maryland Assembly when St.
IV
�PREFACE
v
John's was chartered. These and the letters of Rev. William Smith were major
sources for my first article: "1784; The Year St. John's College was Named."
Again I found that I needed to search more deeply in order to answer the
questions I had about John McDowell. In particular, I had to know more about
King William's School. The results of this research were published in my next
three m1icles: "King William's School and the College of William and Mary";
"King William's School Plans to Become a College"; and "King William's
School Survives the RevolUtion."
By the time I wrote the fifth article, "John McDowell, Federalist: President
of St. John's College," I knew that it was the Rev. William Smith who brought
to fmition fifty years of attempts to found a Maryland college. He wrote the
charters of both Washington College and St. John's College. McDowell had
attended the College of Philadelphia when Smith was its provost, and it was the
Philadelphia connection that was crucial in bringing McDowell to Maryland.
I am grateful to the helpful staff of the following libraries and archives: the
St. John's College Library; the Maryland State Archives; the Historical Society
of. Pennsylvania Archives; the Archives of the Histmical Collection of the
Episcopal Church; the Maryland State Library; the Archives in the Swemm
Library of the College of William and Mary; the Archives of Nimitz Library,
U.S. Naval Academy; the Garrett Library of the Milton Eisenhower Library of
the Johns Hopkins Univer~ity; and the Archives of the Library of Congress.
For their critical comments in the preparation of the essay on the naming of
the College I am grateful to Eva Brann, Mmy Fletcher, Phebe Jacobsen, Mildred
Trivers, Margaret Ross, Harriet Sheehy, Allison Karslake, and Kathryn Kinzer.
For clitical comments while I prepared the other articles I am grateful to Mary
Fletcher, James Tolber1, and Phebe Jacobsen.! thank Nancy Jordan for her skill
and care in typing four of the manuscripts. I especially thank Elliott Zuckennan,
who suggested publishing the five essays together and who carefully edited them
into a consistent whole; and Christina Davidson, whose skills in graphic design
and word processing helped produce this issue of the St. John's Review.
Charlotte Fletcher
Annapalis, May I 991
�p
"•
E
/
I
//_
I
<)
(Fig. 1) Counties of Maryland and the Pennsylvania Border. The three westernmost counties, Washington, Allegany, and Garrett, were not incorporated until
1776, 1789, and 1872 respectively.
�One:
King William's School
and the College of
William and Mary
Long after Maryland was chmtered by Lord Baltimore, its English overlords
continued to treat Maryland as if it were part of Virginia. For example, in the last
decade of the seventeenth century, officers of the Crown and the Church helped
found a college in Virginia named William and Mary and a free school in
Maryland named King William's School. By charter William and Mary College
was given the entire revenue from a one-penny tax on every pound of tobacco
exported from both the Maryland and the Virginia plantations to countries outside England, Wales, and Scotland; no portion of the tax upon what
Mmyland's plantations produced was reserved for a free school in Maryland.
According to Maryland's Governor Francis Nicholson and Rev. Thomas Bray,
the Bishop ofLondon's Conmtissary for Maryland, the college in Virginia should
be of great benefit to Maryland youths who wanted a higher education. At the
time the two institutions were founded, some members of the General Assembly
shared this expectation, an expectation that was never fulfilled. It was many years
before a restored proprietary government in Maryland awarded the Atmapolis
free school a revenue comparable to what the Crown had given William and
Mary College in perpetuity by charter.
In 1632 King Charles the First carved two ribs from Virgirtia north of the
Potomac and gave them to Cecilius Calve1t, second Lord Baltimore, who called
the territory Maryland in honor of Queen Hernietta Maria. It became a home for
families of Calvert's own faith, the Roman Catholic, and of many other sects. As
early as 1671, Calvert proposed that a college be founded within the province of
Maryland, but his proposal foundered in an overwhelmingly Protestant lower
house of the Assembly- the upper house, or Council, appointed by the Proprietor was wholly Catholic- on the question of whether instruction should be
Catholic, Protestant, or both. 1
�2
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Twenty years later, when a royal governor, Francis Nicholson, who was a
strong Church of England man, urged the Assembly to build a free school and
both houses agreed - though they insisted that they wanted not one free school
but many free schools - there was no controversy. An Act of Assembly in 1692
had excluded Catholics from both houses and had also imposed a tax on all free
holders to support the Church of England throughout the newly drawn parishes
of the province. 2
Free school did not mean "free education; it meant a school that made its
students free by giving them a liberal education. 3 The Act that founded King
William's School (1696) described free schools as places where Latin, Greek,
Writing, "and the like" would be studied, for the "Propagation of the Gospel,
and the Education of the Youth oftltis Province in good Letters and Manners,"
with "one Master, one Usher, and one Writing-Master or Scribe." 4 In 1700 Bray
reported that the free school already slatted in Annapolis was also teaching
"arithmetic, navigation, and all useful learning." 5 It was the intention of at least
two officials of the Crown and Church, Nicholson and Bray, that some youths
educated in Maryland's free schools be further educated at William and Mary
College in studies preparing them for ordination as priests in the Church
of England. Indeed, Govemor Nicholson sought moral and financial support for
Maryland's first free school by praising the noble example set by the college in
Virginia "now vigorously carried on," saying "We ... in assembly attempted to
make learning a handmaid to devotion and founded free schools in Maryland to
attend their college." 6 On his visit to Maryland in 1700 after the Annapolis
school had begun, Bray went even further in confirming this, saying its purpose
was chiefly to prepare those youths who wanted to study divinity at William and
Ma1y College. 7 All early American colleges began as free schools, or with a free
school attached, to prepare boys for life and college studies. The grammar school
which was the beginning of William and Mary College was also called a free
school.
Rev. James Blair was founder of William and Mmy College and Commissary
for the Bishop of London in Virginia. Blair lived in Virginia from the time of his
appointment until his death, whereas Rev. Thomas Bray, Commissary for Maryland, spent only one year in his province. But despite his short stay the General
Assembly remembered him gratefully for the magnificent library of eleven
hundred books which he collected and gave them in 1699, and for the good men
he sent to fill the pulpits in Maryland's newly established churches-' As founder
of the first missionary societies in the Church ofEngland9 his influence extended
far beyond Maryland. The Book of Common Prayer adopted by the American
Episcopal Church in 1979 includes his birthday (February 15) with those of saints
of the early church for special celebration.
Yet Bray was visionary in the extreme in 1700 when he wrote the Bishop of
London from Maryland that youths educated in the Annapolis school who later
�FLETCHER
3
studied diviuity at William and Mary College could then be ordaiued by the
Bishop of London's suffragan "residing in the province." 10 Americans would
have no bishop in the Anglican succession, or any other, until after the Revolu-
tion.11 Moreover, Kiug William's School, chmtered in 1696 in Maryland, and
Willimn and Mary College, chartered iu 1693 in Virginia, would not develop
hand iu hand as Nicholson and Bray imagiued; each would develop according
to the style of its native province.
Although there were many differences in both style and substance between
Maryland and Virginia, there were many similarities at the time their first
educational institutions were founded. Both were founding new capital cities-
Williamsburg in Virginia and Annapolis in Maryland. Both had royal governors
-Sir Edmund Andros and Francis Nicholson served in tum as governor of each
colony. Both had economies based on the production and sale of tobacco. Both
chose to name their infant schools after the Crown, hoping for a royal blessing
in return. So similar seemed Maryland and Virginia to the Lords of Trade iu
London that they counted them as one plantation growing tobacco to produce
taxable wealth for the Crown. Siuce the twenty-fifth year of the reign of Charles
the Second (1673), Maryland and Vrrginia had been linked together in a levy of
one penny per pound upon tobacco exported to places other then England, Wales,
or the town of Berwick on Twede, an exportation very aptly called the "side
trade.'" 2 If the Lords of Trade linked Maryland and Vrrgiuia together as one
plantation, it is not surprising that the Lords of the Church, specifically the Lord
Bishop of London, viewed them as one field under his care, and, furthermore,
thought one college would do for both.
However, demographic and geographic differences did exist. Maryland had
the most diverse population of all thecolonies 13 while Virginia was settled almost
entirely by members of the Church of England. Until Maryland's political
revolution of government (1688-92), the colony was open to Catholics, Quakers,
Anglicans, and dissenting Protestants, and in 1649 it became a r'efuge for a group
of Puritans from Virginia fleeing a wave of persecution which followed the
execution of Charles the First and the accession of Cromwell. To accommodate
the Puritans Lord Baltimore urged the Mmyland Assembly iu 1649 to adopt the
famous Act of Toleration, and the Assembly complied. In that smne year the
Puritans left Virgiuia and settled iu Maryland at Severn, in an area that would
become Anne Arundel County. In 1650 they were able to elect two members to
Maryland's lower house. Even so they turned violently against the proprietary
government, hastening its overthrow. It is said that St. Anne's Church iu Annapolis grew slowly because of the many dissenting Protestants living in the parish. 14
This meant that St. Anne's for many years had a small congregation and that its
Rector had time to serve also as Master of King William's School. In any case,
King William's School had a succession of Rectors of St. Anne's as Masters.
�4
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
In the extent and configuration of their lands, Virginia and Maryland were
conspicuously different. Virginia was not only vastly larger- and therefore
wealthier- but her territory except for one small section all lay west of the
Chesapeake Bay. Mmyland 's much smaller area straddled the Bay, and her ten
counties in 1695 were located five on the Eastern and five on the Western Shore.
So whenever legislators voted according to their regional interests, a consensus
vote in favor of collective action was hard to achieve. Governor. Nicholson, an
able career administrator, comPlained "G-, I know better to Govern Virginia &
Maryland than all the Bishops of England, if I had not hampered them in
Mmyland & kept them under I should never have been able to have governed
them." About this remark Rev. James Blair commented in a letter to the Bishop
of London: "I don't pretend to understand Maryland but if I know anything of
Virginia they are a good natured tractable people as any is in the world. " 15
Just as these differences were reflected in the character of the two provincial
governments, so too they influenced the development of the two educational
institutions. They did indeed spring from a common heritage in the same decade;
they did indeed enjoy alternately the leadership of governors Nicholson and
Andros, and they were promoted by the Church of England at the time of their
founding. But from then on they were distant cousins. By charter William and
Mary was named for a reigning couple; King William's School for the King only,
Queen Mary having died in 1694, a year after the Virginia college was chartered.
The sponsors of William and Mary College specified in their charter the revenues
they expected the King to give them as endowments. Rev. James Blair traveled
to England with charter in hand, where friends persuaded him that in addition to
a Master and Usher even the Grammar School would need a President to
discipline Masters and Scholars 16 Whereupon he added paragraph 3 to the
Charter, naming himself President for life. He appealed to a sympathetic and
charitable Queen Mary, who got him an audience with the King. He petitioned
William on bended knee and received almost all he asked for. Petitioners for
King William's School, on the other hand, did not present their charter in person
and requested not specific endowments but ones "conformable" to those given
by charter to the college in VIrginia. The King lent his name and that was all.
Yet even the magnificent royal endowments that William and Mary College
was fortunate enough to receive proved inadequate to create a college. In addition
to the duty on the side trade, they included accrued money from quit-rents, the
"profits" from the surveyor general's office, and twenty thousand acres of land.
Forces in the Virginia Assembly thwarted Blair's efforts; his zeal was taken for
ambition (they thought he wanted to become a bishop), and as head of a college
faction he fought the royal governors as well as the House of Burgesses to gain
the support William and Mary needed to become a college. Until the "college"
acquired six professors in addition to the President, power of administration and
all its property was vested in the nineteen trustees. When its faculty developed
�FLETCHER
5
to this size, then "according to our Royal Intent ... the said Manors, Lands,
Tenements, Rents, Services, Rectories, Annuities, Pensions, and Advowsons of
Churches, [etc.]" should be made over to the President and Faculty. After the
transfer, the President and Faculty could elect one of themselves to the House of
Burgesses,l7 a parliamentary representation like that allowed the colleges at
Oxford and Cambridge Universities. When the school thus attained college
status, Blair's power, as~ consequence, would be further increased, a develop-
ment the Burgesses postPoned as long as they could. In 1727 an Usher was the
sole teacher in the Grammar School. Later there was a Master, an Usher, and a
Writing-Master.
President Blair had special difficulty in collecting the one-penny duty on the
side trade. Partly it was the fault of Queen Anne's War- pirates ravaged the sea
and trade with England's enemies was viltually impossible. The duty originated
in "An Act for the Encouragement of the Greenland and Eastland Trades, and
for better securing the Plantation Trade" passed by Parliament in 1673. It was
reserved for the use of the Crown. Bray had investigated its availability when
looking for funds to support the Church in Maryland, only to find that it had
already been given to the college in Virginia. 18 When King William and Queen
Mary bestowed the duty upon William and Mary College by charter, it was
on condition that the college pay the salary of its collectors out of the
revenue collected. 19 On several occasions President Blair solicited the help of
the Mmyland Council to further the collection.
His first solicitation came in 1695 as a directive from the Commissioners of
the London Customs House. It asked Maryland's Governor and Council to
reduce by fifty percent the fee given to Maryland Collectors (it had already been
reduced in Virginia), and to abolish the Office of Comptroller and Surveyor since
the Govemors of William and Mary intended to audit the accounts themselves
and thus save all profits for the college 20
The Council's response is unknown, but the directive cert<iinly reminded it
that Maryland's planters were being taxed for the benefit of the Virginia college.
Not entirely convinced by Nicholson's glowing account of its vigor, two Councillors asked Governor. Andros how the college was progressing. The first, Col.
Henry Coursey of Talbot County, remarked to Governor. Andros that he hoped
the college would be of great help to Mmyland youth, and Andros had replied,
"Pish, it will come to nolhing." The second, Philip Clarke of St. Mary's County,
reported that Govemor. Andros had said to him, "I suppose this College is to
teach Children their A.B.C." The reason given in Council for Sir Edmund's
barbed remarks was that President Blair had preached a sermon saying that
"those who withdrew back & did not forward their helping hand towards the
Building of the College would be damned," a remark that had offended the
Governor. 21
�6
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
This incident suggests the striking difference in the styles affected by the
founders of King William's School and those of William and Mary College.
Trustees in Maryland, often falteringly, worked through the ordinary channels
of the Assembly, responding to built-in tensions between Council and purse-conscious lower house, Govemor and Assembly, Eastern Shore and Western Shore,
country patty and Am1apolis party, and the still unresolved conflicts among the
various sects in the Province)n contrast, the ever vigilant Rev. James Blair in
Virginia initiated all the action. He led a college faction which fought the House
of Burgesses, the Governor, and even the trustees and clergy, to make his college
a reality; and, when they did not cooperate, he called down the wrath of God
upon them. In his often pious but autocratic way, he fulfilled the dream of his
life and built a splendid college for Virginia. It can be said of the founders of
both institutions that they adhered valiantly to their respective goals of founding
free schools in Maryland and a college in Virginia.
Fresh from the experience of founding William and Mary College, in October
1694 Governor. Nicholson, when first addressing the Mmyland Assembly then
sitting in St. Mary's City, urged them to found an educational institution which
he termed a free school and offered a generous gift towards its support. Members
of the lower house subscribed generously also, saying "Doubt not that every well
minded person within this province will contribute the same. " 22 The Council,
too, contributed. Nicholson read them the charter of William and Mary College,
suggesting that they draw up a supplication "to present tl1eir Sacred Majesties
for the Erecting the said free-school confonnable as near as may be to the said
Chatter. " 23 Both houses insisted, and indeed persuaded Nicholson, that free
schools should be established throughout the counties as well as at ArundellTown on the Severn where the seat of government would move in the following
year.
No text has survived of that portion dealing with establishment of free schools
in "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning & Advancement of the Natives
of the Province" passed in 1694 in response to Governor Nicholson's initiative,
but its contents are known. 24 It called for the founding of a free school on the
Western Shore at Severn (Annapolis had not yet been founded) and on its
successful operation another at Oxford on the Eastern Shore; then, in each of the
counties as means permitted. This basic mandate would be repeated in the Act
which did survive, that of 1696, and would be adhered to by the legislators until
county schools were actually funded in the Act of 1723. But that part called the
"Advancement of Natives of this Province," requiring that all provincial jobs not
appointed by the Crown be filled by natives of at least three years' residence,
was not reenacted until 1704.25 Both Nicholson and the Assembly realized that
local schools were needed to fit native-born men for the offices of church and
state.
�FLETCHER
7
The Act of 1694 was weak in that it did not mention trustees to cany out its
purpose. Recognizing this weakness the Council asked the Assembly what was
to be done with the money already levied for the maintenance of a free school
or schools. 26 Should it not be used to build a small school and maintain a
schoolmaster? Having no trustees it could deploy to engage architects and
builders, or to select a schoolmaster, the lower house prudently replied, "Resolved that the money thereby raised should be kept in Bancke."27 Eager to help,
the Bishop of London had already sent a schoolmaster named Andrew Geddes
to the Province. Unprepared to receive him, the Assembly first assigned him as
a reader in a vacant church, and then dispatched him to William and Mary
College until a schoolhouse could be built in Maryland. No more was heard of
him.Z8
Finally the Council and lower house together wrote and enacted an "Act for
Establishing Free Schools" of July 1696. 29 In its petitionary preamble it thanks
the King "for his royal benediction to our neighboring colony [Virginia] ... in
your gracious Grant and Charter for the propagation of the College" and asks
him to extend "your Royal Grace and Favour to us your Majesty's Subjects of
this Province, represented in this your Majesty's General Assembly thereof." It
is clearly stated throughout that all the enactments are proposed "with the Advice,
Prayer and Consent of this present General Assembly, and the Authority of the
Same." It politely informs the King of the Assembly's intent but nowhere
pretends, as the charter of William and Mary does, that the enactments originated
with the King. The royal "we" appears in every paragraph of the charter for
William and Mary College, usually as "we have granted'' or "we grant." It is a
fiction which the General Assembly in Mmyland did not employ.
Like the charter for William and Mary College, Maryland's "Act for Establishing Free Schools" required that there be eighteen to twenty trustees who
should elect a rector from among themselves each year to serve as chief officer.
In the corporate title of both, the trustees were called VisitorS and Governors.
Unlike the charter for William and Mary, the Act provided that whenever one or
more of the trustees "shall die or remove himself and Family out of this Province
into any other country for good and all," he should be replaced by "one or more
of the Principal and better Sort of the Inhabitants of the said Province." The
charter for William and Mary College, on the other hand, appointed its trustees
"for ever" with "perpetual succession," offeling no process for removal if they
left the Province. First among the group named as trustee was "our trusty and
well-beloved Francis Nicholson, our Lieutenant-Governor in our colonies of
Virginia and Maryland," who remained a trustee for many years after Blair had
ousted him as governor of Virginia because there was no means of lawfully
removing him as trustee of the college. Needless to say, when certain men were
named trustees for ever, Blair had not anticipated that Nicholson would become
his enemy; and when Blair was tenured as President for life, Nicholson had been
�8
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
equally naive. Blair, of course, had thought the "for ever" would last only a few
years, believing that the school would quickly develop into a college when the
Statutes called for in the charter would be written, vesting power and all property
in the President and Faculty. However, that day, when the school was finally
awarded college status through the enacting of the Statutes by the Assembly, did
not arrive for more than thirty years.
In September 1696 the lo,wer house of Mmyland's General Assembly instmcted the Sheliffs throughout the pmvince to collect all subscriptions, and
commanded the trustees with all convenient speed to meet together and treat with
workmen (a bricklayer had just arrived from Philadelphia) to agree upon a
building proportionable to the tobacco and money subscribed. 30
Four years later the schoolhouse was built. 31 On 7 May 1700 ten of the
original nineteen Visitors and Governors named in the Act of 1696 met with the
Bishop of London's Commissmy, Rev. Thomas Bray, during his visitation to
Maryland. After filling county vacancies on the board occasioned by death or
departure of trustees from the province, ''they proceed to know what money is
raised toward building the said Schools [schools in the counties]." 32 Representatives of all eleven counties were present except those from Anne Arundel and
St. Mary's. Two Cantabrigians were among the completed board membership of
1700: Robert Smith was a graduate33 and newly appointed Col. Thomas Greenfield had attended Cambridge University. 34 Six were members of the Governor's
Council, who, acting as Visitors and Governors, agreed upon compensation due
the free school because of occupation of a schoolhouse room by the Council (no
quarters had been provided them in the new state house).
Six years later the Rector and the Visitors and Governors were to demand
payment from the Assembly for past rent, claiming that an agreement to that
effect had been made on 3 May 1700. 35 Undoubtedly in 1700 the Council thought
their occupation a temporary anangement but were nonetheless uncertain of its
·
propriety, for on 13 May 1701 they said to the lower house,
Whereas the free school wee now sit in hath been built in great measure by
the Subscriptions of Severall private psons well affected to that good Designe,
who arc desireous to see the good ef:Tect thereof, It is recommended to your
house to consider how the best use may De made of the sayd house, it being
now finished, And also that you will take care to provide some convenient
fitting place for his Majesty's Council to sitt in in Assembly time for the better
dispatch of business. 36
The lower house made no effort to provide other quarters for the Council. But
four years later a majority of the house, like the Council, believed that the "good
Designe" for free schools was jeopardized by rental of the schoolhouse for
government use. The house felt it necessary to enact a bill on 30 September 1704,
reaffirming its support for free schools, which read, "the petitionary Act to
�FLETCHER
9
establish ... free schools is declared to be in full force to all Intents construccons
and purposes." 37 Its good intentions, however, were defeated by events. On 17
October 1704 the new state house burned, and hence the occupation of the
schoolhouse not only by the Council but also by the Public Library (the Bray
Collection) [Fig. 21 and by the public records was prolonged until another state
house was built in 1711.
(Fig. 2) Three books from the ''Public Library," housed in the King William's
schoolhouse from 1700 until 1786. Many books in the collection are embossed
De Biblioteca Annapolitana on the front cover and Sub Auspiciis Wilhelmi Ill on
the back. The volume of Chrysostom shown in the center was consulted by Bishop
John Carroll and partially translated by John Shaw. Known as both the Annapolitan Library and the Bray Collection. (Courtesy of St. John's College Library,
on deposit at Maryland State Archives.)
Meanwhile, in Virginia, Rev. James Blair was having his own troubles. The
side trade was hampered by Queen Anne's war against France. From what little
trade there was, President Blair wanted more levy money than he was receiving.
He did not hesitate in August 1704 to ask the Governor of Maryland "to quicken
�10
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
the Collectors in making up their Accounts of the one Penny ... and to take Bond
from the said Collectors to the College for their Answering." The Council replied
that "they do think the Collectors have already given Bond Sufficient to Answer
the said Duty. " 38
It is possible that the Customs Collectors had little incentive to gather the duty
after President Blair appropriated the fee they ordinarily received for their
trouble; and Maryland had litlle interest in helping collect a levy from which it
derived no benefit. It was difficult enough for the Councillor-trustees to rally
support in the lower house for the free school in Annapolis, which the counhy
party viewed as operating at county expense. In addition to Blair's disappointment over the small amount of revenue coming from the one-penny duty, disaster
struck his college on 29 October 1705. Fire destmyed the college building, which
was sheltering both the House of Burgesses and the college grammar school. The
college then had no building at all- to occupy itself or to rent out- until it
built a new one more than ten years later.
King William's School also waited more than ten years to gain full possession
of its schoolhouse. A kind of stalemate existed between the trustees and the lower
house, which refused to pay fair rent for the schoolhouse. Finally, in 1706, the
trustees took a firm stance, saying they would either receive fair rent or sell. This
brought the lower house around. The deal struck for rental of the whole building
must have been agreeable to both parties,39 trustees and legislators, for they do
not discuss it again until 1709, when the Council complained to the lower house
that an open chest standing in the free school porch "is exposed to the Weather
so that several Certificates of Land ... are damnified and spoiled. " 40 Once more
the lower house was dilatory; two years later the same complaint was lodged.
The completion of the state house in 1711 relieved the situation, for in it a Council
office was provided.41
Presumably there were a master and scholars meeting elsewhere in Annapolis, as the lower house mentions them in connection with their use ·of the Public
Library.42 The first master whose name we know was Rev. Edward Butler, who
began teaching some time before 1710. From that year until his death in 1713
he was both rector of St. Anne's and master of King William's Schoo1. 43 In 1711
the Committee of Aggrievances of the Assembly reiterated the desire of each
county for a free school of its own:
It is humbly offered by this Committee as an Aggrievance that the Country
receives no Benefit by the Duties paid for the Maintenance of the free School
and they pray the House to consider whether the present Governors and
Visitors of the free School apply the Money arising by Virtue of such Duties
according to the Act for that Purpose made and whether the said Governors
and Visitors have any Right thereto. 44
�FLETCHER
II
In answer the House suggested in November 1713
that forasmuch as most of the trustees in the Act named are dead and departed
the present Rector, Govemor and Visitors be such with the Addition of one
out of those Counties where there are none already. The Money now in the
Treasurers' Hands belonging to the ffree Schools be called in and let out on
good land security.... That the Accounts of the ffree Schools be yearly laid
before the House for their inspection.45
To this Capt. Jones, for the trustees, readily replied that "the Number of
Governors and Visitors is already compleat ... but Cecil, Charles and Somerset," and as for the money in the hands of Col. Smithson, Treasurer of the Eastern
Shore, who by his own admission is "very aged and crazy," they would ask for
land security (which they got by way of a farm in Dorchester County named
"Surveyor's Choice"), and they would "alwaJ's be glad to shew the Gen.
Assembly the Accounts of their Proceedings." 4
When John Hm1 anived from England in 1714 as the first royal governor
since 1709- the President of the Council had acted as governor from 1709 to
1714- he circulated a questionnaire prepared by the Bishop of London to the
clergy asking among other things about the education of Maryland children. It
revealed that "the case of schools is ve1y bad, Good Schoolmasters are very much
wanting." 47 This, of course, was what the country party had been saying for
years. Governor Hart noted the lack of schools in his first address to the Assembly
on 5 October 1714:
Providence in his bounty has blessed the Inhabitants of this Province with
a numerous Issue but It is a deplorable Ret1ection that no better Provision is
made for the Education of your youth, there being but a slender support for
one School on the Western and none on the Eastern Shore of this so wide a
bay.
I do eamestly recommend this Gentlemen to your Consideration being a
Duty incumbent upon you as you will acquit yourselves to God & the Queen
like good Fathers & good subjects. 48
Queen Anne died within the year. Her successor, George the First, restored
full prop1ietary power to Charles Calvert, fifth Lord Baltimore, age fifteen, who
had Lord Guilford as guardian. Young Charles had been raised in the Church of
England, his father having converted, and was acceptable to the Protestant
government of Maryland.
In a new optimism which followed the restoration of 1715, the rector and the
Visitors and Governors of the Free Schools redefined their purpose, "the Ends
for which we were incorporated," and stated their claim to certain properties long
ago bequeathed them. They also asked to be enabled by law to conduct business
�12
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
with a quorum of five trustees present, it being difficult, they said, to assemble
a majority of their members at any one time from the distant counties. 49 Their
well expressed determination was matched by suitable legislation passed in
1715, vesting in them and ..their Successors for ever, a certain lot of Land in the
City of Annapolis, and an House thereon erected, commonly called the Kentish
House; and impowering the said Rector and Visitors more easily to transact the
Business of the said Free-Sch.ools.''50
In addition, at a meeting of the Visitors and Governors in May 1715, Thomas
Bordley, "speedily designed on a voyage to England," was commissioned "to
use his Endeavors to invite & Procure some Discreet & learned person ... as an
Usher at the said schools ... that he may Expect upon Vacancy of Provost Master
thereof to be propos' d in his Place, or otherwise to be Master of another
Freeschool erected on the Eastem Shore." 51 We know that Bordley did their
bidding because Governor Hart wrote Bishop Robinson in 1717 that "Mr. Wamer
who behaves himself with Prudence was on the first meeting of the Visitors of
the Free Schools, admitted as Usher to the School of Annapolis." 52
All these were forward steps in the development of King William's School,
but its means of suppmt were still slim. For twenty-two years the Council had
not officially questioned the fairness of the one-penny-per-pound tax from the
side trade going in its entirety to the college in Virginia. It was the Crown's to
give. But as trade increased after 1714 and Maryland had desperate need for
additional funds to develop schools, members of House and Council naturally
wondered why all the levy should go to Virginia when it came from tobacco
raised partly on Maryland plantations. The question was first raised in the
Council, where the most eminent of the provincial attorneys sat, on 24 March
1715.
On that day Charles Carroll, who had been appointed by Charles, Lord
Baltimore, "our chief Agent, Escheator, Naval Officer, & Receiver General of
all our Rents, Fines, Fmfeitures, Tobaccos or Moneys for Lands, etc.," brought
instructions from the King to Governor Hart. Members of the Carroll family were
held in high esteem by the Calve1ts, who had entrusted their business to them for
several generations. The royal instructions began thus:
First. You shall give directions & take especial Care that John Hart, Esq.
Deputy Governour of our Province of Maryland do the first place inform
himself of the Principal 'Laws relating to the Plantation Trade Viz ...
. . . An Act for the incouragement of the Greene land and Eastland Trades;
and for the better secureing the Plantation Trade. 53
At the reading of the instructions Governor Hart was less concerned about
the King's communication than he was about the fact that Mr. Carroll, a Catholic,
refused to take the oath of abjuration required of all men holding provincial
�FLETCHER
13
offices. Deeply disturbed that the Lords Baltimore and Guilford would employ
someone as Naval Officer in violation of the act that established the Protestant
religion in Maryland, he publicly considered resigning as governor. This was the
year the King of France recognized James the Pretender as true King of England
and some Maryland hotheads shot off a cannon in honor of the Pretender's
birthday.54 Fear that there were Jacobites among Maryland's Catholics caused
Governor Hart's unease apd distraction. Had he studied the Act made in the
twenty-fifth year of the Reign of King Charles the Second as instructed by the
King, he might have more quickly become sensitive to the fact that the ancient
linkage of the Mmyland and Virginia plantations gave the duty entirely to
Virginia. But instead of questioning the levy, Hart quarreled with Charles Carroll
and throughout 1717 continued to exhort the Assembly to find means to provide
better for the education of Mmyland children. It required an aggravation of
another sort to focus his attention on the lack of generosity shown Maryland by
the Crown: the erection of a beautiful college building for William and Mary in
Williamsburg, 55 a visible monument to the extraordinary generosity of the
Crown toward that college.
Conscious of the splendor of the building, in 1719 Hart admitted to the
Assembly "your abilities [your wealth] do not come up to your desire for that
laudable end [to build schools]." 56 By this time fully informed about the law of
the tobacco trade which had enriched William and Mary College, he was
persuaded to ask the Lords Baltimore and Guilford to beg a fair share of the
King's bounty for Maryland schools:
The good People of this province [he wrote them] have paid Large Sums
of money towards the Encouragement of Learning there [William and Mary
College] which the Distance of the Place And the Great Charge of Schooling
Children hath made altogether useless to us; For such psons as are of Ability
to Defray such Charge choose Rather to Educate their Children in Great
Britain.... We are humbly of Opinion ... that we should have Some share
in his Royall Bounty Toward the Support of a Free School already Built at
Annapolis and that the one Penny p pound to be Collected within this Province
... might be applied to the use and Support thereof. 57
The Proprietors received the royal answer in April 1720. It was negative.
Governor Hart was sony to report to the Assembly that they "can have no
Expectation of benefit from the Duty ... having Setled the same for ever on the
College of Virginia."58 But in the October 1720 session of the Assembly the
Lords Baltimore and Guilford suggested that a moiety of the 3" per hogshead of
tobacco the Assembly allowed Governor Hart should be applied to the school at
Annapolis, a proposal the lower house agreed to.
In his speech of 1717 Govemor Hart had said, "The Province is now in the
most happy Condition that ever it was since the first Settlement." 59 Such a
�14
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
change for the better can be detected in the temper of the Assembly Proceedings.
The lower house now acted, whereas it fonnerly had found legalistic reasons for
saying no. In 1720 arrangements were made to finish a room for the Public
Library, 60 and the Committee of Accounts wa<; ordered to pay the Rector and the
Visitors and Governors of the Free School the sum of eighty-six pounds, thirteen
shillings and four pence cunent money for the rent of the schoolhouse, which
they did without demur. Twen,ty-five years after the chartering of King William's
School it.;; schoolhouse was tenanted by the school master and its rooms were
available for classes. Furthermore, the lower house acted favorably on a petition
from Michael Piper,61 Master of the Free School at Annapolis, asking that
"vacant ground lying between the School House and the Stadt House be granted
him for a small Garden." 62 We know also that an usher was at the school. By
1721 King William's School had attained the desired stability described by its
charter- one master, one usher, and an annual income of one hundred and
twenty pounds for their support, and one hundred scholars more or less. By
charter this was the signal to establish schools in all the counties. Enough had
been collected for that purpose from an "Imposition on Sundry Commodities
exported out of, and other imported into, this Province, which has succeeded
with such desired Effect." "An Act for the Encouragement of Leaming, and
erecting Schools in the several Counties within this Province" was passed in
October 1723, naming seven Visitors in each county to receive funds and to build
and organize a school in each. 63
The fund was divided into twelve parts for the twelve existing counties, to
build a school near the center of each. King William's School did not share in
this distribution. Besides the schoolhouse and the Public Library in its charge, it
had enough income to survive from the moiety of the three pence allowed
Governor Hart and from vmious taxes, 64 rental properties, gifts, and legacies.
Now that the counties had the means to develop free schools of their own, the
country party no longer jealously watched how the trustees of King William's
School expended public funds, thus allowing them a free hand to develop the
Annapolis school.
�Two:
An Endowed
King William's School
Plans to Become a College
In 1732 King William's School received an adequate, though not princely,
endowment. This was fortunate because a few years earlier it had lost all support
from provincial taxes. The endowment was a legacy of young Governor Benedict
Leonard Calvert, who willed the school one third of Ills estate. At mid-century,
legislation to develop the Annapolis school into a college, and to establish
another college on the Eastern Shore, was introduced in the General Assembly.
King William's School was chartered by an act of 1696. 1 It was planned that
a school should be founded on the Eastern Shore at Oxford, Talbot County, after
King William's School became self-supporting. And after that, one at a time, free
schools should be established in the other counties of Maryland.
However, no county schools were fmmded under the act of 1696. They were
not established until thirty years later by an act of 1723,2 wltich divided into
twelve equal parts all the monies collected since 1696 for the benefit of public
schools. County school boards were appointed to serve in "perpetual succession"
like the Rector and Visitors and Governors of King William's School. They were
directed to use their portion of this money to purchase one hu:n,dred acres for a
schoolhouse and for support of the masters. King William's School did not share
in this distribution, nor did it receive any portion of the annual taxes eatmarked
thereafter for public schools. Although sometimes called the Annapolis Free
School, it was quite distinct from the county school called Anne Anmdel County
Free School established under the act of 1723.
A majority in the Assembly wanted local schools inrmediately. But a minority
continued to trunk that the one-school-at-a-time procedure outlined in the act of
1696 would build better schools. Those who wanted a college or two for
Maryland favored the earlier act. They thought that to distribute limited public
funds for education among so many schools would give none of them enough
support to develop into the kind of good school the province needed for its youth.
Young Benedict Leonard Calvert, governor of Maryland from 1727 to 1732,
belonged to this group and on 18 March 1728/29, wrote antiquarian Thomas
�16
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Heame at Oxford University that "wee have here settled a fund for a free school
in the several12 counties." But he said there would be a better chance for "Real
Success in Education" if the limited funds had been spent on "our two older
foundations," i.e., the school in Annapolis and the one proposed for Oxford by
the Act of 1696, where there were accommodations for "Boarding Scholars." 3
Soon after his arrival in Maryland in 1727, Calvert "in tender Consideration"
of an application from the lo)'ler house, gave to the county schools half of the
three-pence-per-hogshead t~ reserved for the governor's use. 4 This was the
revenue that Governor Hart gave King William's School in 1720. The act
renewing the revenue in 1723 provided for its expiration in 1726.5 Loss of the
revenue from this tax almost wrecked King William's School.
The funds were sunk, the School had soon decay' d
Unless supported by thy [Govemor Calve1t's] Bounteous Aid,6
rhymed poet and schoolmaster Richard Lewis. For what Calvert ahnost destroyed with his left hand, he saved with his right by seeking private benefactors
to aid the Annapolis school.
Governor Calvert's "Bounteous Aid" came as one third of his worldly goods,
which he, mindful of failing health, bequeathed King William's School in a will
written just before he sailed for England in April 1732. 7 Benedict Leonard
Calvert, great-grandson of Charles I and the Duchess of Cleveland, and younger
brother of the fifth Proprietor, Charles, Lord Baltimore, was only twenty-seven
years old when he became Governor of Mary land. According to two discerning
friends, he was scholarly and generous. Thomas Hearne, older than Calvert, had
corresponded with him ever since Calvert's student days at Christ Church
College, Oxford, in 1717. During his years in Maryland Calvert enjoyed the
company of a contemporary, Richard Lewis, a poet and schoolmaster, who had
entered Balliol College, Oxford, in 1718. Hearne often mentions Calvert in his
famous diary, 8 Lewis writes of him in his occasional verse. Both mention the
Annapolis School.
Hearne confessed that he had tried to persuade Calvert to stay in England
rather than go to what Calvert in his previously mentioned letter called an
"unpolished part of the Universe." But while saying this, Calvert sent to Hearne,
as if to show that conditions were changing in Maryland, a copy of Richard
Lewis's translation of Holdsworth's Muscipula: the Mousetrap, 9 recently printed
on Maryland's new printing press. In the preface, Lewis called himself"one who
is engaged in teaching Language"; Calvert described him as "a man realy of
Ingenuity, and to my judgment well versed in Poetry." Though he was best known
as a nature poet, 10 his occasional verses are of interest because they tell of
Calvert's intention to build a college in Maryland. Of the bequest to King
William's School, Lewis writes,
�FLETCHER
17
The Gift he gave was small to what his :Mind
Had to advance good Literature design' d,
His pow'rful Entreaties would have mov'd
His Noble Friends who useful Learning Lov'd,
To build a College, where our Youths might find
Instruction to Adorn each studious Mind;
And for their Use his B~lOks were all Design'd. 11
"His Books" refers to Calvert's well-stocked library, which it is believed Lewis
consulted while preparing annotations to Muscz]JUla. Evidently Calvert had
intended to give his library to the college.
Lewis is commonly thought to have written Proposals for Founding an
Academy at Annapolis. 12 Its author sounds like an experienced language teacher
when he says Greek and Latin are often taught in a way "too dry, laborious &
discouraging to the Capacities of Boys" and proposes that a better method be
adopted for the Academy.
Lewis, if he is the author, proposes a faculty composed of a senior Lecturer,
or Regent, "who shall be Professor of Divinity, Moral Philosophy & the Classics:
a Master and sub-master or Usher who could teach the Classics, a Writing Master
competent in Mathematicks, and an English Master who would also teach
reading and Accounts." The author suggests that the Regent and the Greek master
in the Academy be "clergymen as best qualified for Instructing the Young
Gentlemen designed for Holy Orders," and he clearly means clergymen of the
Church of England. Yet he recommends that "none of the Youth of this or the
neighboring Provinces, of what Opinion soever they may be in Religion, shall
be excluded from the Benefit of receiving their Education here, on Account of
their Dissenting from the Establish'd Church." This liberality toward nonChurch of England youth was later stated in much stronger language in the
non-sectarian charters of Washington College and St. John's College of 1782 and
1784.
In conclusion the author writes,
the Proposer. ... is ready to attend Either of the Honourable Houses when
Call'd upon, with all Integrity and Submission, being Prepar'd, as they shall
Judge proper, to Enlarge or Contract the Design, and Accomodate the Whole
to the Circumstance of the Province; The Genius of Whose Youths He has
Remarked to be nahirally Very Good, and Capable of great Proficiency by a
Suitable Cultivation.
This last remark suggests again that Lewis, a teacher in the Annapolis school and
therefore familiar with the abilities of Maryland youths, was the author of the
Proposals.
�18
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Unfortunately, the Proposals to Found an Academy at Annapolis, was never
introduced in the Assembly. The untimely deaths ofthe two men who would have
been its most likely proponents may explain the failure: Calvert died at sea on I
June 1732 and Lewis died two years later in 1734.
Without the income produced by Calvert's bequest, King William's School,
as Lewis wrote, might indeed have "sunk." Until the Revolution it comprised
seven-eighths of the school's ,entire income, 13 not counting fees received from
students. In his will, Calvert. required that sound investment be made of the
inheritance, that it
be put out at Interest upon good Security ... towards the payment of the Salary
or Support of the Master or Masters Usher or Ushers of the said School. And
to no other purpose whatsoever. ... If it should ever happen a Master of the
said School should be wanting during the space of one whole year, so that
children cannot be taught instructed educated at least as well as usual ... it
be paid to the church wardens & vestry of St. Anne's Parish . .. to apply in
the purchase of a Tract of Land ... for the use and benefit of the Minister of
the time being and his Successors of St. Anne's Parish. 14
The poverty of St. Anne's Parish helped make it possible for King William's
School to operate continuously. St. Anne's Parish had no rectory for its clergy to
occupy. The parish, being small, offered a meager living to its rector from the
tobacco tax of "40 per poll." 15 This was recognized as early as 12 July 1709,
when "the Governor and Council recorded that the Annapolis palish was deliberately made small so as to entail a minimum of parochial work for Commissary
Bray [who had an additional salary], but that this arrangement provided such a
small income that the governor had difficulty in keeping it supplied." 16 Years
later, in 1754, Governor Sharpe described the living as scarcely a decent
subsistence because of the "Dearth of provision, Fireing & Family necessaries,
which the lack of glebe land and a rectory provide." 17 For these reasons, it is
likely that between 1732 and 1759, some, if not all, of the rectors of St. Anne's
also served as masters of King William's School, living in the schoolhouse
quarters and, as masters, receiving some additional income from Calvert's
bequest. If this was the case, it was fortunate for the school, because the clergy
were well-educated and the school therefore never wanted for masters. 18
In 1754 Governor Sharpe wrote Lord Baltimore suggesting that money be
raised to build a rectory for St. Anne's Palish according to a plan like that
proposed in 1724 by Rev. James Henderson, acting commissary: money should
be accumulated by not appointing a rector for St. Anne's for a number of years. 19
And indeed, between 1754 and 1759, St. Anne's had no rector, but was served
by a vicar only, Rev. John McPherson. The money saved was used in 1759 to
build a rectory at 217 Hanover Street, which was the home of St. Anne's rectors
untill885. 20
�FLETCHER
19
After receiving Calvert's legacy in 1732, King William's School was independent of provincial funds. But the county schools, supported by the tax dollar,
were at the mercy of the Assembly. In 1740 they lost the revenue from half of
the three-pence-per-hogshead tax, 21 and it was never replaced. A bill of 1742 to
restore the revenue failed by a vote in the lower house of twenty-seven to eight. 22
Throughout the 1740s Assembly sessions were bitter confrontations between the
lower house, which claimed an exclusive right to initiate money bills, and the
governor, who demanded money for defense. Finally in 1746 Governor Bladen
pressed too hard for funds to support His Majesty's troops in King George's war
against the French and their Indian allies. In retaliation, the lower house withdrew
all funds for the completion of the governor's house begun in 1733. As a result,
it stood half-finished without a roof, slowly decaying, until renovated and
completed as an academic hall for St. John's College in 1789. 23
A frequent turnover of masters during the 1740s shows that the county schools
suffered from loss of revenue. In 1745, 1746, and 1747, tmstees from Anne
A1undel, Calvert, Prince George's, Queen Anne's, and St. Mary's counties
advettised for many months for qualified candidates. 24
Elsewhere in the colonies during the decades of the thirties and forties, people
were expetiencing a moral and spiritual uplift known as the Great Awakening.
Three colleges claim that they were established as a result of the moral enthusiasm of the period: The College of New Jersey (Princeton) in 1746; the Academy,
College and Charitable School of Philadelphia (University of Pennsylvania) in
1750; and King's College (Columbia) in 1754. Maryland was stirred in its own
way by what Samuel Mmison describes as "aggressive missionary work by the
Church of England, and a quiet but pervasive growth of liberal Christianity." 25
Social clubs like the famed Tuesday Club and a newly founded Masonic lodge
flourished in Annapolis and were part of the liberal movement. Members of the
Tuesday Club contributed toward the Talbot County Charity and Work School,
founded to educate poor black and white children in useful trades by a fellow
member, Rev. Thomas Bacon. 26 Both he and Rev. John Gordon?' who left St.
Anne's Parish in 1749 for St. Michael's Parish, Talbot County, belonged to the
Tuesday Club. They and Rev. William Brogden, rector of All Hallow's Parish,
Anne Arundel County, preached sermons in St. Anne's Church before the Society
of Free and Accepted Masons of Annapolis at celebrations of the two St. John's
days: Gordon on 25 June 1749 and Bacon on 25 June 1753, the feast day of St.
John the Baptist. Rev. William Brogden preached before them on the feast day
of St. John the Evangelist on 28 December 1749.
But Annapolis's social clubs are more famous for their fun and ftivolity than
for their moral uplift and good works. Thanks to the historian of the Tuesday
Club, Dr. Alexander Hamilton, we have a picture of the King William's schoolroom where the predecessor of the Tuesday Club met weekly. 28 It was called the
Ugly Club.
�20
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
According to Hamilton's history
what chiefly gave this Society the name of the Ugly Club was the squalidness
of the Room, where they sat, and held their meetings, it being a large ghastly
apartment, of an old Building made use of for a School Room. The plaister of
the walls and Ceiling was much decayed and cracked, moldy, dirty, and several
places fallen off. Around the walls were many names engraved and done with
Ink, Chalk, and marking Stolle, and some human faces and figures of a strange
wild fancy with monstrous noses, unconscionable mouths, and horrid staring
eyes. The Ceiling was smoked in several places with a candle, and very much
gamished with cobwebs, and the Clay nests of worms and wasps. Many panes
of Glass in the windows were broke and cracked, the window sills and shelves
covered with dust, which had been collecting there for half a century. The
floor was squalid, full of spots and plaistered in many places with daubs of
dirt, collected from chaws of tobacco, and such like plastic substances, which
having been stood upon, adhered, and in a manner grew to the planks. The
furniture of the Room consisted of a parcell of old forms and desks, which
Served the members of the Club to sit and loll upon. There was only one
antiquated elbow chair, which was Set apart for the president of the Club.
Thus was it Solely upon account of the Slovenliness of the members (who
looked when met like a parcel of ragged philosophers), their affectation of
odd gestures, and dirtiness and unseemliness of the Club room that this Society
had tbe name of the Ugly Club, not from any bodily deformity in tbe members
themselves, for, in that respect, some of them were proper enough men, and
tollerably well made.
Among the members was Mr. Pedanticus,
a man of letters, having for some time exercised the office of Schoolmaster
for the City of Annapolis, and exerted himself to admiration, in that conspicuous station. He was remarkable for wearing dirty linnen nightcaps in summer,
and greasy worsted Ditto in winter.... He was an Hybemicum by birth, and
was pretty well stocked in the sort of modest assurance which is reckoned
peculiar to that nation. He had a particular tum to mechanics, and made such
great strides toward the discovery of the perpetuam mobile and the longitude,
that it is thought by many competent Ju~ges, had his means or purse been
sufficient, he would have effected them both. Like others of his profession he
was positive, dogmatic and Imperious, treating all persons, as if they were his
pupils or Schoolboys, much given to dispute, and always sure he was in the
right, and Commonly needed to get the better of the argument, by ~uoting
Greek and Latin authors, which few or none of the Club understood. 2
But contrary to Hamilton's comical descriptions and lampoons, many of tbe
discourses at the weekly meetings of the Tuesday Club were far from nonsense.
Smoothum Sly, Esq., was Rev. John Gordon, whose discourse on 5 April l746
�FLETCHER
21
(Fig. 3) The Ugly Club, predecessor of the Tuesday Club, meeting in the King
William's schoolroom in the early 1740s. Garrett Manuscript no. 1. (Courtesy of
John Work Garrett Library, the Johns Hopkins University Library.)
"was upon Civil Government, and had the approbation of the Club in general,
excepting his honor the president, who alledged he spoke too much in favor of
popular liberty." 30 On 16 August 1748 Gordon was high steward and therefore
entertained the Club in his home, which was the schoolhouse. 31
By 1747 the Assembly had mended its ways somewhat. After two decades of
debate it passed an act for "amending the Staple Tobacco for preventing frauds
in his Majesty's Customs and for limitation of Officers' Fees," 32 imposing
regulations and inspection on the tobacco trade. These were necessary to raise
the quality of Maryland tobacco, to make it competitive with the Virginia leaf,
�22
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
which was already under stlict regulation. Hoping to prevent the exportation of
"bad and trash tobacco," the act set up numerous inspection stations at ports on
the Chesapeake and its tributaries. In that same year the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle temporarily ended the conflict between England and France in Europe and
concluded King George's War in America. With the coming of peace, trade was
resumed with the continent, where Maryland's famous Orinoco tobacco was
always in demand.
The Tobacco Law and peace raised hopes such as those expressed in an essay
written in 1747 entitled "On the Means of Improving the Trade." 33 The author
recommended that two ports be established, one on each shore of the Bay, to
draw the grain ttade. He predicted that these two potts would soon become "Seats
of Learning as well as of Commerce." For, he continued, "Athens was the Center
of the Commerce as well as of the Literature of ancient Greece."
Seemingly the author's dream was shared by the trustees of King William's
School, who readied themselves to play a leading role in making Annapolis a
center of colonial learning. They gained permission from the Assembly to sell
"ce1tain lands and houses belonging to the free-school in the city of Annapolis
called King Williana's School," which brought in little rent, and 650 acres in
Dorchester County, which brought in no annual profit and on which they had to
pay quit rent. The Assembly required that any money realized from the sales
must be invested "on good security" and bring in annual interest for suppmt of
the masters. 34 But having gained the necessary permission, the trustees were in
no hurry to sell.
Evidently, they were awaiting the outcome of an action just begun in the May
1750 Assembly, whose purpose was to found two colleges with funds acquired
through confiscating the property of the county schools. It was necessmy first
for the lower house to be polled on the question "Whether the County Schools
will be suppressed, in order that a sufficient Fund may be raised for establishing
a School, or College, on each Shore of this Province." Thirty-five rriembers voted
in the affirmative, seventeen in the negative. 35 Just before adjournment the lower
house appointed a Committee on Ways and Means and ordered that the proposed
bill, when ready, should be published in the Maryland Gazette during the summer
recess.
The bill as published abrogated the Act of 1723 and proposed to replace
county schools with "One good ... school for the Western Shore which should
be King William's School with such succession of Rector, Governors and
Visitors as directed by the Act of 1696," and one "good ... school at ... on the
Eastern Shore."
The firstmasterofKing William's School should have a master's degree from
Oxford University, and the first master of the Eastem Shore school should have
his from Canabridge University, each to be appointed by the vice chancellor of
his university, and the vice chancellors would, for the "Time Being" serve as
�FLETCHER
23
chancellors of the two Maryland colleges. Two Maryland boys, designated
Calvert's Scholars, should be educated gratis and be recommended for holy
orders in England. "Money arising by ... the Sales of the Land and Chattels
belonging to the County Schools shall be ... applied by the said Rector, Governors and Visitors of either School respectively to build suitable and proper
Houses ... all such Buildings shall be of Brick or Stone, with shingled Hip
Roofs, and but one Story High ... Three Rooms to each School ... to be
denominated First, Second and Third Schools." Standards were set for promotion
within the vmious schools. For example, no boy should be admitted into the First
School until he had read Tully and Horace in Latin and gone through the Greek
Grammar, Homer, Theocritus in the Greek likewise. 36
According to this bill, King William's School was to develop into a "good
school" or college, under the same board that had continued in perpetual
succession since appointed by the Act of 1696; and another "good school" or
college was to be established on the Eastern Shore, whose location and governance were not stated in the proposal. This bill, however, was never introduced
in the Assembly.
By 1750 wheat was becoming an important Maryland export. Many Mm·yland planters followed their grain northward to Philadelphia, causing Chestertown, on the way to Philadelphia, to enjoy a prosperity beyond that of Oxford to
the south. One of the attractions of Pennsylvania's capital city was the Academy
of Philadelphia, which opened January 1751 to teach
Latin, Greek, English, French, and GennanLanguage; together with History,
Geography, Chronology, Logic, and Rhetoric; also Writing, Arithmetic, Merchants Accounts, Geometry, Algebra, Surveying, Gauging, Navigation, Astronomy, Drawing in Perspective, and other mathematical sciences; with
natural and mechanic Philosophy, etc., agreeable to the Constitutions heretofore published, at the Rate of Four Pounds per Annum and twenty Shillings,
Entrance. 37
The exodus of Maryland youths to the Academy, and later to the Academy
and College of Philadelphia, became so great between 1751 and 1754 that it
occmred to one "Philo Marilandicus" that the money Maryland youths spent in
Pennsylvania for their education could build colleges on both the Eastern and
Western Shores of Maryland, or at least one in Annapolis.
He wrote:
On Enquiiy, it has been found that there are (at least) 100 Mmylanders in the
Academy of Philadelphia, and it is experimentally known, that the annual
Charges, for Cloaths, Schooling, Board, etc. etc. etc. amount (at least) to 75£
Maryland Currency, 50£ Sterling, for each Youth educated. Hence it is evident,
that if this Practice continues but 20 years (at the moderate Computation of
�24
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
5000£ Sterling per Annum), there must be remitted from Maryland for the
Benefit of the Pennsylvanians, the round Plumb, or Sum of One Hundred
Pounds Sterling. Besides this 'tis well known, that vast Sums are every Year
transmitted to France, etc. for the Education of our young Gentlemen of the
Popish Persuasion, etc. Tho perhaps superior Politics, Interest and Influence
may render the saving the Money in the latter Case (entirely lost to the
Province), impracticable, yet cettainly our Protestant Patriots might contrive
Ways and Means for keeping within Maryland, Cash advanced (as aforesaid),
for the Use of Pennsylvania, by establishing a College on each Shore, or one
at Annapolis, at which (if duly cheaper, and more conveniently accomodated,
and at the same Time) the Cash expended, would still circulate within the
Province. If you think these Hints deserve public Consideration, by inserting
them in your next, you will oblige,
Yours etc
Philo Marilandicus 38
Philo Marilandicus did not go unanswered. On reading this letter in the
Maryland Gazette, Richard Brooke responded with an argument in favor of one
college only. If youths of both shores were educated under one roof, he wrote,
they would contract friendships which would wipe out some of the ancient
jealousies between the inhabitants of the two shores; if one college only, it would
certainly be at Annapolis, where Gentlemen have frequent opportunities to see
their children while attending the Assembly and Court. To satisfy those who
objected to Annapolis for moral reasons, sirice towns have disorderly elements,
good regulations should be enforced. But if a town was considered too objectionable a situation for a college, it could be placed on the opposite shore of the
Severn.
Brooke, a Protestant heir to "certain lands, which are detained from him by
the Jesuits," suggested that the Jesuits be divested of their land, which could be
sold to produce revenue for a college. "Here then," he wrote, "we· have found a
Fund equal perhaps or very near equal to a genteel Endowment for one College,
but by no Means of two." In making this suggestion, to avoid any insinuating
aspersions on his character, he made "a public Renunciation of any Right to those
Lands." 39
The lower house did indeed write a bill to divest the Jesuits of their lands 40
- not to build a college, but to pay Maryland's contribution to frontier defense
in the French and Indian War. Since the foe was Catholic, some men feared that
Maryland's Catholics might aid the enemy. The upper house, however, rejected
the bill.
But in answer to Philo Marilandicus and others who wanted a Maryland
college, and who expressed their desire in terms advantageous to Maryland's
wealth, Governor Sharpe replied in May 1754. He was aroused to action by the
sight not only of the thriving college in Virginia, but also of the flourishing
�FLETCHER
25
Academy and College of Philadelphia where many Maryland youths were
spending Maryland cash. Speaking before the Maryland General Assembly in
1754 he said,
Shall I also take the Liberty of intimating what a considerable Benefit must
accrue to the Inhabitants, and what Honour must redound to yourselves, from
the Foundation of a more perfect and more public Seminary of Leaming in
this province; a Scheme this long since put in Execution among our Neighbors,
to whom our Youth are still obliged, much to the disadvantage and Discredit
of this Province, to recur for Liberal education.
If the Assembly could not be shamed into founding a college, Governor
Sharpe held out a carrot: "From my knowledge of what vast Pleasure and
Satisfaction his Lordship receives from being able to contribute, and promote,
the Reputation Honour and Prosperity of his Province, I will presume to
encourage you to expect something more than his bare approbation of such a
Proposal." 41
In spite of placing little trust in "more than bare approbation" from the
Proprietor, the Assembly responded to the governor's plea by again introducing
a college bill, this time an .act to establish one college, not two. Just as in 1750,
proponents called for a vote on the question "Whether the Fund now appropriated
for the several County Schools, and the money which may arise in the Sale of
the Land and Houses, which appertains to the several County Schools, be applied
toward the Erection of One public Seminary for Learning within this Province,
or Not?" Again, it was resolved in the affirmative, with thirty-eight ayes and
thirteen nays. It was then ordered "That the Committee of Laws do make an
Enquiry into Ways and Means to raise a Fund, for the Establislunent of One
Public Seminary for Learning in this Province and repmt the same to the
House." 42
Taxes already levied for the benefit of the county schools were the following:
"twenty shillings per Poll on Irish servants being Papists, and on Negroes; the
Duty of six pence per barrel on tar and twelve pence on pitch; and twelve pence
on Port." The Committee recommended two more- one on feny licenses and
another one penny per gall<?n on all rum and wine. They also included the annual
income received by King William's School from the bank stock bought with
Calvett's bequest, ground rents on lots in Annapolis, and what could be realized
from the sale of the Dorchester fmm. They thought that the total amount would
"be sufficient to defray the Annual Expense of a College." In addition, they
calculated what the sale of county school property would bring. But they did not
suggest selling the King William's schoolhouse, which "yonr Committee apprehend ... may be converted to some Public Use." 43
This last remark has caused some speculation. One historian has called it "an
innuendo doubtless full of significance." 44 This may be so. But on the face of it,
�26
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
it sounds more like a redundancy than an innuendo. The schoolhouse, from its
completion in 1701, had known public use- by the Council, the Records
Office, the Provincial Library, the church, the clubs.
In a final vote on 28 May 1754 a majority of one in the lower house voted
not to refer the bill "For the Erection of One Public Seminary for Learning within
this Province" for consideration in the next Assembly. Eighteen members from
the Eastern Shore counties voted for consideration; eighteen men from the
Western Shore counties voted against consideration in the next session. The
deciding vote was cast against by the Speaker, Philip Hammond, from Anne
Arundel County. The two Annapolis delegates present, Walter Dulany and
Alexander Hamilton, voted against, as did three delegates from Anne Arundel
County. Four delegates from Kent County voted for; the Talbot delegation split.45
All this suggests that the bill of 1754 favored an Eastern Shore location -in all
probability Chestertown, not Oxford- rather than Annapolis, where King
William's School would have been developed into the Seminary. 1f this was the
case, the innuendo may have been a recommendation that the King William's
schoolhouse, like the county schools, should be sacrificed for the development
of one seminary. The trustees of the county schools, like those of King William's
School, had been appointed in perpetual succession 46 Undoubtedly, they wanted
equable representation on the governing board of the new seminary, along with
the trustees of King William's School. An acceptable governance of the one
seminary obviously had not been worked out. Furthermore, the bill proposed in
1754 did not carry out the intention of the two earlier acts for the encouragement
of learning, both of which were committed to the establishment of county
schools.
In May 1754 Governor Sharpe wrote Lord Baltimore that the session just
concluded had not been a propitious time to introduce "the scheme your Lordship
was pleased to intimate for compleating the Governour's House." It had indeed
been another unproductive session, producing no constructive legislation for
defense or education. The lower house had again proposed the unthinkable, that
the tax on ordinaries be diverted from the proprietor's income to the support of
troops.47
Yet, when sympathetic to a cause, the Assembly could find solutions. News
came in July 1754 that young Lt. Col. George Washington (age 22) and his
Virginia militia had surrendered to the French and their Indian allies. Governor
Sharpe wrote Lord Baltimore, "Govemour Dinwiddie renewed his solicitation
for our assistance .... By this I was induced to meet our Assembly on the 16th
Instant & prevailed them so far as to send up a bill for supporting the Virginians
with 6000 pounds." 48
The lower house raised a significant portion of this amount by placing a surtax
on ordinaries. Their attempts to attach the base tax on ordinaries, which the
proprietor claimed as his own, had failed in the past. Thus they considered the
�FLETCHER
27
passage of the surtax a signal success, for they had been led to believe that the
proprietor considered not only the base tax on ordinaries, but any tax on
ordinaries as a source of revenue, his peculiar preserve. Their success proved to
be a step in the right direction toward financing a college.
During the visit of a victorious Washington to Annapolis thirty years later,
the lower house chartered St. John's College, having chartered Washington
College in Chestertown two years before. Included in the St. John's charter was
a tax on Western Shore ordinaries to provide revenue for its support.
��Three:
King William's School
Survives the Revolution
King William's School in Annapolis, where many generations of boys quietly
received an education in the eighteenth century, labored under inescapable
administrative, financial, and political problems. It was govemed by trustees
appointed in unbroken succession from its founding in 1696 until 1786, when
they legally changed its name to Annapolis SchooL They appointed masters and
"ushers" (assistants), and directed disciplinmy action until 1789, when Annapolis School became St. John's College. Unfortunately the school's journal of
1
proceedings and book of accounts have not been found. However, the Proceed~
ings of the General Assembly record what legislative action was taken in behalf
of the school, and the published letters of Governor Horatio Sharpe and a few
Gazette notices add commentary. Together, these records document the continuous operation of the school until St. John's College opened.
Nineteenth-century histories of King William's School are not continuous
nmTatives 2 Yet they satisfied those who held the popular view that St. John's
was founded as King William's School in 1696 until several mid-twentieth-cen-
tury historians, 3 troubled by gaps in these early histories, doubted its continuity
and overlooked the role its trustees played in establishing St. John's.
This, the last of three articles on King William's School, covers the years
between 1755 and 1786, when five college bills were introduced in the Assembly
during the brief peaceful interludes between French and Indian frontier wars,
and following the repeal of the Stamp arid Townshend Acts before the American
Revolution. This article relates a history of continuous operation during years
when King William's trustees dreamed of developing their school into a college.
Seven bills to found a college in Maryland were written before the Revolution. The first of these, ordered by the Assembly in 1750, was never introduced
in that body, perhaps because it was grandiose in some of its recommendations.
The next college bill (1754), like that of 1750, proposed that county schools be
confiscated, an unpopular notion. Also it was unclear about whether the one
college (the bill of 1750 had proposed two colleges) was to be located on the
�30
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Eastern or Western Shore, thus pleasing neither shore. It did not pass the lower
house. A third bill (5 May 1761) failed in the lower house; a fourth (6 May 1761)
and a fifth (1763) were killed in the upper house. The sixth and seventh (1771,
1773) were riders on money bills. The upper house killed the sixth but approved
the seventh, which" Govemor Eden sighed into law on 21 December 1773,
affixing the "Great Seal with wax appendant." 4
All bills written to estaplish a Maryland college before the Revolution
provided for the incorporation of King William's School into a new college
entity, a fact lending credence to the sign on the St. John's Annapolis campus
today, "St. John's College, Founded as King William's School in 1696." Each
time a college bill was introduced in the Assembly, King William's board would
strengthen its financial situation in order to employ another usher or hire a more
able master, thereby making the school a firmer foundation for the college. For
example, in 1750, when the first college bill was being discussed, the board
gained permission to sell its unproductive real estate and to reinvest on good
security to bring in annual interest.
When the first college bill was proposed, Rev. Alexander Malcolm,5 a gifted
mathematician and musician, was Rector of St. Anne's (1749-1755). He was a
teacher before he carne to Annapolis and after he left. In all probability he taught
at King William's School and lived in the schoolhouse quarters where some of
the other rectors had lived after 1732 (between 1755 and 1759, while saving
money to build a rectory, St. Anne's had no rector, employing a vicar who was
Jess expensive). If Malcolm was indeed master of King William's School, he was
the last master before the Revolution who was also Rector of St. Anne's. The
college bill of 1750 in fact had intimated that one man should not be both rector
of a parish and a schoolmaster, stating that the head of neither of the proposed
colleges shall "officiate in any church living in the province."
After 1755 King William's had a succession oflayteachers. No longer sharing
a teacher-priest with St. Anne's after Malcolm left, King William's for a few
years may have pooled resources with Anne Arundel County School to support
a master and an usher in the King William's schoolhouse. 6 In 1755 John
Wilmot, former master of Anne Arundel School but now master at King
William's, advettised for students, calling.the school by the long-accepted name
"Free School," and by a name not formerly used, "Public School." 7 Wilmot
taught arithmetic, geometry, gravity, surveying, navigation, and Italian (or
double-entry) bookkeeping.' His assistant, William Clajon, taught the Latin,
Greek, and French languages. 9
In 1757 Ciajon advertised that he was offering to teach a new subject, English
grammar, saying, 10
The Subscriber having by a great Application acquired a reasonable Knowledge of the ENGLISH GRAMMAR, he proposes to Teach the same at the
�31
FLETCHER
FREE SCHOOL of Annapolis. Those Parents who cannot afford their Children spending several years in the learning of Greek and Latin, may by this
Proposal procure to them the only Benefit commonly expected from these
Languages, THE LEARNING OF THEIR OWN. Besides, their Daughters
can as easily enjoy the same Advantage. As he does not take upon himself to
teach English Pronunciation (which will be taught as usual by Mr. Wilmot)
he hopes no judicious Person will make any Objection to his being a Foreigner;
and that, as his Proposal i.s of a self-evident Advantage to Youth, he will meet
with good Encouragement. His terms are very moderate, being only Thirty
Shillings, additional to what is allowed to Mr. Wilmot.
William Clajon
N.B. This will make no Alteration to the Price given me for Teaching French,
Latin and Greek. 11
Even more interesting than that a foreigner would teach English grammar
was his invitation to daughters to study at King William's School. Clajon enjoyed
some success: his role at the Free School expanded while that of Wilmot became
the "subject offalse mmors." 12 By 1759 Wilmot had opened a school at the head
of South River, the same year Isaac Dakein began his nine years ( 1759-1768) as
King William's schoolmaster.
The decade of the sixties in the eighteenth-centmy colonies was turbulent,
like the sixties of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and like them changed
America. Taxes were the issues in the 1760s- independence became the issue
later. Matyland's proprietor refused to allow the large revenue from ordinary
licenses to be appropriated by the lower house to finance the French and Indian
wars or to go toward the establishment of a college. He claimed it as personal
income. Proprietor and king alike exacted taxes on trade, and Marylanders
increasingly realized that such levies prevented the growth of h·ade. Until the
Stamp and Townshend Acts, these taxes exceeded those paid by two neighboring
colonies, Virginia and Pennsylvania. Matyland 's sluggish economy gave the
majority country party in the lower house reason to challenge the prerogatives
claimed by the proprietary. Governor Sharpe's inability to force the lower house
to appropriate revenue for defense prompted the proprietary to write Sharpe that
"Scarce any one End of Government is answered." 13 Sharpe found some solace
in the bond of freemasonry, which he, the proprietor, and his "enemies" in the
lower house respected. 14
A third college bill, introduced on 5 May 1761, unfortunately affronted both
the proprietary and country parties. It offended the proprietary by recommending
that the unfinished governor's mansion be renovated as the college building, and
by appropriating the fees from ordinary licenses to support the college. On the
other hand, it offended the country pmty by again proposing that county school
property be confiscated to pay for the renovation of the mansion as a college
�32
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
building. Many parents in the counties wanted to retain their local schools. In
1763 two new county schools were established in Frederick and Worcester
counties. The counties were also offended by the proposal that the present
trustees of King William's School be the total governing body, thus abolishing
their county school boards. On a final vote the entire bill lost, seventeen votes to
fifteen. 15
True friends of a college, ,however, did not accept defeat. The following day
(6 May 1761), Charles CaiTo II the Banister, a trustee of King William's School,
introduced a fourth college bill. Unlike its predecessor, it did not threaten county
schools. Instead, it recommended a lottery to raise money to renovate the
governor's mansion as a college building; and it further provided that "one
representative of each county ... be named a Visitor with those at present of
King William's School," thus giving the country party a share in the governance
of the college while preserving the board of King William's. Like the preceding
bill, Canoll's recommended that revenue from ordinary licenses support the
college. It received a resounding affirmative vote, twenty to twelve, in the lower
house. 16 Even George Steuart, a pror)rietary man representing Annapolis, voted
for it though it proposed appropriating the revenue from ordinary licenses.
Sharpe defended Steuart's defection, saying that had Steumt not voted as he did
"his Constituents ... should have rejected him at the next election." 17 Although
some members of the upper house also wanted a Maryland college, they knew
that Lord Baltimore would not allow such "a strip of his right" and therefore
killed the fourth bill.'"
Clearly Sharpe was impressed by the size of the vote for founding a college.
Believing that an excellent school was needed in Annapolis, he sought support
from private benefactors. He wrote the executor of Benedict Calvert's estate in
August 1763 that a Mr. Hunt had power of attorney from Visitors of the Free
School in Annapolis "to receive what money you shall be pleased to pay him for
the use of the said School":
Nothing remains for me but in the name of the Visitors to retum you thanks
for what you have done and intend to do for the Advancement of the School,
to which I have for my part engaged to contribute Ten pounds a year during
my Residence here as Governor.... it is i·eally to be lamented that while such
great things are done for the Support of Colleges and Academies in the
neighbouring Colonies there is not in this [province] even one good Grammar
School. I should be glad if either by Donations or some other method the Fund
or annual Income of our School in this City could be augmented so as to enable
us to give such a salary to a Master & Usher as would encourage good and
able men to acl in those capacities. 19
At the same time these efforts were being made to develop King William's,
efforts continued to establish a Maryland college. In 1763 the fifth college bill
�FLETCHER
33
was introduced by a lower house committee headed by James Tilghman and
composed of members of both parties. Despite the bipartisanship, it proved
another unacceptable bill. It, too, recommended that license revenue from
ordinaries be appropriated to college use. Worse, it proposed the use of an even
more contested revenue- three thousand pounds from the balance in the Loan
Office- to renovate the govemor's mansion. The upper house said the balance
should be used to discharge the debt owed to veterans of the French and Indian
wars. Therefore, although it wanted to establish a college, it referred the bill "to
a distant day for mature consideration." 20
Alarmed by the growing sentiment in the Council for a college, Sharpe
warned the proprietary "that there is a majority even in the upper house that think
the Ordynary Lycence Fines could not be applied to a better purpose [than to
build a college]," and urged, "if you see it in a light at all different from what it
has hitherto appeared to you ... send further instructions." 21 Unfortunately the
proprietor had not changed his mind.
As late as February 1765 Frederick, Lord Baltimore, adamantly refused to
give up the "privilege of Granting and Regulating Ordinaries," which he called
the "very essence of my Prerogative." 22 And Sha1pe himself expressed reservations about giving away the unfinished governor's mansion for a college. He
wrote, "it would really be a pity to give it entirely up, especially as I think it very
probable that the Assembly will some time or other refuse to pay a Governor's
Rent for him & alledge that it was for many years the Custom here & is still in
Pennsylvania for the Proprietary to accomodate his Lieutenant-Governor with a
Mansi on." 23
In 1764 an epidemic of smallpox gave Sharpe an excuse for not calling the
unco-operative Assembly to its regular session. But in his wisdom, at its request,
he called a special session to elect delegates to a congress in Boston to protest
the Stamp Act Eight other colonies sent delegates, But the governor of Virginia
refused even to call a meeting of the burgesses to elect delegates, On 30 May
1765 Annapolis was "thunder struck" by the arrival of Captain Joseph Richardson on the ship Pitt bearing news that the king had signed the Stamp Act on the
twenty-second of March. 24
A new generation of leaders emerged in the sixties composed of men who
had enjoyed a liberal education, By far the largest number had either graduated
from, or studied at, the College of Philadelphia- at least thirteen from the
college and many more from its academy. 25 In 1761 St. Anne's inducted its first
native-born priest, Rev. Samuel Keene, a 1759 graduate of the College of
Philadelphia, who served as rector until 1767, A year later Rev, William
Edmiston, another 1759 graduate of the College of Philadelphia, replaced the
scandalous Bennet Allen, a favorite of Lord Baltimore, as St. Anne's rector.
Edmiston stayed until 1770, Vestries in Virginia often called College of Philadelphia graduates before Maryland vestries could persuade Lord Baltimore to
�34
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
appoint them. 26 Three of this new generation were elected to the lower house,
where they relentlessly challenged prerogatives claimed by the proprietor:
Thomas Johnson, who studied law in Annapolis with Stephen Bordley, was
elected in 1762: Samuel Chase, educated by his father who was a graduate of St.
John's College, Cambridge University, was elected in 1764; and William Paca,
who graduated from the College of Philadelphia in 1759, was elected in 1767.
A fourth, Charles Carroll of C;mollton, who was educated at St. Orner's, France,
and at the Middle Temple, London, was barred from elective office because he
was a Catholic but joined them in their political demonstrations. All four men
belonged to the Sons of Liberty, a group formed in Boston to protest the Stamp
Act.
Lord Baltimore's favorite revenue source became a casualty of the storm
raised by that measure. Paca, Chase, Johnson, and Canoll led "out-of-doors"
protests that upset Daniel Dulany of the Council, a constitutional lawyer. He
thought action through legislative channels more proper. With three other
members of the Council who favored establishment of a college- Francis
Jenckins Henry, Henry Hooper, and Charles Goldsborough- Dulany prepared
and signed a brief addressed to Lord Baltimore that challenged the proprietor's
right to exact fees from keepers of inns and ordinaries. It said that the monarch
who had given him his charter had no such right under common law. Between
the expiration and the renewal of a statute to regulate ordinalies, they had often
operated under common law (1766 was between statutes). Therefore, the propri·
etor could not collect license fees until the Assembly passed the necessary
statute. 27 Convinced by this argument, or more likely by the force of events, Lmd
Baltimore relinquished his claim to revenue from this source. 28 The lower house
was then free to appropriate it to some provincial use.
If those who wanted a college in Maryland were heartened by this victory,
they were soon disappointed. The lower house did not then appropriate the
revenue to establish a college but used it for general purposes instead, leading
some men to think that members of the lower house were more interested in
testing the prerogatives of Lord Baltimore than in founding a college.
At the end of the sixties local school boards throughout the province tried to
improve existing schools. Negotiations led to the merger of some county schools,
a strategy that aimed to produce larger incomes and attract better teachers. In the
seventies three mergers were accomplished: Somerset and Worcester County
Schools into Eden Academy (1770); St. Mary's, Charles, and Prince George's
County Schools into Charlotte Hall (1774); and Calvert County School into
Lower Marlborough Academy (1778). 29
In 1766 King William's trustees advertised for "An usher capable of teaching
the English language, Writing, Surveying and Arithmetick," 30 while searching
for a person to replace Isaac Dakein, whom they had fired 31 Daniel Dulany (his
brother Walter was a trustee of King William's, and both brothers had sons of
�FLETCHER
35
school age) talked with a Mr. Davidson, hoping he might "be got for the
Free-School of Annapolis," and that "a subscription [might] be obtained that
would give him a reasonable support." He also mentioned a Virginia clergyman,
saying, "I am very much induced to think that all who have sons to educate here
have great interest in his settling in Mmyland." 32 This was Rev. Jonathan
Boucher, who was then operating a school in Virginia and who would later
become Rector of St. An!le's (1771) and conduct a small school in Annapolis.
But neither he nor DavidSon became master of King William's School.
It was clear that the school needed more income to attract a good master. So
after many years the trustees sold a twenty-year lease on Kentish House in
Annapolis. 33 And on 6 May 1769 Horatio Sharpe, Benedict Calvert, Charles
Carroll, Walter Dulany, John Ridout, Thomas Johnson, and Nicholas Maccubbin,
"Rector, Governors, Trustees and Visitors of the Free School of Annapolis called
King William's School," signed a deed of sale conveying their farm called
"Surveyor's Forest" in Dorchester County to Andrew Skinner Ennalls. 34
No record reveals who followed Isaac Dakein as Master of King William's
School. But many Annapolis schoolmasters were advertising for students in the
Gazette. Among them, Thomas Ball held classes at the Free School, where in
September 1769 he lost five textbooks. 35 He may have been master.
Aware of the repeated efforts to found a college, Governor Robert Eden, who
had replaced Governor Sharpe in 1769, told the Assembly that year that he
wanted "a well founded Provision for a more liberal institution of Youths to be
established." 36 Two years later the lower house approved a means to finance
one. Since no new college laws were introduced, one may presume that the
general provisions of Carroll's bill of 6 May 1761 prevailed. They were the
following: one college, reconstruction of the governor's mansion in Annapolis
as a college building, dissolution of King William's School and transfer of its
funds upon the opening of a college, and a college governing board composed
of the "present" King William's School trustees plus one representative from
each county.
The sixth attempt to finance a college (1771) appeared in the last paragraph
of "an Act for the Emission of Bills of Credit." It appropriated $42,666.67 to be
accumulated from interest on bills of credit to be issued, the money to be locked
as received in iron chests. This appropriation was approved in the lower house.
But the upper house, in evident pique because it had not been consulted
beforehand, killed the entire bill. It said that if the upper house was not allowed
any say in the disposal of money got from the issue of bills of credit, the lower
house might also exclude it "from considering what system of Instruction and
Enforcement of Discipline would be most proper." 37 Two years later, however,
it voted affirmatively for the same bill it had rejected in 1771. On 21 December
1773, Govemor Eden affixed his signature and the "Great Seal with wax
�36
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
appendant" upon "An Act for the Emission of Bills of Credit." 38 The sanguine
expected a Maryland college to be founded within a few years.
Again the trustees of King William's readied themselves to play a full role
in the governance of the anticipated Annapolis college. Their Register, John
Duckett, advertised for a master, an usher, and a scribe, their appointments to be
effective April 1774. The master was offered "an annual salary of fifty-five
pounds sterling ce1iain and five pounds currency to be paid by each scholar in
the latin school"; the usher "thirty pounds sterling cettain and two pounds
cunency paid by each scholar"; and "a scribe who can teach English, writing
and aritlunetick, six pounds sterling with every advantage alising from the
scholars he instructs and libe1ty to make his own bargain with their parents." In
addition, the master was promised a comfortable apartment in the schoolhouse. 39
A master was soon appointed, but the school still advertised for an usher and
a sc1ibe in April, indirectly reminding applicants that according to Maryland law
only members of the Church of England were "properly qualified." (A Somerset
county advertisement explicitly stated this requirement. 40 ) Since many of the
competent schoolmasters in America were Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, Maryland.
schools suffered because of this prejudicial law. (After the Revolution, John
McDowell, a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian and a graduate of the College of Philadelphia, would be appointed the first president of St. John's.)
Throughout 1773 the Assembly kept a jealous eye on the King William's
trustees, even though the school was supported by private contributions and an
endowment. It enacted a curious bill voiding any gift that would enlarge the
school's annual income beyond £200. The "Act of 1696" had allowed £120 for
support of a master, an usher and a scribe; the Assembly in 1773 recognized that
now much more income was needed, but thought there was a limit. Perhaps it
sensed that the trustees were overambitious to govern the hoped-for college and
felt it necessary to curb the trustees' efforts. On the other hand, this act strengthened the role Annapolitan trustees could play in the management of King
William's: it empowered seven of them to act if prior notice of meetings was
given to those who resided in Annapolis and to any others temporarily there at
meeting time. 41
In October 1773 William Eddis wrote a friend in England that the Assembly
had "endowed and founded a college for the education of youth in every liberal
and useful branch of science ... to be conducted under excellent regulations."
The next October he wrote that the brig Peggy Stewart had been burned with all
its cargo of tea in the Annapolis harbor. In September 1775 he was "almmed by
the beating of drums and a proclamation for the inhabitants to assemble at the
Libe1ty Tree" and resolved to compel all Loyalists to quit the city. No such
resolve was promulgated but by the fall of 1776 he and Governor Eden had left
Mmyland.42 Two months earlier the Free School building had become a military
hospital. 43
�FLETCHER
37
After independence, the General Assembly continued to control Maryland
schools. The Constitution of 1776 required all men in positions of public trust,
including school trustees, to take an oath of allegiance to the new state, an oath
many refused to take. As a result the King William's board and many county
boards were decimated. To reconstitute the King William's board, the Assembly
in 1778 declared that "from the absence of some, disqualification and resignation
of others ... it would be )egal for three tmstees [of King William's School] to
meet together, consult, direct and manage the affairs of the said school and
execute the several powers and authority ... as the whole of them together."
These three trustees were instructed to meet before 15 July 1778, to elect the
number of visitors required by charter and to take the oath of fidelity to the state.44
Four of the trustees who had signed the deed of sale for Surveyor's Forest in
1769 had taken the oath: Charles Carroll the Barrister, Thomas Johnson, Nicholas
Maccubbin, and John Ridout. At least three of them in all likelihood appointed
the new members necessary to reconstitute the board as instructed by the
Assembly.
Within two years hopes for a college were again dashed. In 1780 the state
confiscated all money· accumulated in the locked iron chests as directed by "An
Act for the Emission of Bills of Credit" (1773) to pay for "a just war." 45 The
Assembly promised that the $42,666.67 intended for the establishment of a
college would be replaced as soon as possible after the return of peace. In the
same year legislators passed a law to regulate ordinalies, effective for seven
years, empowering the state to collect licen~e fees and impose fines for breach
of law. 46 (A restatement of this law in 1784 would give tllis revenue by charter
to St. John's forever.)
Finally, in 1782, the General Assembly chartered a Maryland college. But it
was on the Eastern Shore. Under the mastership of Rev. William Smith, former
provost of the College of Philadelphia, the Kent County Free School had
attracted over one hundred students. Its board (with Smith as chairman) had
collected subscriptions worth £5,992. On the strength of this success, it had
petitioned the Assembly to charter the school as a college, to be called "Washington College." According to the charter, one trustee was to be elected from
each group of subscribers who together pledged £500; later the St. John's charter
included a like plan, except that groups pledging £I ,000 selected trustees.
The Washington College charter proposed that a Western Shore college
should also be founded to form, with Washington, one state university. 47 Accord-
ingly in 1783 Governor Paca asked the General Assembly to give special
attention as soon as peace was established to the support of "Religion and
Learning." 48 After the signing of the Treaty of Paris in January 1784 the King
William's trustees, and others, anticipated establishment of a Western Shore
college. Undoubtedly they hoped that it would be located in Annapolis. In August
1784 the King William's trustees announced that the new master, Rev. Ralph
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
(Fig. 4)The Reverend William Smith, first provost of the College of Philadelphia,
first president of Washington College, and president protem. of St. John's at its
opening. Engraved by John Sartain in t880, from the original portrait by Gilbert
Stuart, painted 1800. (Courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania.)
Higginbotham, "will open a school for the education of young gentlemen in the
Greek and Latin languages, preparatory to their entering college." 49 On 3
December 1784 a group met in Annapolis to promote a Western Shore college
and choose six subscription agents, three clergy and three laymen, to prepare a
bill for founding a college. This bill would be the college charter.
Although many legislators were ready to found a Westem Shore college as
part of a University of Maryland, it was necessary to persuade them to fund it.
The three clerical subscription agents who framed the St. John's charter (Patrick
Allison and John Carroll besides Smith) wrote as a provision that the college
would receive £1,750 annually from the state. They gave secondary importance
to acceptance of the governor's mansion offered by the state, should the college
settle in Annapolis. Since some delegates wanted the college located in their
home districts, the agents may have thought it politic- as well as just- to
postpone the choice of location until the number of trustees required to constitute
a board was elected from the Western Shore county subscription lists. They did
�39
FLETCHER
provide that the choice of a college site should be the first order of business once
a duly constituted board was seated. If the board chose Annapolis, it could then
accept the mansion as a college building. The charter set a deadline of 1 June
1785 for the election of thirteen trustees who were to meet and decide upon a
location of the college by l August of that year.
The charter establishing St. John's College was entitled "An Act for founding
a College on the Western :'Shore of this state, and constituting the same, together
with Washington College on the Eastern Shore, into one University by the name
of the University ofMaryland." It passed the House of Delegates on 30 December
1784. Paragraph 22 amended the act for licensing ordinaries passed in March
1780, stating that "the money hereafter collected from ordinary licenses on the
Western Shore (with the exception of the city of Annapolis and Baltimore), shall
... be subject to the orders of the visitors and governors of St. John's College."
This revenue, with that from several other taxes, would compose the £1,750
yearly income the charter promised.
Despite such care not to offend the counties and Baltimore, opposition
developed as soon as the appropriation for St. John's became known and a similar
but lesser one (£ 1,250) was committed to Washington College in the sarue
session. A "Planter" complained in the Maryland Gazette that the "state is
burthened with two thousand five hundred pounds per year for ever for the
support of two colleges, where gentlemen's children are to be educated at the
public expence." An able rebuttal argued that in 1773 "An Act for the Emission
of Bills of Credit" had appropriated $42,666.67 or £4,000, for the establishment
5°
of a seminary but that "the calamaties of war rendered it necessary to unlock the
chest, but with a solemn pledge ... that the money should be replaced as soon
as possible and applied for a seminary of learning." The writer had carefully
calculated that if that money had been invested, it would by 1785 have yielded
at least £3,000 a year.
Thus it appears ... that the college laws are not any new burden on the
people, but only a wise and easy provision for the payment of interest on an
old debt ... and when every other Debt was to be funded and provision made
for the payment of interest till the capital on it be discharged it would be very
unjust that the Debt for the rising generation, our own children and posterity,
though one of the oldest, and contracted at the commencement of the war,
should alone remain neglected ... and ... the taxes imposed are not any
except on those who choose to pay them. 5 1
It took longer than expected to collect subscription lists totaling £1 ,000 each,
and to elect the thirteen trustees. So the 1 August deadline passed without the
choice of a college site. Contingency plans offered by the charter for selecting a
site were not adopted but a bit of advice was that "In the meantime the said agents
shall with all diligence increase the number of subscriptions."
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
In November the agents asked the Assembly to give them until March 1786
to elect the requisite trustees and begged it to allow the following alterations in
the charter provisions for setting up a working board: that seven (instead of
thirteen) trustees elected by I March 1786, plus four agents, be allowed to choose
a college site, if seven of these eleven agreed on a place; and that nine trustees
elected by 1 March 1786 be empowered to conduct college business. The
Assembly approved these altyrations. 52
Like other subsCiibers King William's was allowed one trustee of its choice
for each £1,000 it pledged to St. John's. Unlike other subscribers it did not make
its pledge to the subscription agents, but waited until it could negotiate the terms
of its conveyance with a St. John's board, as one corporation to another. And
before making its pledge, it would ask the St. John's board to grant certain
concessions.
On 28 February 1786, in the presence of five agents, nine men elected by
subscribers were seated as trustees of a St. John's College board. By a cha1ter
amendment, nine were enough to conduct business. But instead of voting as a
first order of business on a college site, they considered a "Proposition laid before
the Visitors and Governors by the Rector and Visitors of Annapolis School [King
William's School] in pursuance of 'An Act of Assembly for Consolidating the
funds of King William's School with the funds of St. John's College."' A
committee representing King William's School requested that the "two trustees
they were entitled to elect by virtue of the two thousand pounds they were
prepared to pledge immediately, be sworn in as visitors on the St. John's board
in time to vote on the location of the college." The committee requested also that
"until the college shall be compleated," the school trustees might withhold the
residue of their funds (more than £1,000) to maintain their school, now called
the Annapolis School. "But they thought that whenever they subscribed it, they
should be entitled to the election of another trustee." TI1e St. John's board granted
the King William's board both these requests, but refused a request that would
allow an Annapolitan donating £1 ,000 to fill any St. John's board vacancy that
might occur in the future. 53 Awaiting decision from King William's on these
terms, the St. John's board adjoumecl until] March.
King William's and St. John's could profit from each other's assets. King
William's had long wanted to grow into a college, and St. John's, like all other
early American colleges, realized that it had to be founded upon a grammar
school. But it was prudent for King William's, obliged as it was to conduct a
school for Annapolis youths, to require some indication that the college would
settle in Annapolis before parting with its prope11y. The college, on the other
hand, had left the question oflocation undecided until the subscribers had elected
a sufficient number of trustees to constitute a board. The state, on its part, had
offered four acres of ground on which the unfinished governor's mansion stood,
if the college settled in Annapolis. There was a least one other town contending
�FLETCHER
41
for the college, Upper Marlborough, situated near the center of the Westem
Shore, a trading market for tobacco where occasional theatricals and fall and
spring races were held. But in 1786 the town had neither church nor county
school. King William's board had £2,000 in cash, which, if subscribed, would
entitle it to elect two trustees to join the nine already seated on the St. John's
board. Two of these, John Claggett and William Beanes from Prince George's
County, might be expect\'d to vote for Upper Marlborough. The other sevenWilliam West, Nicholas Canoll, John H. Stone, Richard Ridgeley, Thomas
Stone, Samuel Chase, and John Thomas- were likely to vote for Annapolis.
The King William's board apparently tested St. John's when it insisted that
its two trustees be seated before the college site was voted upon. Such a
postponement suggests a breach of the charter- unless in fact a merger was
contemplated. King William's had fmfeited its chance to seat its appointees with
the first nine trustees by not making its pledge to the subscription agents, who
would have conducted an election for the two trustees in time to seat them with
the other nine. Five of the nine trustees had to agree to the postponement, or
charter variance, to pass it. If at least five voted aye, then the King William's
board could anticipate that these five plus its two would ensure a decisive vote
for Annapolis. (Later balloting revealed that actually seven of the original nine
trustees favored Annapolis.) The St. John's board acceded to King William's
request that it be seated before voting on a site, and King William's dropped its
request that future vacancies on the St. John's board be filled with Annapolitans.
King William's was mainly concerned that the college settle in Annapolis. It
expressed no reservations about the way the St. John's board was constituted:
both St. John's and King William's boards appointed new members in "perpetual
succession." And the two King William's appointees who joined the original nine
St. John's tmstees could expect to participate in the choice of thirteen other
tmstees to complete a board of twenty-four.
Further protection of King William's interest was included in the "Act of
Consolidation" of 2 March 1786. It proposed a split of the King William's
corporation into two pmts: one part to become St. John's College on 1 March
1786, the other part to operate the Annapolis School until the college opened. If
the terms under which King William's conveyed its funds and property to St.
John's College should be violated, then the Rector and Visitors of Annapolis
School could sue to retrieve the funds and property, and the governor and council
of Maryland were instructed to reconstitute the King William's board, which
would resume its trust "to fulfill the intentions of the founders and benefactors
of the said school, in advancing the interests of piety and leaming." 54
The merger greatly pleased Rev. William Smith, the most energetic of the
subscription agents. Smith had canvassed for subscribers during January and
February, had taken an active part in King William 's-St. John's negotiations, and
�42
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
viewed the cuhnination of his mission as reason for triumph and relief. He wrote
on 5 March:
I have been but two Nights in my own House for these 4 weeks past, & am
just returned from a Journey of at least 300 miles, which became necessary in
the final establishment of our Colleges, & opening the Western Shore one
(called St. John's) which is QOW fixed at Annapolis, & everyThing on my Part
as an agent appointed by Law for founding & opening it, is now happily &
successfully finished, the Subscription being above 12000 pounds beside the
public Endowment of 1750 pounds per annum.55
Of the £12,000 that Smith mentions, King William's would contribute at least
one fourth. Moreover, the college had no life until the two corporations merged;
no business was conducted until the St. John's board had accepted the terms
submitted by the King William's board and those contained in the "Act of
Consolidation." Of the two institutions, King William's was the viable one in
1786, the flourishing preparatory school ready to grow into a college. Furthermore, it was imbued with an almost century-old determination to survive. By
necessity and by design, St. John's College built upon King William's School.
�Four:
1784: The Year St. John's College
Was Named
A Western Shore college was chartered by the Maryland General Assembly in
late December 1784 and given the name St. John's College. Contemporary
records do not reveal how and why the name was chosen.
If the Col1ege was named for a saint there are three strong contenders. First,
there is St. John Chrysostom. In 1807 he was a favorite of two of the College's
early graduates, John Shaw and Francis Scott Key (class of 1796), who were
young poets with literary ambitions. Chrysostom, the "golden-mouthed" Bishop
of Constantinople, was like a muse to John Shaw. "By the blessing of St.
Chrysostom," he wrote Francis Scott Key on 24 January 1807, "as I am in great
haste, and in no less need for our Saint's assistance, I hope you have not forgotten
our plans, but will soon be ready in the litany, 0 Sancte Chrysostome! ora pro
nobis. I have examined the college library and find many valuable books in it.
There is an edition of Chrysostom in twelve volumes, three of which are
wanting .... " 1
After 1870 John the Evangelist was generally accepted as the favored saint.
Assuming this in a dedication speech at the opening of Woodward Hall on 18
June 1900, John Wirt Randall commented that the Evangelist's name was
particularly appropriate for an educational institution because his was a name
"suggestive more than that of the other apostles of the relation between a scholar
and a teacher." 2 St. John's College at Cambridge University was indeed named
for the Evangelist. Randall knew this and also that a college historian of the 1870s
had claimed that certain unnamed 1784 incorporators had attended St. John's
College, Cambridge. For this reason, it was believed, the Annapolis college had
been named "St. John's" after the Cambridge college. 3
In 1894 Bernard Steiner introduced another theory about the origin of the
College's name. He wrote: "Other authorities say the name [St. John's] was given
in compliment to the Masonic fraternity then very strong in Annapolis." 4 It is
true that the seal of St. John's College, as well as that of Washington College,
founded in 1782, bears a Masonic symbol. It is also true that the old Masonic
�44
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
lodge of Annapolis, warranted by the St. John's Grand Lodge of Massachusetts
in 1750, was a St. John's lodge. It was a "modem," i.e., descended from the Grand
Lodge of England (founded 1717). Other Maryland lodges of the colonial period
were chartered by the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania and were "ancients," or
Ancient York Masons. It was customary to call all local lodges that were
warranted by Grand Lodges by the generic name, St. John's lodges 5
But if the College was nap1ed in compliment to a "masonic fratenrity then
very strong in Annapolis," as Steiner suggested, a third saint, John the Baptist,
could have been the one honored in the naming of the College. The Masons
honored two St. Johns, John the Baptist and John the Evangelist.
Steiner's statement is also unclear in its reference to an active Masonic
fraternity because the old Annapolis St. John's Lodge was moribund after 1764. 6
Yet many Masons visited Annapolis in the revolutionary period. They came from
the counties of Maryland and other states of the Confederation to attend the
Continental Congress, the General Assembly, and the General Courts. They
included officers in the Maryland Line7 and other distinguished military figures.
Moreover, throughout the state new "ancient" lodges were being wananted
under the Pennsylvania Grand Lodge; and members of "modern" lodges who
wished to enter into the mysteries of Ancient York Masonry were being "healed."
Two Masons in Kent County were active in promoting Ancient York Masonry
in Maryland during the 1780s: they were Rev. William Smith and Peregrine
Leatherbury, who had been among the incorporators of Washington College in
1782.8 The year before, Smith, the Grand Secretary of the Pennsylvania Grand
Lodge, had digested and abridged an Ahiman Rezon, or book of Masonic
constitutions, for the Pennsylvania Grand Lodge. Published in 1783, it was a
guide to Masons on moral conduct and discretion, and laid out an orderly
procedure to be followed at lodge meetings. Repeatedly, it designated the two
St. Johns' days, that of the Baptist on June 24 and of the Evangelist on December
27, for special business and festive occasions. 9 But it offers no inforination about
the Masonic symbols used in Europe and America on official seals like those of
Washington and St. John's colleges.
Two books on European Masonry of the period, however, do offer examples
of Masonic symbols used as teaching devices. A famous old Russian Mason in
Tolstoy's War and Peace described one to Piene Bezuhov when he instructed
him in the mysteries of Masomy. The old man pictured a mount raised stone by
stone by succeeding generations, on which the temple of wisdom, or Solomon's
temple, was erected. 10 This description was an aid in identifying the device
adopted for the St. John's seal; a count of the layers of stones in the pile numbers
seven, the usual number of steps leading up to Solomon's temple and a number
corresponding to the seven Masonic virtues. On the St. John's seal a man
climbing aloft carries aT-square. 11
�FLETCHER
45
(Fig. 5) Seal of St. John's College adopted in 1793 to imprint the diplomas of the
College's first graduates.
(Fig. 6) Seal of Washington College adopted at its opening in 1782, showing three
stars symbolizing the three Masonic degrees of St. John's Masonry. (Courtesy of
Washington College.)
�46
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Another book about European Masonry of this period, Jacques Chailley 's The
Magic Flute: a Masonic Opera, 12 is replete with illustrations of Masonic devices.
Washington College adopted one that shows a shield hung from a column: three
stars on the shield symbolize the three Masonic degrees of St. John's Masonry,
apprentice, fellow-craft, and master mason. Key-like tools hold garlands of roses
as a drapery above the column to celebrate the enthusiasm that brought about the
founding of the college. A picture in Chailley's book 13 identifies these tools as
miniature trowels used in Masonic rites to "seal" the mouths of initiates, i.e., to
remind them of the first Masonic virtue, discretion, or the keeping of secrets.
The date on the Washington College seal, 1782, commemorated the year
when that college was founded- a time when two well-established Masonic
lodges were flourishing in Kent County. 14 If the St. John's seal had been likewise
dated with the year when it was chartered, its seal might also constitute evidence
of a Masonic fraternity in Annapolis in 1784. But the St. John's seal is dated
1793, the year when the Board of Visitors and Governors ordered that a seal be
designed and executed to imprint diplomas for the College's first graduates. 15
Coincidentally, it also commemorated a significant date for Annapolis Masonry.
In 1793 the Amanda Lodge No. 12, an "ancient," was founded, creating a
brotherhood of Annapolis Masons to help lay the cornerstone of the new capitol
at Washington in November 1793. 16 The Masonic device on the St. John's seal
dated 1793, then, does not refer to a Masonicfratemity in Annapolis in the 1780s
and does not substantiate Steiner's theory.
Yet a Masonic enthusiasm was promoting education throughout Maryland in
the 1780s. In 1784 the imminent creation of a Western Shore college was greeted
with fervor by Freemason William Smith in his introduction to An Account of
Washington College. The preamble of the Charter of 1782 published therein
described an eventual state university comprised of a Western and Eastern Shore
college united under ''one supreme legislative and visitatorial jurisdiction."
Smith's uplifting and inspiring introduction was written in the spirit ofthe times:
... For however flattering it may be to consider the growth of these rising
states as tending to encrease the wealth and commerce of the world; they are
to be considered in another more serious view, as ordained to enlarge the
sphere of HUMANITY. In that view the great interest of civil LIBERTY, the
parent of every other social blessings, will not be forgotten. . . . We must
regard the great concems of religion and another world. We must attend to the
rising generation. The souls of our youth must be nursed up to the love of
LIBERTY and KNOWLEDGE; and their bosoms warmed with a sacred and
enlightened zeal for every thing that can bless or dignify the species .... 17
In the same spirit~ wishing "to attend to the rising generation" and to found
a university~ a group of gentlemen met in Annapolis to promote a Western
Shore college on 3 December 1784. They ordered
�FLETCHER
47
that the reverend John Carroll, W1lliam Smith D.O. and Patrick Allison, D.D.,
together with Richard Sprigg, John Steret and George Digges Esquires, be a
committee to complete the heads of a bill for founding a college on the Western
Shore, and to publish the same immediately, with a proper preamble for taking
in subscriptions . ...
Accordingly, by December 16 the text of "A Draught of a Proposed Act,
Submitted to Public Consideration, for Founding a College on the Western Shore
of This State, and for Constituting the Same, together with Washington College
on the Eastem Shore, into One University, by the Name of The UNIVERSITY
OF MARYLAND" was released to the public18
One subscription list was actually filled by December 16. Known as the
Annapolis list, it bore signatures of sixty-two subscribers who pledged a total of
£2703. Those who pledged were planters, legislators, state officials, a banacksman, a silversmith, a carpenter, a clergyman, a tavern-keeper, a barber, a sea
captain, and all the merchants of Annapolis.
The six men ordered "to complete the heads of a bill for founding a college
on the Western Shore" were to be known as "subscription agents." They were a
clergyman and a layman from each of the three major religious denominations
in Maryland, the Roman Catholic, the Presbyterian, and the Protestant Episcopal.
Of these men only William Smith was from an Eastern Shore county.
The Draught borrowed large portions of the Washington College charter of
1782 but added a new preamble and plan for electing members to the Board of
Visitors and Governors. Much else was left out because, as they explained, it
would merely repeat similar articles in the Charter of 1782. 19
A letter written by William Smith dated 16 January 1785, told how in early
December he had been called "in Conjunction with two Clergymen of other
Denominations ... to draft the University Law which we happily did with great
Unanimity." 20
While "happily" drafting the "Proposed Act," the subscription agents expanded paragraph 9 of the Charter of 1782- which read "youth of all religious
denominations shall be freely and liberally admitted ... according to their merit
... without requiring or enforcing any religious or civel test"~ by adding
"without urging their attendance upon any particular worship or service, other
than what they have been educated in, or have the consent and approbation of
their parents or guardians to attend." Apparently the authors of the text, which
finally became the Charter of 1784, intended that students should enjoy religious
liberty and that the college would nurture students in their own faith, for as John
Canoll said, it was "an intended stipulation that provision be made, from the
College funds, if necessary, to procure all of them opportunities to frequent their
particular forms of worship." 21
�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
48
To this paragraph on civil liberty in the Draught, the Charter of 1784 added
an introductory clause for emphasis, saying that the college would be established
"upon the following fundamental and inviolable principles"- and made several
other changes as well. Where the Draught had read "upon the most liberal and
catholic plan," the Charter of 1784 omitted the word "catholic." 22
William Smith explained the necessity for omitting "and catholic." The word
"catholic," he wrote, "altho.ugh intelligible enough to many, yet it is not
approved by many others, on account of the vulgar application to one particular
church." 23 He continued to use it in his own letters, however, in its all-embracing
sense. When the Charter of 1784 was finally enacted, he proudly commented
that "Maryland has been among the last of the States in her Provisions for
Learning; but none of them can boast so noble a Foundation as her University
now is. " 24
In May 1783, eighteen months before the passage of the Charter of 1784,
William Paca and his Council sent a message to the General Assembly recommending that the legislature give special attention to two issues as soon as Peace
was firmly established: "Trade and Commerce" first, and then "Matters of so
high Concernment as Religion and Learning.''
For the latter they recommended "Public support for the Ministers of the
Gospel," which the Maryland Bill of Rights allowed, and, acknowledging the
strong public encouragement given Washington College as shown by the
Zeal of the Eastern Shore for the Advancement of Learning that of Sum of
five thousand pounds which the Act required ... has been nearly doubled in
less than One Year,
they trusted that
the General Assembly will think this College deserving of their further
Attention and favors, and will extend their Views to the establishing and
encouraging other Seminaries of Learning in this State. 25
As a matter of fact, the three clergy agents who were commanded in December 1784 to "complete the heads of a bill for founding a college on the Western
Shore" had been engaged in "Religion and Learning" all their lives. All were
teachers and educators. John Carroll was a graduate of St. Orner's College in
France and of the Jesuit academy at Liege, Belgium; he was a priest and a teacher
at the Jesuit college in Bruges, until the Jesuit order in Belgium was suppressed
by papal bull in 1773. In 1784 he was organizing the American Catholic Church.
Patrick Allison, a graduate of the College of Philadelphia and later a teacher
there, came to Maryland in 1764 to become pastor of the Baltimore Presbyterian
Church for the remainder of his life. And last, there was William Smith, a
graduate of the University of Aberdeen, the young Scotsman whom Benjamin
�FLETCHER
49
Franklin had recruited to develop the Philadelphia Academy into a college; he
had been the teacher of Natural Philosophy and provost of the College of
Philadelphia from the time the College was chartered in 1753 until the revocation
of its charter in 1779. In 1784 he was rector of Chester Parish, Kent County, and
president of Washington College, as well as a leader in the fonnation of the new
Protestant Episcopal Church. 26
All three were polemipists who wrote pamphlets, letters to the newspapers,
and petitions to the Assembly on behalf of their particular churches, sometimes
attacking one another. Though sectarian interests divided them, the rise of
Freemasonry may have created a climate that allowed them to work in concert
for the advancement of learning. John Carroll indeed described a new kind of
religious freedom in America following the Revolution:
in these United States our Religious System has undergone a revolution if
possible, more extraordinary, than our political one. In all of them free
toleration is allowed to Christians of every denomination; and particularly in
the States of Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia, a communication of all Civil rights, without distinction or diminution, is extended to those
of our Religion. This is a blessing and advantage, which it is our duty to
preserve & improve with utmost prudence. 27
Either Freemasonry or the Spirit of '76, or both, created such a climate. In
the fall of 1784 John Carroll was replying to a "Letter to the Roman Catholics
of Worcester," which was published in three different issues of the Maryland
Gazette 28 after having been printed as a pamphlet in Philadelphia the previous
winter. The author, Charles Wharton, his cousin and an ex-Jesuit, had recently
joined the Protestant Episcopal Church. In the "Letter" he explained to his former
congregation in Worcester, England, the doctrinal reasons for his leaving the
Roman Church. All three parts are scholarly, referring often to the church fathers,
and especially to St. John Chrysostom, who he claimed supported his Protestant
view of the Scriptures. Carroll, a convinced Catholic, took the opposite view and
refuted this argument in a pamphlet, "An Address to Roman Catholics on
Wharton." 29 He quoted from the volumes of Chrysostom that he found in the
"public library" in Annapolis. 30 Responses from Catholic readers assured him
that he had succeeded in reaffirming their faith. When Wharton published
another letter, "To the Roman Catholics ofMaryland," 31 Carroll refused to reply:
"I shall forbear reviving a spirit of controversy, least it should add fuel to some
spark of religious animosity." 32 CaiToll was eager that Catholic youths and
teachers seize the opportunity offered them by the Maryland colleges. 33
Patrick Allison, on the contrary, was far more contentious in 1783 and 1784
because he saw a concerted effort to set up a new established church in Maryland.
Along with Anabaptists, Methodists, Quakers, and Roman Catholics, he continued to smart from having been taxed for the support of the Church of England
�50
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
in Maryland before 1776. Immediately after Governor Paca's address in May
1783, he began writing a series of articles in the Maryland Journal against the
tax proposed to "support the ministers of the Gospel." Allison thought the tax
could only benefit the new Protestant Episcopal Church, which had been designated heir to all real property of the old established Church of England. Moreover, because its membership and property already exceeded that of the other
sects, the tax would extend its ,influence out of all proportion to that enjoyed by
the others, and, indeed, lead to a new church establishment. To prevent such a
development he suggested that former Church of England property be divided
among all the sects who had paid a church tax before the Revolution. 34
The first of Allison's aiticles (published 15 July 1783) attacked the clergyman
nominated by the Maryland Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church to
become the first bishop of Maryland, William Smith. Allison used his rapier pen
exuberantly:
Nor is it my wish to disturb the reverend Dr. S. in his retirement from the world
and the things of the world, where he is inhaling copious draughts of sublime
contemplation, purifying himself by a course of mental recollection, contrition, and extraordinary devotion, for the mitred honours to which he is
destined. 35
Smith took no lasting offence at Allison's attack even though it may have
been one of the factors influencing the church to reject him as a candidate for
bishop. Smith was perhaps toughened by years of controversy in Pennsylvania
before corning to Maryland. In 1758 and 1759, while William Paca and Patrick
Allison were attending the College of Philadelphia, Provost Smith was jailed by
the Pennsylvania General Assembly on a charge of libel but with the backing of
the hustees of the college had continued to conduct classes and to function as
provost while in jail. 36 An appeal to the King freed him but did not endear him
to the Assembly: they already felt threatened because of Smith's efforts to
promote the Church of England in Pennsylvania. Finally, in 1779 when they
revoked the charter of the College of Philadelphia, he was ousted as both provost
and teacher. He then migrated to Chestertown and started a school. This school
merged with the Kent County School and Under his direction grew in size and
importance to the point where its trustees petitioned the General Assembly of
Maryland to charter it as Washington College. 37
It seems most unlikely, however, that Smith, the Freemason, would have
suggested the name "St. John" to honor a Masonic fraternity in Annapolis at the
time when the Draught of a Proposed Act was being written: He would have been
afi·aid that such a suggestion might destroy the "great Unanimity" that the
committee was enjoying. Furthermore, though many Catholics, and notably John
Carroll's brother Daniel, belonged to the Masons, Carroll would have had a deep
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51
personal aversion to them, for they had played an active role in the suppression
of the Jesuits in Europe. But while he would not have chosen to honor the
Masons, most likely he would not have objected to naming the College after his
patron saint (who was one of the "Johns"). Allison, however, actually expressed
his personal distaste for Masonry when he ridiculed Smith's participation in
Masonic purification rites. 38 Moreover, the Presbyterians (like the Jews) consider all members of a cpngregation saints, and they scarcely ever name their
institutions after any sairit except St. Andrew and St. Giles. Those two agents,
then, Carroll and Allison, would certainly not have suggested the name "St. John"
to honor the Masons.
On 24 December 1784, ten days after its publication in Annapolis, the
Draught of a Proposed Act appeared in Baltimore's Mmyland Journal. Six days
later a revised version that incorporated hitherto unpublished sections borrowed
from the Charter of 1782 was enacted by the House of Delegates. It included
provisions for collecting revenues through licenses and taxes on the Western
Shore for the support of the College39 and outlined a policy for the governance
of a University of Maryland. Where blanks had been left in the Draught for
insertion of a name, "St. John's College" now appeared. The action was a fait
accompli at the time the bill was introduced, for the Journal ofthe House reported
neither motions nor discussion regarding the College's name.
Neither the Mmyland Gazette and theM my/and Journal, nor the Journals of
the Senate and the House of Delegates for the November 1784 Session of the
General Assembly, explain what happened. Some special influence was at work
in Annapolis during the last week of December 1784.
While Governor Paca spent Christmas at Wye Hall on the Eastern Shore, the
General Assembly convened every day including Christmas and Sunday in
Annapolis. Two major pieces of legislation that he had recommended in the
message of 1783 were slated to come up during his absence. One bill embodied
the interests of "Trade and Commerce"; the other, the interests of "Religion and
Learning." Although promotion of the second, the "University Law" (St. John's
College), began early in the session, action on it was delayed until the report
from a conference of Maryland and Virginia legislators concerned with "Trade
and Commerce" was pushed through the Assembly on December 27.
The Journals of the House and Senate report that General Washington and
General Gates mrived in Annapolis on December 22. On the same day the
following Maryland commissioners were appointed by the Assembly to confer
with the Virginia delegation: Senators Thomas Stone, Samuel Hughes, and
Charles Carroll; and Delegates John Cadwalader, Samuel Chase, John DeButts,
George Digges, Philip Key, Gustavus Scott, and Joseph Dashiell. George Washington- now the sole Virginian, for General Gates had fallen ill on anivalwas chosen to chair the Conference.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
The Senate and House Journals give the barest facts about the Conference,
and the newspapers less. A letter from George Washington, in Annapolis, to the
Marquis de Lafayette in Paris on December 23, is more descriptive:
You would scarcely expect to receive a letter from me at this place. A few
hours before I set out for it, I as little expected to cross the Potomac again this
winter, or even to be fifteen f11iles from home before the last of April, as I did
to make a visit in an air-balloon in France. I am here, however, with General
Gates, at the request of the Assembly of Virginia to fix matters with the
Assembly of this State respecting the extension of the inland navigation of
the Potomac, and the communication between it and the western waters; and
I hope a plan which will be agreed upon, to the mutual satisfaction of both
States and to the advantage of the union at large .... 40
On December 22 five days of unremitting labor began for all the conferees.
If there were any parties, balls, or dinners given in honor of Washington between
December 22 and 29, 1784, in Annapolis, the Maryland Gazette failed to report
them. Near midnight on the 28th Washington wrote James Madison at the
Legislature in Richmond: "It is now near 12 at Night, and I am writing with an
Aching Head, having been constantly employed in this business since the 22nd
without assistance from my Colleagues, Genl. Gates having been sick the whole
time, and Colo. Blackburn not attending .... " 41
The Journals of the House and Senate, however, do reveal one strange hiatus
in these five days of intense legislative effort. On December 27 the commissioners who were preparing a Potomac bill introduced their report in the House of
Delegates and received a first and second reading early in the rooming session
(only nine dissenting votes were cast). From the House the bill was taken to the
Senate, where it was read and ordered "to lie on the table" until the Senate
reconvened at five o'clock for a "post meridiem" meeting. The House followed
suit and also adjourned for a "post meridiem" meeting, to begin a half hour later
than the Senate's.
When the Senate reconvened at five o'clock the Potomac bill entitled "An
Act for Establishing a Company for Opening and Extending the Navigation on
the River Patowmack" had a second reading; the Senate then concurred with the
action taken by the House and adjourned, probably no later than six o'clock. The
House had reconvened at half past five, and since they had no busine.'>s to transact
-their meeting had apparently been called so that they would be on hand if
needed by the Senate -had adjourned forthwith.
The Potomac bill thus passed both Houses on 27 December 1784, the Festival
Day of St. John the Evangelist, the anniversmy celebrated by all Freemasons.
On the following day, December 28, the Senate resolved "that an attested copy
of the act ... be transmitted to Gen. Washington and Gen. Gates ... signing by
the governor will be complied with when he returns to town."
�FLETCHER
53
On December 29, the House proceeded to take action on the second major
bill of the session, the "University Law," which was submitted by gentlemen
whose names were on a list of Annapolis subscribers dated 16 December 1784,
begging that the General Assembly enact legislation to establish a Western Shore
college 42
Like the Draught of a Proposed Act which headed all the subscription lists,
the Charter of 1784 allowed one vote toward election of a Visitor and Governor
to each subscriber of nine pounds or more on any list totaling one thousand
pounds. Other provisos in the Chmter for electing members to the Board of
Visitors and Governors differed in some significant respects from those in the
Draught. Where the Draught specified "person or persons" as sources from
whom the agents might solicit conttibutions, and who might form a class of
subscribers who could elect one board member, the Charter of 1784 adds "bodies
politic and corporate"; 43 and where the Draught said the last seven members
elected to the Board to complete an aggregate of twenty-four "may be chosen
from this or any part of the adjacent states," the Charternarrows the geographical
field to "any part of this state." The first seventeen members in both documents
are required to be residents of the Western Shore.44
These are among the "considerable alterations" to which William Smith
refen·ed in a letter to Rev, William White in late December 1784:
Considerable alterations were made in the plan first settled by Mr. Carroll, Dr.
Allison and myself, respecting the nice provisos amongst different denominations in proportion to their subscriptions. The paper was printed off before
I came over. But I was told by Carroll of Carrollton, Mr. Sprigg, etc., that the
alterations were made in concert with Dr. Allison. I am satisfied, as I hope all
our society will be, with the plan as it now is, and as I would have agreed it
should originally have been, as I know that a few grains of mutual confidence
and benevolence among different denominations of Christians. will be better
than splitting and torturing a design ofthis kind with all the provisos possible .
. . . CaiToll of CatTollton, Mr. Digges, etc. have subscribed liberally, as it is
expected the rest of that society will do. 45
During his less than peaceable sojo1,1rn among the Quakers in Pennsylvania,
William Smith had very likely Iemned to call all denominations "societies," a
term used by some denominations but very seldom used by the Episcopalians
and Catholics to whom he referred in this letter. For example, the rapidly growing
denomination of Methodists called themselves "members in society" and their
congregations "societies" as late as 1857. 46 During Chtistmas 1784 they were
organizing the Methodist Episcopal Church at a conference in Baltimore, declaring themselves independent of the British Conference in the choice of their
bishops and superintendents; they were also laying plans to found a college of
their own to educate their youth.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
In response to the request of the Annapolis subscribers the House of Delegates
on 29 December 1784 proceeded to order a committee of seven men- Samuel
Chase, George Digges, Allen Quynn, Nicholas Can·oll, John Cadwalader, David
McMechen, and Gustavus Scott- to prepare and bring in a bill for "Founding
a college on the Western Shore of this State." Chase, Digges, Cadwalader, and
Scott had been on the committee to confer with Washington on the Potomac bill;
all but Scott and Cadwalader were signers of the Annapolis subscription list dated
December 16. The very next day they were ready with the bill.
The Journals reveal no additions or conections to the bill as introduced on
December 30. The name "St. John's College" as well as any other changes made
in the Draught must have been agreed on beforehand. The only recorded
discussion or motions on the House floor while the Act was under consideration
came from jealous Baltimore town delegates. They proposed that some of the
proceeds collected in Baltimore from the taxes and licenses designated for the
support of the college be returned to Baltimore. When the question on the total
bill finally carne- no changes had been made in the text introduced by the
committee- there were 33 yeas and 18 nays.
The nays came from the counties farthest removed from AnnapolisHarford, Cecil, and Washington Counties; the Eastern Shore (they already had
a college) and southern Maryland delegates were almost to a man in favor. The
one Baltimore delegate who voted yea was David McMechen, a Freemason.47
One year before (23 December 1783), when Washington had resigned as
commander-in-chief before the Continental Congress in Annapolis, the Mary-
land House of Delegates had sent him the following message:
having by your conduct in the field gloriously terminated the war, you have
taught us, by your last circular letter, how to value, how to preserve and to
improve that liberty for which we have been contending. We are convinced
that public liberty cannot be long preserved, but by wisdom, integ.rity, and a
strict adherence to public justice and public engagements. The justice and
these engagements, as far as the influence and example of one state can extend,
we are determined to promote and fulfill; and if the powers given to congress
by the confederation should be found to be incompetent to the purposes
of the union, we doubt not our constituents will readily consent to enlarge
them ... 48
Proud to have enlarged the powers of the Confederation by the expeditious
passage of Washington's Potomac bill, the Maryland legislators named the
Westem Shore college for the day when his bill was enacted, the Feast Day of
the Evangelist. (If the Eastern Shore had not already preempted the name for
their college, "Washington" might have been a natural choice for the Western
Shore college.) Not only was it a day that they had enjoyed in the company of
�FLETCHER
55
their former commander-in-chief, but it was a day that would have had special
significance for Washington the Freemason.
George Washington, private citizen in 1784, would have observed the Feast
Day of the Evangelist. Young George had been initiated as a Mason in the Lodge
at Fredericksburg on 4 November 1752. He attended various Masonic functions
while commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, notably the celebration of
the anniversary of the Evangelist in Christ Church, Philadelphia, on 28 December
1778, when William Smith preached the sermon. On 23 December 1783 the
brethren in the Alexandria Lodge had sent greetings to him on his return home,
which he had acknowledged on 28 December as "Yr. Affect. Bro' & obed' Serv'."
These were not Christmas greetings that were being exchanged: they were the
customary exchange of greetings between Masons on the anniversary of the
Evangelist-December 27. On 24 June 1784, the anniversary of St. John the
Baptist, another festival day observed by the Masons, Washington was invited
to dine with Lodge No. 39 in Alexandria. He had replied, "I will have the honor
of doing it." Minutes of Lodge No. 39 for that day record
The Worshipful Master Read to the Lodge a most instructive lecture on the
rise, progress & advantages of Masonry & concluded with a prayer suitable
to the occasion. The Master & Brethren then proceed'd to Jn° Wise's Tavern,
where they Dined & after spending the afternoon in Masonick Festivity,
returned again to the Lodge room. The Worshipful Master with the unanimous
consent of the Brethren, was pleased to admit his Excellency, Gen1Washington
as an Honorary Member of Lodge No. 39. 49
Two months after his visit to Annapolis in December 1784, on 28 February 1785,
Washington walked in a procession of Freemasons at the funeral of his friend
William Ramsay.
Moreover, Maryland Masons were particularly in the habit of observing the
St. Johns' days with festivities. According to Edward T. Schultz, "it will be
observed how scrupulously our Brethren of Maryland in the early times observed
the Saint Johns' days and the custom was continued as we shall see by the Lodges
in the jurisdictions for many years.''50
It is possible that the Maryland General Assembly returned for a "post
meridiem" meeting on 27 December 1784, which adjourned in favor of an
evening dinner to celebrate the festival of the Evangelist with Freemason George
Washington. The Journals of the House and Senate show that they did adjourn
and reconvene in the evening, probably for a joint affair. The House had
completed its business for the day; there was no reason for them to reconvene at
half past five, one half hour later than the Senate had scheduled their evening
meeting, unless it was to participate in some sort of event with members of the
Senate, after the Senate had concurred with the House's action on the Potomac
bill. The Senate reconvened at five o'clock. An hour would have given them
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
ample time to read the Act and concur- no debate or voting was required for
this. Their business could have been finished easily by six o'clock- in time for
a St. John's dinner. The "post meridiem" meeting scheduled by both Houses on
27 December 1784- a rare event in the recorded history of the two Houses indicates some special circumstance.
Another possibility is that a festive dinner was held during the afternoon
recess even though a majority of the legislators were not Masons. Ce1tainly a
number of them were Masons. Yet even those who were not accepted Masonic
rituals. Masonry provided an accepted ceremonial in the young republic; Washington, for example, as well as many other prominent men, was buried with
Masonic rites.
Nonetheless, in spite of much interest in Freemasonry in Annapolis during
the 1780s there was no active Annapolis lodge in 1784. But gentlemen of the
town enjoyed several social and literary clubs, notably the Hominy and Tuesday
Evening Clubs, where subjects of literary and philosophical interest- and
Freemasonry perhaps- were discussed by "enlightened men." The counties of
the state and Baltimore, on the other hand, had only their Masonic lodges for
fraternal occasions and for intelligent conversation.
Also, Washington, the Freemason, was aware that a Western Shore college
was being founded as part of a University of Maryland; he knew that an Act for
establishing it would be introduced after he left Annapolis. Just a week later, on
5 January 1785, he wrote Samuel Chase, a member of both the committee to
confer on the Potomac bill and the committee to present the Charter of 1784 to
the House of Delegates, that
the attention which your assembly is giving to the establishment of public
schools, for the encouragement of literature, does them great honor: to
accomplish this, ought to be one of our first endeavours; I know of no object
more interesting. We want something to expand the mind, and make us think
with more liberality, and act with sounder policy, than most of the States do.
We should consider that we are not now in leading strings. It behooves us
therefore to look well to our ways. 5 1
Washington was clearly interested in~ the grander scheme of which the
Western Shore college was a part- the University for "the encouragement of
literature"- and his letter showed that he must have talked about the bold
scheme with Samuel Chase and perhaps others.
When eleven members were finally elected to the Board of Visitors and
Governors in early 1786 from the various classes of subscribers, the Board was
duly constituted. Under the date of21 March 1786 they published the following
notice: "the subscribers of St. John's College, by order of the visitors and
govemors, are hereby requested to make their first payment to the subscriber,
treasurer to the college, on or before the first day of June next. [signed]
�FLETCHER
57
BENJAMIN HARWOOD."52 Previous to this, all notices published by the
subscription agents had been addressed to "subscribers of St. John's or the
Western Shore College." ln the notice dated 21 March 1786 "Western Shore
College" was omitted, and "St. John's College" appeared in roman type, alone,
for the first time.
"St. John's College" became the corporate name when enacted in the Chatter
of 1784. The tradition promulgated in 1870, which said that the college was
named by its incorporators after an English institution, had little basis. If
honoring a noted English college had been the reason for calling the Annapolis
college "St. John's," few of the Maryland populace would have been pleased so
soon after the conclusion of a bloody war with Britain.
In 1971 the Board of Visitors and Governors of St. John's College, Annapolis
and Santa Fe, were persuaded that prospective students and donors were repe11ed
by the name "St. John's College," and they considered adopting a secular name
instead. 53 At this time, President Richard D. Weigle searched the student rolls at
St. John's College, Cambridge- and also those at St. John's College, Oxford
-'-to discover which men associated with the 1784 incorporation had actually
registered there. Evidently the generally accepted theory that the Annapolis
college had been named after St. John's College, Cambridge (or Oxford), which
went unquestioned for many years , reflected the anglophilia of the 1870s rather
than the sentiment of 1784, which was anglophobia. For no names of men
directly tied with the founding of the Maryland college were found.
Then, as a preliminary step in effecting a change in name, a committee ofthe
Board sent a questionnaire to all alumni, students, and faculty to gather their
reactions. Response from the group was overwhelmingly in favor of continuing
to operate as "St. John's College," a name now rich with associations gathered
over the years, including the 1937 adoption of a curriculum nationally known as
the St. John's Program. 54 The Board proceeded no further.
In 1786 the name already had strong associations, and the first Board of
Visitors and Governors continued to use it. They did not revert to "Western Shore
College," or any other name, although through process of law they could have
done so. Indeed "St. John's College" proved so acceptable that it prevailed
through the first stormy half-century of the college's history, and long after
participants in the naming had died. But no one had bothered to record the
circumstances from living memory. Records show, however, that a remarkable
legislative performance did take place on the Feast Day of St. John the Evangelist, 27 December 1784, when on behalf of their good friend, George Washington,
Maryland legislators enacted the first piece of cooperative legislation among the
various states in the Confederation following the definitive "Treaty of Peace."
They were naturally proud of a name which reminded them of that day, and they
adopted it for the new college several days later.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Thus, even though there are no contemporary records stating why the college
was called St. John's, one could infer that it was in honor of the Evangelist.
Coincidentally, it was in compliment to the Masonic fraternity of Annapolis in
1784. Perhaps some few were reminded of the Cambridge college as well,
although no contemporary record suggests this.
It is hard to understand why a cloud of mystery has ever since enveloped the
circumstances of the naming;' But if Masons were responsible, one could expect
secrecy about their role. Discretion, the keeping of secrets, is the first of the
Masonic virtues.
�Five:
John McDowell, Federalist:
President of St. John's College
In the spring of 1790 Professor John McDowell was the dark horse among
possible candidates for president of St. John's College. The college trustees had
advertised that they prefen-ed "a Stranger or some Gentleman of Great Character
from Europe." On 5 May Rev. William Smith wrote Rev. William West, chairman
of the trustees, that if such a candidate offered himself, he might not "suit the
American Genius." (Smith, now provost of the University of Pennsylvania, had
presided as president pro tern. at the opening of St. John's the previous November.) "I have the interest of that Seminary [St. John's] and its future success much
at Heart . ... were I not too advanced in years, I am not certain whether I might
not have offered my Services once more as head of one of the Maryland
Seminaries [he had been Washington College's first president] .... but my
Family is attach'd to Pennsylvania." Taking himself out of the race- and
disparaging the notion that a "Stranger" or'' Great Character from Europe" was
preferable to a qualified native- Smith opened the field to McDowell of the
St. John's faculty." It would have been well," Smith continued," if the Assembly
had restored the Funds previous to an Election [of legislators]." 1 How each
election would affect their funding wonied the trustees too.
Although it was a common practice among trustees of their era to appoint a
distinguished clergyman of their own denomination (a majority of the St. John's
trustees were Episcopalians) to head their colleges, they acted othetwise. Being
politically enlightened, they demonstrated in 1790 that the college was open to
students and faculty of all denominatons as their charter stated. They passed over
Rev. Ralph Higginbotham, rector of St. Anne's Church, also on the faculty,
although his profile nearly matched their ad. He was an Anglican clergyman from
Waterford, Ireland, educated in Europe. There is no indication that he wanted to
be president. They appointed a Presbyterian, John McDowell, president of the
College, and a Catholic, Bishop John Carroll, chairman of their board.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
The trustees were honored to have Carroll join their ranks. He was America's
foremost Catholic educator as well as America's first Roman Catholic bishop.
He represented a prominent Maryland family who had promoted the College.
McDowell, on the other hand, had no prominent family connections in Maryland.
His Maryland fliends consisted of alumni of the College of Philadelphia, where
he taught without professorial rank after his graduation, and colleagues from
Cambridge, where during the preceding seven years while teaching school he
had prepared for admission to the Dorchester County bar. For five years he had
practiced law in Dorchester County. Presented with these modest credentials, the
St. John's trustees relied on a judgment fanned during his year on the faculty,
that McDowell "suited the American genius" and could head the college. "The
vote being unanimous was not a little flattering," wrote Charles Goldsborough
in congratulation. "I always was sure that the delay ... would, by extending your
acquaintance among the Trustees, ensure it [the presidency] to you." 2
The tmstees and McDowell shared an enthusiasm for the federal Constitution
just adopted but they did not share a common background. The trustees had
grown up in well-established tidewater communities on the Chesapeake near
pmts where English vessels routinely docked. John McDowell had grown up in
a landlocked valley where the Scotch-Irish settlers often took the law into their
own hands. He was born in 1751, the second son of John and Mary Maxwell
McDowell's twelve children, on a fann near Marks in Peters Township, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. It lay in the Great Cove under Pamell Knob of
the Tuscarora range. From age five to age twelve he lived intermittently within
a stockade around the West Conococheague Prebyterian Church called White
Church. The stockade protected families from Indians on the rampage during
outbreaks of the French and Indian wars. Fires set by Indians twice burnt his log
home to the grmmd. 3
During such turmoil he learned to read, write, and figure, all the while being
taught the tenets of his Presbyterian faith. TI1e New England Primer and P;ke's
Arithmetic would have been his texts. According to a grand-nephew, "he was
early taught the Bible, the 'Shorter and Larger Catechism,' and the 'Confession
of Faith' ... these of themselves being good training for the young mind." 4 For
three years he attended John King's L-atin school, until King's sister was
massacred and her horne, which served as the schoolhouse, was bumt (1763).
King then left Conococheague for the east 5
Reading, and lessons learned in the church, the field, and at the crossroads
rounded out McDowell's education. According to a Presbyterian historian, at age
ten, during a Presbyterian prayer session when the frontier was under siege, John
experienced a conversion. 6 He also leamed from working in the fields, for
surveying was a school in mathematics for many colonial youths. After the
Pennsylvania-Maryland boundary dispute was settled, his father employed surveyors to prepare a valid deed for the Pennsylvania Land Office to replace the
�FLETCHER
61
warrants under which his grandfather had settled in the 1730s 7 John may have
learned his geometry and trigonometry by participating in the survey. He learned
principles of economics, such as what is a fair price, at the crossroads in Marks,
where pony trains carrying goods from the east filed through on their way west.
Here frumers, millers, and hunters bartered their grain, flour, and skins for
manufactured goods. They lived in a subsistence economy without money. They
were landlocked between ~he east and west branches of the Conococheague
Creek, whose beautiful swift rapids powered their mills but were not navigable.
Early experience in barter trade left him with an appreciation for money- not
just for what it could buy, but for its convenience. In later years he often acted
as broker for his planter clients in Maryland who needed to borrow between
crops. He was shrewd in the investment of his own money.
When McDowell was seventeen his former teacher, John King, visited West
Conococheague on the eve of his ordination to the Presbyterian ministry. He had
just won a degree in theology from the College of Philadelphia. The elders of
the White Church - John McDowell's father was one of them - persuaded him
to become their pastor8 They had had none since 1757. Not only did John King's
example encourage McDowell to enter the College of Philadelphia, but King
served as an intermediary between him and the college authmities to assure them
of the youth's competence. Since McDowell's parents had no money to pay his
college tuition, anangements were made for him to tutor less advanced students
in exchange for his tuition and board. John King's classmate, John Montgomery,
a member of the college faculty, sponsored McDowell, guaranteeing that his
tuition would be paid quarterly."
McDowell entered the College of Philadelphia in the fall of 1768, the first
youth raised on the frontier to be admitted. Throughout the year Provost William
Smith and Professors Ewing and Williamson on the college faculty joined other
mathematicians and astronomers in America and Europe in prep~rations for the
observation of the Transit of Venus to take place on the third of June. The first
number of the American Philosophical Society's Transactions published their
remarkably accurate calculations preliminaty to and during the Transit. Three
years later at commencement John McDowell gave the English oration entitled
"On the Advantages of studying History." Soon after graduation in Smith's
absence McDowell conducted the provost's class in natural philosophy, assisted
with the apparatus by David Rittenhouse. Three members of the Class of 1771
joined the faculties of three colleges founded after the Revolution: Samuel
Armor, vice president of Washington College; Robert Davidson, acting President
of Dickinson College; and John McDowell, president of St. John's College. Like
his classmates McDowell fought in the Revolution. Unlike them he served as a
private (until he became ill), not an officer. One classmate, Samuel Hanson of
Maryland, served as a surgeon on Washington's staff. 10
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
After the Revolution, by 1782, four of McDowell's classmates but not
McDowell had completed graduate studies to qualify for professorial appoint·
ments, graduate studies at this time being the three professions of medicine, law,
and theology. Because of a weak voice McDowell felt himself unfit for the
ministry. When Judge Robert Goldsborough, whose nephew Charles was
McDowell's student at the University of the State of Pennsylvania (successor to
the College of Philadelphia.), invited McDowell to read law in his Cambridge,
Mary land office, McDoweil seized the opportunity. To support himself while
preparing for the bar, McDowell conducted a school in Cambridge. In 1783 he
was admitted to the Dorchester County bar and in 1784 to the Franklin County
bar in Pennsylvania (Franklin had been carved from Cumberland County and
included Peters Township). But he chose to stay in Dorchester, where he soon
had a lucrative law practice and many congenial friends. 11
Meanwhile in Annapolis King William's School and the newly chartered St.
John's College had merged. In March 1786 one of the King William's School
trustees, Alexander Contee Hanson (brother of McDowell's deceased classmate,
Samuel Hanson), joined the college board. He was promptly appointed to a
committee authorized to "contract for the repair of and addition of two wings to
Bladen's Folly, with sanguine expectations that in less than twelve months ... a
grammar school will flourish within these walls." 12 For three years efforts to
open the college stalled while Hanson contributed a series of articles to the
Mmyland Gazette against the emission of paper money and, under the pseud-
onym "Alistides," rallied support in Maryland for the ratification of the U.S.
Constitution. Hit by the depression, subsclibers to the College were unable to
pay their pledges. After ratification of the Constitution, which prevented state
governments from printing paper money, the economy improved.
In the spling of 1789 the trustees of St. Johu's had resources enough to appoint
two professors and to open the College. They offered the professorship of
mathematics to John McDowell and the professorship of languages to Rev.
Ralph Higginbotham, and ordered that two rooms in Bladen's Folly be made
ready for classes. 13 (They never added the wings proposed earlier.) Following a
visit to his parents McDowell appeared before the trustees in August to accept
his appointment. Several weeks later he: wrote his father from Cambridge, "I
have determined to remove to Annapolis. At present I expect it will be about the
middle of November.... I shall ... have the satisfaction of being near my
friends and hearing more frequently from them." 14
The friends he referred to comprised a group of 1ising young Federalists. All
had been members of the lower house or senate. Three had been delegates to the
Convention that ratified the U.S. Constitution. Four would be elected to Congress, two received high federal appointments and two became governor of
Mary1and. 15 They conversed and conesponded with each other, commenting on
the Declaration of Independence and its endowing all men with the right to life,
�FLETCHER
63
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; they noted that black slaves among them
had been awakened politically and would inevitably demand their freedom. 16 In
the November 1789 Session of the Maryland Legislature, Nicholas Hammond
introduced "An Act to Promote the Gradual Abo1iton of Slavery," only to arouse
such an uproar in the Assembly that it tabled the bill. A determination to preserve
the federal union silenced even those bold enough to speak about the certain kind
of property that genuinely embarrassed them, and they foresaw the struggle for
its abolition ahead. Of these friends William Tilghman and William Hindman
manumitted their slaves by their wills. 17
Almost as soon as McDowell arrived in Annapolis his friends one by one
moved away. In 1790 John Henry left Annapolis for the U.S. Senate. By 1800
both William Vans Murray and William Tilghman were gone, Murray to the
Hague and Tilghman to a federal judgeship in Peunsylvania.
For a decade the College flourished. Until1800 the College attracted students
from all over Ma1yland and many from out of state. Eighteen students enrolled
from McDowell's old home, Dorchester County. 18 One August day he accompanied sixteen-year-old Robert H. Goldsborough, then in his junior year at St.
John's, to his home "Myrtle Grove" in Talbot County, arriving "well, tho' a little
fatigued as the Sun became very watm. " 19 Spring of 1791 was a season for a
great celebration when President George Washington visited the campus. In May
1793 the College publicly examined the highest classes in the mathematical and
philsophical schools, giving "convincing proof of the great exertions of the
faculty on behalf of those committed to their care." 20 Nonetheless, in 1793 the
House of Delegates voted to withdraw all appropriations from Maryland's two
colleges, which, they said, educated the sons of rich men at the expense of those
less well-to-do who would really benefit from the establishment of local schools.
In defense of the colleges (St. John's and Washington College), Nicholas
Canol!, chairman of the St. John's board, questioned the worth of the county
schools that had been established by an act of the Assembly in 1723. "No great
benefits ... were delived from the free-schools formerly established," he main-
tained.Z1 While it was true that many of the county schools established by the
Act of 1723 did not survive the Revolution, Maryland's determination to have
local schools had begun in 1694 and the first academy, King William's School,
was chartered in 1696.
Federalists in the senate were conciliatory in their defense of the colleges,
advising delegates that "We shall be at all times willing to concur in any well
digested plan for establishing schools, in order to place education within the
reach of every citizen of this state and render it more diffusive through all classes
of society."22 ConcuiTence between the two houses eluded them, however, as a
core of moderate Federalists in the senate was replaced by more rigid party
members, and a growing representation from Republican Baltimore Town and
the western counties gained strength in the lower house. Rancor between the two
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
(Fig. 7) John McDowell (1751-1820), painted by Robert Field. Collection at Mrs.
Clyde Gritten. (Courtesy at Mrs. Griffen and the Frick Art Reference Library, New
York, #4421.)
parties was further exacerbated by differences of opinion over who was the
enemy, England or France. In 1801 McDowell, missing his friends and weary of
the turmoil, offered his resignation. The trustees persuaded him to stay on as
necessary to the college's survival, though he knew that it was only a matter of
a few years before the college's entire funds would be withdrawn:
In 1806 St. John's lost its yearly income. It also lost McDowell. Two trustees
at the University of Pennsylvania who had been one class below him at the
College of Philadelphia, Judges William Tilghman and Nathan Levy, persuaded
him to become professor of Natural Philosophy and then third Provost of the
University. Impressed by his success at St. John's, they hoped that he could infuse
the spirit of the old College of Philadelphia into the University.
Before leaving Annapolis McDowell wrote Judge Tilghman that he wanted
to take Joseph Williams, a black boy, with him to Pennsylvania, where by law
no slaves could be imported. He wanted to take him, McDowell explained, "both
on his' account, and on my own." He would manumit him but could he have him
bound for seven years. 23 Joseph went with him to Philadelphia, and later, when
Joseph had been left "to his own discretion," McDowell wrote that he would "be
glad to hear he has made good use of the libe1ty he has." 24 Once in Philadelphia
�FLETCHER
65
McDowell was guardian for Charles Goldsborough's two daughters while they
attended Mrs. Garland's School. Their father wrote them not to become "too fond
of pleasure and amusement for country Ladies." He also counseled them as how
best to write their school reports, saying that "when you begin to write, the Book
should be put by, and the composition should be produced from the reflection,
and reasoning of your mind." 25
At the commencement in 1807 the University of Pennsylvania confened an
honorary doctor of laws degree on McDowell. After three years as provost, he
resigned because of ill health. He spent 1811 and the years of the War of 1812
in Franklin County among relatives. He practiced law again, but he missed
the company of friends he had enjoyed in Cambridge, Annapolis, and Philadelphia. He remained a confirmed Federalist in Republican Pennsylvania,
agreeing with Maryland's three congressional representatives (his friend,
Charles Goldsborough, was one of them) that the United States should not
have declared war against Britain, calling it "this wicked and impolitic war
[that will] ... end in the ruin of our unhappy country which begins to feel the
heavy curse of bad rulers." 26
(Fig 8) William Tilghman (1756-1827), painted by Charles Willson Peale. (Courtesy of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.)
�66
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
The trustees of St. John's never forgot him. Encouraged because the legislature appropriated $1,000 per annum to St. John's and $25,000 per annum for the
support of public schools, and by the election of a federalist governor, they
invited McDowell to return as president. He did not retum on their first invitation
(1812), but when they asked him again in 1815 he accepted. Rev. Alexander
Conlee Magruder, chairman of the board, gave Bishop Kemp the good news that
"Dr. McDowell has agreed to take charge of the college." 27
Settled once more in Annapolis, he soon regretted his retmn. "I always
considered the revival of St. John's from its miserable ruins, as an expetiment,
the success of which was very doubtful," he wrote. "However, as I promised to
give what assistance I could towards it this winter, I consider myself bound to
make every exertion I can in so laudable an undertaking, for it is generally felt
and confessed that a good Seminary is much wanted in this state. Yet from the
Legislature such is the state of parties, we can have no expectation of assistance,
though each may confess it ought to be afforded .... But there is no contending
against time, and the undertaking is now, I fear, too arduous for me." Even more
discouraged by February 1816 he wrote, "TI1is place is as different from what it
formerly was, such are the deteriorating effects of democracy, that I feel my
attachment to it much diminished." And in December he concluded that "St.
John's seems hopeless".
The following fall the Federalists elected a governor by a majority of one, a
majority managed by bringing a Federalist legislator to the Assembly on a
stretcher. "Such is the spirit of party that prevails," wrote McDowell of their
antics, "and which I was sorry to find [also] in our board of Visitors and
Governors which ought to be free of its baneful influence." Not only had the
Assembly done nothing for the College but "the citizens and trustees, who are
so immediately and deeply interested in the success of the College, have been
very deficient in their exertions to promote it." 28
As early as July 1816, Magruder realised that McDowell's "advanced age and
ill health will prevent him from continuing long in the College." 29 Other trustees,
too, were disheartened by the lack of support from the Legislature and in 1817
the board in despair tentatively closed it. Thanks to a rallying of alumni support
the College was able to reopen in 1818. In December of that year the Federalists
elected their last governor, McDowell's friend, Charles Goldsborough, who in
his inaugural address spoke of the huge state deficit resulting from the late war.
He then spoke of "the great advantages once experienced from the Seminary
long ago established at the seat of government ... as particularly deserving of
regard." But, he continued, "at this time ... the funds of the state do not admit
of an extension of pecuniary aid to purposes of education, beyond the existing
appropriations. ''30
Meanwhile McDowell spent some portions of Goldsborough's term at the
governor's home "Shoal Creek" outside Cambridge. From there he wrote Judge
�FLETCHER
67
Tilghman in March 1819, "When I left Philadelphia I had no intention of
spending the winter here. But I have spent it, not unpleasantly, nor altogether
unprofitably. I have read a good deal ... and amused myself by teaching and
grounding Mr. Goldsborough's son in the rudiments of the Latin language." In
April 1820 he wrote, "My time has been fully occupied in teaching and reading,
particularly Greek of which I have become fonder than of any other study." 31 In
late fall he was at his si~ter' s home in Mercersburg, where he died on 22
December 1820.32
·
McDowell's reappointment had accomplished little toward reorganizing
the College. His return and subsequent departure, however, aroused alumni
to come to the aid of their College. Francis Scott Key and Senator Robert H.
Goldsborough gave orations that echoed passages from McDowell's commencement address to their class in 1796. With others they organized an effective
Alumni Society by the end of the 1820s. 33
In his commencement address to the Class of 1796 McDowell had said:
The end of education is to direct the powers of the mind in unfolding
themselves, & to assist them in gaining throughout bent & force, to teach it
rather how to think .. , than what to think. ...
To gain a complete knowledge of science, or indeed of any one branch of
it dming the short time, which is spent at a college, is not to be expected. An
acquaintance with its general principles & such an improvement of the mental
faculties, as will facilitate a further progress in them ... is all that ought
reasonably to be expected.
I shall ... indulge the pleasing hope, that you will continue to cultivate a
general acquaintance with letters, and devote a part of your time to the
generous purpose of improving and enlarging your intellectual powers for
their own sake .... For the liberal student should enrich his understanding by
collecting ideas on all subjects, & these acquisitions, which he makes in other
pursuits, will often fumish him with useful helps, for the further prosecution
of his own particular one ....
I hope you will always treat [the Christian religion] with due reverence &
attention, that you will make it the subject of fair & candid discussion but
never of ridicule & contempt. ... One branch of moral science is by peculiar
necessity entitled to your attention. As_ we live in a country, where the law
ought to govem, & where every citizen is directly or indirectly a legislator,
the principles of law & government ought to be well understood. Impressed
with a proper idea of the difficulty & importance of legislation, I hope, you
will labour to build on the foundation already laid, a super structure of political
knowledge, which will render you eminently useful to your country & enable
you on all occasions to promote its real interest & happiness. 34
McDowell, an advocate for a stronger federal government, regretted that the
Federalists resorted to such antics in order to stay in power. He was also impatient
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
with the stalemates that blocked action in a two-party legislature. As a more
democratic Maryland evolved, thanks to a two-party system that forced the
sharing of power, he saw old honored ways and institutions like the colleges
suffer. But students who had been taught by him that they lived "in a country
where the law ought to govern, where every citizen is ... a legislator" were
equipped to survive in the new order. Some alumni always sat on the college
board of trustees. When the cpllege again received state aid, the trustees decided
to devote all that aid to scholarships for worthy candidates selected by Maryland
senators, a practice long continued. In the mid-twentieth century the college
admitted blacks and then women. In his day McDowell, the Federalist, was a
pundit to many and a scholar of national stature. He was a student of the liberal
arts and of public affairs until his death.
�NOTES
Notes to One
1. Basil Sollers, "Education in Colonial Maryland," in B. C. Steiner, History
of Education in Maryland (Washington, D.C., 1894), p.l5. Contributions to
American Educational History no. 19.
2. "An Act to Establish the Protestant Religion," variously amended until
finally signed by the Crown in 1701 under the title "An Act for the
Establishment of Religious Worship in the Province According to the
Church of England."
3. Sollers, p. 20 n.
4. "Act for Establishing Free Schools" [1696]. In Archives of Maryland
19:420-30 (hereafter referred to as Archives).
5. Sollers, p. 22.
6. Thomas Fell, Some historical accounts of the Founding of King William's
School, and its subsequent establishment as St. John's College (Annapolis,
1894), p. 8. See also Sollers, pp. 19, 20.
7. Sollers, p. 22.
8. Archives 19:252. Known as the Annapolitan Library, it was the most extensive of the libraries sent by Dr. Bray to the colonies. Called by him a
"Provincial Library" to distinguish it from the parish libraries, it was
collected to cover universal knowledge. Along with the Fathers of the
Church, Boyle, Descartes, Hobbes, and classical authors are included.
Accepted by the Assembly for the free use of the people, it was called the
"Publick Library." From the possession of King William's School, in whose
schoolhouse it was placed on arrival in 1700, it has descended to St. John's
College, Annapolis.
·
9. The Society for the Preservation of Christian Knowledge and the Society
for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.
10. Sollers, p. 22 n.
11. Colonies where the Church of England was established were no more
anxious to have resident bishops than the Congregationalist northern colonies. A bishop had direct communication with the Crown and was both
politically powerful and expensive to support. After the Revolution when
state constitutions had separated church and state, churches that were
episcopally organized, like the Episcopal, Roman Catholic, and Methodist,
elected bishops.
12. William Stevens Perry, ed., Historical Collections Relating to the American
Colonial Churches (Printed for the Subscribers, 1878), 4:59.
13. Lois Green Carr and David William Jordan, Maryland's Revolution of
Government 1689-1692 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974), p. I.
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THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
14. Ethan Allen, Historical Notices of St. Anne's Parish in Anne Arundell
County, Maryland: Extending from 1659 to 1857, a period of 208 years
(Baltimore: P. des Forges, 1857). In MHS Archives.
15. J. E. Morpurgo, Their Majesties' Royall Colledge: William and Mary in the
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centw·ies (The Endowment Association of the
College of William and Mary, Inc., 1976), p. 50.
16. Commissary James Blair to Gov. Francis Nicholson, 3 December 1691, in
William and Mary College Papers, Folder 7 (College Archives, Swem
Library, College of William and Mary).
17. The History of the College of William and Mary (Including the General
Catalogue)from its Foundation, 1660 to 1874 (Richmond: J. Randolph &
English, 1874), pp. 37-47. For text of the charter see "Charter granted by
King WilHam and Queen Mary for the founding of William and Mary
College in Virginia," in Henry Hartwell, James Blair, and Edward Chilton,
The Present State of Virginia, and the College (Charlottesville: Dominion
Books, 1694 ), pp. 72-94. "To the end that the Church of Virginia may be
furnished with a Seminary of Ministers of the Gospel, and that the Youth
may be piously educated in Good Letters and Manners, and that the Christian faith may be propagated amongst the Western Indians, to the Glory of
Almighty God, to make, found and establish a certain Place of universal
Study, or perpetual College of Divinity, Philosophy, Languages, and other
good Arts and Sciences, consisting of one President, six Masters or Professors, and an hundred scholars more or less, according to the Ability of the
said College, and the Statutes of the same to be made, encreased or changed
by certain Trustees nominated and elected by the General Assembly." The
Statutes could not be written until six professors were in place, which was
not until 1727.
18. Perry, 4:59.
19. "Charter ... for William and Mary College."
20. Archives 20:341, 342.
21. Archives 20:235, 237.
22. Archives 19:36, 49.
23. Archives 19:51.
24. "An Act for the Incouragement of Learning and the Advancement of the
Natives of this Province," in Archives 19:49, 100, 101.
25. See Sollers, pp. 21, 22.
26. Archives 19:276, "Imposition upon Ffllrrs and Skins to be Imployed for the
maintenance of a ffree school or schools," passed October 1695.
27. Archives 19:252.
28. Archives 19:447,463,492,493. See also Sollers, p. 21.
29. "Act for Establishing Free Schools" [1696].
30. Archives 29:287.
31. M. L. Radoff, Buildings of the State of Maryland in Annapolis, Publication
of Hall of Records Commission, 1954.
32. "Annapolis, May the 7, 1700. At a Meeting of the Governors and Visitors
of the Free Schools." Bray ms. in Sion College Library, London. Copy in
Library of Congress. Trustees present: Col. Charles Hutchins (Dorchester),
�FLETCHER
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
71
Robert Smith (Talbot), Thomas Tasker (Prince George's), Col. John Addison
(Somerset), Maj. Edward Dorsey (Baltimore), Maj. William Dent (Charles),
Col. John Thompson (Cecil), Lt. Col. Thomas Ennalls (Dorchester), Lt. Col.
Thomas Smith (Kent).
Carr and Jordan, p. 278.
E. C. Papenfuse, A. F. Day, D. W. Jordan, and Gregory Stiverson, A
Biographical Dictionary of the Maryland Legislature, 1635-1889 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins( University Press, 1979), 1:374.
Archives 26:602.
Archives 24:179.
Archives 26:361. "An Act declaring the Peticionary Act relating to the
ffree-holders[!] to be in force."
Archives 25:179.
Archives 26:616.
Archives 27:428.
Archives 29:66.
Archives 29:297.
Ethan Allen, p. 41.
Archives 29:159.
Archives 29:287.
Archives 29:299.
Perry, 4:76.
Archives 29:452.
Archives 30:41,42.
Archives 36:498-500.
"At a meeting of the Rector, Governors and Visitors of the Free Schools
held in the city of Annapolis on Tuesday the 6th of September anno Domino
1715." Fulham Papers, reel!, vol. 2, nos. 221-22, in Library of Congress.
Present: Rev. Joseph Colbatch, Rector, the Governor, Hon. Samuel Young,
Hon. Philemon Lloyd, Rev. Henry Hall, Rev. William Hinderforch, Mr.
William Bladen.
52. Gov. John Hart to Bishop Robinson, 20 June 1717. Fulham Papers, reel 1,
vol. 2, nos. 227-28, in Library of Congress.
53. Archives 39:386, 387. See also Great Britain, Statutes ~f the Realm, 1819,
vol. 5 (25 Carolus II, chap. 7, p. 793.)
54. Archives 30:373.
55. Archives 33:354; Morpurgo, pp. S8c64.
56. Archives 33:370.
57. Archives 33:629. See History of William and Mary, pp. 83-84, for list of
students before 1720.
58. Archives 34:11.
59. Archives 33:59.
60. Archives 34:95.
61. Also Clerk or Registrar of St. Anne's Vestry. See St. Anne's Parish, Vestry
Minutes, 1713-67 (in Hall of Records), p. 117. Mention of the scholars at
King William's are so few that the following paragraph has interest: "It is
the desire of the Minister, Vestry and Church wardens now mett together
�72
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
that the School Master of Annapolis and the Charity Boys upon the Foundation of the Schoole of Annapolis be permitted during the vacancy of the
Assembly consent to Sitt in the Front seat joining the back door, till such
time as further provision can be made for them." 5 Dec. 1721, p. 123.
62. Archives 34:302.
63. Archives 34:740-46.
64. For summary of taxes levied for benefit of free schools see Oswald Tilghman, History of Talbot County, Md. 1661-1861 (Baltimore: Williams &
Wilkins, 1925), pp. 462-65.
Notes to Two
1. Thomas Bacon, Laws of Maryland (Annapolis: Jonas Green, 1765), chap.
vii. Chaps. 12 and 13 of the Act of 1696 established an Oxford and county
schools but were superseded by the Act of 1723.
2. Archives 34:740-46 (Act of 1723).
3. Benedict Leonard Calvert to Thomas Hearne, 18 March 1728/29, in
"Calvert Memorabilia," Maryland Historical Magazine, 11:282 (hereafter referred to as MHM). "Wee have here settled a fund for a free school
in the several 12 Counties, which have mostly masters, but I think the
Province too young for such a separated Scituation of Studies; I would rather
the funds appropriated for these 12 schools were settled on our two older
foundations, viz., one a free school at Annapolis and at Oxford, a convenient
Town over our Bay. I should then hope for some real success of Education
amongst us; two schools well provided of Masters were better than 12
indifferently suited with one each, and inconvenient for Scholars, there
being no Towns or accomodation for Boarding Scholars, where those 12
schools are fixed."
4. Archives 36:357.
5. Archives 24:70; 36:551; Bacon, chap. xv.
6. Richard Lewis, "Verses To The Memory of His Excellency Benedict Leonard Calvert." Ms. in Nimitz Library, U.S. Naval Academy.
7. Bernard C. Steiner, "Benedict Leonard Calvert, Esq.," in MHM 3:192-200,
339-41.
8. Thomas Hearne, Remarks And Collections, 11 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1885-1921). Passages relevant to Calvert are in "Calvert Memorabilia," MHM 11:282-85, 339-41. In 1703 the Bishop of London tried to
persuade Hearne to emigrate to Maryland to oversee the libraries given by
Dr. Bray. Hearne refused. Later he twice refused offers to become librarian
of the Bodleian.
9. Edward Holdsworth, Muscipula: The Mousetrap, or The Battle of The
Camhrians And The Mice, translated into English by R. Lewis (Annapolis:
William Parks, 1728). Reprinted in MHS Fund Publication no. 36, "Early
Maryland Poetry," pp. 57-102.
�73
FLETCHER
10. J. A. Leo Lemay, Men of Letters in Maryland (Knoxville: University of
Tennessee Press, 1972), p. 150. For life and works of Lewis see pp. 126-84.
11. Richard Lewis, "Verses ... ".
12. Archives 38:456-61
13. Archives 50:491. The Committee of Laws reported to lower house 21 May
1754 that interest on Calvert's Donation was £37 ten shiilings sterling;
ground rents on houses in Annapolis 4.0 pounds sterling. The five hundred
acres in Dorchester br,ought in no rent and cost ground rent; it was not sold
until 1769.
14. Wills, Anne Arundel, 1732, 20:496, 498, in Maryland State Archives. For
accounting of American estate, see Executor Edmund Jennings Testamentary Bond, etc. Anne Arundel, 1732-34, box 37, folder 41; Additional
Account 4 September 1753. In 1763 Gov. Sharpe wrote Calvert's brother,
Caecelius, the English executor, to send the residue of what was owing King
William's School still held in the estate of Jennings, who had died in
England in 1756.
15. Archives 6:54, 55. Every freeholder was taxed 40 pounds of tobacco for
support of the Anglican clergyman of his parish. This was commonly
expressed as "40p per poll."
16. Nelson Richtmyer, Mmy/and's Established Church (Baltimore: The Church
Historical Society for the Diocese of Maryland, 1956), p. 42.
17. Prior to Calvert's gift, St. Anne's Vestry Minutes record several attempts to
provide decent housing for the rector, Samuel Skippon. The church wardens
neither repaired two old parsonage houses nor built a new parsonage (MHM
7: 167). After Skippon 's death in 1724, Rev. James Henderson, commissary
of the Anglican Church on the Western Shore, proposed to the vestry that
he and the neighboring clergy "serve the Parish for the present year in the
best manner they can on condition that his Excellency the Governor and the
rest of the Vestry do agree that the 40p poll for the present year be apply'd
toward purchasing glebe land and improving the glebe for the use of the
present Incumbent and his successors" (MHM 7: 178).
18. But in the next meeting of the vestry, 11 February 1724/25 candidate who
had received the "bounty as a schoolmaster in Philadelphia" (Richtmyer,
p. 193) was presented to them. His qualifications and their need must have
coincided. Their reply was "Forasmuch as the Reverend John Humphreys
is willing to reside among us, we readily accept his offer, and desire that his
Excellency the Governor will induct him into this Parish" (MHM 7:269).
The money saved through using the services of neighboring clergy after
Skippon 's death was given him to defray "his Charges in Removing his
Family to this City," and was not used to build a rectory. It is clear that they
did not provide a place for him to live, because two years later in September
1726, Humphrey "acquainted this Vestry that he stands indebted for House
rent twenty-four pounds currency" (MHM 7:279). He asked the church
wardens to beg help "from the several parishioners toward Discharge of the
Rent." On 4 August 1730 he was granted permission "to remove the house
he built on the glebe lot," presumably at his own expense (MHM 8:157).
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�THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
74
It is very likely that Rev. John Humphreys was both rector of St. Anne's
and master of King William's School after Michael Piper died, and that he
occupied the schoolhouse living quarters after 1730. By education and
experience he was well able to hold both offices. The next rector, Rev. James
Stirling, a poet and playwright, stayed only from 1739 to 1740, in which
time Charles Peale was a master of King William's School. There are several
hints that Rev. John Gordon, who became rector in 1745, lived in the
schoolhouse quarters. Three times during his incumbency- 1 July and 18
August 1746 (MHM 9:50, 51) and 10 November 1747 (St. Anne's Vestry
Minutes, p. 302)- the St. Anne's Vestry met in the schoolhouse. More
significantly, he was host of the Tuesday Club in the schoolhouse. He, too,
was well prepared by education to teach as well as to preach. See note 31.
19. Archives 6:54, 55. See note 17 for Henderson's proposal.
20. William F. Paynter, St. Anne's, Annapolis, History and Times (Annapolis:
St. Anne's Parish, 1980), pp. 21, 22.
Archives 40:271
Archives 42:344, 354-55
Radoff, pp. 77-80.
Maryland Gazette 7 Nov. 1745; 21 Aprill747; 27 Sept. 1747; 2 June 1745.
Samuel Eliot Morison, The Oxford History of the American People (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 150.
26. For the life of Bacon see Lemay, 303-42, and Tilghman, 1:272-300; 2:47795.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
27. For the life of Gordon see Mary M. Starin, "The Reverend Doctor John
Gordon, 1717-1790," in MHM 75:167-91.
28. Alexander Hamilton, "History of the Ancient and Honorable Tuesday
Club," opp. 118, ms. no. 2, John Work Garrett Collection, Milton S.
Eisenhower Library, the Johns Hopkins University Library.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
Ibid., pp. 119-23.
Ibid., p. 249.
Ibid., p. 368.
Archives 44:595-638.
Gazette,9, 16,23,30Dec.1747.
Archives 46:485, 486.
Archives 46:384, 385.
Gazette 1, 8 Aug. 1750.
Gazette 27 Feb. 1751.
Gazette 21 March 1754.
Gazette 16 May 1754.
Archives 50:514-19.
Archives 50:472, 473.
Archives 50:482, 483.
Archives 50:490-92.
44. Archives 50:xxii.
45. Archives 50:506. Alexander Hamilton was Grand Master of the Annapolis
A. F&M Lodge as well as president of the Tuesday Club.
�FLETCHER
75
46. Archives 34:388.
47. Archives 6:56.
48. Archives 6:79, 80.
Notes to Three
1. "A Journal of the PrOceedings of the School" and "Book of Accounts" of
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
King William's School are referred to in a suit brought by St. John's College
to recover back rent and interest from the King William's School lease of
Kentish House in 1769. See Chancery Records, March 1830, pp.l41 ff.,
215-54, in Maryland State Archives.
See Visitors and Governors of St. John's College, An Appeal to the People
a/Maryland, Annapolis, August 1868 (Annapolis: Robert F. Bonsall, 1868):
Sollers in Steiner; Thomas Fell, Some Historical Accounts of the Founding
of King William's School and its Subsequent Establishment as St. John's
College (Annapolis, 1894); and "Establishment of a College," Archives
56:lxvi-lxviii; 58:lv-lviii; "Schools," 58:liv-lv.
George H. Callcott, A History of the University of Maryland (Baltimore:
Maryland Historical Society, 1966), chap. 1; Morris Radoff, "King
William's School," in Buildings, pp. 43-46; Tench Tilghman, "The Founding of St. John's College," MHM 44:85·92.
Archives 64:242-53.
Malcolm may have helped write the college bill of 1750 (Gazette 8 August
1750); later the trustees of Queen Anne's County school dismissed him as
master for writing a too elaborate curriculum. He was calledPhilo-Dogmaticus in the Tuesday Club (an earlier master of King William's School was
called Mr. Pedanticus in the Ugly Club). He was Sharpe's appointee to the
Commission on Boundaries to supervise the laying of the Mason-and-Dixon
Line between Maryland and Pennsylvania because he was the ablest mathematician in Maryland (Archives 9:471,466, 224, 233; 14:556). He was the
author of A Treatise of Musick, Speculative, Practical and Historical (Edinburgh, 1721); A New System of Arithmetick, Theoretical and Practical
(London, 1730); A Treatise of Bookkeeping . .. in the Italian method of
Debtor and Creditor (London, 1731). For the most complete account of
Malcolm see The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London:
Macmillan, 1980) 1:568. See also Lemay.
Gazette 1 and 8 August 1750.
Gazette 20 Nov. 1755.
Gazette 10 May 1759.
Gazette 20 Nov. 1755.
Clajon was undoubtedly aware of the curriculum taught at the Academy of
Philadelphia, where the English "tongue" was taught grammatically and
as "a language." Benjamin Franklin, "Proposals Relating to the Education
of Youth in Pensilvania," Philadelphia, 1749, in Papers of Benjamin Franklin (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1959- ), 3:395-421.
�76
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Franklin quotes copiously from John Locke's Treatise of Education, and
William Fordyce's Dialogues. See also William Smith, A general Idea of
the College ofMironia (New York: J. Parker and Weyman, 1753).
Gazette 28 Aprill757.
Gazette 10 May 1759.
Archives 9:375 (Calvert to Sharpe 17 March 1760).
Archives 9:402,277,438-39. Realizing that Sharpe was very much hurt by
the scolding proprietary letter (seen. 13), Lord Baltimore sent an appeasing
gift, a snuff-box bearing a Masonic device on its lid, a representation of
Solomon's Temple. Sharpe hoped the gift "would convince at least one of
my Enemies here who will see it and know from whom it come that all
Attempts to prejudice me in his Lordship's Opinion have been very unsuccessful." Undoubtedly there were freernasons in the lower house who were
pressing for the two great interests of the lodge, the promotion of commerce
and the education of the rising generation. Perhaps some of his enemies
attended the Annapolis St. John's lodge, which was active throughout the
middle sixties, years when the brigantine Free Mason lay between voyages
in the Annapolis dock.
Archives 56:488-94.
Archives 56:496, 497.
Archives 9:523.
Archives 9:545. Lord Baltimore emphatically said he would not allow such
a "strip of his right."
Archives 14:114 (Sharpe to Calvert, 21 August 1763).
Archives 58:309,310, 393; 4:402-4.
Archives 14:152.
Archives 14:194.
Archives 14:152, 153.
Gazette 30 May 1765.
Thomas Harrison Montgomery, "List of Scholars Entered at the Academy
and College up to and Including the Year 1769," in A History of the
University of Pennsylvania from its Foundation to A.D. 1770 (Philadelphia:
George W. Jacobs Co., 1900) pp. 530-54; see also University of Pennsylvania, Biographical Catalogue of' the Matriculates of the College, 1749-1893
(Philadelphia, 1894 ).
Rev. Jonathan Boucher scorned the education received in American colleges. Of the College of Philadelphia and Princeton he wrote, "they were
the chief nurseries of all that frivolous and mischievous kind of knowledge
which passed for learning in America .... They pretend to teach everything,
without being really competent to the teaching of anything .... Their chief
and peculiar merit was thought to be in Rhetoric and the belles lettres ...
Hence in no country were there so many orators, and so many smatterers."
Virginia, according to him, was more guilty of appointing them as their
rectors than Maryland, for "in Virginia the clergy were elected by the
vestries ... in Maryland, they were in the prerogative of Lord Baltimore.
But even in Maryland, congregations had influence on governors." Jonathan
�FLETCHER
77
Boucher, Reminiscences of an American Loyalist (New York: Kennikat
Press, 1967), p.!Ol.
27. Archives 32:145, 146. Daniel Dulany was from Annapolis. The other three
were from the Eastern Shore: Henry (Somerset County), Goldsborough
(Dorchester), Hooper (Dorchester, member of county school board, bequeathed ten pounds to King William School); see Papenfuse, et al., vol. 1.
See also Archives 14:126 ("No Right without a Remedy").
28. Archives 14:327, 328,,
29. Steiner, p. 42.
30. Gazette 22 May to 9 Oct. 1766.
31. See Gazette 7 Nov. 1768 for account of firing ofDakein. He and Rev. Bennet
Allen learned that the Dulanys intended to replace them both with Rev.
Jonathan Boucher, who could serve as both rector of St. Anne's and master
of King William's. In defending Allen, Dakein thought he was defending
Lord Baltimore's prerogative to appoint the clergy. The Gazette refused to
publish Allen's unsigned letters delivered by Dakein. So the story of their
troubles first appeared in the Pennsylvania Chronicle. Dakein lost his job,
and Allen, who was thoroughly disreputable but had Lord Baltimore's
backing, was awarded Maryland's most lucrative parish, in Frederick.
32. Daniel Dulany to Walter Dulany, 11 Oct. 1767 (Dulany Papers, MHS 1264).
33. Gazette 20 April 1769. An Act of 1750 gave them permission to sell.
34. Land Records of Dorchester County, Old no. 23, 1768-1770, pp. 228-92. An
earlier attempt to sellS May 1764 failed; see Chancery Record 14:215 ff.
35. Gazette 6, 14 Sept. 1769. Books lost: Ferguson's Lectures on Astronomy
and Philosophy; A Volume of Projectiles; Mather's Young Man's Companion; The Seaman's Calendar; Seaman's Daily Assistant.
36. Archives 62:4.
37. Archives 63:34, 35.
38. Archives 64:242-53.
39. Gazette 18 Nov. 1773.
40. Gazette 7 Apri11774, 26 May 1768.
41. Archives 64:379, 380 ("An Act for King William's School' in Annapolis").
42. William Eddis, Letters from America (Cambridge :Harvard University
Press, 1969).
43. Gazette 31 July 1776.
44. William Kilty, Laws of Mmyland (Annapolis: Frederick Green, 1799), 1
(June 1778), chap. 5, "Supplementary Act to the Act Entitled 'An Act for
King William's School in Annapolis 1696."'
45. Kilty, I (1780), chap. 5, "An Act for calling out of circulation the quota of
this state of bills of credit issued by congress, and the bills of credit emitted
by act of Assembly."
46. Kilty, I (1780), chap. 24, "An act for licensing and regulating ordinaries."
47. William Smith, An Account of Washington College in the State of Maryland
(Philadelphia: Joseph Cruikshank, 1784).
48. Archives 48:408, 409.
49. Gazette 26 August 1784.
�78
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
50. Kilty, 1 (Nov. 1784), chap. 37, "An Act for founding a college on the
Western Shore and constituting the same, together with Washington College
on the Eastern Shore, into one University by the name of the University of
Maryland."
51. Gazette 21 April 1785; see also "An Act to provide a permanent fund for
the further encouragement and establishment of Washington College," in
Kilty (1784), chap. 7.
52. Kilty (1785), chap. 2, "A supplement to the act entitled An 'Act for founding
a college on the Western Shore, etc."'
53. St. John's College, Minutes of the Board ofVisitors and Governors, 28 Feb.,
I March 1786 (in St. John's Archives).
54. "An Act for Consolidating the Funds belonging to King William's School
in the city of Annapolis with the Funds of Saint John's College: in Laws of
Maryland made and passed at a session of Assembly 1785 (Annapolis:
Frederick Green), chap. 39.
55. William Smith to Hon. Thomas Willing, Esq., President of the Bank of
America, 5 March 1786, William Smith mss., vol.l, no.lOl, Archives,
Historical Collection of the Episcopal Church, Austin, Texas.
Notes to Four
1. Poems by the late Doctor John Shaw, to which is prefixed a Biographical
Sketch of the Author (Philadelphia and Baltimore, 1810), pp. 92-93. A short
essay on the "Eloquence of St. Chrysostom: with a translation of a homily
on patience" was published by Shaw in Port Folio, n.s. 3, no. 2 (1807), pp.
17-19.
2. Memorial Volume: Dedication Ceremonies in Connection with the Formal
Opening of the Henry Williams Woodward Hall at St. John's College,
Annapolis, Md. (Annapolis, 1900), pp. 30, 31.
3. Steiner, p. 103 n.
4. Ibid.
5. Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed., s.v. "Freemasonry"; Coil's Masonic
Encyclopedia, s.v. "St. John As a Generic Term and As a Lodge Name";
Edward T. Schultz, Histm·y of Freemasonry in Maryland, 4 vols. (Baltimore:
Mediary, 1884), 1:389-90.
6. One Hundredth Anniversary, 1848-1948, Annapolis Lodge No. 89, A.F. and
A.M. (Annapolis, n.d.), pp. 12, 13.
7. Generals Otto Holland Williams, John Swan, Mordecai Gist, Major
Archibald Anderson, Capt. Stephen Decatur, Commodore James Nicholson,
Col. Nathaniel Ramsey; see Schultz, 1:97-106. General Lafayette also
visited Annapolis many times.
8. Schultz, 1:382,393,396,397.
�FLETCHER
79
9. William Smith, Ahiman Rezon, Abridged and Digested, As a Help to All
That Are, or Would Be Free and Accepted Masons (Philadelphia, 1783), pp.
62,65,66,67,80,82,83.
10. Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (New York: Modern Library, 1931), pp. 323-36.
11. Motto encircling the St. John's seal: "Est Nulla Via Invia Virtuti" (No way
impassable to courage). There are seven Masonic virtues: (1) discretion, the
keeping of secrets; (2) obedience to the higher authorities of the order; (3)
morality; (4) love for· mankind; (5) courage; (6) liberality; and (7) love of
Death. See Tolstoy, p. 331.
12. Jacques Chailley, The Magic Flute, a Masonic Opera: an lntopretation of
the Libretto and the Music (New York: Knopf, 1971), pl. 35, p. 130.
13. Coil's s.v. "St. John."
14. Lodge No.6 in Georgetown on the Sassafras and Lodge No. 17 at Chestertown were founded in 1766.
15. St. John's College, Minutes of the Board of Visitors and Governors, 2 July,
1793: "Resolved: that Bishop Carroll, Bishop Claggett, Mr. Nicholas Carroll, Dr. Scott, Mr. John Thomas, Mr. Jennings and Mr. Hanson, or any three,
be a committee to attend at any time, when requested by the principal for
the purpose of superintending a private examination of such students as shall
be candidates for the first degree to be conferred, at a commencement to
take place in November next." "Resolved: that the said committee be
authorized to procure for the board one common public seal and likewise
one privy seal with such devices and inscriptions as they shall think proper;
the particular uses of the said seals to be hereafter ascertained, fixed and
regulated by this board."
16. One Hundredth Anniversary, pp. 13, 14.
17. Smith, An Account of Washington College, p.2. Compare with Pierre
Bezuhov's speech to the Petersburg lodge in 1809 (Tolstoy, p. 405).
18. Gazette 16 Dec. 1784.
19. For text of the Washington College charter of 1782 see Smith, Account pp.
5-14. Hereafter Washington College's charter will be cited as Charter of
1782; "Draught of a Proposed Act ... "will be cited as Draught or Proposed
Act (Gazette 16 Dec. 1784); the Act bearing the same name as the Draught
will be cited as the Charter of 1784, or the University Law (Laws of
Maryland, Made and Passed at a Session of Assembly Begun and Held at
the City of Annapolis, on Monday the first of November, in the Year of Our
Lord One Thousand Seven Hundred and Eighty-Four [Annapolis, 1785],
chap. 36).
20. William Smith to William White, 26 Jan. 1785. The Right Reverend William
White Papers, val. I, no. 56, Archives Historical Collection of the Episcopal
Church, Austin, Texas.
21. The John Carroll Papers, ed. Thomas O'Brien Hanley, 3 vols. (Notre Dame,
1976), 1:158.
22. Charter of 1782, paragraph 9:" ... and youth of all religious denominations
and persuasions, shall be freely and liberally admitted to equal privileges
and advantages of education, and to all the literary honors of the college,
according to their merit, and the standing rules of the seminary, without
�80
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
requmng or enforcing any religious or civel test whatsoever upon any
student, scholar or member of the said college, other than such oath of
fidelity to the state as the laws thereof may require of the Visitors, Governors, Masters, Professors and Teachers in Schools and seminaries of learning in general" (Smith, Account, p. I 0).
Draught: "First, That the said intended college shall be founded and
maintained for ever upon the most liberal and catholic plan for the benefit
of the youth of every religious denomination, who shall be freely admitted
to the equal privileges and advantages of education and to all the literary
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
honours of the college according to their merit, without requiring or enforcing any religious or civil test or urging their attendance upon any particular
religious worship or service, other than what they have been educated in,
or have the consent and approbation of their parents or guardians to attend:
nor shall any preference be given in the choice of a principal, vice-principal,
or any professor or master in the said college on a religious score; but merely
on account of his literary and other necessary qualifications to fill the place,
for which he is chosen," (Gazette 16 Dec. 1784).
Charter of 1784:"II. Be it enacted, by the General Assembly of Maryland
That a college or general seminary of learning, by the name of Saint John's,
be established on the said western shore, upon the following fundamental
and inviolable principles, namely; first the said college shall be founded and
maintained for ever, upon a most liberal plan, for the benefit of youth of
every religious denomination, who shall be freely admitted to equal privileges and advantages of education, and ,o all the literary honours of the
college, according to their merit, without requiring or enforcing any religious or civil test, or urging their attendance upon any particular religious
worship or service, other than what they have been educated in or have the
consent and approbation of their parents or guardians to attend" (Laws of
Maryland. 1785, chap. 36).
Smith to White, 26 Jan. 1785. Speaking of opposition to the Religious Bill
in the General Assembly of 1785, Smith wrote "some men who call themselves Christians,- but I need not tell you, seem never to be Pleased with
any Thing however Christian, or however Catholic, where their Numbers
will not enable them to be the sole or chief Directors .... "In passing it is
interesting to note that the word "Christian" never appears in either the 1782
or 1784 charter.
Smith to White, 26 Jan. 1785.
Archives 27:408-9.
For Carroll see John Carroll Papers, 1:xlv-li; for Allison see John H.
Gardner, Jr., First Presbyterian Church of Baltimore ... (Baltimore, 1966)
and William B. Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit, 9 vols. (New York:
Carter, 1857-69), 3:257-63; for Smith see Horace W. Smith, Life and
Correspondence of the Rev. William Smith, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1879),
I :22-28; 2:18-23, 34, 35, 2 vols. in I (reprint New York: Arno, 1972).
John Carroll Papers 1:80,81.
Gazette 30 Sept., 7 Oct., 21 Oct. 1784.
John Carroll Papers 1:82-143.
�FLETCHER
81
30. John Carroll Papers 1:112: "I procured a friend to examine the edition of
Chrysostom's work belonging to the public library in Annapolis." The
"public library"- known today as the Annapolitan Library or the Thomas
Bray Collection- is in the possession of the St. John's College Library and
is on deposit at the Maryland Hall of Records on the college campus. These
are the volumes referred to in John Shaw's letter 24 Jan. 1807 (see note 16).
31. "To the Roman Catholics of the State of Maryland: Especially Those of St.
Mary's County," Gazette 25 Nov. 1784.
32. John Carroll Papers 1:191.
33. John Carroll Papers 1:185, 186. Carroll wrote to Father Eden at the
Academy of Liege, April 1785: "Do you know any young men of improved
abilities and good conduct, capable of teaching the different branches of
science with credit and reputation? It is now in contemplation to establish
two Colleges in this state, open to Professors and Scholars of all denominations, and handsome appointments are to be annexed to the professorships.
To me it appears, that it may be of much service not only to Learning, but
to true Religion, to have some of these Professorships filled by R. C. men
of letters and virtue; and if one or two of them were in orders, it would be
so much the better.... "
34. MarylandJoumall5 July 1783, "To the Public"; 28 Oct. 1783, "To the Han.
the General Assembly"; 26 Nov., 7 and 14 Dec. 1784, "To the People of
Maryland"; 28 Dec. 1784, "A Design to Raise One Sect of Christians above
Another." A restatement of these articles may be found in Allison, Candid
Animadversions, cited in note 35.
35. Patrick Allison, Candid Animadversions on a Petition Presented to the
General Assembly of Maryland by the Rev. William Smith and the Rev.
Thomas Gates, First Published in 1783 ... by Vindex (Baltimore, 1793), pp.
iii-v, 1-16.
36. University of Pennsylvania, Minutes of the Trustees of the College, Academy, and Charitable School (Wilmington, 1974), p. 91: "The Assembly of
the Province having taken Mr. Smith into Custody, the Tru$tees considered
how the inconvenience from thence arising to the College might be best
remedied, and Mr. Smith having expressed a Desire to continue his Lectures
to the Classes, which had formerly attended them, the Students also inclining rather to proceed on their Studies under his Care. They ordered that the
said Classes should attend him for that Purpose at the usual Hour in the
Place of his present Confinement.,.
37. H. W. Smith, 2:34, 35.
38. Schultz, 1:382-93: "When Bro. Smith removed to Maryland, he was the
Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, and as all Lodges of
Ancient York Masons in Maryland were under the jurisdiction of the Grand
Lodge of Pennsylvania, he was active in his official and other Masonic
duties. The Lodges which had existed in Maryland prior to the introduction
of the Lodges by the Ancients, were held under the authority of the Moderns,
or other branch of the Masonic fraternity, and as these had now no ruling
head in America, many of their members sought admission into the Ancient
York Lodges. Brother Smith, and Brother John Coats, a Past Deputy Grand
�82
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Master of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, who also resided at the time in
Maryland, were deputed by the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania on the 2nd of
September, 1782, to take to their assistance such true brothers as they might
see proper, and enter into the mysteries of Ancient York Masonry any
respectable Modern Masons in Maryland who might desire to be so healed
... "See also Allison, p.3.
The sources of revenue are similar to those enacted for Washington College
in "An Act to Provide'' a Permanent Fund for the Encouragement and
Establishment of Washington College," Votes and Proceedings of the House
of Delegates for the State of Maryland (Annapolis, 1783-85), pp. 15-18.
Writings of George Washington, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick, 39 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1931-44), 22:17,18.
Ibid., 22:20.
Walter Bowie, James Brice, John Bullen, John Callahan, Charles Carroll of
Carrollton, James Carroll, Nicholas Carroll, John Chalmers, J. Chase, Samuel Chase, Abraham Claude, John Davidson, George Digges, Joseph Dowson, Joseph Eastman, Joshua Frazier, Thomas Gates, Alexander Golder,
John Graham, T. Green, William Hammond, Alexander Hanson, Benjamin
Harwood, Thomas Harwood, Wi11iam Harwood, Samuel Hughes, Daniel of
St. Thomas Jenifer, Thomas Jennings, John Johnson, Rinaldo Johnson,
Philip Key, James Mackubin, Nicholas Mancubbin, George Mann, David
McMechen, John Muir, James Murray, Ben Oake, Aquila Paca, William
Paca, George Plater, Edward Plowden, Allen Quynn, James Reid, Christopher Richmond, Abasalom Ridgley, JohL Roger, Richard Sprigg, Charles
Steuart, James Steuart, John Steuart, William Steuart, J.D. Stone, Thomas
Stone, Michael Taney, Alexander Travers, James Tro(?), Charles Wallace,
James Williams, Nathaniel Yates. Annapolis Subscription List, 16 Dec.
1784, in St. John's College Archives.
Draught: "Thirdly ... agents ... are hereby authorised and made capable to
solicit and receive contributions and subscriptions ... of any person or
persons, bodies politic and corporate, who may be willing t.o promote so
good a design."
Charter of 1784: "III.... and they are hereby authorised to solicit and
receive, subscriptions and contributions . , . of any person or persons, who
may be willing to promote so good a design."
Draught and Charter of 1784: "Secondly, there shall be a subscription
carried on in the different counties of the western shore, upon the plan on
which it hath been opened, for founding the said college; and the several
subscribers shall class themselves, according to their respective inclinations, and for every thousand pounds current money which may be subscribed and paid, or secured to be paid, into the hands of the treasurer of the
western shore, by any particular class of subscribers, they shall be entitled
to the choice of one person as a visitor and governor of said college .... "
The addition of "bodies politic and corporate" allowed the King William's
School to give £2000 and to qualify as two classes of subscribers, each of
which could elect a member to the Board of Visitors and Governors of St.
John's College.
�FLETCHER
83
44. "Draught of a Proposed Act," Gazette !6 Dec. 1784: " ... and provided
further, that is in three years from the first day of June 1785, there shall not
be twenty-four visitors and governors chosen as aforesaid by classes of
subscribers of one thousand pounds, each class; the other visitors and
governors being not less then eleven duly assembled at any quarterly
visitation, shall proceed by election to fill up the number of twenty-four
visitors and governors, as they shaH think most expedient and convenient:
provided nevertheless/that seventeen of the said visitors and governors shaH
always be residents on the western shore of this state, but that the additional
visitors and governors (to make up and perpetuate the number of twentyfour) may be chosen from this or any part of the adjacent states, if they are
such persons as can reasonably undertake to attend the quarterly visitations,
and are thought capable, by their particular learning, weight, and character,
to advance the interest and reputation of the said seminary.... "
Charter of 1784: "IV.... Provided always, that seventeen of the said
visitors and governors shall be resident on the western shore of this state,
but that the additional visitors and governors (to make up and perpetuate
the number of twenty-four) may be chosen from any part of this state, if
they are such persons as can reasonably undertake the quarterly visitations,
and are thought capable, by their particular learning, weight, and character,
to advance the interest and reputation of the said seminary."
45. H. W. Smith, 2:249.
46. The History of American Methodism, 3 vols. (New York, 1964), 1:222.
47. Schultz, 1:105.
48. Votes and Proceedings of the House of Delegates of the State of Maryland,
1783-85 (Annapolis, 1785), p. 73.
49. William Morley Brown, George Washington, Freemason (Richmond: Garrett and Massi!, 1952), p. 332.
50. Schultz, I :76-78; and Gazette 29 Dec. 1763: "Tuesday last, being St. John's
was observed by the Brethren of the Ancient and Honarable Fraternity of
Free and Accepted Masons with great order and decency."
51. Writings of G. W. 22:25-27.
·
52. Gazette 30 March 1786. For earlier notices to subscribers see Gazette 9 June
1785 (no name at all, only reference to the Act); I Dec. 1785; 12 Jan. 1786.
First eleven members of the Board of Visitors and Governors who were
elected March 1786: Thomas Claggett, D.D., and William West, D.D.
(Episcopal clergymen, who would later be elected bishops); subscribers on
the Annapolis list of 16 Dec. 1784: Nicholas Carroll, John H. Stone, William
Beans, Thomas Stone, Samuel Chase, Thomas Jennings, A. C. Hanson, John
Thomas (a Quaker), and Richard Ridgeley.
53. Robert Reinhold, "For Relevance, the Students at St. John's College Turn
to Galileo," New Yark Times, 18 Oct. 1971, p. 39.
54. St. John's College, Minutes of the Board of Visitors and Governors, 12 and
13 May 1972. A branch college, St. John's College, Santa Fe, New Mexico,
was founded in 1963.
�84
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Notes to Five
1. Rev. William Smith to Rev. William West, 5 May 1790, Maryland Diocesan
Archives on deposit at the Maryland Historical Society (hereafter MDA).
2. Charles Goldsborough to John McDowell, Shoal Creek, 22 November 1790
(St. John's College LibraJY ).
3. Biographical Annals of Franklin County, Pennsylvania (Chicago: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1905), pp. 82, 83.
4. John M. McDowell, "John McDowell, LI.D., First President of St. John's
College, Annapolis, Maryland; Third Provost of University of Pennsylvania," in Old Mercersburg, by the Woman's Club of Mercersburg, Pennsylvania (New York: Frank Allaben Genealogical Co.,l912), pp. 69-71; and
Stevenson Whitcomb Fletcher, Pennsylvania Agriculture and Country Life,
1640-1840 (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission,
1950), pp. 496-97.
5. Alfred Nevin, Churches of the Valley, and Historical Sketch of the Old
Presbyterian Congregations of Cumberland and Franklin Counties in Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: James H. Wilson, 1852), p.l09.
6. Sprague, Vol. 3, p. 188.
7. Bureau of Land Affairs, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Warrant 81 (survey of
23 acres, 27 May 1767; survey of 158 acres, 17 March 1767).
8. Nevin,pp.lll, 112.
9. University of Pennsylvania, Biographical Catalogue, p.13, and Montgomery, p. 544. Between 1771 and 1774 Montgomery was rector of St. Anne's
Church in Annapolis.
10. See University of Pennsylvania, Minutes of the Trustees of the College,
Academy and Charitable Schools, 1749-1851, p.33; University of Pennsylvania, Biographical Catalogue, pp.l7-18; and Pennsylvania Archives, Fifth
Series, 8 vols. (Harrisburg, 1906), 6:271, 281, 316.
11. See McDowell, passim.
12. Gazette 10 May 1786.
13. St. John's College, Minutes of the Board of Visitors and Governors, 17861825, 19 November 1790, St. John's College Archives.
14. John McDowell to William McDowell, 4 September 1789. In Gratz Collection, case 71, box 14, Historical Society of Pennsylvania (hereafter HSP).
15. Charles Goldsborough (congressman and governor); John Henry (U.S.
senator); William Vans Murray (congressman and ambassador to the
Hague); and William Tilghman (chief judge, third judicial circuit).
16. See, for example, Gov. John Henry, Letters and Papers (Baltimore: George
W. King, 1904), pp. 26-27.
17. Papenfuse, et al., 1:396-97, 445; 2:834.
18. They were Thomas Hayward, Thomas Shaw, Henry Steels, Hall Harris,
Christopher Harrison, Joseph Richardson, Howes Goldsborough, William
Lockerman, William Shaw, William Sanders, John Sanders, Henry Maynadier, John G. Harrison, Robert Goldsborough, William Goldsborough,
�FLETCHER
85
J. Campbell Henry, and John Shaw. See St. John's College, Matriculation
Book, 1789-1860.
19. Judge Robert Goldsborough to Charles Goldsborough, 27 August 1795,
MDA.
20. Gazette 23 May 1793.
21. Votes and Proceedings of the Senate ... November Session 1793, p.42.
Journal of the Proceedings of the House of Delegates ... November 1793
(hereafter JHD), p.l20.
22. JHD 1794, p.84.
23. Manumission of Joseph Williams, Gratz Collection, ABC, HSP. McDowell
to Tilghman, 8, 16, 22 December 1806 and 9 March 1807.
24. McDowell to Rev. William Rogers, 20 December 1810, no. 671, University
of Pennsylvania Guide; McDowell to Rogers, 30 January 1811, Gratz
Collection, case 7, box 14, HSP.
25. Charles Goldsborough to Elizabeth and Anna Maria Goldsborough, I April
and 14 May 1809, John Lweeds Bozman Papers, Library of Congress.
26. McDowell to Tilghman, 25 December 1815 and 15 February 1816, Tilghman Papers, box 22, HSP. McDowell to Robert Henry Goldsborough, 27
December 1816, Goldsborough Papers, Myrtle Grove.
27. Alexander Contee Magruder to Bishop James Kemp, 29 June 1815, MDA.
Kemp was offered the presidency of St. John's in 1807 but he refused,
choosing instead to head an academy in Cambridge. See Kemp to John
Trippe, 13 March 1807, MDA.
28. McDowell to Tilghman, 25 December 1815 and 15 February 1816, Tilghman Papers, box 22, HSP; McDowell to Robert Henry Goldsborough, 27
December 1816, Goldsborough Papers, Myrtle Grove.
29. Magruder to[?], II July 1816, MDA.
30. Gov. Charles Goldsborough, Executive Letter Book, 1819-34, pp. 47-48,
MSA.
31. McDowell to Tilghman, 23 March 1819 and 6 April 1820, Tilghman Papers,
box 24, HSP. See also Robert H. Goldsborough to William Hemsley, 8
January 1810, Goldsborough papers, Myrtle Grove: "My sOns are now with
Dr. McDowell and have been at Shoal Creek for a week."
32. McDowell left an estate worth $40,000 to brothers, sisters, nephews, and
nieces, and his scholarly books to the University of Pennsylvania where one
volume survives in the rare book room: Hemy Pemberton, A View of Sir
Isaac Newton's Philosophy (London, 1728).
33. See Francis Scott Key, A Discourse on Education Delivered in St. Anne's
Church, Annapolis, After the Commencement of St. John's College, February 22d, 1827 (Annapolis: Jonas Green, 1827), pp. 33, 34; and Robert Henry
Goldsborough, Address Delivered Before the Alumni of St. John's College
at the Annual commencement on the 22 February, 1836 (Annapolis: Jonas
Green, 1836).
34. St. John's College Archives.
��•
Results of
St. John's Crossword Number One
For Crossword Number One the three winners of $35 book tokens, redeemable
at the St. John's College Bookstore, are:
Tracy Cobbs, Martselle, AL
Steven Epstein, Saratoga Springs, NY
Elsie Roberts, Rhodesdale, MD
The winners were selected at random on July 8, from among thirteen entries.
The editor wishes to inform the readers of the Review that he is not Cassandra.
Nor is he Trout.
Solution to Crossword Number One
��St. John's Crossword Number Two
"Canonic Eponyms"
By TROUT
In this puzzle there are nine answers for which no clues are given. (That there are
nine of them provides an allusion for those who were students at the College
before 1972.) They are all of a type, and must be deduced from the cross-checked
letters and from the hint in the title. There is also a connection with the fourth
essay in this issue. AU clued answers, except one proper but common noun, are
in Webster's Ninth Collegiate DictionaJ)'·
For explanations of how to solve cryptic clues, new solvers are referred to the
preface to Crossword Number One, in the previous issue. Once again, there will
be three prizes of$35 book tokens redeemable at the St. John's College Bookstore,
the winners to be chosen at random from among the entries.
�90
ST. JOHN'S REVIEW
Down
Across
6. Taxmen following letter lead to
native rulers (5)
L Cherry swallowing it was
cheating (6)
10. Capital has fifty less after new
moon makes limited mental illness
3. Radioactive old boats are places
to socialize (7, two words)
(9)
.
12. Answer back with a bit of
temper and sound hoarse (7)
14. General assembly from ample
numbers (6)
15. Causes theories (4)
17. Inside tour in Albania is the
place to go (6)
19. The Spanish last month has no
time for the Hebrew last month (4)
20. A nasty thing in man's attire
never at first seems to be a woman
(7)
4. Trunk of middleman with gold
and thanks (5)
5. Adults mad about point are
honored (7)
7. Very small, to say the least (7)
8. Arab enters church for language
group (7)
9. Multiple choice of colors (3)
13. Woman of letters (5)
16. Unite wrongly and divide (5)
18. Two of our dead return without
right (3)
23. Experienced one's voice (in
principal) (5)
22. Cunning boy! (3)
24. Steadily reflects openings (5)
27. Plant pouch in God's acre (3)
26. Solid mistakes? Or fallacies? (5)
30. Rodent found in 'Toad Row,'
misplaced (7, two words)
29. Tricky wicket not kosher, again
(5)
33. Pitcher's stat points nullify an
effect (5)
25. Transfer down and strung up (5)
31. Ingredients of Bacardi act near
the heart (7)
35. The French, only part demon,
are yellow (5)
38. Cuniculum is for weight (7)
32. Hard going after top brass is a
certainty (5)
33. That is retumed around virtue
for superannuated tutors (7)
40. A worm turns. Hallelujah! (4)
34. Second person is star, we hear
42. One leaves a debt, Father, for a
sheep (6)
37. Organ was melancholy (6)
43. Result of thesis-writing shows
in immorality (4)
41. Cooperative in Russia, later
disjointed (5)
44. Undergarment's a little black (3)
45. To spoil liquor is the limit (6)
46. This time the Frence stand by
for the Scotch sign (7)
47. Mineral yields prophet in the
time of end (9)
48. Penetrating accent (5)
(3)
�TROUT
1
91
2
4
3
5
12
14
15
16
20
19
23
24
25
29
30
27
26
31
32
34
33
36
35
38
37
39
42
40
41
43
45
46
47
48
17
22
28
8
11
13
21
7
10
9
18
6
49
44
��
Dublin Core
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Title
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<em>The St. John's Review</em>
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<em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College. All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to </span><em>The St. John's Review</em><span>, St. John's College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or via e-mail at </span><a class="obfuscated_link" href="mailto:review@sjc.edu"><span class="obfuscated_link_text">review@sjc.edu</span></a><span>.</span><br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection that is nurtured by the St. John's Program. It does so both through the character most in common among its contributors — their familiarity with the Program and their respect for it — and through the style and content of their contributions. As it represents the St. John's Program, The St. John's Review espouses no philosophical, religious, or political doctrine beyond a dedication to liberal learning, and its readers may expect to find diversity of thought represented in its pages.<br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> was first published in 1974. It merged with <em>The College </em>beginning with the July 1980 issue. From that date forward, the numbering of <em>The St. John's Review</em> continues that of <em>The College</em>. <br /><br />Click on <a title="The St. John's Review" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=13"><strong>Items in the The St. John's Review Collection</strong></a> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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thestjohnsreview
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The St. John's Review, 1990-91/2
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1990-1991
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Zuckerman, Elliott
Brann, Eva T. H.
Ruhm von Oppen, Beate
Sachs, Joe
Stickney, Cary
Van Doren, John
Williamson, Robert B.
Lucchetti, Louis
Sachs, Joe
Fletcher, Charlotte
Trout
Description
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Volume XL, number two of The St. John's Review. Published in 1991.
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The_St_Johns_Review_Vol_40_No_2_1990-1991
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Annapolis, MD
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text
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pdf
St. John's Review
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https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/f51c0da13c29e175a228fff9f8c6374c.pdf
cf9b26e9f18afe2ef32d12ebe743f5c8
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
<em>The St. John's Review</em>
Description
An account of the resource
<em>The St. John's Review</em><span> is published by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College. All manuscripts are subject to blind review. Address correspondence to </span><em>The St. John's Review</em><span>, St. John's College, 60 College Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21401 or via e-mail at </span><a class="obfuscated_link" href="mailto:review@sjc.edu"><span class="obfuscated_link_text">review@sjc.edu</span></a><span>.</span><br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> exemplifies, encourages, and enhances the disciplined reflection that is nurtured by the St. John's Program. It does so both through the character most in common among its contributors — their familiarity with the Program and their respect for it — and through the style and content of their contributions. As it represents the St. John's Program, The St. John's Review espouses no philosophical, religious, or political doctrine beyond a dedication to liberal learning, and its readers may expect to find diversity of thought represented in its pages.<br /><br /><em>The St. John's Review</em> was first published in 1974. It merged with <em>The College </em>beginning with the July 1980 issue. From that date forward, the numbering of <em>The St. John's Review</em> continues that of <em>The College</em>. <br /><br />Click on <a title="The St. John's Review" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=13"><strong>Items in the The St. John's Review Collection</strong></a> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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Office of the Dean
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St. John's College
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ISSN 0277-4720
thestjohnsreview
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
Text
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93 pages
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paper
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The St. John's Review, 1990-91/3
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1990-1991
Contributor
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Zuckerman, Elliott
Brann, Eva T. H.
Ruhm von Oppen, Beate
Sachs, Joe
Stickney, Cary
Van Doren, John
Williamson, Robert B.
Hunt, Jack
Sachs, Joe
Kalkavage, Peter
Woodard, Joseph Keith
Scally, Thomas
Cohen, Mariam Cunningham
Smith, Brother Robert
Cassandra
Description
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Volume XL, number three of The St. John's Review. Published in 1991.
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ISSN 0277-4720
The_St_Johns_Review_Vol_40_No_3_1990-1991
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Annapolis, MD
Publisher
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St. John's College
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English
Type
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text
Rights
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St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
Format
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pdf
St. John's Review
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