1
20
5
-
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Text
f
I
ST
JoHN 's Co LLEGE
ANNA POLI S. MARYLAND 21404
FouNDED 1&% M
KIN G WiU.IAM·~ SrHooL
Lecture Schedule 1976-77
Sept. 1 7
Curtis A. Wilson , Dean
St. John 's College , Annapol is
On Knowing How and Knowing What
Sept. 24
Noel Lee, Piano
Concert
October 1
Hugh McGrath, Tutor
Poetry Reading
October 8
All-Col l ege Seminar
No Lecture
October 1 5
Long Weekend
No Lecture
October 22
Bruce Venable , Tutor
St. John's College, Santa Fe
Philosophy and Spirituality
in Plotinus
October 29
Professor Arnal do Momigliano
Universi ty College
London, England
The 18th Century Background
to Gi bbon
November 5
Professor Wm . M. Goldsmith
Brandeis University
The Dialectic of Presidential
Power
November 1 2
Robert Sacks, Tutor
St. John ' s College, Santa Fe
Genes i s
November 19
John S. Steadman, Tutor
St. John ' s College, Santa Fe
Why Should Gloucester Attempt
Suicide, and Why Must Cordelia Die?
November 26
Thanksgiving
No Lectur e
December 3
The University of Maryland Trio Concert
December 10
King William Players
Play
Dec. 16- Jan. 3
Winter Vacation
No Lecture
January 7
David Bolotin, Tutor
St. John ' s College, Annapolis
The Ajax
January 14
Michael Ossorgin, Tutor
St. John ' s College, Santa Fe
Celebrating with a Book
(The Brothers Karamazov)
January 21
Paul Sperr y Tenor and
Rose Taylor, Mezzo
Concert
January 28
Dr . Adelyn Breeskin
washington, D.C.
Changing Trends in 20th Century
Painting and Sculpture
TELEPHONI 'lOI ·lEd · 2'171
�Lecture 1976-77
Page 2
February 4
William O'Grady, Tutor
St. John's College, Annapolis
Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus
February ll
Long Weekend
No Lecture
February 18
Leo Raditsa, Tutor
St. John's College, Annapolis
The Collapse of Democracy at Athens
and the Trial of Socrates
February 25
Jonathan Griffin
On the Translation of Rimbaud's
Poetry
March 4
Sequoia String Quartet
Concert
March 5
Charles Bell, Tutor
St. John's College, Santa Fe
Slide show:
A.D. 1500
March 6
Charles Bell, Tutor
Slide Show:
Shakespeare
March 12-27
Spring Vacation
No Lectures
April l
Paul S. Minear
Yale School of Divinity
The Epistle to the Galatians and
Christian Freedom
April 8
David Starr, Tutor
St. John's College, Annapolis
On Plato 1 s Timaeus
April 12
Martin Robertson
University of Oxford
Daedalus on the Parthenon
April 22
David Eisenbud
Institut des Hautes
Etudes Scientifiques
The Interplay of Algebra and
Geometry -- A Twenteeth Century
Theme
April 29
Peter Quint
University of Maryland
On The Constitutional Law of
the Nixon Administration
May 6
Stillman Drake
University of Toronto
A. B. Johnson:
Philosophy
May 13
Reality
No Lecture
May 20
Alan Dorfman, Tutor
St. John's College, Annapolis
Freud and Ethics
Language and
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
Contributor
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
formallectureseriesannapolis
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
2 pages
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Office of the Dean
Title
A name given to the resource
Lecture Schedule 1976-77
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1976-1977
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts for the 1976-1977 Academic Year.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lecture Schedule 1976-1977
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Relation
A related resource
September 17, 1967. Wilson, Curtis. <a title="On knowing how and knowing what" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/282">On knowing how and knowing what</a> (audio)
September 17, 1967. Wilson, Curtis. <a title="Typescript" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3653">On knowing how and knowing what</a> (typescript)
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Wilson, Curtis
Lee, Noel
McGrath, Hugh
Venable, Bruce
Momigliano, Arnaldo
Goldsmith, Wm. M.
Sacks, Robert
Steadman, John S.
Bolotin, David, 1944-
Ossorgin, Michael
Sperry, Paul
Taylor, Rose
Breeskin, Adelyn Dohme, 1896-1986
O'Grady, William
Raditsa, Leo
Griffin, Jonathan
Bell, Charles
Minear, Paul S. (Paul Sevier), 1906-2007
Starr, David
Robertson, Martin
Eisenbud, David
Quint, Peter E.
Drake, Stillman
Dorfman, Alan H.
King William Players
Friday night lecture
Lecture schedule
-
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PDF Text
Text
ST
JoHN's CoLLEGE
ANNAPOLIS. MARYLAND 21404
FouNom IG'IG A'> KINe WiLLIAM\ ScHOOl
FORMAL LECTURE/CONCERT SCHEDULE - 1979-1980
September 14
Miss Eva Brann, Tutor
Plato's Theory of Ideas
St. John's College, Annapolis
September 21
Mr. Richard Sacks
Columbia University
'Shining Hector' and the
HOllow Norms of Heroism
Mr. Jacques Barzun
Charles Scribner's Sons
Tolstoy and History:
A Look at the Theory in
War and Peace
October 5
Mr. Edward G. Sparrow, Dean
St. John's College, Annapolis
The Love of Truth and
the Liberal Arts
October 12
Long Weekend
No Lecture
october 19
Mr. David Jones, Tutor
St. John 1 s College, Santa Fe
Further Remarks on Value
October 26
Renaldo Reyes - Piano
Concert
November 2
Mr. Bruce Venable, Tutor
Let Man's Soul be a Sphere"
The Soul, Mathematics, and Music
September 28
St. John's College, Santa Fe
11
November 9
Professor Creighton Gilbert
Cornell University
Who Painted the Life of
St. Francis at Assisi? A
New slant on a Classic Puzzle
November 16
All College Seminar
No Lecture
November 23
Thanksgiving Holiday
No Lecture
November 30
Professor Marjorie Grene
Douglass College
Rutgers University
Changing Concepts of
Darwinian Evolution
December 7
Play
No Lecture
December 14 January 2
Winter Vacation
No Lectures
Professor Irving Younger
The Idea of Sanctuary
January 4
Cornell Law School
January 11
Jan diGaetani, Mezzosoprano
Leslie Guinn, Baritone
n Lli'HONE
--101-1.6-l- 7 371
Concert
�FORMAL LECTURE/CONCERT SCHEDULE - 1979-1980
PAGE TWO
January 18
Professor John Hollander
Yale University
Poetry Reading
January 25
Dr. Wilbur Knorr
The Riddle of Euclid's
Fifth Book
New York
(Stanford University)
February 1
Professor Leonard Clark
Earlham College
Hume and the Mechanical Self
February 8
Long Weekend
No Lecture
February 15
Mr. Mortimer Adler
World Community and Cultural
Pluralism
Institute for Philosophical
Research
February 22
Professor Henry Veatch
Georgetown University
Who Is a Logician, and
What Does He Do?
February 29
Dr. Gerald Holton
Jefferson Laboratories
Harvard University
Einstein as Builder of a
World View
Spring vacation
No Lectures
March 21
Mr. David Starr, Tutor
St. John's College, Annapolis
March 28
Emerson Quartet
Beyond the Portals of the Paths
of Night and Day: A Translation
and Interpretation of The Fragments
Concert
of Parmenides
Mr. Nicholas Maistrellis, Tutor
Darwin's 'Origin of Species'
March 7 March 14
April 4
St. John's College, Annapolis
April ll
Mr. Joe Sachs, Tutor
St. John's College, Annapolis
An Outline of the Argument of
Aristotle's Metaphysics
April 18
Mr. Hilail Gildin
Liberal Arts Institute
Queens College
The Design of Rousseau's
Social Contract
April 25
Mr. Richard ttiJeigle, President
St. John's College
Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching
May 2
Father Louis Bouyer
May 9
Real Olympics
The Logos in the Gospel
According to St. John
No Lecture
May 16
Commencement Weekend
No Lecture
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
formallectureseriesannapolis
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
2 pages
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Office of the Dean
Title
A name given to the resource
Formal Lecture/Concert Schedule - 1979-1980
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1979-1980
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts for the 1979-1980 Academic Year.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lecture Schedule 1979-1980
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Brann, Eva T. H.
Sacks, Richard
Barzun, Jacques, 1907-2012
Sparrow, Edward G.
Jones, David
Reyes, Renaldo
Venable, Bruce
Gilbert, Creighton
Grene, Marjorie, 1910-2009
Younger, Irving
diGaetani, Jan
Guinn, Leslie
Hollander, John
Knorr, Wilbur
Clark, Leonard
Adler, Mortimer Jerome, 1902-2001
Veatch, Henry
Holton, Gerald
Starr, David
Maistrellis, Nicholas
Sachs, Joe
Gildin, Hilail
Weigle, Richard Daniel, 1912-
King William Players
Relation
A related resource
September 14, 1979. Brann, Eva T. H. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/1239" title="Plato's theory of ideas">Plato's theory of ideas</a> (typescript)
April 11, 1980. Sachs, Joe. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3726" title="An outline of the argument of Aristotle's Metaphysics">An outline of the argument of Aristotle's Metaphysics</a> (typescript)
Friday night lecture
Lecture schedule
-
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PDF Text
Text
ST
JoHN's CoLLEGE
ANNAPOLIS. MARYLAND 21404
fouNmo lh% A'i K1r--1e> Wullr\M';
.IJrHOO
FORMAL LECTURE/CONCERT SCHEDULE - 1980-1981
September 12
Mr. Edward G. Sparrow, Dean
St. John's College, Annapolis
"What Shall I Do?"
September 19
Mr. Scott Stripling, Tutor
St. John's College, Annapolis
What St. John's College
Owes Rene Descartes
September 26
Dr. William J. Bennett
National·Humanities Center
An American Scholar:
The Young James Madison
october 3
Professor John Hollander
Yale University
Miltonic Origins
october 10
Long Weekend
No Lecture
october 17
Mr. Christopher Bruell
On The Original Meaning
of Political Philosophy
Department of Political Science
Boston College
october 24
Mr. Thomas Mark, Tutor
St. John's College, Annapolis
Spinoza's Theory of
the Human Mind
october 31
Mr. Michael H. Hart
Trinity University, Texas
The Abundance of Life
in the Universe
November 7
Mr. Leo Raditsa, Tutor
St. John's College, Annapolis
Persians in Asia Minor
November 14
Felger Consort
Concert
November 21
Professor Richard Mitchell
Glassboro State College
Underground in Outer Space:
A Report to the Academy
November 28
Thanksgiving Holiday
No Lecture
December 5
King William Players
Play
December 12January 4
Winter Vacation
No Lecture
January 9
Mr. Mortimer Adler
Institute for Philosophical
Research
Liberty,
Justice
January 16
Emerson Quartet
Concert
January 23
Mr. Charles L. Kent
Chevy Chase, Maryland
Ethics in the Practice
of Law
*
Title to be announced
TELEPHONE -iOI- J(o3- l :\71
Equality, and
�PAGE TWO
FORMAL LECTURE/CONCERT SCHEDULE - 1980-81
January 30
Mr. Bruce Venable, Tutor
Ste John's College, Santa Fe
Proclus on Prayer
February 6
Long Weekend
No Lecture
February 13
Mr. John Blackmore
Alexandria, Virginia
Galilee:
The Fighting
Physicist
February 20
Mr. Douglas Allanbrook, Tutor
St. John's College, Annapolis
Truth-telling and the Iliad
February 27
Mr. Michael Littleton, Tutor
St. John's College, Annapolis
March 5 -· 16
Spring Vacation
Chasing the Goat from
the Sky -- An Approach to
Dante 1 s Divine Comedy
No Lecture
March 20
Mr. Michael Campbell, piano
Concert
March 27
All-College Seminar
No Lecture
April 3
Mr. Charles Price
Theological Seminary
Alexandria, Virginia
Kiekegaard as Antithesis
April 10
Professor Hippocrates G. Apostle
Grinnell College, Iowa
Ancient and Modern
Definitions of Mathematics
April 17
Professor V.Jilliam J. Quirk
School of Law
University of South Caroline
Is the United States
Seriously Thinking of Going
Back on the Gold Standard?
April 24
Professor Oleg Grabar
Department of Fine Arts
Harvard University
Islamic Ceramics:
A Case
Study from Eastern Iran
May l
Professor William Kristol
University of Pennsylvania
,The Federalist on
Self-Government
May 8
Mr. Peter Arnott
Winchester, Massachusetts
Presentation of the Bacchae by
Euripides done with Marionettes
May 15
Commencement V.Jeekend
No Lecture
*
Title to be announced
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Description
An account of the resource
Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts.<br /><br />For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <strong><a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a></strong>. <br /><br />Click on <strong><a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.<br /><br />A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://anchor.fm/greenfieldlibrary" title="Anchor.fm">Anchor.fm</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a>, <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy84Yzk5MzdhYy9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw" title="Google Podcasts">Google Podcasts</a>, or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
St. John's College Greenfield Library
Title
A name given to the resource
St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
formallectureseriesannapolis
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Page numeration
Number of pages in the original item.
3 pages
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
paper
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Office of the Dean
Title
A name given to the resource
Formal Lecture/Concert Schedule - 1980-1981
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1980-1981
Description
An account of the resource
Schedule of lectures and concerts for the 1980-1981 Academic Year, including Summer 1981.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
Lecture Schedule 1980-1981
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Annapolis, MD
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
St. John's College
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
text
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
St. John's College owns the rights to this publication.
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
pdf
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Sparrow, Edward G.
Stripling, Scott Randall
Bennett, William J. (William John), 1943-
Hollander, John
Bruell, Christopher, 1942-
Mark, Thomas
Hart, Michael H.
Raditsa, Leo
Mitchell, Richard
Adler, Mortimer Jerome, 1902-2001
Kent, Charles L.
Venable, Bruce
Blackmore, John
Allanbrook, Douglas
Littleton, Michael
Campbell, Michael
Price, Charles
Apostle, Hippocrates George
Quirk, William J.
Grabar, Oleg
Kristol, William
Arnott, Peter
King William Players
Friday night lecture
Lecture schedule
-
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PDF Text
Text
•
ST
JoHN's CoLLEGE
P.O. BOX 1671
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND 21404
FouNDED 1696 AS KING W il li AM's ScHOOl
LECTURE/CONCERT SCHEDULE - FIRST SEMESTER 1986-87
September 5
Mr . Thomas J. Slakey, Dean
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland
Inquiry and Insight
September 12
Mr. Robert Goldwin , Alumni
American enterprise Institute
Washington, D.C .
How to Read the Original
Const itution on Subjects
It Doesn ' t Mention
September 19
Mr . Henry Higuera, Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland
Don Quixote and Dulcinea:
Eros and Empire
September 26
Mr. Robert Bart, Tutor
St. John's Col~ege
Santa Fe, New Mexico
The Miraculous Moonlight :
Flannery O'Connor's Story,
The Artificial Nigger
October 3
All College Seminar
October 1 0
Long Weekend
No Lecture
October 1 7
Mr. Michael Comenetz, Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis , Maryl a nd
Pushkin and th e Poetry
of Russia
October 24
Mr. Joe Sachs, Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis, Maryland
God o f Abraham , Isaac,
and Jacob
October 31
Mr. Jonathan Cull er
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York
Post-Structuralist
Criticism
November 7
Mr. Houston Baker
Univers ity of Penn syl vania
Philadelphia, PA
The Origin s of the
Sl ave Narrative
November 14
Mr. Edward Sparrow, Tutor
St. John ' s College
Annapolis, Maryland
Only Mercy Could
Make Hell
November 21
Mr. Laurence Birns
Counci l on Hemispheric Affairs
Washington, D.C.
Diplomacy or Ideology:
The Search for a
Meaningful Lat i n
American Policy
TE LEPHONE 301 -263-2371
�LECTURE/CONCERT SCHEDULE - FIRST SEMESTER 1986-87 - PAGE 2
November 28
Thanksgiving Holiday
December 5
Concert
December 12January 4
Winter Holiday
No Lectures
January 9, 1987
Mr. David Bolotin, Tutor
St. John's College
The Life of Philosophy and
the Immortality of the
Soul: An Introduction
to Plato's Phaedo
Santa Fe, New Mexico
January 16
Mr. Thomas Banchoff
Brown University
Providence, Rhode Island
No Lecture
The Fourth Dimension and
Computer Animated Geometry
�ST JoHN's
•
CoLLEGE
P.O. BOX 1671
ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND 21404
fOUNDED 1696 AS K ING WILLIAM'S SCHOOL
LECTURE/CONCERT SCHEDULE - SECOND SEMESTER 1986-87
January 23
Mr. Bruce Venable, Tutor
St. John's College College
Santa Fe, New Mexico
History and Non-Being
January 30
Mr. Alasda ir Mac intyre
Vanderbilt University
Nashville, Tennessee
The Good, the Desired,
and the Desirable
February 6
Long Weekend
No Lecture
February 13
Mr. Mortimer Adler
Institute for Philosophical
Research
Chicago, Illinois
The Two Bicentennia l s
February 20
Ms. Ann Hartle
Emory University
Atlanta, Georgia
Wonder and Death: The Human
Beginnings of Philosophy
February 27
Concert
March 5-22
Spring Vacation
No Lectures
March 27
Mr. Alan Greenberg
New Haven, Conn
The Architecture of
Democracy
April 3
Concert
April 10
Mr. Elliott Zuckerman, Tutor
St. John's College
Annapolis
The Chopin Mazurkas:
A Talk with Piano
Il lustrations
April 17
Ms. Pamela Kraus, Tutor
St. John ' s College
Annapolis
Cartesian 'Soul' and the
'Whole Nature o f Man '
April 24
Ms. Judith Van Herik
Pennsyl vania State University
University Park, Pennsyl v ania
May 1
Mr. Charles Jones
Department of Lingui stics
University of Wisconsin
Madison , Wisconsin
May 8
Mr. Walter Sterling, Tutor
st . John ' s College
Annapol i s
May 1 5
Mr. Peter Arnott
Winchester, Mass
TE LEPHONE 301 -263-2371
Freud on Gender
and I llusion
Some Things You Always
Knew About the Language
You Speak*
but were never taught
The Character of
Robert E. Lee
Marionette Performance
of Hippolytus
�
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Lecture/Concert Schedule - First Semester 1986-87 & Second Semester 1986-87
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1986-1987
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Slakey, Thomas
Goldwin, Robert A., 1922-2010
Higuera, Henry, 1952-
Bart, Robert S.
Comenetz, Michael, 1944-
Sachs, Joe
Culler, Jonathan D.
Baker, Houston A., Jr., 1943-
Sparrow, Edward
Berns, Laurence, 1928-
Bolotin, David, 1944-
Banchoff, Thomas
Venable, Bruce
MacIntyre, Alasdair C.
Adler, Mortimer Jerome, 1902-2001
Hartle, Ann
Greenberg, Alan
Zuckerman, Elliott
Kraus, Pamela
Van Herik, Judith
Jones, Charles
Sterling, Walter
Arnott, Peter
King William Players
Relation
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October 24, 1986. Sachs, Joe. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3717" title="God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.">God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.</a> (audio)
October 24, 1986. Sachs, Joe. <a href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/show/3718" title="God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.">God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.</a> (typescript)
Friday night lecture
Lecture schedule
-
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Text
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�Editor:
Leo Raditsa
Managing Editor:
Thomas Parran, Jr.
Editorial Assistant:
Janet Durholz
Consulting Editors:
Eva Brann,
Curtis A. Wilson.
Editor's Note
Unsolicited articles, stories, and poems are welcome,
but should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed
envelope in each instance. Reasoned comments are also
welcome.
Requests for subscriptions should be sent to The St.
John's Review, St. John's College, Annapolis, MD 21404.
Although there are currently no subscription fees, volun·
tary contributions toward production costs are gratefully
received.
THE ST. JOHN'S REVIEW (formerly THE COLLEGE) is pub·
lished by the Office of the Dean, St. John's College, Annapolis,
Maryland 21404. Edwin J. Delattre, President, Edward G. Spar·
row, Dean. Published thrice yearly, usually in autumn, winter
and summer.
Volume XXXIIl
AUTUMN 1981
Number 1
©1981, St. John's College. All rights reserved. Reproduction in
whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
ISSN 0277-4720
Cover: Superimposed on Thomas Jefferson's "Rough draft" of the Declaration of Independence (composed between June 11 and 28, 1776) upon
a Mathew B. Brady photograph of President Abraham Lincoln with
General George B. McClellan, October 4, 1862. This latter photograph
was taken at McClellan's headquarters near Sharpsburg, Maryland, about
two and one· half weeks after the Battle of Antietam.
Composition: Britton Composition Co.
Printing: The John D. Lucas Printing Co.
�~HESTJOHNSREVIEWAUTUMN81
3
Inventing the Past Henry V. jaffa
20
Four Poems Laurence Josephs
22
The World of Physics and the
"Natural" World jacob Klein
35
"Sexism" is Meaningless Michael Levin
41
Going to See the Leaves Linda Collins
46
One Day in the Life of the New
York Times and Pravda in the
World: Which is more informative?
Lev Navrozov
62
The Incompleteness Theory David Guaspari
72
Philosophy and Spirituality in
Plotinus Bruce Venable
81
OCCASIONAL DISCOURSES
The Permanent Part of the College Eva T. H. Brann
84
FIRST READINGS
Sidney Hook, Philosophy and Public Policy,
review by Nelson Lund
V. S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River, review
by Adam Wasserman.
1
�Abraham Lincoln, photograph by Mathew B. Brady,
probably taken in February 1860. From the Collections
of the Library of Congress.
2
AUTUMN 1981
�Inventing the Past
Garry Wills's Inventing America and the Pathology of
Ideological Scholarship
Harry V. Jaffa
And this too is denied even to God, to make that which has been not to have been.
Thomas Aquinas
Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of Independence is a book that should never
have been' published, certainly not in its present
form. Its errors are so egregious that any intelligent graduate student-or undergraduate student-checking many
of its assertions against their alleged sources, would have
demanded, at the least, considerable revision.
It has been widely hailed as a great contribution to our
understanding of the American political tradition. There
have been "rave" reviews in the New York Times Book
Review, the New York Review of Books, the Saturday Review, the New Republic, the American Spectator, and National Review, to mention but a few of many. It has been
praised by S\lCh glittering eminences of the academy, and
of the historical profession, as David Brion Davis, Edmund
Morgan, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. These are men who
can, if they wish, split a hair at fifty paces. In this instance,
their critical faculties seem to have gone into a narcotic
G
ARRY WILLS'S
Henry Salvatori Research Professor of Political Philosophy at Clare·
mont Men's College and Claremont Graduate School, Harry V. Jaffa
has recently published The Conditions of Freedom (The John Hopkins
University Press 1975) and How to Think about the American Revolution
(Carolina Academic Press 1978) He is editor of, and contributor to, the
forthcoming Statesmanship: Essays in Honor or Sir Winston Spencer
Churchill (Carolina Academic Press 1981).
THE ST.JOHNSREVJEW
trance, proving the truth of the aphorism that ideology is
the opiate of the intellectuals. Among the reviewers hitherto, only Professor Kenneth Lynn, writing in Commentary, October, 1978, has seen Wills's book for what it is.
"Inventing America," he writes, udoes not help us to un~
derstand Thomas Jefferson, but its totally unearned acclaim tells us a good deal about modern intellectuals and
their terrible need for radical myths." The myth promoted by Inventing America "is that the Declaration is
not grounded in Lockean individualism, as we have been
accustomed to think, but is a communitarian manifesto
derived from the common-sense philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment. .. " By this myth, says Lynn, Wills
would have "transmogrified" a ~~new nation, conceived in
liberty ... into a new nation, conceived in communality,"
and thus have supplied "the history of the Republic with
as pink a dawn as possible."
I think that Professor Lynn is correct as far as he goes.
But he does not go far enough. Inventing America was received with virtually the same enthusiasm on the Right as
on the Left. The reviews in National Review and the
American Spectator were both written by current editors
of National Review, surely the most authoritative of conservative journals* (Ronald Reagan's message to the
*See Postscript
3
�Twentieth Anniversary banquet declared he had read
every issue from cover to cover.) But the current editors,
we must note, are apostolic successors to Wills himself,
who wrote for the journal for a number of years. His account of his days as an NR staffer may be found in
Confessions of a Conservative, published shortly after Inventing America. The title of the book is not meant in
irony. Wills thinks of himself as a Conservative still, and
somehow traces all his serious ideas to St. Augustine. At
the deepest level of Wills's being, there is indeed a kind of
Lutheran hatred (and Luther was an Augustinian Monk)
of classical rationalism. Lynn calls Wills "the leftist
(formerly rightist) writer." Yet there is more inner consistency between the two "Willses" than Lynn perceives.
That is because there is more inner consistency between
the Right and the Left than is commonly supposed.
where Inventing America "comes
from," to employ a popular neologism, one must read
an essay Wills published in 1964, entitled "The Convenient State." It was originally published in a volume
edited by the late Frank Meyer (an NR editor, and Wills's
close friend), called What is Conservatism? Later, it achieved
neo-canonical status, by. its inclusion in an anthology of
American Conservative Thought in the Twentieth Century,
edited by NR's Editor of Editors, William F. Buckley, Jr.
(It is only fair to add that an essay of mine, "On the Nature of Civil and Religious Liberty," was included in the
same volume. My essay, however, represented Conservative heresy; Wills's Conservative orthodoxy.) Frank Meyer
and I exchanged dialectical blows in the pages of NR in
1965, after Meyer published an article attacking Abraham
Lincoln as the enemy of American constitutionalism and
American freedom. (Meyer's own best known book is called
In Defense of Freedom.) Meyer in 1965 and Wills in 1964,
follow exactly the same line: Calhoun is their hero and
their authority, Lincoln the villain of American history. As
we shall see, both of them, in the decisive sense, follow a
pattern of thought which seems to have been worked out
for them by Willmoore Kendall. Kendall was a professor of
political science at Yale when Wills was a graduate student in classics there. For Wills, as for Meyer and Kendall,
there is no contradiction, nor even any paradox, in identifying the cause of constitutionalism and freedom with the
defense of chattel slavery. For all three, the defense of
freedom turns, in the decisive case, into the defense of
the freedom of_ slaveowners.
The main thesis of Wills's 1964 essay was that something called "rationalism" is the root of all political evil.
This attack on "reason" has been the stock-in-trade of
Conservatism since Rousseau's attack on the Enlightenment was fortified by Burke's polemics against the French
Revolution. Most present-day Conservatives would be
horrified to learn that they are disciples of Rousseau, yet
such is surely the case. For it was Rousseau who, in going
all the way back to the "state of nature" discovered that
T
4
O UNDERSTAND
man by nature was free, but not rational. The celebration
of freedom, divorced from reason, has a theoretical foundation in Rousseau which is nowhere else to be found.
The Rousseauan denigration of reason, and the elevation
of sentiment to take its place, is the core of nineteenth
century romanticism, both in its Left phases (e.g. anarchism, syndicalism, socialism, communism), and in its
Right phases (e.g. monarchism, clericalism, feudalism,
slavery). Romantic nationalism has been equally a phenomenon of the Right and of the Left. "Rationalism,"
Wills declared as a man of the Right, "leads to a sterile
paradox, to an ideal freedom that is a denial of freedom."
What such a remark means can be inferred only from the
use to which it is put. Here it clearly refers to the question
of slavery, and to the Civil War. Concerning slavery, heremarks, somewhat vaguely, "One cannot simply ask whether
a thing is just." Certainly, to ask whether slavery was just
was never sufficient, but it was always necessary. One
cannot distinguish a greater from a lesser evil, unless one
can distinguish evil from good. Wills concedes that "the
abolition of slavery [may have] been just," but insists nevertheless that the only politically relevant question was
"whether it [was] constitutional." For "what is meant by
constitutional government" Wills turns to that statesman
of the Old South, the spiritual Father of the Confederacy,
John C. Calhoun. According to Calhoun, we are told, constitutional gov·ernment means Hthe government in which
all the free forms of society-or as many as possible-retain their life and 'concur' in a political area of peaceful
cooperation and compromise." We can now better understand Wills's polemic against "rationalism," since among
the "free forms" which, by the foregoing statement,
ought to be retained, was the institution of chattel slavery.
It was not the slaves whose concurrence Calhoun's constitutional doctrine required, but only those who had an
interest in preserving, protecting, and defending slavery.
Calhoun provided the slaveholders a constitutional mechanism, in the supposed rights of nullification and secession, to veto any national (or federal) legislation that they
regarded as hostile to the interests of slavery. Calhoun's
constitutionalism, based upon supposed rights of the
states, was originally forged in the fires of the nullification
controversy, between 1828 and 1839. Later it was elaborated in two books, the Disquisition on Government, and
the Discourse on the Constitution. Calhoun's main dialectical adversary in 1830 was no one less than the Father of
the Constitution, James Madison, although his principal
political adversary was President Andrew Jackson, backed
in the Senate by Daniel Webster. It was as the heir of
Madison, Jackson, Webster (and others) that Lincoln compounded his constitutional doctrine. Lincoln's genius
proved itself less by its originality than by the ability to reduce a complex matter to its essentials, and to express
those essentials in profound and memorable prose. The
essence of a constitutional regime, according to Lincoln,
was that it was based upon the consent of the governed.
And the consent of the governed was required, because
AUTUMN 1981
�"all men are created equal." In 1964, Wills rejected Lincolnian constitutionalism because (like the Declaration) it
was rational. In 1978, he rejects it because it is based upon
an allegedly mistaken understanding of the Declaration.
In Inventing America, he will undercut what Lincoln has
made of the Declaration, by unleashing a barrage of fanciful scholarship designed to transform the Declaration's
lucid doctrine of self-evident truths into esoteric eighteenth century mysteries.
Wills's 1964 essay follows the conventional path of Confederate apologists since the Civil War (and Wills is a native of Atlanta). He tries to make it appear that, on the one
hand, Lincoln's war was an abolitionist crusade and, on
the other, that the South was defending, not slavery, but
constitutionalism. Nothing could be further from the
truth. As we shall presently see, however, Inventing America is less a book about Thomas jefferson and the Declaration of Independence, than it is a book against Abraham
Lincoln and the Gettysburg Address.
make the record straight, as against the
1964 Garry Wills and his preceptors of the Right, as
to what purposes were in conflict, that led to the Civil
War, or the War for the Union. (It was not a War between
the States.) First of all, there was no disagreement between Abraham Lincoln and the followers of John C. Calhoun that slavery was a lawful institution in some fifteen
of the States. Moreover, it was agreed that where slavery
was lawful, it was under the exclusive control of the
States, and that the federal government had no jurisdiction over it. In his inaugural address, Lincoln quoted from
a statement he had made many times before, in which he
said that he had "no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where
it exists." He said that he believed that he had "no lawful
right to do so," and added that he "had no inclination to
do so." Lincoln's anti-slavery policy was comprehended
completely by his avowed purpose to have excluded slavery, by federal law, from the national territories, where it
had not already established itself. It is true that Lincoln
believed, as, indeed, his pro-slavery antagonists believed,
that slavery as an institution in the United States was
highly volatile, and that if its expansion were prevented,
its contraction would set in. And, it was further believed-on both sides-that if contraction once set in,
slavery would be, in Lincoln's words, "in course of ulti~
mate extinction."
Lincoln believed that, in the understanding of the
Founding Fathers, slavery was an evil. It was an evil condemned by the principles of the Declaration, which Lincoln called "the father of all moral principle among us." It
was an evil to which certain constitutional guarantees
were given, in the political arrangements of the Founding,
because at the time there did not appear to be any alternative arrangements which would not have been disruptive
L
ET US HERE
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
of the Union. Yet the Fathers showed their opposition to
its perpetuation in various ways: by the limit placed upon
the foreign slave tra-de, and by the prohibition upon slavery in the Northwest Territory, among others. They had
left the institution of slavery where, to repeat, "the public
mind might rest in the belief that it was in course of ultimate extinction." Such a belief, Lincoln held, was absolutely necessary, if the slavery question were not to agitate
the public mind, and threaten the perpetuity of the Union.
Yet the expectations of the Fathers had been upset: by
the invention of the cotton gin, by the progress of the factory system, by the enormous expansion of the cotton
economy, and with the latter, the expansion of the demand for slave labor. These changes culminated, in time,
in the most sinister change of all: that change in at least a
part of the public mind which, from regarding slavery as
at best a necessary evil, now began to look upon it as a positive good. With this, slavery sought expansion into new
lands: into the lands acquired from France in 1803 (the
Louisiana Purchase), and into the lands acquired from
Mexico as a result of the war that ended in 1848. To prevent this expansion of slavery, the Republican Party was
formed in 1854, and, in 1860, elected Abraham Lincoln to
be sixteenth President of the United States.
The great ante-bellum political question, the one that
dwarfed and absorbed all others, was the question of
whether slavery should be permitted in the territories of
the United States, while they were territories, and before
they became states. The dialectics of this dispute became
as complicated as any thirteenth century theological controversy. Yet in the end the legal and political questions
resolved themselves into moral questions, and the moral
questions into a question of both the meaning and the
authority of the Declaration of Independence. The Constitution itself was ambiguous-if not actually self-contradictory-as to whether Negro slaves were human persons
or chattels. In fact, the Constitution refers to slaves
(which are never explicitly mentioned before the Thirteenth Amendment) only as persons, even in the fugitive
slave clause. But by implication, it also refers to them as
chattels, since they were so regarded by the laws of the
states that the fugitive slave clause recognized. But the
logic of the idea of a chattel excludes that of personality,
while that of a person excludes that of chatteldom. The
Fifth Amendment of the Constitution forbade the United
States to deprive any person of life, liberty, or property,
except by due process of law. Did this forbid the United
States to deprive any citizen of a slave state of his Negro
chattel, when he entered the territory of Kansas? Or did it
forbid the United States to deprive any Negro person of
his liberty, when he entered that same territory? Since the
language of the Constitution was equally consistent with
two mutually exclusive interpretations, there was no way
to resolve the meaning of the Constitution, from the language of the Constitution alone. For Lincoln the question
was resolved by the Declaration of Independence, by the
proposition that all men are created equal. The right of
5
�persons to own property under the Constitution as under
any substance. Rather was he "the great artist of America's
the laws of nature and of nature's God," was derivative
romantic period." By his "democratic-oracular tone" he
from their right, as human beings, to life and to liberty.
Such an understanding of the Declaration alone gave life
and meaning to the Constitution. Wills, in "The Conve·
nient State," repudiates the Declaration. In Inventing
America, he denies that it has any such meaning as Lincoln found in it. In the course of denying that meaning,
he denies some of the most undeniable facts of American
history.
invested the Declaration with a meaning that the Gettysburg Address canonized, but which has nothing in com·
mon with the document drafted by Thomas Jefferson in
1776!
The Civil War was not, however, fought because of any
merely abstract moral judgment concerning the ethics of
treating human beings as chattels. It was fought because
eleven states of the Union "seceded," meaning that they
repudiated and took arms against the Constitution and
the laws of the United States. They did so because they
refused to accept the lawful election of a President who
believed that slavery ought to be excluded by law from
United States territories. (The President, by himself, had
no authority to accomplish that exclusion. Nor was there
a majority in Congress to pass such a law, before the representatives of the "seceding" states left Washington.)
Slavery was, in fact, abolished as a result of the Civil War.
This abolition was accomplished, in part, by the Emancipation Proclamation. It was consummated by the Thir-
11
*
*
*
in the free states of the antebellum United States, for public opinion to acquiesce
in the proposition that slavery was in itself neither good
nor evil, and that it was best to leave to the people of a territory the decision whether they should permit slavery as
one of their domestic institutions. This was the famous
doctrine of "popular sovereignty," advanced by Lincoln's
redoubtable opponent, Stephen A. Douglas. Douglas's
doctrine was both appealing and plausible, since it seemed
to rest upon and embody the very kernel of the idea of
popular self-government, that "the people shall be judge."
Here is how Lincoln-dealt with it. The following is from
Lincoln's Peoria speech, of October 1854:
I
T WAS NOT POSSIBLE,
The doctrine of self-government is right-absolutely and eternally right-but it has no just application as here attempted.
Or perhaps I should rather say that whether it has such application depends upon whether a negro is not or is a man. If he
is not a man, why in that case, he who is a man may, as a matter of self-government, do just as he pleases with him. But if
the negro is a man, is it not to that extent a total destruction
of self-government, to say that he too shall not govern himself? When the white man governs himself that is self-government; but when he governs himself, and also governs another
man, that is more than self-government-that is despotism. If
the negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me
that "all men are created equal;" and that there can be no
moral right in connection with one man's making a slave of
another. [All emphasis is Lincoln's.]
I have quoted so much of classic Lincolniana here, to
bring before the reader an example of that reasoning that
Garry Wills dismisses and ridicules. For Lincoln, of
course, the article of his "ancient faith" was such, not be-
cause it was inherited, but because it was true. Inventing
America was written for no other reason than to obfuscate
and deny what Lincoln here affirmed. The Declaration,
Wills writes, "is written in the lost language of the Englightenment." "It is dark with unexamined lights." It embodies "the dry intellectual formulae of the eighteenth
century" which according to Wills "were traced in fine
acids of doubt, leaving them difficult to decipher across
the intervals of time and fashion." Wills does not think
that Lincoln-like Calhoun-was a political thinker of
6
teenth Amendment. The former was a war measure, aimed
at the property of the enemies of the United States, in
arms against the United States. But we cannot forget that
the destruction of property by the Proclamation had a
double effect, due to the peculiarity of the "peculiar institution" at which it was directed. By the laws governing
this institution, certain human beings were legally defined
as chattels. Interestingly, the root meanings of both "peculiar" and of "chattel" refer to "cattle." But some eightysix thousand of these human beings who had hitherto
been regarded by law as no more than cattle, enlisted and
fought in the Union armies, many of them sealing with
their blood their right to that freedom that the Declaration of Independence had proclaimed to be the universal
birthright of mankind. Nevertheless, the Civil War was
not, we repeat, an abolitionist crusade. It was a war to preserve the Union, to prove that there could not be a successful appeal, as Lincoln said, from ballots to bullets.
Emancipation and abolition became, in the course of the
war, and because of the war, indispensable constitutional
means to a constitutional end. Let us never forget this just
but tragic consummation of our history: that men who
had been called cattle proved their manhood in arms, and
provided indispensable help to save a Union which thereby
became theirs. They also vindicated the Declaration ofln·
dependence, by proving that human laws which rest upon
a denial of the laws of nature cannot long endure. The
Union endured, but only by repudiating that denial and
becoming a different Union. The original Union-or nation-embodied the Original Sin of human slavery. With·
out "a new birth of freedom" it must needs have perished
from the earth. It is this understanding of the Declaration
of Independence, in the light of what "fourscore and seven
years" had revealed as to its meaning, that is immortalized
by the Gettysburg Address, but that Inventing America
maliciously attacks.
AUTUMN 1981
�in 1964 that in a constitutional
regime "the free forms of society ... 'concur' in ...
peaceful cooperation and compromise," he was
using Calhounian Confederate code language, implying
the rightfulness and constitutionality of "secession." Con·
versely, he was implying the wrongfulness and unconstitutionality of Lincoln's executive action to preserve the
Constitution and the Union. But what was this vaunted
''right of secession"? Lincoln called it an "ingenious
sophism" according to which "any State of the Union
may, consistently with the national Constitution, and
therefore lawfully and peacefully, withdraw from the
Union without the consent of the Union or of any other
State." [Lincoln's emphasis.] But, Lincoln asked, if one
can reject the constitutional decision of a constitutional
majority, whenever one dislikes that decision, how can
there be any free government at all? Unanimity is impossible. Government that is both constitutional and popular
also becomes impossible, if the principle of "secession" is
once granted. With what right, Lincoln asked, can the
seceders deny the right of secession against themselves, if
a discontented minority should arise amongst them?
In 1848 Henry David Thoreau published his essay, "Civil
Disobedience." At the same time, Thoreau called for the
secession of Massachusetts from the Union. He adopted
the pattern of abolitionists generally, who declared that
there should be "No Union with slaveholders." Thus
Thoreau invoked an alleged right of secession against slavery, as Calhoun's followers would invoke it for the sake of
slavery. But Thoreau brushed aside any such notion as
that of the "concurrent majority" in Calhoun's sense.
Thoreau saw quite clearly that the argument of a minority
veto upon majority action, in any matter of interest that
could be called one of conscience, did not admit of any
stopping point, short of the minority of one. Thoreau declared frankly that, although he preferred "that government ... which governs least," he would not be satisfied
except with that government "which governs not at all."
Thoreau believed in the withering away of the state quite
W
HEN WILLS WROTE
as much as Karl Marx, and saw the best regime as an anar-
chist regime, also quite as much as Marx. But Lincoln, in
1861, showed by unrefutable logic that Calhoun's premises
led to Thoreau's conclusions. In short, despotism leads to
anarchy, as surely as anarchy leads to despotism. The
Garry Wills of 1964 defended despotism. In the later sixties and early seventies, Garry Wills joined those who
were protesting and demonstrating in behalf of their
Thoreauvian consciences, in behalf of those causes
which, in the name of conscience, would arrest the process of constitutional government. But the earlier Wills
and the later Wills are like two segments of the same circle. Each leads into the other: like anarchy and despotism.
I
*
*
*
differs from the later one, as John
C. Calhoun differs from Henry David Thoreau, so also
do the two "Willses" differ as George Fitzhugh and Karl
F THE EARLIER WILLS
THE ST.JOHNSREVIEW
Marx. Fitzhugh (1806-1881), after the death of Calhoun
in 1850, became the leading publicist and intellectual protagonist of the thesis that slavery was a positive good. Of
all the pro-slavery writers, none roused the anger of Abraham Lincoln more than he did. Yet Lincoln viewed Fitzhugh's argument with a certain grim satisfaction, since it
arrived at the conclusion that Lincoln always insisted followed from the pro-slavery premises: namely, that if slavery was a positive good for black men, then it must also be
good for white men. Calhoun had already argued that, in
the burgeoning conflict in the industrial North, between
capital and labor, the South, with its stability rooted in
chattel slavery, would be the force making for equilibrium
between the two great factions. Fitzhugh went a step farther: only by the enslavement of the white work force,
could the North achieve that equilibrium. By way of contrast, Lincoln declared, in March, 1860, "I am glad to
know there is a system of labor where the laborer can
strike if he wants to! I would to God that such a system
prevailed all over the world."
It is a matter of the highest moment for students of the
political scene today, to understand that what is now called
Conservatism, and what is now called Liberalism (although
neither is properly so called), have their common ground
in the rejection of the principles of the American Founding, above all in the rejection of the principles of the Declaration of Independence. On both sides, there is a peculiar
hatred of Abraham Lincoln, because of the renewed vitality
he gave to the authority of the Declaration, in and through
the Gettysburg Address. The Liberalism of today-or,
more properly the Radical Liberalism of today-stems
largely from the Abolitionism of the ante-bellum North
(not to mention its successor in the Reconstruction era).
And the abolitionist critique of Northern free society, and
the critique by Fitzhugh and his pro-slavery coadjutors of
that same free society, were not only virtually identical,
but were hardly distinguishable from the Marxist critique
of capitalism.
Anyone today reading the pro-slavery literature of the
ante-bellum South, must be struck by the constant reference to Northern workers as ''wage slaves." Indeed, if
someone reading these tracts did not know where they
came from, and when, he might reasonably suppose that
they were written by Marxists of a later period, or even by
Bolsheviks. The general argument against Northern capitalism-which as we noted was shared with the Abolitionists-ran as follows. The "free workers" depended upon
the owners for their livelihood. But the owners employed
them only when they could make a profit from their labor.
There was no provision for the workers during the slack
periods of business; but neither was there provision for
them when they were too young, too old, too sick, too feeble, or too handicapped to be profitably employed. In
these respects, Fitzhugh (and all the other defenders of
slavery) argued, slavery, with its traditions of paternalism
and patriarchalism, with its ethics of responsibility for
masters no less than of obedience for slaves, was morally
7
�as well as economically superior. Thus Fitzhugh, at the
end of Cannibals All! (1857) addresses the Abolitionists as
follows. (In today's parlance, a Conservative addressing a
Radical Liberal, or Garry Wills, vintage 1964, addressing
Garry Wills, vintage 1978):
As we are a Brother Socialist, we have a right to prescribe for
the patient; and our Consulting Brethren, Messrs. Garrison,
Greeley, and others, should duly consider the value of our
opinion. Extremes meet-and we and the leading abolitionists
differ but a hairbreadth. We ... prescribe more of government;
they insist on No-Government. Yet their social institutions
would make excellently conducted Southern sugar and cotton farms, with a head to govern them. Add a Virginia overseer to Mr. Greeley's Phalansteries, and Mr. Greeley and we
would have little to quarrel about.
Extremes do indeed meet. "Phalansteries" were the Fourierist anticipation of the later and better known "communes" and "soviets." Nearly a century before Hayek's
Road to Serfdom, Fitzhugh saw with perfect clarity the inner identity of the slave system and a socialist system.
We noted earlier the denigration of reason, and the
elevation of sentiment, that characterized the radical
thought~equally of the Left and the Right-of the nineteenth century. Capitalism, Marx declared, reduces all
human relations to "the naked cash nexus." It is this
~~nakedness," this reducton of man to a "commodity"
which ((alienates" him, and leaves him feeling alone in a
world without meaning. It is Marxism's promise to restore
"community" (where all men will be "comrades"), that is
the source of that magnetism to which we have adverted.
No promise of wealth to mere "individuals" by a market
economy can possibly compete for long with this secularization of Christian eschatology. But Marx's communist
moral vision is itself adapted from the moral vision of the
ancien regime that we find in Edmund Burke. From the
standpoint of historical dialectics, it is true that the bourgeois regime is "progressive" compared with its predecessor_ That is because, in stripping away ''illusions," it
prepared the way for the revolution of the proletariat. Intrinsically, however, the ancien regime is more humanly
desirable, even to Marx, because these self-same illusions
made man at home in his world. Men are not as ''alien-
as if Conservatism is wedded to the
free market economy. But that is true only on the
surface. Garry Wills deserted Conservatism rather
than embrace the free market. Others embraced the free
market, rather than submit themselves to the authoritarianism of the Left. But Conservatives who embrace the
free market, not as Abraham Lincoln did, because it implements the moral principles of the Declaration of Inde-
T
ODAY IT SEEMS
pendence, but because it is "value free," are building their
politics on that same "House Divided" as the ante-bellum
Union. For a free market economy committed to nothing
but "consumer sovereignty" does not differ essentially
from a "popular sovereignty" that is free to choose slavery. Those who look backward to slavery, and those who
look forward to the dictatorship of the proletariat, will
always have the better of an argument founded upon
"ethical neutrality." Critics of Marxism in our time,
notably the patrons of the free market economy, constantly marvel at the survival of Marxism as an intellectual
force (notably in the minds of college professors of the
liberal arts). They marvel at the apparent immunity of
Marxism to the disastrous fate of every single one of
Marx's predictions, based upon his analysis of the dynamics of capitalism. And this, moreover, despite his
claim of "scientific" status for his analysis, and his staking
of his claim to that status upon the verification of these
same predictions. But the magnetic core of Marxism, the
source of the power of its attraction, consists not in its
economic analysis, or its economic claims, but in its moral
analysis, and in its moral claims. What follows is a representative passage from the Manifesto:
The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put
an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to
his "natural superiors."
8
ated" under feudalism as they are under capitalism. For in
the ancien regime there is the illusion that, in being governed by his "natural superiors" the superiors and inferiors
are joined together in ucommunity," an organic relation-
ship in which the whole gives independent meaning to
each of its human parts. In the meaning that the proletarian whole gives to the lives of each of the comrades, it
resembles the feudal order. This is why R. H. Tawneyhimself a socialist-could remark, with profound insight,
that "the last of the Schoolmen was Karl Marx." Both feudalism and communism see themselves as bonded into a
community, which is denied to man in "the lonely crowd"
of the de-humanized bourgeois-capitalistic order.
Burke's romantic imagination dignified the morality of inequality, of the ancien regime.
Here, in truth, is the inspiration of Marx's moral
imagination. What follows are excerpts from the Reflections on the Revolution in France:
H
ERE IS HOW
It is now sixteen or seventeen years, since I saw the Queen of
France, then the Dauphiness ... and surely never lighted on
this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful
vision ...
Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen upon her in a nation of gallant men . .. I thought
ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards
to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the
age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and
calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever . ..
All the pleasing illusions . .. are to be dissolved by this conquering empire of light and reason. All the decent drapery of
AUTUMN 1981
�life is to be rudely torn off. All the superadded ideas, furn·
Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another,
ished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the
heart owns and the understanding ratifies, as necessary to
cover the defects of our naked, shivering nature . .. are to be
example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence
but let him work diligently and build one for himself, thus by
when built.
exploded ...
On this scheme of things, a king is but a man, a queen is but a
woman ...
In another famous line, Burke also spoke of that "digni·
fied obedience, that subordination of the heart, which
kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted
freedom." Here was the very spiritual charter or gospel of
the Confederacy, in building a polity upon chattel slavery.
For make no mistake, it was this spiritual justification of
the ancien regime that became the ideology of the Holy
Alliance, and that served the cause of American slavery,
when it came across.the seas. For the "exalted freedom"
of the slaves was compared, to its disadvantage, with the
debased freedom of the "wage slaves" of the bourgeois
order. How these "superadded ideas" appeared to the
leader of the American Revolution, may be inferred from
what Washington wrote in 1783:
The foundation of our empire was not laid in the gloomy ages
of ignorance and superstition; but at an epoch when the
rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly
defined, than at any other period.
Everyone knows that Karl Marx called revealed religion
"the opiate of the people." But Marx's critique of Chris·
tianity, the very foundation of his system, also had its lum·
inous antecedent in Burke. Here is what Burke wrote, in
the Reflections, before Marx was born:
The body of the people ... must respect that property of
which they cannot partake. They must labor to obtain what
by labor can be obtained; and when they find, as they commonly do, the success disproportioned to the endeavor, they
must be taught their consolation in the final proportions of
eternal justice. Of this consolation, whoever deprives them,
deadens their industry, and strikes at the root of all acquisition as of all conservation.
To convert Burkean Conservatism into Revolutionary
Communism, all that was necessary was to declare that
the disproportion between labor's endeavor and labor's
success was the Hsurplus value" appropriated by the owning classes. To make the proletariat revolutionary, it was
necessary to deprive them of that meretricious consola·
tion in the "final proportions of eternal justice." Marx did
not state more clearly than Burke the utility of revealed
religion for maintaining a regime of unmerited privilege.
here to compare the proto-Marxism of
Burke, and the Marxism of Marx, with Abraham Lin·
coln. Here is how Lincoln teaches respect for private
property:
I
T IS DESIRABLE
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
Concerning the priority of labor to capital, Lincoln was as
emphatic as Marx:
Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only
the fruit of labor; and could not exist if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the
higher consideration. (Nevertheless] Capital has its rights,
which are as worthy of protection as any other rights . ..
What the rights of Capital are, is seen in the following:
That men who are industrious and sober and honest in the
pursuit of their own interests should after a while accumulate
capital, and after that should be allowed to enjoy it in peace,
and . .. to use it to save themselves actual labor, and hire
other people to labor for them is right.
The common ground of Burke and Marx is the idea that
morality-whether illusory or real-is ineluctably grounded
in stratified and invincible class distinctions. For Burke,
this stratification follows the arbitrary lines of the feudal
regime. It requires, in the name of the myths of such a re·
gime, an unequal distribution of the rewards of life, along
the lines of class and caste. Yet the proletarian society of
the future-the classless society of Marx-is nothing but
a mirror image of that very same feudalism. For it is as
arbitrary in its commitment to an equal distribution of the
rewards of life, as the other is to an unequal distribution.
For arbitrary equality-that is to say, giving equal rewards
to unequal persons-is as unjust as unequal rewards to
equal persons. Both are equally unjust, for the same
reasons. The regime of the American Founding, however
imperfect the implementation of its principles, is in its
principles the perfectly just middle way between these
two extemes. As a regime of equal rights, it recognizes the
justice of unequal rewards. There is, said James Madison,
"a diversity in the faculties of men from which the rights
of property originate." "The protection of these faculties,"
he added, "is the first object of government." Because of
this equal protection of unequal faculties, wealth accumu·
lates and social classes become distinguishable. But neither
accumulations of wealth, nor social classes, are fixed in
any immutable pattern. As Lincoln declared, on one of
many similar occasons,
There is no permanent class of hired laborers among us.
Twenty-five years ago I was a hired laborer. The hired laborer
of yesterday labors on his own account today, and will hire
others to labor for him tomorrow.
And again:
The progress by which the poor, honest, industrious and resolute man raises himself . .. is that progress that human nature
is entitled to [and} is that improvement in condition that is in-
9
�tended to be secured by those institutions under which we
live ...
It is this moral vindication of the "bourgeois" regime, as
the regime which is truly in accord with human nature,
that makes Abraham Lincoln, and his interpretation of
the Declaration of Independece, that "hard nut" that the
tyrannies of both Right and Left must crack, to establish
their sway and domination. It explains the extraordinary
efforts in Inventing America, of that symbol of the union
of Left and Right: Garry Wills.
I
NVENTING AMERICA begins in this way:
Americans like, at intervals, to play this dirty trick upon themselves: Pollsters are sent out to canvass men and women on
certain doctrines and to shame them when these are declared
-as usually happens-unacceptable. Shortly after, the results
are published: Americans have, once again, failed to subscribe
to some phrase or other from the Declaration of Independence. The late political scientist Willmoore Kendall called
this game ''discovering America.'' He meant to remind us that
running men out of town on a rail is at least as much an American tradition as declaring unalienable rights.
But Wills is not accurate even in this reference to Kendall.
The game Wills calls "discovering America" is called by
Kendall "Sam Stouffer discovers America," and may be
found described in pages 80 and 81 of The Conservative
Affirmation. It is Kendall's commentary on a book by
Stouffer published in the early fifties under the title of
Civil Liberties, Communism, and Conformity. It is one of
the "classic" liberal attacks on the reactionary public opinion of the so-called McCarthy era; and one should bear in
mind that Kendall was one of McCarthy's staunchest defenders. Hence Kendall's testimony is unusual, in this
context, for a guru of the Left to take as his authority!
Here is how Kendall actually described Stouffer's book:
Mr. Stouffer and his team of researchers asked a representative sample of Americans a number of questions calculated to
find out whether they would permit (a) a Communist, or (b)
an atheist, to (I) speak in their local community, or (2) teach
in their local high school, or (3) be represented, by means of a
book he had written, in their local public library. And consider: some two-thirds of the sample answered "Nothing
doing" right straight down the line . .. nor was there any evidence that they would have been much disturbed to learn
that the Supreme Court says that the Fourteenth Amend-
ment says they can't do anything legally to (e.g.) prevent the
Communist from speaking.
In the poll conducted by Stouffer there is, we see, literally
nothing about the Declaration of Independence. What
Kendall observes the American people saying "Nothing
doing" to-at the period in question-is what the Warren
Court (not the Declaration) was saying in interpreting the
First and Fourteenth Amendments. And on this point I
10
think the American people (thus polled) were right, and
the Court wrong. In 1964 I myself published an essay "On
the Nature of Civil and Religious Liberty" in which I
argued that precisely on the ground of the principles of
the Declaration, Communists and Nazis had no just claim
to the constitutional privileges of the First Amendment.
Moreover, I know of no such polls or studies, that Wills asserts exist, in which Americans have "failed to subscribe
to some phrase or other from the Declaration oflndependence."
In any event, it is not phrases that count, but ideas or
principles. These must be stated in terms intelligible to
the respondent. Perhaps the best known slogan of the
American Revolution was "Taxation without Representation is Tyranny." In accordance with it, the Declaration
denounced the King "For imposing taxes on us without
our Consent." The premise underlying these judgments is
that the power to tax is the power to destroy. Does Wills
think that Americans today do not agree with these judgments or their underlying premise? The Declaration says
that the just powers of government are derived from the
consent of the governed. Suppose a pollster, asking
whether the respondent thinks that any government that
governed him, might do so justly without his consent.
Does Wills believe that Americans today would answer
differently from those in 1776? Does he think that they
think that any government might justly levy taxes upon
them-or on anyone else-without the consent, given by
their elected representatives, of the ones taxed?
But perhaps Wills thinks that the arch mystery of the
Declaration is the great proposition, upon which Lincoln
so concentrated attention in the Gettysburg Address, that
all men are created equal. Certainly many are today puzzled by this doctrine. This is not, I think, because of its intrinsic difficulty, but because publicists like Wills have for
so long told them that it is a mere vague abstraction. But
let us re-phrase the proposition, in some of its applications. Suppose, in conducting a poll, one asked whether
the respondents thought it reasonable to divide all human
beings (men and women) into the superior and the inferior, the latter to be ruled by the former, and without their
consent? Or, to put the same queston slightly differently,
suppose one asked whether those· who made the laws
should live under them, or whether the government might
reasonably and justly exempt itself from the laws it made
for others. (One example might be whether the lawmakers
might exempt themselves from the payment of taxes; another might be whether the punishments for either civil
damage or criminal offenses might be different for those
in office, as compared with those out of office.) How
many today would reject Lincoln's simple maxim-interpreting the proposition that all men are created equalthat no man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent?
All the foregoing questions a.re based upon that simplified Lockeanism that Jefferson thought was to be found
AUTUMN 1981
�in the American mind, no less than in the common sense
of the subject. One need not have ever heard of the
names of Hume or Hutcheson or Reid or Stewart-indeed
one need not have heard of John Locke-to know that the
power to tax is the power to destroy, and to draw all the
long series of inferences that follow from it. Wills wants to
turn the Declaration into an esoteric mystery, by convincing us that we do not know things that we know perfectly
welL He would have us think that eighteenth century
beliefs are necessarily different from twentieth century
beliefs, and that the veil between them can be pierced only by the magic of the cultural (or professorial) elite. This
is the priestcraft of our contemporary Dark Age.
I would like to make one
further comment on Kendall's assertion, endorsed by
Wills, that
T
O END THIS DISCUSSION,
the true American tradition is less that of our Fourth of July
orations and our constitutional law textbooks, with their
cluck-clucking over the so-called preferred freedoms, than,
quite simply, that of riding someone out of town on a rail.
Note that even here Kendall says something different
from what Wills represents him as saying. Kendall does
not mention unalienable rights. The closest he comes to it
is when he mentions Fourth of July orations. "Preferred
freedoms" refers almost certainly to the constitutional
doctrines of Mr. Justice Black, not to those of Thomas Jefferson, or of any other of the Founding Fathers. Yet Kendall here is in fact being squeamish, something certainly
unusual for KendalL Riding someone out of town on a rail
is a quasi-euphemism for lynching. Someone-perhaps a
specialist in Burlamaqui or Hutcheson-might not know
that riding on a rail was usually preceded by tarring and
feathering. And tarring frequently resulted in second (and
sometimes third) degree burns. Since the tar covered the
whole body, the minimum result was usually pneumonia.
Not many more survived a tarring and feathering than
survived a hanging. But it was a more protracted process,
and accompanied by terrible suffering. In the thirty-third
chapter of Huckleberry Finn we bid our farewell to the
Duke and the King. These bunco artists have by now forfeited all of our-and Huck's-sympathy, by betraying
Jim back into slavery. In their last appearance Huck sees
them being whooped along by the townsmen they had
cheated. Huck says he knew it was the Duke and the
King,
though they was all over tar and feathers, and didn't look like
nothing in the world that was human . ..
Although he had loathed them before, and hates them
now, he says that
It was a dreadful thing to see. Human beings can be awful
cruel to one another.
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
When Kendall or Wills tells us that lynching is as much an
American tradition as declaring that there are unalienable, or natural human rights, they are telling us no more
than that evil is as deeply engrained in the American tradition as good. This is a difficult proposition to contest. All
that I would contend is that the principles of the Declaration, which embody the principles of the rule oflaw, stand
in direct opposition to lynching, which is the denial or repudiation of lawfulness. And by a disposition of Providence, as poetical as it is historical, Abraham Lincoln's
first great speech-his Lyceum Address of 1838-was a
denunciation of the growing and dangerous habit of lawlessness, which he observed to be abroad in the land then.
In that speech, Lincoln warned that lynch law and free
government were enemies of each other, and that one
could not long survive in the presence of the other. Lynch
law, we repeat, was but one expression of the repudiation
of the Declaration of Independence. Slavery was another.
Slavery and lynch law went together. Kendall's (and
Wills's) tacit patronage of lynch law is but another aspect
of their tacit patronage of slavery.
According to Wills, Abraham Lincoln was "a great artist
of America's romantic period." This, however, is not in-
tended as a compliment. Rather is it intended as an a
priori explanation of how Lincoln was able to substitute a
fallacious myth of our origins as a nation for the truth
about those origins. Lincoln's artistry, he says, fit the antiscientific, biblical mood of mid-century, so that the "biblically shrouded" figure of "Fourscore and seven years . .. "
presumably evoked acceptance, as "eighty-seven" might
not. And Wills is not tender with Lincoln's character, in
regard to this alleged deception about the date of the
founding of the nation. "Useful falsehoods," he writes,
"are dangerous things, often costing us down the road."
The Gettysburg Address, beginning with its magisterial
invocation of the year 1776 as the point of our origin as a
nation, is a "falsehood," and even a "dangerous" one.
Wills has summoned up a strict standard of truthfulness,
by which he, no less than Abraham Lincoln, must then be
judged.
Wills's entire work, as we shall see, actually stands or
falls by this claim that 1776 is not, and cannot be regarded
as, the birth date of the nation. Lincoln, he says, "obviously gave some thought" to his "Fourscore and seven."
Indeed he did.
I pointed out, more
than a score of years ago, that the beginning of the Gettysburg Address marked as well the end of the long debate with Stephen A. Douglas. For Douglas had declared
that we existed as a nation only by virtue of the Constitution. Notwithstanding the fact that, in other respects,
Douglas was a Jacksonian Unionist, in this he echoes
Southern-and Calhounian-doctrine. It was axiomatic
for Jefferson Davis-and for all who voted for secession in
the winter and spring of 1860-1861-that the United
I
N CRISIS OF THE HOUSE DNIDED
11
�States could be regarded as a single nation, solely by virtue
of the Constitution. Each state, it was held, became part
of the Union or nation by virtue of the process of ratification. The ordinances of secession were regarded as-and
in some cases were actually called~acts of de-ratification.
And there can be no doubt that, were the Union or nation
created solely by the process by which the Constitution of
1787 was ratified, then it could lawfully have been uncreated by the same process. Willmoore Kendall, whom
Wills is obviously following, repeats this Confederate
dogma, saying that there was a "bakers dozen" of new nations resulting from the Declaration of Independence. By
this interpretation, in the Declaration of Independence
the thirteen colonies were not only declaring their independence of Great Britain, they were declaring their independence of each other.
Wills thinks that Lincoln would have had some ground
for treating 1777 as the year of birth of the nation, since in
that year the Articles of Confederation were adopted. But
best of all, as a proposed birth date, he thinks, is 1789, the
year in which the Constitution came into operation. For
this date, he says, Lincoln should have written "Four
score minus six years ago ... " With this ill-placed facetiousness Wills shows himself completely oblivious of the
great ante-bellum debate. He seems unconscious of the
existence of the masterful brief, legal, historical, and
philosophical, that Lincoln presented, notably in his inaugural address, and still more copiously, after Sumter, in
his message to Congress, in special session, July 4, 1861.
Lincoln's argument, as to the nature and origin of the
Union, is presented with Euclidean precision and classic
beauty. It is surpassed by nothing in Demosthenes, Cicero, or Burke.
Wills writes as if Lincoln had suddenly invented the notion that the nation had been born in 1776 as he com·
posed the Gettysburg Address, and that he relied upon
the mesmerizing influence of his vowels and consonants
(e.g. "by mere ripple and interplay of liquids") to secure
his deception. But Lincoln's audience in 1863 and thereafter, unlike Wills, knew very well that the Gettysburg Ad·
dress was but a moment in a dialectical process that had
been going on for more than a generation. Neither Lin·
coin nor the nation ever imagined that he was appealing
to their sentiment, apart from an argument, laid in fact
and reason. It would have been perfectly honorable for
Wills to have taken up the weapons of controversy against
Lincoln's side, as statemen and scholars have done since
the days of Calhoun, jefferson Davis, and Alexander
Stephens. But mere malicious sneering has no place in
such a debate.
Wills tells us, with easy assurance, that "there are some
fairly self-evident objections to that mode of calculating,"
viz., the mode expressed by "Four score and seven years
ago ... " What are these objections?
All thirteen colonies [writes Wills] subscribed to the Declaration with instructions to their delegates that this was not to
12
imply formation of a single nation. If anything, july 4, 1776,
produced twelve new nations (with a thirteenth coming in on
July 15)-conceived in liberty perhaps, but more dedicated to
the proposition that the colonies they severed from the
mother country were equal to each other than that their in-
habitants were equal. [Italics by Wills.]
We note that Wills does not say that the delegates were
not instructed to form a single nation. He says that they
were instructed not to form (or imply formation of) a single
nation. If Wills had said that the instructions for indepen·
dence were in some cases ambiguous, as to whether the
thirteen colonies were to form a single union, state, or na~
tion, he would have asserted what would certainly have
been plausible. But in positively asserting an unambiguous intention not to form a single nation, he is asserting
something for which there is not a shred of evidence.
Not many readers will take the trouble to look up the
colonial instructions to the delegates to the Continental
Congress, in the spring of 1776. Like most reviewers, they
will assume that someone with a prestigious professorship
at a major university, with a doctorate from Yale (all
things advertised on the dust jacket), will of course have
read documents carefully, and reported them faithfully.
Errors like Wills's, launched with such authority, spread
like plague germs in an epidemic. And although it takes
few words to put such errors in circulation, it takes painstaking effort, and detailed analysis, effectively to contradict them.
Turning now to the instructions, we note that they do
not contain the word "nation" at all. The word "union" is
its nearest equivalent. (We note also that in Lincoln's political vocabulary, the words "union" and "nation" were
virtually synonymous.) In the instructions, the word "confederation" is also used in a sense, at least quasi~synony~
mous with "union."
The important question we must ask, in examining the
language of the instructions for independence, is whether
the colonies were, in making a single and common declaration of independence, implying or assuming or declaring
that they did so as members of a common government.
And further, we would want to know whether they implied or stated that they expected their association in and
through the Congress to become a permanent one. An affirmative answer to these two questions is all that would
be needed to sustain Lincoln's thesis with respect to the
"Four score and seven years." Wills, we repeat, by assert~
ing that in july of 1776 thirteen nations or states came
into existence by virtue of the Declaration, asserts that
the thirteen were not merely declaring their independence of Great Britain, but their independence of each
other.
Rhode Island, by its General Assembly, on May 4, 1776,
instructed its delegates
to join with the delegates of the other United Colonies in
Congress . .. to consult and advise . .. upon the most proper
AUTUMN 1981
�measures for promoting and confirming the strictest union
and confederation . ..
such further compact and confederation . .. as shall be judged
necessary for securing the liberties of America . ..
Virginia's instructions-May 15th-called simply for such
measures as might be thought proper and necessary
Most extraordinary of all is the instruction of the House
of Representatives of New Hampshire. For in this case,
the instruction for independence and the instruction for
union, given separately in the other cases, were here com~
bined into one. New Hampshire instructed its (single)
delegate
for forming foreign alliances, and a confederation of the
colonies.
Here "confederation" is synonymous with "union and
confederation" in the Rhode Island instructions.
in reading these documents,
that we are witnessing a transformation in the use
and application of certain key terms. The word
"confederation," like the words "federal" or "confederal,"
was an old bottle into which new wine was being poured.
The American Revolution, and the American Founding,
produced a form of government unprecedented in the history of the world. In later years, James Madison called the
government of the United States a "nondescript," because there was still no word that properly expressed what
it actually was. In 1787, in the Federalist, Madison called
the government of the new Constitution, "partly national,
partly federal," although by the traditional understanding
of "federal" and ''national" such an expression would
have been a self-contradiction. As the late Martin Diamond
has pointed out, the expression "federal government"
would have been a solecism, prior to the emergence of the
American form of government. What had hitherto been
regarded as federal, could not properly be regarded as a
government, and what had hitherto been regarded as government, could not properly admit any distinct or separate sovereignty in any of its parts. In these instructions
we see an early application of "confederation" in a sense
consistent with what was later understood clearly in the
expression "federal government." It would be a mistake to
assume that the later meaning was clearly present to the
minds ofthe men of 1776. Yet it would be an equally great
mistake to fail to perceive, in 1776, the genesis of the later
meaning. Lincoln, one should remember, said that the nation had been born in 1776, he did not say it had already
matured.
W
E SHOULD BE AWARE,
Connecticut, on June 14, 1776, instructed its delegates
in Congress to
.
move and promote, as fast as may be convenient, a regular
and permanent plan of union and confederation of the
Colonies ...
New Jersey, on June 21st, called for
entering into a confederation for union and common
defense .. .
Maryland, on June 28th, in authorizing independence,
also authorized
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
to join with the other colonies in declaring the thirteen
United Colonies a free and independent state . ..
Concerning what might justly be called the burgeoning
national consciousness, consider the language with which
the Georgia Colonial Congress addressed its delegates in
the Continental Congress, in April of 1776. They exhorted their representatives that they
always keep in view the general utility, remembering that the
great and righteous cause in which we are engaged is not provincial, but continental. We therefore, gentlemen, shall rely
upon your patriotism, abilities, firmness, and integrity, to propose, join, and concur in all such meaSures as you shall think
calculated for the common good, and to oppose all such asappear destructive.
We see the coordination of "patriotism" with the "com~
mon good," and that this good is said to be "continental"
and not "provincial." Can anyone, reading these words,
think that in 1776 Georgia (any more than New Hampshire) was engaged in declaring its independence from its
sister colonies?
what could lie behind Wills's assertion
about these colonial instructions. It is certainly true
that the full implications of single statehood, or
union, or nationhood, were not visible in 1776. And it is
true that all of the colonies, while endorsing union in vary:
ing terms, nonetheless did so with reservation. For example, while calling for the formation of the "strictest
union," Rhode Island required that the greatest care be
taken
L
ET US ASK
to secure to this colony . .. its present established form, and all
powers of government, so far as it related to its internal police
and conduct of our own affairs, civil and religious.
Virginia, in like manner, asked that
the power of forming government for, and the regulating of
the internal concerns of, each colony, be left to the respective
Colonial Legislatures.
Pennsylvania required that there be reserved
to the people of this colony the sole and exclusive right of
regulating the internal government and police of the same.
13
�And New Hampshire, the same New Hampshire which
thought that the United Colonies should declare themselves a single "free and independent state," nonetheless
required that,
the regulation of our internal police be under the direction of
our own Assembly.
Could there be any clearer demonstration, than these
words by which New Hampshire reserved its right of internal or local government, that such reservations did not
constitute obstacles, in the minds of those making the reservations, to national unity?
These reservations of local or state autonomy represent,
in generic form, the great principle of American federalism. They reappeared, the year following the Declaration,
in the Articles of Confederation, in Article II, which reads
as follows.
Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not
expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress
assembled.
The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution contains a
similar reservation of the "internal concerns" to the juris-
diction of the governments of the states-and to the people of the states-as is found in those colonial instructions
of the spring of 1776. It reads:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the
States respectively,
o~
to the people.
The notable difference between these two articles is the
presence of the words Hsovereignty" and "expressly" in
the former. But John Quincy Adams, among others,
thought that the spirit of the Declaration (and of the instructions authorizing the Declaration) was stronger in
the Constitution than in the Articles. The Tenth Amendment, by not referring to the powers delegated as being
"expressly" delegated, opened the door to the great contest, begun by Hamilton and Jefferson, between liberalor broad-construction, and strict-or narrow-construction, a contest which continues until this very day. But
the ambiguity in the Constitution which permits two
schools of constitutional interpretation is not different
from the ambiguity in the original instructions for forming a union. If that ambiguity is regarded as militating
against the formation of a national union, then we are no
more a nation today than we were on July 4, 1776.
*
*
*
denies any credibility to
Lincoln's characterization, in the Gettysburg Address, of july 4, 1776, as the birth date of the nation. We have seen that his alleged grounds for this denial,
the colonial instructions to the delegates to the Continen-
W
14
lLLS, WE HAVE NOTED,
tal Congress in the spring of 1776, do not bear out what
he says about them. But Edmund Morgan, writing in The
New York Review of Books, August 17, 1978, in a generally
favorable notice of Inventing America, has pointed to a
very good test of single statehood in the Declaration itself.
For the Declaration reads, near the end, as follows:
That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be Free
and Independent States . .. and that as Free and Independent
States, they have full power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and do all other Acts
and Things which Independent States may of right do.
"Which of these free and independent states," asks Morgan, "undertook to do the acts and things Jefferson specified as characteristic of a state?"
It was Congress [Morgan continues] that levied war through
the Continental Army; it was Congress that concluded peace
through its appointed commissioners; and it was Congress
that contracted the alliance with France. Congress may not
have established commerce, but in the Association it had disestablished it, and in a resolution of the preceding April 6, it
had opened American ports to all the world except England.
In denying that there was "one nation" or anything like
it, resulting from the Declaration of Independence, Wills
makes the extraordinary assertion that the Declaration is
not a legal document of any kind. He calls it and the Gettysburg Address mere "war propaganda with no legal
force."
Now the Gettysburg Address was an occasional address
of the President of the United States. Its force, as such,
was moral rather than legal. Its chief feature, however,
was to reaffirm the principles of the Declaration, and to
reaffirm them in conjunction with another Presidential
act, namely, the Emancipation Proclamation. The latter
of course was a legal act, although its permanent force depended upon the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment. The purpose of the Gettysburg Address was to help
to generate the political forces which would lead the nation from the Emancipation Proclamation-whose legal
effect was limited to what could be inferred from the war
powers of the Commander-in-Chief-to that permanent
abolition of chattel slavery that could only be accomplished by an amendment to the Constitution. It is that
fulfillment of the promise of equal human rights by the
Declaration, in the Thirteenth Amendment, that constitutes the "new birth of freedom" wished for by the Address. If Wills regards this as mere "war propaganda" then
he can have little regard for the abolition of slavery as an
event in American history.
To assert, as Wills does, that the Declaration of Independence is not a legal document, is simply amazing. It is
among the more stupendous reasons why we think that
Inventing America should have been shipped back to its
author in manuscript. Evidently Wills-and the readers of
his manuscript-have never held in their hands the StatAUTUMN 1981
�utes at Large of the United States, the Revised Statutes of
the United States, or the United States Code. The 1970
edition of the United States Code, which is before me as I
write, classifies the Declaration among the "Organic Laws
of the United States." Of these, the Declaration of Independence is the first. Second is the Articles of Confederation. Third is the Ordinance of 1787: The Northwest
Territorial Government. Fourth is the Constitution of the
United States and Amendments.
Let us recall that Wills preferred both the Articles and
the Constitution to the Declaration, as marking the beginning of American statehood or nationhood. But the Articles declares, in its preamble, that it was done "in the
second year of the Independence of America." Moreover,
the Constitution, in the form in which it left the Convention, over the signature of George Washington, dates
Itself
in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and
Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States
of America the Twelfth.
Both these notable documents-which Wills thinks Lincoln should have preferred to the Declaration-themselves
refer to the Declaration as the originating document of
the United States.
This dating of the union, at the end of Article VII of the
Constitution, has moreover a particular legal application.
Article VI reads, in its first paragraph, that
our State, and of that of the United States," they wrote,
the first of the "best guides" to this end was
the Declaration of Independence, as the fundamental act of
union of these States.
We see then that the Declaration was not regarded by Jefferson and Madison, as it is by Wills (and Kendall), as an
act whose sole effect was to separate thirteen colonies
from Great Britain. It was an act whereby the separation
from Great Britain was simultaneously accompanied by
union with each other. It was the accomplishment of
union that makes it the primitive organic law of the
United States. This is why all acts of the United States are
dated from the Declaration.
But the Declaration is more even than an organic law.
Its statement of principles remains that statement of the
principles of natural right and of natural law which is the
ground for asserting that the government of the United
States (and of each of the States) represents law and right,
and not mere force without law or right.
In 1844, for example, in a great speech in the House of
Representatives, john Quincy Adams declared that the
assertion of principles in the Declaration of Independence, beginning with the proposition that "we hold
these truths to be self-evident ... " constituted the "moral
foundation of the North American Revolution." It was, he
said, "the only foundation upon which the North American Revolution could be justified from the charge of
treason and rebellion."
All debts contracted and engagements entered into, before
the adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the
United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation.
From the foregoing, it is clear that there was a "United
States under the Confederation" before there was a
"United States under this Constitution." The fact that
the United States in its subsequent form (that of "a more
perfect Union") acknowledges the debts of the earlier
United States, shows that it remains the same moral person. But Article XII of the Articles of Confederation
accepts responsibility for the debts contracted by the
Congress before the adoption of the Articles, just as the
Constitution accepts the debts of the government of the
Confederation. In short, the United States is continuously
the United States, is continuously the same collective
identity, the same moral agent, from the moment that it
became independent, viz., since july 4, 1776.
In what sense then is the Declaration of Independence
a law of the United States; or, rather, in what sense is it
the first of the organic laws of the United States? The
United States Code does not say. In 1825, however,
Thomas jefferson and james Madison, both members of
the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia, together prepared a list of books and documents to serve as
authorities for the instruction to be offered by the faculty
of law. On "the distinctive principles of government of
1HE ST.JOHNSREVIEW
But Wills hates the very idea that the United States was
born out of a dedication to liberty and justice. For him,
the belief that our political arrangements are in some particular sense in accordance with universal principles of
natural right, breeds only a sense of self-righteousness,
and makes us a danger to ourselves and to others. As an
example of the latter, he cites john F. Kennedy's alleged
willingness "to throw Communist devils out of Russia,
China, Cuba, or Vietnam." As an example of the former,
he cites "the House Un-American Activities Committee!"
In 1823, jefferson, writing to Madison on August 30th,
referred to a meeting that had taken place the previous
month as an anniversary assemblage of the nation on its
birthday. When Jefferson thus referred to july 4th as the
nation's birthday, Abraham Lincoln was fourteen years
old. By this time, such references to the Glorious Fourth
were traditional and customary. No one seemed to doubt
then that the principles that accompanied our beginnings
were as luminous as they were true. It was some years
later that men began to discover the "positive good" of
slavery, and to mutter that the so called self-evident truths
might after all be self-evident lies. Then was the foundation laid for Garry Will's discovery that the Declaration
was, after all, written in "the lost language of the
Enlightenment."
*
*
*
15
�ILLS CONTENDS that the major influence upon
Jefferson, and upon the writing of the Declaration, was not John Locke, but Francis Hutcheson.
Hutcheson was a Scottish philosopher, who wrote a generation or so after Locke. The dates of his books, as given
by Wills, are from 1725 to 1755. Locke died in 1704. Indeed, the principal explicit thesis of Inventing America is
that the Declaration is an Hutchesonian and not a
Lockean document. Wills's principal antagonist, within
these lists of controversy, is Carl Becker.. Becker's The
Declaration of Independence, published in 1922, has long
been regarded as a classic. And in certain respects, its authority-as Wills notes-has gone unchallenged. We
would note that Becker was himself an historicist and a
relativist, and as such took no more seriously than Wills
the Declaration's assertion (in Lincoln's words) "of an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times." However,
Wills cites one noted scholar after another, who has cited
Becker, assimilated Becker, built on Becker. "The secret
of this universal acclaim," writes Wills,
W
lies in the inability of any later student to challenge Becker's
basic thesis-that Jefferson found in John Locke "the ideas
which he put into the Declaration." [Wills's italics]
According to Wills, the thesis of a "Lockean orthodoxy ... coloring all men's thought in the middle of the
eighteenth century" is one which has not been challenged
by "any later student." That is to say, it has not been challenged by a single student prior to Wills.
Wills's bold cliallenge to Beckerian-and all later-orthodoxy, concerning the Lockean orthodoxy of the Amer·
ican Founding, comes to a climax in Chapter 18. This
chapter is prefaced by a paragraph from an influential
pamphlet essay by James Wilson, first published in 1774.
This passage from Wilson, says Wills, was used by Becker
"to establish the orthodox Lockean nature of Jefferson's
Declaration." Here it is, as it appears in Inventing America.
All men are, by nature, equal and free: no one has a right to
any authority over another without his consent: all lawful
government is founded on the consent of those who are subject to it: such consent was given with a view to ensure and to
increase the happiness of the governed, above what they
could enjoy in an independent and unconnected state of nature. The consequence is, that the happiness of the society is
the first law of every government. [Wilson's italics.]
Next, we will repeat what Wills says about this passage
from Wilson's essay, and what he says about Becker's use
of it. We give this paragraph from page 250 of Inventing
America exactly as it appears there. If the reader finds the
paragraph confusing, he must ask the apology of Wills.
For Wills has the muddling and confusing habit of using
no footnotes, but incorporating all his reference notes in
parentheses within his text. As we shall presently see,
however, Wills does not only not use footnotes, he does
not know how to read them. Becker, says Wills,
16
calls the Wilson quote "a summary of Locke" (Declaration,
108), part of America's common heritage of ideas. But if the
idea was so common, why did Wilson give a particular source
for it, and only one? Here is his own footnote to the passage
(in his Considerations on the Nature and Extent of the Legislative Authority of the British Parliament of 1774): "The right to
sovereignty is that of commanding finally-but in order to
procure real felicity; for if this is not obtained, sovereignty
ceases to be a legitimate authority, 2 Burl., 32, 33." He is
quoting in summary Burlamaqui's Principes du droit politique,
1, v, 1; 6( ~Principes du droit nature!, 1, x, 2). Now Burlamaqui
was a disciple of Hutcheson's philosophy of moral sense
(Nature!, 2, iii, 1) and therefore he differed from Locke on
concepts of right (ibid., 1, v, 10) and property (1, iv, 8), of the
social contract (1, iv, 9) and the state of nature (2, iv, ll). If
Wilson meant to voice a Lockean view of government, as
Becker assumed, he clumsily chose the wrong source.
The unsuspecting reader, confronted by this witches'
brew of scholarship, is apt to think that Carl Becker must
certainly have been clumsy, and not James Wilson. And it
would certainly seem as if a whole generation-or
more-of scholars had followed Becker, "like sheep,
through the gates of error." It takes two or three readings
of this paragraph before one can accustom one's eyes to
the forest of parentheses, and then slowly begin to distinguish the sentences within. This, however, is what can be
seen at last. Wilson has quoted something in a footnote.
At the end of the quotation, and within the quotation
marks, he has given a source for that quotation. Wills calls
the quotation "a summary" of a certain chapter in a book
of Burlamaqui, which parallels another chapter in another
book of Burlamaqui. Having read with some care both
chapters in both books, I would call the quotation a paraphrase rather than a summary. But that is not important.
What is important is that Wilson does not present the
paraphrase or summary of Burlamaqui as a source for
what he himself has written. Wills's assertion 'that the passage from Burlamaqui is the "particular source" and the
"only" source for Wilson's alleged "summary of Locke" is
simply untrue. It is easier to see this if one has Wilson's essay before one, and if one sees the footnote separated
from the text at the bottom of the page. Let us suppose,
for example, that after saying that "all lawful government
is founded on the consent of those who are subject to it"
Wilson had appended this footnote: "Our authority is his
consent, Sh., 2 Hen. 6, 4, I, 316." Would this have meant
that Wilson had declared that the source of the idea expressed in the text was the second part of Shakespeare's
Henry VI? Would it have meant more than that Wilson
had found a felicitous expression of his thought in Shakespeare, and that such an expression lent a certain cogency
or weight to what Wilson had said?
Wills's assertion that this note gives the "only" source
of Wilson's thought, is all the more absurd because Wilson's essay has forty-eight separate footnotes. Some cite
Blackstone, some cite Bolingbroke, but the majority refer
to decisions of British courts, and opinions of British
AUTUMN 1981
�judges. As Becker rightly observes, the main point of Wilson's entire essay is to show the close approximation of
the principles of British constitutionalism to the principles of natural law. All of Wilson's footnotes are designed
to confirm his judgments, not to give sources for his ideas.
To repeat: the quotation in the footnote is a paraphrase of
Burlamaqui. The reference to Burlamaqui is simply to
give the source in Burlamaqui of the passages thus paraphrased. The reference then is to the source of the footnote, not to the source of the text. All that buckshot spray
of alleged differences between Burlamaqui and Hutcheson, on the one hand, and Locke on the other, is simply
pretentious nonsense. Wilson has throughout spoken in
his own name, not in that of either Locke or Burlamaqui.
That he has in the main followed Locke, as Becker says, is
not to be doubted on the basis of any evidence supplied
by Wills.
*
I
*
*
N HIS ANXIETY to re-write the intellectual history of the
American Founding, Wills goes to lengths of hyperbole
and exaggeration which are inconsistent with serious
scholarship. He says, for example, that there is "no demonstrable verbal echo of the Treatise [Locke's Second
Treatise of Government] in all of Jefferson's vast body of
writings." Against the many writers who have said that
the Declaration repeats not only arguments, but even the
phraseology of the Second Treatise, Wills airily asserts that
"no precise verbal parallels have been adduced."
Wills, however, thinks that verbal parallels to the Declaration abound in Hutcheson. Here, for example, is a passage from Hutcheson, adduced by Wills as an example of
the proximity of Hutcheson to the jefferson of the
Declaration:
Nor is it justifiable in a people to have recourse for any lighter
causes to violence and civil wars against their rulers, while the
public interests are tolerably secured and consulted. But
when it is evident that the public liberty and safety is not tol-
erably secured, and that more mischiefs, and these of a more
lasting kind, are like to arise from the continuance of any plan
of civil power than are to be feared from the violent efforts for
an alteration of it, then it becomes lawful, nay honorable, to
make such efforts and change the plan of government.
Here is the passage in the Declaration it is compared with:
Prudence indeed will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes;
and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are
more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right
themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are
accustomed.
But here is what Locke, in the Second Treatise (para. 230)
had written:
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
For till the mischief be grown general, and the ill designs of
the Rulers become visible, or their attempts sensible to the
greater part, the People, who are more disposed to suffer,
than right themselves by Resistance, are not apt to stir.
Who cannot see that the words of Locke are much closer
to the words of jefferson than those of Hutcheson? The
phrases "disposed to suffer" and "right themselves" may
or may not be echoes, but they are key phrases, and they
are identical in Locke and Jefferson.
Here is another example of Hutcheson, provided by
Wills:
A good subject ought to bear patiently many injuries done
only to himself, rather than take arms against a prince in the
main good and useful to the state, provided the danger extends only to himself. But when the common rights of humanity are trampled upon, and what at first attempted
against one is made precedent against all the rest, then as the
governor is plainly perfidious to his trust, he has forfeited all
the power committed to him.
Here is the parallel passage in the Declaration. This is
from the Declaration in the draft originally reported, as
distinguished from that finally adopted:
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, begun at a
distinguished period and pursuing invariably the same object,
evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism it
is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government .. .
And here is Locke, in the parallel passage in the Second
Treatise.
But if a long train of abuses, Prevarications, and Artifices, all
tending the same way, make the design visible to the people,
and they cannot but feel, what they lie under, and see,
whither they are going; 'tis not to be wonder'd, that they
should then rouze theniselves, and endeavor to put the rule
into such hands, which may secure to them the ends fOr
which Government was first erected . ..
Once .again, we have, not echoes, but identical phrases
in jefferson and Locke. The "long train of abuses" has
been the phrase most cited by generations of
scholars-although Wills stubbornly denies that they have
ever "adduced" such parallels. Even more to the point, is
the key word "design," which occurs in both Locke and
jefferson, and which is peculiarly vital to the Declaration's
argument.
Edmund Morgan, in the review to which we have already referred, says flatly that the resemblances of Jefferson's language to Locke are closer than anything Wills has
found in any Scottish philosopher. But even more to the
point-and we will let Morgan make this point for us-is
that in the parallels between Hutcheson and Jefferson
cited by Wills, "the distance from Locke's political principles is not noticeable, indeed it is non-existent." Yet so insistent is Wills upon this very distance of jefferson from
Locke, that he asserts that: "There is no indication )effer-
17
�son read the Second Treatise carefully or with profit. Indeed, there is no direct proof he ever read it at all (though
I assume he did at some point.)" Wills is aware that Jefferson recommended the book to others but thinks that, like
many a professor puffing himself to students, "There
would be nothing dishonest about his general recommendation of the Treatise, made to others while he lacked any
close acquaintance with the text. .. " Yet in 1790, writing
to an intimate friend, Jefferson pronounced "Locke's little
book on government" to be "perfect as far as it goes."
Forty-five years later, near the end of his life, Jefferson
collaborated with Madison-as we have already noted-in
drawing up a list of books and documents for the faculty
of law at the University of Virginia. Again-and for the
last time-he turned to Locke, as he sought by university
education to preserve the principles of the Revolution. In
a resolution, prepared for, and adopted by the Board of
Visitors, it was affirmed to be
the opinion of this Board that as to the general principles of
liberty and the rights of man, in nature and in society, the
doctrines of Locke, in his "Essay concerning the true original
extent and end of civil government," [the full title of the Sec-
ond Treatise] and of Sidney in his "Discourses on government," may be considered as those generally approved by our
fellow citizens of this, and the United States ...
From this recommendation of Locke and Sidney for "general principles" Jefferson went on, as we have already
seen, to recommend the Declaration for the "distinctive
principles" of American government. The pairing of Locke
and Sidney was, as Wills notes, a traditional Whig custom.
I do not see how this detracts from the importance of
Locke. Wills says that the famous letter to Henry Lee is
the only place in which Jefferson ever links Locke and the
Declaration. In this resolution however, Locke and the
Declaration are again linked, and linked in the most authoritative manner. Coming at the end of Jefferson's life,
this resolution has a peculiar and final authority.
Among the many absurdities of Wills's work is that
Adam Smith, as a "moral sense" philosopher, becomes a
"communitarian." Thus the spiritual father of capitalism-or the system of natural freedom, as he called
it-becomes part of the anti-individualism which prepared the way for Marx and today's Left. Had Wills read
that notable book linking the Theory of Moral Sentiments
with The Wealth of Nations, Joseph Cropsey's Polity and
Economy: An Interpretation of the Principles of Adam
Smith, he would not have committed such an egregious
error. For he would have learned from Cropsey that the
Scottish school were emenders of Locke, rather than negators or opponents. All their thought moves within a circle previously defined by Locke, and before Locke, by
Hobbes. Indeed, the quotation from Burlamaqui, relating
the purposes of civil society to sovereignty, points back
from Locke towards Hobbes, rather than forward toward
the Scottish school.
18
An important book may still be written about Hutcheson, and the school he represents, and their influence
upon the American Founding Fathers. No responsible
scholar has ever claimed that the Declaration of Independence is purely (or merely) a Lockean document. The substitution of "pursuit of happiness" for "property" in the
famous enumeration of rights is a sufficient obstacle to
such a simplistic view. So is the appeal to the "dictates of
prudence." The ultimate authority for the meaning of the
intellectual virtue of prudence is Aristotle. For it was Aristotle who separated philosophic wisdom from practical
wisdom, sophia from phronesis, sapientia from prudentia.
T
a great deal in the Declaration that points backwards from Locke, towards the
ancients. In that famous letter to Henry Lee in 1825,
Jefferson wrote of the Declaration:
HERE IS ACCORDINGLY
All its authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of
the day, whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed
essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle,
Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc.
Wills attempts to brush this aside and to ridicule the reference to Aristotle, because elsewhere Jefferson depreciates
him. But Jefferson makes clear in the Lee letter that in
drafting the Declaration he was the agent of the Congress, and of the American people. What he wrote was not
intended as a personal statement, but "as an expression of
the American mind." That Jefferson listed two ancientsAristotle and Cicero-before two moderns-Locke and
Sidney-was not casual or accidental. Patrick Henry's
famous apostrophe began by noting that "Caesar had his
Brutus." The Senate, the Capitol, and many other symbols from the Founding period remind us of the power of
the example of ancient Rome, and of ancient freedom.
Perhaps Rome was more looked to than Greece. But Cicero himself looked to Athens to discover the principles of
Rome's greatness. Cicero was an "academic skeptic,"
who, although he wrote both a "Republic" and a "Laws,"
came closer in many respects to Aristotle than to Plato.
Wills ends his Prologue, his apology for writing his
book, with an appeal to the authority of Douglass Adair.
He cites an essay by Adair published in 1946, in which
Adair said, among other things, that
An exact knowledge of Jefferson's ideas . .. is still lacking ... We know relatively little about his ideas in the context
of the total civilization of which he was a part . ..
This, Wills thinks, authorizes his flat rejection of the
Lockeanism of orthodox scholarship. Certainly, Adair was
himself something of a rebel against orthodox scholarship.
He was also the author of what has often been referred to
as the most influential unpublished dissertation of our
time. Adair was restrained more by modesty and perfecAUTUMN 1981
�tionism, than by fear of the orthodox. Adair-who died in
1968-was my colleague and my friend, and a copy of his
1943 dissertation is before me. It is entitled The Intellec·
tual Origins of Jeffersonian Democracy. Its exceedingly
bold hypothesis is: that the most important source of Jef.
fersonian ideas on the connection between virtue, free~
dom, agrarianism, and republicanism, was to be found in
the Sixth Book of Aristotle's Politics. Adair's argument,
although brilliantly set forth, is not altogether persuasive.
But it adds plausibility to the notion of an Aristotelian in·
fluence on the Declaration-particularly since Jefferson
mentions that influence himself. When the Declaration
speaks of the people, instituting new government, such as
"to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and
Happiness," he is appealing to a tradition of more than
two thousand years. For safety and happiness are the
alpha and omega of political life, according to a tradition
originating with Aristotle. Political life, Aristotle had writ.
ten, originates in the desire for life, that is, for self-preser.
vation. But it moves on a scale of dignity, from mere life,
to the good life. And the name for the good life is happi·
ness.
In his straining to credit everything Jeffersonian to
Hutcheson, Wills makes much of the fact that Hutcheson
coined the phrase, "the greatest happiness of the greatest
number." He is sure that this is what caused Jefferson to
write "pursuit of happiness" instead of property" or
~<estate," in the famous enumeration. He tells us confidently that from the teachings of the Scottish school
"public happiness" is "measurable'' and "is, indeed, the
test and justification of any government." That public
happiness is the test and justification of any government
is also the teaching of both the Nicomachean Ethics and
of the Politics. Such public happiness would not, how·
ever, be measurable in any mathematical sense. Happi·
ness, according to Aristotle, is the summum bonum. As
such it cannot be counted among good things, since it
11
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
represents the presence of all good things, in the propor·
lions that make them beneficial to their possessor. For ex·
ample, you cannot be made happier by becoming richer,
if you already have all the wealth that you can use well.
But where does Jefferson ever speak of measuring happi·
ness, in the mathematical or geometrical manner that
Wills imputes to Hutcheson? It bears repeating, that in
sketching the literary sources of the Declaration-or,
rather, of the American mind that the Declaration ex·
pressed-Jefferson names Aristotle first of all. Then, after
naming Cicero, he mentions Locke. But the name of
Francis Hutcheson, in connection with the Declaration of
Independence, is never mentioned at all.
POSTSCRIPT
The two reviewers in question were M. J. Sobran, for NR, and
Richard Brookhiser for the American Spectator. In a later article
in NR, "Saving the Declaration," (December 22, 1978) Mr. Sobran
wrote as follows.
The Declaration is a republican document, based squarely on
Locke's theory . .. Which brings me to a personally embarrassing
point. In his recent book, Inventing America, Garry Wills persuaded
me (NR, July 7), that the Declaration can be understood without
reference to Locke. He denied, in fact, that there are any distinct
echoes of Locke, either in the Declaration or in Jefferson's writings
generally. But a careful reading of the Second Treatise makes overwhelmingly clear that Wills is wrong. In diction, terms, turns of
phrase, structure, and of course destination, the resemblance is so
close that it is hard to feel that the Declaration is anything but a sustained allusion to Locke. [Emphasis by Mr. Sobran.]
The reader will, of course, have perceived that in our opinion
the Declaration is in fact much more than an allusion to Locke.
Without that allusion, however, nothing of substance in the Declaration comes to sight. I am pleased to be able to record that Mr.
Brookhiser has authorized me to declare his association with Mr.
Sobran's revised judgment of Inventing America. This is a most
hopeful sign, that for better reasons than mere success, the Right
may become the Center of American politics.
19
�Four Poems
Laurence Josephs
ELM TREE
LATE WINTER PoEM
My elm is dead. Its bark
Peels off in shrugs, aghast
Bendings. Though some birds
Still bud there like leaves,
They sing through its bones
Resentfully, and none will nest.
For Frederick Caldwell II
A fairground edge-of-town,
A wreck stripped for the next
Stop, it shows only absence
Down to the last pennant
Where before the summer sky
Gorgeously intervened.
There has been some snow, I see,
Enough just to receive
The traced pawprints
Of small animals, to and from
The birdfeeder
Where they have mined
A first course of fallen
Seeds left by the birds.
Next spring will hear it
Shrieking in the chain-saw's
Mad embrace, as if
Gargantuan insects
Rubbed mutant wings, until,
Mire in the chimney
And released, all sickness
Burned away, its pale insubstant
Ghost against a pewter sky
Once more will branch
In air, blooming high over the house.
Up early I catch a cold
World almost a part
Of the moon, as if
It had dropped from that
Somehow and hardened.
Let me open the door! 0 let
Me open the window and lean out
Into this mask of silent air!
Has nothing really human
Happened here since last night
Before the snow began to come down?
In the road are tire-tracks:
Tracks of snow pushed aszde
To look like sculptured wavesThe wake of someone rushing past my house
As I slept and dreamed.
Professor of English at Skidmore College, Laurence Josephs has published three collections of poems, Cold Water Morning (Skidmore College 1964), The Skidmore Poems (Skidmore College 1975) and Six Elegies
(The Greenfield Review Press 1972).
20
AUTUMN 1981
�THE PoRCH
UNFINISHED SELF-PORTRAIT AND SEASCAPE
(Late August Mternoon)
Seeing in the glass their life
Losing color- as you saw that last,
Sad summer- painters will make us
Their mirror. Now I am your mirror,
Father, today looking your sickness
Back into your eyes; knowing
Nothing to disguise it in paint or words.
The breeze is transparent
Ribbons coming untied between the trees.
Far back, tin-voiced
Hawks parade the air, not flying,
But afloat, cruciform, at leisure
Just lower than the cloud.
Somewhere closed in all this
I am lying-a book interrupted
By a forgotten bookmark
Beneath which the page is a slightly
Differing color: a pale
Stripe no one could ever have painted;
Almost a whisper of color, unnameableAnd I hear your voice, unrolling too,
Like the ribboned breeze:
~ou are saying that summers were always
Ltke thts; always, always the same
As this: that there was even the same
Thunder waiting somewhere near the tall
Glasses of tea the ice had made
Weep through the tea -colored glass
And run down the sides like tears.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
On the easel where an unfinished
Seascape began to grow from canvas,
I see reflected the start
Of a world losing itself in your skill
That was not skillful enough.
Now it will never flow, that ocean,
Though in my eyes its sketchy tide
Stops, starts, subsides; changing
No course as we knew it could not
When you put aside the last brush.
Horizons show beginning
Is the end; endings begin.
And even God, I think, knew this
Ceding the sea nothing but depth
And that restlessness
From which life came crawling up
On a shore unwilling,
As it always is, to support life.
21
�The World of Physics
and The "Natural" World
Jacob Klein
I
It can scarcely be denied that at the present time physics
and philosophy, two sciences of recognized durability,
each handed down in a continuous tradition, are estranged
from one another; they oppose one another more or less
uncomprehendingly. By the nineteenth century a real and
hence effective mutual understanding between philosophers and physicists concerning the methods, presuppositions, and the meaning of physical research had already
become basically impossible; this remained true even
when both parties, with great goodwill and great earnestness, tried to reach a clear understanding of these issues.
When, in the second half of the last century, physicists
themselves adopted certain basic philosophical positions,
the Neo-Kantian or Machian, for instance, this scarcely affected their genuine scientific work. They did their work
independently of any philosophical question; they conquered more and more territory and were not distracted
from their course by difficulties appearing from time to
time in the interpretation of the formal mathematical apparatus (as in the case of Maxwell's Theory) or in regard to
the validity of ultimate physical principles (as in the case
of the second law of thermodynamics).
In this respect the situation has now changed in an essential way. To be sure, mathematical physics, in conformity with the basic attitude it has never abandoned, is still
content today with what can be established experimentally
and can be given an exact mathematical formulation; it refuses to follow philosophy into the region of what is neither experimentally nor mathematically confirmable and
hence is almost always controversial. Nonetheless, physics
now sees itself faced by questions in its own fundamental
work which have always been taken to fall within the domain of philosophy. In its own right physics raises questions about space and time, causality and substance,
about the limits of possible knowledge and the epistemic
sense of scientific statements and experimental results.
Consequently, it now considers turning to "philosophy"
as a reliable and valid court of appeal, if not for solutions
to these questions, then at least for advice or for new
points of view. The unsatisfactory relation between mathematical physics and philosophy has consequently become
more acute than it usually was in the 19th century. The
particular philosophical tendencies involved are a secondary matter. More importantly, it is clear that no agreement
about the meaning of the most fundamental concepts
which both physics and philosophy employ can be achieved,
e.g., the meaning of the concepts Space," "Time,"
11
('Causal Law,'' ''Experience,'' ''Intuition.''
texts.
Sometimes it seems as if two languages were being spoken, languages that sound the same and yet are totally different. Physicists and philosophers assess this situation
differently only insofar as the physicists are inclined-not
always, certainly, but for the most part-to regard the language of philosophy as unscientific, while the philosophers
-not always, to be sure, but frequently enough-suspect
themselves of something like bad conscience in such debates, simply because they think they are incapable of getting to the bottom of the physical concepts amidst the
formalistic thicket of differential equations, tensor calculus,
or group-theory. This bad conscience is understandable.
For, no matter how philosophy expresses itself philosophi-
22
AUTUMN 1981
Delivered as a lecture to the Physikalische Institut of the University of
Marburg on February 3, 1932, this paper is the only completed work
which one of Jacob Klein's literary executors, David R. Lachterman,
found among his papers after his death in 1978. The first half, roughly
of the paper is in typescript, the second in manuscript with marginal ad:
ditions, not always easily fitted into the text. The transcriber and translator, David R. Lachterman, has completed several elliptical references to
�cally, no matter what "standpoint" it might adopt, it cannot possibly pass by the problem of the World. And does
not physics, most of all, have to do with the world around
us? Don't the formulae of physics give an answer to the
question of the "true world," however "truth" might here
be understood? Even when philosophy believes it cannot
accept the answer physics gives, even when it regards it as
basically unsuccessful, it still has to reckon with it in some
fashion, even if only to refute it. Above all philosophy
must try to understand this answer. Even if philosophy
concerns itself exclusively with things falling within that
other hemisphere of science, the so-called "Geisteswissenschaften," it should never forget, even for an instant,
that mathematical physics is at the foundation of our
mental and spiritual life, that we see the world and ourselves in this world at first quite ingenuously as mathematical physics has taught us to see it, that the direction, the
very manner of our questioning is fixed in advance by
mathematical physics, and that even a critical attitude towards mathematical physics does not free us from its dominion. The idea of science intrinsic to mathematical
physics determines the basic fact of our contemporary
life, namely, our "scientific consciousness."
Mathematical physics and philosophy are nowadays
split apart and at odds with one another; they depend on
one another, even while time and again they are forced to
acknowledge their mutual incomprehension. What is to
be done in this situation? We must first of all try to find a
common ground, a basis of shared questions, such that
our questions are not in danger of missing their target
from the start. Is there any common ground? Where
should we try to find it? If we cannot glimpse it anywhere
in the present, then we have to consider whether we can
find it in the past.
Let us remember that there was an age that did not
know this hard and fast division between philosophy and
physics. Let us recall the title of Newton's work: Philosophiae natura/is principia mathematica. For Galileo the
true philosophy coincides with the true science of the
structure of this world. Likewise, Descrates' entire physics
is contained in his Principia philosophiae. The philosophia
naturalis of the seventeenth century is scientia naturalis,
science pure and simple, the heir to the legacy of medieval
and ancient science. The seventeenth century claimed
that the foundations it gave to this scientia were identical
with the foundations of all human knowing. Leibniz was
the first to open a gap between physics and metaphysics,
between the sciences of nature and of philosophy; however, Leibniz himself also exhibited their essential unity
in an especially impressive way. In the middle of the eighteenth century the paths of the new science of nature and
the new philosophy parted, even though their common
origin could never be forgotten. Furthermore, the contemporary tense division just noted between physics and
philosophy has its roots in precisely this history of the two
disciplines, a history which leads them from an original
unity to an increasing mutual estrangement.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
Accordingly, we must try to gain purchase on that common ground by going back to the initial situation, the situation of science in the seventeenth century; from this we
might possibly gain a measure of enlightenment concerning present-day difficulties, even if we simply come to understand the nature of these difficulties better. We should
not forget that all of the basic concepts of contemporary
science were given their now·authoritative stamp in the
seventeenth century. This holds especially true of the
basic concepts of physics, at least of "classical" physics, to
speak in the idiom of modern-day physics. However great
the changes modern-day physics is about to make, or has
already made in its foundations, no one will deny that it
stands squarely on the shoulders of classical physics and,
thus, of seventeenth century physics.
Reflection on the historical foundations of physics is
not an utterly wayward and irrelevant beginning, since
physics itself, even in its most recent phase, has been
forced again and again to look back to the past in order to
recognize the limited character of many of its basic concepts. Thus, the designation "classical physics," used to
refer to the physics of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and
nineteenth centuries, arises from the debate between
quantum mechanics and relativity-theory and the basic
concepts of Galilean and Newtonian mechanics. In their
own day, the debates between the mechanistic and the
energistic conceptions within physics led to the historical
investigations of Mach and Duhem. What we have to do,
in my judgment, is make this turn to historical origins
even more radical. Not only is this demanded by the issue
itself, it is most intimately connected with the basic presuppositions of our knowledge of the world.
II
Let us begin by picturing the general situation of science in the seventeenth century: A new science, desirous
above all of being a science of Nature and moreover a
"natural" science, opposed an already extant science. The
conceptual edifice of this new science was built up in continuous debate with the traditional and dominant science
of the Scholastics. The new concepts were worked out
and fortified in combat with the concepts of the old science. As has been emphasized time and again, the founders of this new science, men like Galileo, Slevin, Kepler,
Descartes, were moved by an original impulse quite alien
to the erudite science of the Scholastics. Their scientific
interests were inspired by problems of practical mechanics and practical optics, by problems of architecture,
machine construction, painting, and the newly-discovered
art of optical instruments. An open and unprejudiced eye
for the things of this world took the place of sterile booklearning.1 However, it is no less true that the conceptual
interpretation of these new insights was linked in every
case with the old, traditional concepts. The claim to communicate true science, true knowledge, necessarily took
23
�its bearings from the firmly-established edifice of traditional science. At all events, such a claim presupposes the
fact of "science"; it also presupposes the most general
foundations of the theoretical attitude which the Greeks
displayed and bequeathed to later centuries. The battle
between the new and the old science was fought on the
ground and in the name of the one, uniquely true science.
One or the other had to triumph; they could not subsist
side by side. This explains the great bitterness of the battle which lived on in the memory of succeeding generations, a bitterness immediately evident even today in the
difficulty we have when we try to distance ourselves from
the interpretation the victors -gave both of the battle and
of the enemy they vanquished.
_
What especially characterizes this battle is not only the
common goal marked out by those most general presuppositions, viz., the one, unique science, but, over and above
this, a definite uniformity of the weapons with which the
battle was fought. However different their viewpoints,
however antithetical the contents designated by their
concepts might be, the antagonists are very largely in accord as to the way in which these contents are to be interpreted, the way in which the concepts intend what is
meant by them whenever they are employed, in short, the
conceptual framework or intentionality [Begrifflichkeit] in
which their antithetical opinions are expressed. This accord has all too often been overlooked. The only issue is:
Which of them handled these weapons more suitably,
which of them filled in the conceptuality common to both
with contents genuinely in harmony with it? No doubt,
the outcome gives the victory to the new science. When it
mocks at the physics of the Scholastics, the physics of
"substantial forms/' the new science is striking primarily
at the unquestioning attitude of the old science, the Scholasticism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, an
attitude which made this old science unable to detect the
tension between the contents of its concepts and the use it
made of these. Such an unquestioning understanding of
oneself always exhibits a failure to comprehend one's own
presuppositions and thus a failure really to grasp what one
pretends to know. This is the danger to which science is
always exposed; this is the danger to which Scholastic science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries succumbed
as no other science had done before.
To penetrate to the foundations of the new science
and, in this way, to the foundations of mathematical physics, we have to keep this general situation of science in the
seventeenth century constantly in mind. It determines in
the most basic way the horizon of this new science, as well
as its methods, its general structure. It determines, above
all, the intentionality of its concepts as such.
There is a long-standing controversy over how the experiential bases of physics fit together with its specific
conceptuality. The very possibility of distinguishing "experimental" from "theoretical physics," a distinction
which surely rests on nothing more than a didactic, or
technical, division of labor, illustrates the problem. The
24
reciprocity of experiment and theory, of observation and
hypothesis, the relation of universal constants to the
mathematical formalism-all of these issues point again
and again to the two antithetical tendencies pervading
modern physical science and giving it its characteristic
stamp. This controversy, familiar to us from the nineteenth century, fundamentally concerns the preeminence
of one or the other of these two tendencies. Nowadays,
depending on the side one takes, one speaks of Empiricism or Apriorism; physicists themselves customarily side
with the so-called empiricists and confuse apriorism with
a kind of capriciously speculative philosophy. The good
name of Kant has been made to bear the burden of furnishing ever-new fuel for this controversy. I am not going
to take sides in this controversy. The controversy itself
first grows from the soil of the new science and must be
clarified by turning back to its origins in the seventeenth
century. What is primarily at stake is an understanding of
the particular intentionality, the particular character of
the concepts with whose aid the mathematical physics
which arose in the seventeenth century erected the new
and immense theoretical structure of human experience
over the next two centuries.
This intentionality is that of contemporary Scholasticism. The Scholastics believed that by using it they were
faithfully administering the legacy of knowledge handed
down to them by tradition. They believed that they were
reproducing ancient doctrine, especially ancient cosmology, in exactly the same way as it was understood and
taught by the Greeks, that is, by Aristotle. They identified
their own concepts with those of the ancients. The new
science, moreover, followed them in this matter. It, too,
interpreted ancient cosmology along the lines of contemporary scholastic science. It was, however, certainly not
content with this. Rather, it called upon the things themselves in order to rebuke the untenable doctrines of this
Scholastic science, with its seemingly unquestioning certitude. In doing so, it exposed the incongruity between
Scholastic intentionality and the contents the traditional
concepts were intended to refer to. Furthermore, it went
back to the sources of Greek science, neglected by Scholastic science; these sources, too, were interpreted in
terms of the intentionality it shared with Scholastic science. And this interpretation of the legacy of ancient
teachings, involving a characteristic modification of every
ancient concept, is the basis of the whole concept-formation of the new science.
As a result, the special character of these new concepts
can be brought to light in one of two ways. First, we can
contrast the Scholastic science of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with genuine Aristotelianism. If we do
so, a direct path leads from the lengthy and little-read
compendia of Cremonini,Z Francesco Piccolomini,3 Buonamico,4 Zabarella, 5 Toletus,6 Benedictus Pereirus/ Alessandro Piccolomini,8 etc., and, above all, of Suarez, as well
as from the humanistically-influenced interpretation of
Aristotle (e.g., in Faber Stapulensis and Petrus Ramus),
AU!1JMN 1981
�back to the Nominalism of fourteenth century. As
Duhem has shown, initiatives leading to the modern sci·
ence of Nature are present everywhere in fourteenth cen·
tury Nominalism. Secondly, we can confront Aristotle
himself as well as the other sources of Greek science, most
importantly Plato, Democritus, Euclid, Archimedes, Apol·
Ianius, Pappus, and Diophantus, with the interpretation
given them by Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, Fermat, Vieta,
et al. In what follows I want to discuss only this second
path, selecting just a few characteristic examples. None·
theless, before I begin I must make a more general remark.
Since the pioneering works of Hultsch and Tannery on
the history of ancient mathematics, the relation between
ancient and modern mathematics has increasingly be·
come the focus of historical investigation as well as the
theme of reflection in the philosophy of history. Two general lines of interpretation can be distinguished here.
One-the prevailing view-sees in the history of science a
continuous forward progress interrupted, at most, by periods of stagnation. On this view, forward progress takes
place with "logical necessity";' accordingly, writing the
history of a mathematical theorem or of a physical principle basically means analyzing its logic 10 The usual presentations, especially of the history of mathematics, picture a
rectilinear course; all of its accidents and irregularities disappear behind the logical straightness of the whole path.
The second interpretation emphasizes that the different stages along this path are incomparable. For example,
it sees in Greek mathematics a science totally distinct from
modern mathematics. It denies that a continuous development from the one to the other took place at all. Both
interpretations, however, start from the present-day condition of science. The first measures ancient by the standard of modern science and pursues the individual threads
leading back from the valid theorems of contemporary science to the anticipatory steps taken towards them in antiquity. Time and again it sees contemporary science in
ancient science; it seeks in ancient science only the seeds
of now-mature fruits. The second interpretation strives to
bring into relief, not what is common, but what divides
ancient and modern science. It, too, however, interprets
the otherness of ancient mathematics, for example, in
terms of the results of contemporary science. Consequently, it recognizes only a counter-image of itself in ancient science, a counter-image which still stands on its
own conceptual level.
Both interpretations fail to do justice to the true state of
the case. There can be no doubt that the science of the
seventeenth century represents a direct continuation of
ancient science. On the other hand, neither can we deny
their differences, differences not only in maturity, but,
above all, in their basic initiatives, in their whole disposition (habitus). The difficulty is precisely to avoid interpreting their differences and their affinity one-sidedly in
terms of the new science. The new science itself did exactly that, in order to prove that its own procedure was
the only correct one. The contemporary tendency to subTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
stitute admiration or tolerance of ancient cosmology for
condemnation contributes little to our understanding of
that cosmology. The issues at stake cannot be divorced
from the specific conceptual framework within which
they are interpreted. Conversely, these issues cannot even
be seen within a conceptual framework unsuited to them;
at best, they can only be imperfectly described. The best
example comes from modern physics itself: the discussion
of modern physical theories is ensnared in great difficulties when physicists and non-physicists alike try to ignore
the mathematical apparatus of physics and present the results of research in a "commonsense" manner!
We need to approach ancient science on a basis appropriate to it, a basis provided by that science itself. Only on
this basis can we measure the transformation ancient science underwent in the seventeenth century. A transformation unique and unparalleled in the history of man!
Our modern ''scientific consciousness" first arose as a re-
sult of this transformation. This modern consciousness is
to be understood not simply as a linear continuation of ancient h<UT~I'~> but as the result of a fundamental conceptual shift which took place in the modern era, a shift we
can nowadays scarcely grasp.
I want to try to grasp the nature of this conceptual shift
more precisely, that is, to determine more precisely the
character of the new concepts in contrast with the old.
III
The unambiguous and explicit preference for quantitative over qualitative determinations in the new science
sets it distinctively apart from the old. There cannot be
any difference of opinion on this point. How often have
those lines from Galileo's II Saggiatore (1623) been cited,
that pilosophy is written in mathematical language in the
great open book of the Universe! To be able to read it one
has first to understand this language, one has to know the
script, the letters in which it is written. These letters are
((triangles, circles, and other geometrical Figures"; without their aid we cannot understand even a single word of
that language. II In the second chapter of Kepler's Mysterium cosmographicum this idea finds its most pointed formulation:
God wanted quantity to make its appearance in reality before
anything else, so that the relation between the curved and the
straight might exist (Quantitatem Deus . .. ante omnia existere
voluit, ut esset curvi ad rectum comparatio.) Hence, He first
selected the curved and the straight in order to spread a
reflection of the splendor of the divine creator over the world
(ad adumbrandam in mundo divinitatem Conditoris); for this
purpose the 'quantities' were necessary, namely, figure (fig~
ura), number (numerus) and extension (amplituda or extensio).
For this reason He created the body which embraces all these
determinations. 12
25
�These words point immediately back to Nicholas of Cusa,
whom Kepler explicitly mentions, and anticipate Descartes'
later theory. However, they are also directly connected
with the whole Platonic-Pythagorean and Neo-Platonic
tradition and, above all, with Plato's own Timaeus. This
tradition had always remained alive. For example, in
Roger Bacon's Opus Maius (1266-68) we can find statements such as these: "Mathematics is the gateway and
key to all other sciences." "Anyone who does not know it
cannot understand either the other sciences or the things
of this world" (Qui ignorat earn, non potest scire caeteras
scientias nee res huius mundi.) HLogic, too, depends on
mathematics. Nothing of great significance in the other
sciences can be understood without mathematics." (Nihil
in eis potest sciri magnificum sine mathematica.)" What
distinguishes Kepler's and Galileo's words from such statements in the earlier Platonic tradition? There clearly must
be a distinction here, one that shows itself in the quite different influence, that is, the entirely different role played
by mathematics in ancient and modern science. Is the distinction merely that Kepler and Galileo spoke from a firsthand, living experience of things, while the earlier authors
were attached only to traditional texts? Or, did the two
traditions understand something different by "quantity,"
by "mathematical science?"
To answer this question, I have chosen examples relevant to the foundation of analytical geometry and algebra.
Both analytical geometry and algebra stand in the closest
relation to one another from the outset, although algebra
asserted its primacy within this relation. Both belong to
the foundations of mathematical physics. Vieta took the
decisive step in the realm of algebra, basing himself both
indirectly and immediately on Diophantus. Fermat and
Descartes, who, as is well-known, count as the founders of
analytical geometry, rely directly on Diophantus and
Apollonius, as well as on Pappus. In both cases, then, we
can confront the old and the new concepts by paying attention to the way Diophantus and Apollonius were received and construed. In both cases, what is at issue is
nothing less than the creation of a formal mathematical
language, without which mathematical physics is inconceivable. I shall begin by considering Apollonius' relation
to Fermat and Descartes.
IV
A. Two works by Apollonius particularly captured the
interest of sixteenth and seventeenth century mathematicians: (I) the first four books of his Treatise on Conic Sections, available in the original Greek since the fifteenth
century and since 1566 in the first usable Latin translation
made by Fredericus Commandinus; (2) his "Plane Loci"
in two books. Only fragments of the latter are preserved in
the Mathematical Collection of Pappus, the Latin translation of which-also by Commandinus-appeared in 1588.
These works-along with those of Diophantus, Archi-
26
medes, and Euclid-are among the basic books of seventeenth century mathematical science. Fermat, for example,
undertook to reconstruct the "Plane Loci" on the basis of
the fragments in Pappus and in the light of the Conic Sections. In an introduction added later, the Isagoge ad locos
pianos et solidos, and an appendix, Fermat sketched the
basic features of analytical geometry. Among other things,
he shows that every equation of the first and second degree in two unknowns can be coordinated with a plane
geometrical locus, that is, a straight~line or a curve, if one
represents the two unknowns as (orthogonal) coordinates,
as we would say today. Among the infinitely many possible curves of this kind are the circle, the parabola, the
ellipse, and the hyperbola, that is, the conic sections Apollonius treats in his major work. Independently of Fermat,
Descartes, by solving a locus-problem posed by Pappus
which goes back to Apollonius, arrived at the definitive
conception of this procedure now familiar to us from ana-
lytical geometry. In doing so, Descartes took up again a
line of thought that had occupied him in his youth. Nonetheless, since the studies of Moritz Cantor, Fermat has
rightly been considered the genuine founder of analytical
geometry, since his Isagoge had certainly already been
written when Descartes' Geometrie appeared (1637). Strikingly, neither Fermat nor Descartes unleashed one of
those struggles over priority so common in the seventeenth century. Fermat made Descartes acquainted with
his own works in analytical geometry after the Geometrie
had appeared; nonetheless, neither of them placed any
value on claiming priority for himself. This is all the more
astonishing since they did embroil the entire Republic of
Letters in the most unpleasant disputes over much flimsier points, as Gaston Milhaud has emphasized.l4 The
only explanation must be that neither Descartes nor Fermat believed he had advanced beyond Apollonius on any
essential points. What we take to be the enormous achievement of Descartes and Fermat they themselves believed
they had learned in essence from Apollonius or Pappus.
Fermat finds fault with Apollonius only because he did
not present matters "generally enough" (non satis generaliter).15 He says very cautiously that his general procedure
for constructing geometrical loci "was perhaps not known
to Apollonius" (ab Apollonio fortasse ignorabatur). 1 And
'
Descartes is quite convinced that the Ancients-he expressly names Pappus along with Diophantus-deliberately erased the traces of their true knowledge out of a
kind of perverted cunning (perniciosa quadam astutia) and
divulged to us, not their own art, but only a few of their resultsP I want to examine this matter more closely.
When Apollonius considers a conic-section, e.g., the ellipse in Book I, Theorem 13 of the Treatise on Conic Sections,18 he begins by passing a plane through the axis of a
cone and then lets the cone be intersected by another
plane in such a way that the desired figure, an ellipse in
this case, emerges on the surface of the cone; the line of
intersection of these two planes forms the diameter of the
ellipse (see Fig. 1).
AUTUMN 1981
�A
day we call the parameter of the ellipse and in Apollonius
is called bpO{a, because it is perpendicular to the diameter
and hence is "straight.") If, now, a perpendicular to ED is
drawn at M, and Pis connected with D, then the segment
PD cuts the perpendicular from M at point X, which determines segment MX. The segments EM and FM thus
stand in a ratio that can be exactly determined geometrically and this holds true of any point F on the ellipse. In
other words, this ratio is characteristic of ~he entire ellipse
and, consequently, of any ellipse as such. Apollonius calls
the segments EM and FM, respectively, ~ &7roTEJ'VOJ'€v~
(the line "cut off' by the diameter of the chord) and ~
TE7a"fl'{vw• xaT~'YI'€v~ (hl ri)v &&J'ETPov) the line "drawn
down" to the diameter in a determinate way (that is, not
in an arbitrary, but in an "ordered" way)-in Latin translation, abscissa and ordinatim applicata, or for short, ordinata.l9 Apollonius uses these segments, the Habscissa" and
the "ordinate/' in every individual case, in order to define
Figure 1
An auxiliary line is drawn from the vertex A which meets
the plane of the base of the cone at point K; AK is parallel
to the diameter ED. From an arbitrary point F on the ellipse a straight line FM is drawn to the diameter in a determinate manner, namely, in such a way that the chord
FF' is bisected by point M. Consequently, FF' becomesas we say today-a conjugate chord to the diameter ED.
(Compare Figure 2.)
F
MF
l.
=
EM-MX
Figure 2
It is then proved that the square on FM equals the rectangle made up of EM and a segment MX (in modern notation: FM2 ~ EM•MX), where the segment MX is defined
as follows: on a perpendicular line dropped to E the segment EP is drawn, which stands in the same ratio to the
diameter ED as the rectangle BK, CK to the square on
AK (in modern notation: EP:ED ~BK·CK:AK 2 ). (Compare Fig. 1). The straight-line EP corresponds to what toTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
the general properties, the basic "planimetric properties,"
characteristic of different conic-sections.
What distinguishes these segments from our "co-ordinates" employed for the first time by Fermat and Descartes? First of all, the axes to which they are referred,
viz., in the present instance, the diameter ED and the tangent to the conic atE, "do not constitute a system of lines
on their own, but like other auxiliary geometrical lines
make their appearance only in connection with the conic
section; they are brought into existence by the theorem to
be proved in each instance."20 This procedure, which for
the Greeks themselves belonged to "Analysis," has been
called "geometrical algebra." This expression, first used
by Zeuthen21 and now widely current, is quite felicitous
insofar as it hints at both the affinity as well as the difference between the Greek and the modern procedure.
The term, however, does not indicate that the procedure
can only be carried out on different conceptual levels in
these two different cases. In each case Apollonius has in
view the particular ellipse, which is cut out on the surface
of a particular cone by two particular intersecting lines.
The representation in the drawing gives a true 'image'
[Abbild] of this cone, these intersecting lines and this ellipse. There are infinitely many possible cones, sections,
and ellipses. The procedure specified is applicable to all of
them-its generality consists in this-but to this generality of procedure there does not correspond the generality
of the object. There is no "general object" for the drawing
ing to represent in a merely symbolic way [symbolisch ].
There are infinitely many possible, more or less good, images of the one ellipse represented here. And there are, in
turn, infinitely many such ellipses which can be exhibited
or 4 'imaged." The characteristic of the f.U:t.O'Yip.&nxa, math-
ematical objects in the Greek sense, is precisely that they
can be grasped by the senses only in images, while they
themselves, in their unalterable constitution, are accessi-
ble only to the discursive intellect; however, there are infinitely many of these objects. 22 What the phrase "there
are" is supposed to mean here, how the mode of being of
27
�mathematical objects is to be understood, is one of the
great disputes in Greek philosophy. No one disputes,
however, that mathematical science as such has to do
with these "pure" figures or formations [Gebilde] whose
nature is accessible to the intellect alone. The lines drawn
in any particular diagram and their ratios belong to this
"pure" ellipse which is exhibited by them. To be sure, in
the case of every individual ellipse-thanks to the generality of the procedure-such "abscissas" and "ordinates"
can always be singled out, but each time line-segments belonging to the particular ellipse in question are intended.
This is not due to the imperfection of Greek mathematics,
its defective means of presentation, or its inadequate
capacity for generalization, but is rather entailed by the
specific intentionality of Greek science. Its concepts in
each instance intend the individual objects themselves;
they are-to speak in Scholastic language-intentiones
primae ["first intentions"]-that is, concepts which refer
immediately to individual objects. This is in harmony
with the means of presentation which Greek science employs. The lines drawn in the figure exhibit the object,
they "image" it. Consequently, the mode of presentation
of Greek mathematics-with a single exception which we
shall come to later-is never merely representative [stellvertretend], never symbolic, but is always the presentation
of an image [abbildlich], and in this way first-intentional.
For this reason, the designation "geometrical algebra,"
which perhaps takes its bearings too much from the exceptional case we shall discuss later, does not really do
justice to the facts of the case.
In contrast to analysis in our own sense, Greek analysis
does not merely have a different style of presentation, but
embodies a fundamentally different relation between the
style of presentation and what is presented. What, in fact,
do the lines which Descartes and Fermat employ as abscissas and ordinates signify? What do the curves which
they draw mean? In the second part of his Discourse on
Method, Descartes gives us exhaustive information on this
point-" In these curves he intends to exhibit only relations or proportions (nihil aliud quam relationes sive proportiones~4 and to do so in the greatest possible generality
(et quidem maxime genera/iter sumptas). 25 The exhibition
of these relations in line-segments is only the simplest and
clearest illustration for the senses and the imagination, so
long as it is a matter of a single relation. In order to survey
many such relations together and to be able to keep them
conveniently in memory, they have to be simultaneously
represented [representiert] by appropriate signs of ciphers,
namely, by letters. Illustration by lines and representation
by letters are thus merely two modes of the very same
symbolic style of presentation. Lines and letters both are
here simply the most suitable bearers of the general relations and proportions being considered; they are merely
"les sujets qui serviraient a m'en rendre la connaissance
plus aisee. "26 The ellipse inscribed within coordinate-axes
(as we employ them today, using the method worked out
by Descartes and Fermat) (Fig. 3)
28
Figure 3
is thus no longer an image of the "pure" ellipse, the Ellipse-Itself. The coordinate-axes drawn are no longer images
of a pair of straight lines applicable to the "pure" ellipse,
but merely symbolize the generally possible use of such a
pair. The abscissa and the ordinate of a point when actually drawn no longer exhibit particular line-segments in
the manner of images, but "illustrate" the general procedure of Apollonius; in other words they stand immediately
only for the general concepts of "abscissa" and ('ordinate"
resulting from that procedure and not for the line-segments directly intended by these concepts in each individual instance. Accordingly, the modern concepts of "abscissa" and ''ordinate" are intentiones securidae [''second
intentions"], concepts which refer directly to other concepts, to intentiones primae, and only indirectly to objects.
In the language of mathematics this means: They are concepts of the "Variable n." For this reason the abscissa and
ordinate axes can be detached from the realm of objects.
All the curves investigated with their help are from now
on nothing but symbolic exhibitions of various possible
relations, or of the different "functional" relations, between two (or more) variables.
All this, however, is only one side of the matter (the side
emphasized principally by the Neo-Kantians and viewed
by them as the only essential aspect). It is no less essential
that these symbolic curves were understood as the images
of the curves exhibited by the Ancients. For example, the
ellipse inscribed within coordinate-axes was regarded as
the very same ellipse treated by Apollonius. Precisely this
assumption led Fermat and Descartes to believe that they
were not proceeding any differently than Apollonius had.
Although, in fact, there has been a shift in conceptual-levels, Fermat thinks that he has simply interpreted many of
Apollonius' theorems more generally (generalius), 27 that
his procedure merely opened up a "general path" to the
construction of geometrical loci (generalis ad locos via)" in
exactly the sense in which Apollonius says that Book One
of his Conic Sections treats things more generally or uniAUTUMN 1981
�versally ("a86)..ov p,&AAov~ 9 than his predecessors had
done. (And not even this is certain for Fermat, if we reflect on his word fortasse ["perhaps"].) What Fermat and
Descartes call "generalization" is in reality a complex conceptual process ascending from intentio prima to intentio
secunda while, at the same time, identifying these. Only in
this way can we understand what Descartes means when
he characterizes his analytical procedure as a unification
of the geometrical analysis of the Ancients with algebra.
This unification is brought about through a symbolic in·
terpretation and exhibiton of geometrical forms, on the
one hand, and of arithmetical ratios, on the other. Both
kinds of "quantities" are viewed together with regard to
their common 1 "general" quantitative character and ex~
hibited in this generality. Consequently, the modern analytical procedure has to do immediately only with "general
quantities." However, these "general quantities," on the
whole, can only be sensibly exhibited because their generality at the same time is understood as variability, that is,
because these magnitudes are thought of from the start as
"alterable." (And, indeed, this holds true as much of the
magnitudes posited as 'constant' as it does of genuine
variables.) The <(being" of "general magnitudes" consists
here only in their peculiar ability to take on all, or all admissible, values one after the other. This is exactly what
gives all of them the capacity to replace particular line-seg·
ments or particular numerical values. Their symbolic exhibition corresponds to what Kant understands by a
schema. Kant says:
This representation of a universal procedure of imagination
in providing an image for a concept [i.e., assigning to a first intention the image belonging to it], I entitle the schema of this
concept. 30
The schema can be directly transformed into an image
[Abbild], if the segments and ratios of segments, of which
it consists, assume numerically determinate lengths and
values. The possibility of identifying prima and secunda
intentio is, therefore, based on this, that the schema is or·
dinarily understood as a schema already transformed into
an image. Schematic imageability [Abbildlichkeit] is thus
the element which allows us to illustrate the generalization of Arithmetic into Algebra, or, in other words, to
"unite" geometry and algebra.
Only in this way can we come to understand that Des·
cartes' concept of extensio identifies the extendedness of
extension with extension itself. Our present-day concept
of space can be traced directly back to this. Present-day
Mathematics and Physics designate as "Euclidean Space"
the domain of symbolic exhibition by means of line-segments, a domain which is defined by a coordinate system,
a relational system [Bezugssystem], as we say nowadays.
"Euclidean Space" is by no means the domain of the fig·
ures and structures studied by Euclid and the rest of
Greek mathematics. It is rather only the symbolic illustration of the general character of the extendedness of those
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
structures. Once this symbolic domain is identified with
corporeal extension itself, it enters into Newtonian physics as "absolute space." At the present time it is being criticized by Relativity Theory, which has been steered by
the question of "In variance" into trying to break through
these symbolic bounds, while continuing to use this very
symbolism.
B. The founding of analytical geometry by Descartes
and Fermat is also conditioned by the immediately preceding development of algebra and the language of algebraic formulae. Vieta, as I have said, provided the decisive
impetus here. I want to consider now, as a further example of this conceptual shift, Vieta's relation to traditional
algebra.
The science of algebra, in the form in which Vieta encountered it in the sixteenth century, namely, in the form
of a doctrine of equations, was received in the West from
the thirteenth century on as an Arabic science. This Arabic science was, in all probability, nourished essentially by
two Ancient sources. We can identify one of these straightaway, viz., the Arithmetic of Diophantus; the other can
only be indirectly inferred. (Tannery believed that he
could recognize it in a lost work by a contemporary of Diophantus, sc., Anatolius.) In any case, Diophantus is by far
the most important source, as the very name "Algebra" indicates: the word ''Algebra" (a 'nomen barbaricum/ as
Descartes says) is in Arabic nothing more than the first
half of a formulaic expression for the basic rule for solving
equations that Diophantus sets out at the beginning of
Book I of his Arithmetica.l 1
The doctrine of equations had made great progress in
the West, before people began, in the second half of the
sixteenth century, to take up Diophantus' work itself.
Modern algebra and modern formalism grew out of
Vieta's direct occupation with Diophantus; later writers
merely elaborated and refined his work. Here, then, in
Vieta's reception of Diophantus, we encounter one of
those nodal-points of development, a point where the new
science arose from the confrontation of two distinct conceptual planes.
The surviving six books of Diophantus' Arithmetic*
teach how to solve problems of reckoning which today are
familiar to us as determinate and indeterminate equations
of the 1st and 2nd degree. Diophantus, in giving these solutions, uses, in addition to other signs, a series of abbreviations for the unknowns and their powers. In every case it
is only a matter of a simple abbreviation; this is above all
the case with the sign for the unknown, which is nothing
other than an abbreviation of the word &p,Op,6<. Heath has
conclusively explained this point. Diophantus' "epochal
*[Readers of the Review may be interested to know that the "lost" books
of Diophantus' Arithmetica have now been discovered in an Arabic
translation. See J. Sesiano, The Arabic Text of Books IV to VII of Diophantus' 'ApdJp.rtnx& . .. edited, with translation and commentary (Ph.D.
Diss., Brown Univ. 1975).]
29
�invention" (to use Hultsch's phrase)32 consists in his having introduced this sign into the logistical procedure of solution, that is, he reckons or calculates with the unknown.
Apart from the unknown or unknowns and their powers
he admits only formations that correspond to rational
numbers, i.e.~ to integers and fractions. In modern termi·
nology, only numerical coefficients appear. What does an
equation look like in Diophantus? Let us look at a very
simple example which I shall write in its simplest form:
That is, lxptfJp.ol OUo p.ov&OES rPt'i:~ '[(JO'i Elalv 1.wv&cn brrci.
Or, in English, "Two numbers [lxP<OI'ot] and three units
are equal to seven units." The sign s is a ligature for
&p,OI'6s; the sign IV! (or tt=J is an abbreviation for l'ov&s or
l'ov&!i<S (the plural is also written 1'"). The corresponding
equation in Vieta, which for the sake of simplicity I shall
write in modern form, since this does not basically deviate
from his, is: 2x + 3 ~ 7. Is this merely a technically more
convenient form of writing? Do the two equations say entirely the same thing, if we disregard the mode of writing?
To answer this question we have to look a little more
closely at the Greek manner of writing. (It is of no importance here whether Diophantus wrote in exactly this way;
the extant manuscripts reproduce what is essential.) What
is particularly surprising is the addition of the sign for
l'ovali<S. Scholars have tried to explain this as intended to
discriminate with sufficient clarity the numerical signs
which specify the number [Anzah~ of dptOI'o(, i.e., the
number of the unknowns (thus, in our case, the sign /3),
from the signs for the purely numerical magnitudes (in
our case the sign)'). If the sign M did not stand between /3
and)', then the expression could be read: 2 C,p,OI'o( and 3
C,p,OI'o( together make 7. Regardless of the fact that in a
great many instances confusion is not possible at all, this
interpretation fails to recognize the fundamental importance of the monad, or the monads, for Greek arithmetic.
Hence, it also misjudges the Greek concept of dptOI'ot,
the Greek "number-" concept in general. 'Apt01'6s does
not mean "Zahl," [number in general) but 11 Anzahl/' viz.,
a definite number of definite things: 'II'Els &pt01'6s nvos
ian. ("Every number is a number of something." 33 ) In
daily life we frequently have to do with numbers of visible
and tangible objects, each of which is in each case just
one. However, the very possibility of counting, where we
utter the same words again and again, viz., "two,"
~<three," "four," etc., while referring to different things at
different times, points to objects of a quite different sort,
namely, to incorporeal, "pure," ones, to "pure" monads.
The Greek science of arithmetic is occupied with these
monads. For this reason the well-known definition of
&pdJp.Os in Euclid runs as follows: ro €x p.ovciOwv
av'Yx•ii'Evov 'll't./i/Oos (Euclid 7, Def. 2), "a multitude composed of monads, of unities." What it means that there are
such monads, the question of the mode of being of these
30
pure monads, is the great issue in Greek philosophy, as I
have already mentioned. Indeed, the case of the monad is
one of the ultimate issues which divide Plato from Aristotle. It is not a matter of controversy, however, that only
these pure monads as such can be the object of scientific
arithmetic. According as one interprets the mode of being
of these pure monads there can or cannot exist a scientific
doctrine of reckoning, a logistic, alongside arithmetic, the
doctrine of pure numbers and pure numerical relations.
Diophantine arithmetic is in this sense a scientific logistic
and stands to arithmetic in much the way the metrics of
Heron of Alexandria stand to theoretical geometry. 34 It focuses upon the field of pure monads. Every single number
which it treats is a number of such monads. Its mode of
writing is accommodated to this fact. Even the unknown,
the dptOwfs which has to be reckoned, is a definite
number of monads, although still unknown at first and
"indeterminate" in this sense alone. All the signs used by
this logistic refer immediately to the enumerated objects
in question here.
How does the new science interpret this situation? In
his work "In artem analyticen Isagoge" published in 1591
Vieta introduces the fundamental distinction between a
''logistica numerosa" and a "logistica speciosa." The former is a doctrine of numerical equations; the second re-
places numerical values with general "symbols," as Vieta
himself says, that is, with letters. (We can, in this context,
disregard the fact that Vieta, in accordance with his "Law
of Homogeneity," has these symbols apparently refer to
geometrical formations.) Logistica speciosa gives Vieta the
capacity, not only of writing an expression such as
ax+ b ~ c (in a much more detailed form, with which we
are not concerned here)-initiatives in this direction can
be found prior to Vieta-but also of calculating with this
expression. With this step, he becomes the first creator of
the algebraic formula.
How are we to understand this step from 2x to ax, from
the numerical coefficient (the term "coefficient" stems
from Vieta himself) to the literal coefficient? Could Diophantus have taken basically the same step? The answer
to this depends directly on how we interpret the numerical sign "2." For Vieta the replacement of "2" by "a" is
possible because the concept of "two" no longer refers, as
it did for Diophantus, directly to an object, viz., to two
pure monads, but in itself already has a umore general"
character. "Two" no longer means in Vieta "two definite
things," but the general concept of twoness in general. In
other words, in Vieta the concept of two has the character
of an intentio secunda. It no longer means or intends a determinate number of things, but the general number-character of this one number, while the symbol "a" represents
the general numerical character of each and every number. In this sense the sign "a" represents "more" than the
sign "2." The symbolic relation between the sign and what
it designates is, however, the same in both cases. The replacement of "2" by "a" is in fact only "logically required
here." However, in this case as wel1, this
uz" is identified
AUTUMN 1981
�with the sign employed by Diophantus-and this is the
decisive thing. The concept of two ness is at the same time
understood as referring to two entities. (Modern set theory
first tries to separate these two constituents, to clarify
what "at the same time" means.) In any case, Vieta, as the
result of this identification, understands Diophantus' logistic as a logistica numerosa which "logically" presupposes the "more general" logistica speciosa. Thus, Vieta
says in paragraph 14 of his Isagoge that Diophantus practiced the art of solving equations most cleverly. He continues: "Earn vera tanquam per numeros non etiam per species,
quibus tamen usus est, institutam exhibuit." ("However,
he exhibited it [this art] as if it were based on numbers and
not also on species [that is, the literal-signs,] although he
nonetheless made use of these species.")35 Diophantus
kept silent about the latter, in Vieta's opinion, only so as
to make his acuity and his skill shine more brightly, since
the numerical solution-procedure is indeed much more
difficult than the convenient literal-reckoning. The relation between Fermat and Apollonius finds its exact counterpart here: Vieta sees in literal-reckoning only a more
convenient, because more general, path to the solution of
the problems posed. He can do this because he interprets
the numbers with which Diophantus dealt from a higher
conceptual level, because, in other words, he identifies
the concept of number with the number itself, in short he
understands Anzahl [counting-number] as Zahl [number
in general]. Our contemporary concept of number [Zahlbegriffj has its roots in this interpretation of the Ancient
c,p,ep.6s.
We can now understand how important it is that
Bachet, who in 1621 (hence, after Vieta) published the
first usable edition and Latin translation of Diophantus,
abandons the current rendering of the sign for the p.ovas.
"Who," he says, "does not immediately think of six units
when he hears the number 6 named?" ("Ecquis enim cum
audit numerum sex non statim cogitat sex unitates?") "Why
is it also necessary to say 'six units,' when it is enough to
1
say 'six'?" ("Quid ergo necesse est sex unitates dicere, cum
sufficiat dicere, sex?'')l 6 This discrepancy-felt to be selfevident-between cogitare (thinking) and dicere (saying
and also writing) expresses the general shift in the meaning of the concept from intentio prima to intentio secunda,
together with their simultaneous identification. Consequently, there is no longer anything to prevent Vieta's
logistica speciosa from becoming a part of geometrical
analysis; this is exactly what Fermat and Descartes explicitly did. The unification of these two disciplines is basically complete in Vieta' s ars analytica. Modern analysis is,
therefore, not a direct combination of Ancient geometrical analysis with the Ancient theory of equations, but the
unification of both on the basis of a transformed intentionality. The same shift in meaning can be established in
a whole series of concepts. For instance, the mathematical term OVvafus, 'power' in ancient mathematics, means
only the square of a magnitude, while we speak as well of
the third, the fourth power, etc. We do not encounter this
THEST.JOHNSREVIEW
relation in the mathematical domain alone. It also holds
between the modern concept of 'method' and the Greek
term p.€8ooos, between our 'theory' and Greek B<wPia. In
two cases, those of substance and causality, this shift in
meaning was of the greatest importance for the construction of the new science. I cannot discuss these now. I
want simply to remark that the relation here is more complicated, inasmuch as these concepts-like all concepts
belonging to 1rpwr~ qn"Aoao<ria, the Ancient ontological
fundamental-science-themselves already have the character of intentiones secundae; this is why the new science
considered itself the sole legitimate heir of ancient philosophy, why, in other words, mathematical physics can in a
certain sense replace ancient ontology for us. I want now,
by way of conclusion, to turn to the exception I mentioned earlier and thereby compare one of the bases of ancient cosmology with the fundaments of the modern
study of nature.
C. I said that what is peculiar to the conceptual intention of ancient science-and especially of Greek mathematics-is that its concepts refer immediately to definite
objects. This obviously does not hold true of the 5th book
of Euclid's Elements which goes back to Plato's friend
Eudoxus. This book contains the so-called general theory
of proportions, that is, it treats ratios and proportions of
p.ey€8~, magnitudes in general. Accordingly, it does not
treat the ratios of particular magnitudes, geometrical
forms for instance, or numbers or bodily masses or time-
segments, but ratios "in themselves," the wholly undetermined bearers of which are symbolized [symbolisch . .. versinnbildlicht] by straight lines. The fifth book of Euclid, in
fact, contains a "geometrical algebra." The exceptional
character of this branch of Greek mathematics brings it
into immediate proximity to Greek ontology. It is not surprising, therefore, that it had an exemplary, although diverse, significance for both Plato and Aristotle.
This xcxOO>..ov 7rPcx'YJ.UXTEia,31 this scientia generaliS or
universalis, took on an even greater importance for the
new science, if that is possible. A direct path leads from
the fifth Book of Euclid and the late Platonic dialogues,
through the preface of Proclus' Commentary on Book
One of Euclid, and the Latin translation of that work by
Barozzi in 1560, to Kepler's astronomical researches, to
Descartes' and Wallis' mathesis universalis, to Leibniz's
universal characteristic and finally to modern symbolic
logics, on the one hand, and, on the other, to Galileo's mechanical investigations and to the conception of natural
laws in general. (The latter connection has not been sufficiently emphasized up to now.) The close relation between
the general theory of proportions and the new science is
established from the start by their kindred conceptual
basis.
What is important, however, is the very different ways
in which ancient cosmology and seventeenth century
physics made use of the concept of proportion. I want to
31
�try to define this difference by using the example of seventeenth century interpretations of Plato's Timaeus. In
that dialogue, the mathematician, the "Pythagorean" Timaeus, gives a genetic presentation of the construction of
the world. (In this context, and only in this, can we disregard the fact that this presentation does not claim to be a
valid €7na7'1/p:q, a true science, but claims only to give an
Elxws !LiiOos, an image approximating the truth as closely
as possible.)l 8 A chaotic state of the world-matter precedes
the origin of the world: Fire, Air, Water, and Earth are in
disharmonious and disordered motion, they pass freely
into one another, they are at first nothing but 7fA~!L!LEAws
xed drrixrws xtvoVp,€vcx.39 The divine demiurge brings
them from this condition of dis-order into the condition of
order, of nXtts-: Els r&~w . .. if'YCX'YfV Ex rfjs lna~t&s. 40 How
does he bring about this condition of order? By producing
a self-maintaining equilibrium among the world-materials,
so that their restless passage into one another yields to
well-balanced rest, turns into ~<Jx{rx. 'Avrx>-.o-y{rx, proportion, is best suited for this purpose, in the first place, because it knits together a firm connection, a firm bond, a
liE<JjLos,' 1 among the world-materials, a bond which proves
to be unbreakable throughout almost all internal changes
in these materials, that is, throughout the overwhelming
majority of possible permutations of the elements within
this proportion; secondly, because the proportion is a
bond which, among all possible bonds, is itself most of all
bound to what it binds together, that is, it binds itself
most intimately with what is bound together so as to form
a unitary whole: atnOv n xal: nl ~vvOoVp..EVa ~n p.&Aurra
€'v 7fotfi.42 Proportion has both of these features by virtue
of its incorporeality. Thus, its incorporeality, by virtue of
which it institutes wholeness and brings about order,
makes it akin to what we call "soul," >fvx~- Indeed, it is difficult to say whether the Timaeus allows us to draw any
distinction at all between >fvx~ and d.vrx>-.o-yfrx. All of the
world-materials together from now on form a structured
whole, because their quantity, the size of their respective
bulk (cf. rxptOjLGJv o-yxwv-3lc), remains in a fixed ratio
throughout all changes or at least comes very close to this
fixed ratio: as Fire is to Air, so Air to Water, and as Air is to
Water, so Water to Earth. Just as a single, living, "besouled"
organism maintains itself as a whole throughout the constant changes of its bodily materials, so, too, the entire visible world maintains itself, thanks to this proportion
among its materials, as this one, perfect whole (t'v OX.ov
TEAEov).43 And that means: as this living whole. It is only
through this proportion that a "world" arises at all, that is,
an ordered condition of the world-materials, which we call
that it continues to produce itself anew, renews itself
again and again as what it already is within the texture of
the world-order. Thereby it helps this world-order, this
Ta~ts, to be continuously maintained. The being of every
natural thing, therefore, is determined by the world-order
as such, the Td.~ts of the world, the >fvx~ Tov xo<JjLOV [soul
of the world) and, finally, by the d.vrx>-.o-y{rx. Td~ts is thus
the basic concept of ancient cosmology, not only Plato's,
but also Aristotle's, in the version transmitted to the
Christian centuries 45 But Ta~ts, order, essentially means
in every case a definite order, an ordering according to a
definite point of view, in conformity with which each individual thing is assigned its place, its location, its n57fos.
Order always means well-ordering. For this reason ancient
cosmology, as topology, is not possible without the question of this ultimate ordering point of view, without the
question of d-yrxOov, the Good. And ancient cosmology
reaches its fulfillment in the doctrine of the different
T61fot [places). This doctrine also investigates the ratios
and proportions in which the celestial bodies appear arranged in their spheres.
How did the new science receive this ancient doctrine
of nx~ts and rxvrx>-.o-y{rx, of ordo and proportio? In his Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems, Galileo takes his
bearings continuously from the two basic books of traditional cosmology, Aristotle's De caelo and Plato's Timaeus;
in battling against Aristotle he relies again and again on
Plato. The entire construction of Galileo' s dialogue is in a
certain sense determined by the construction of the Timaeus. Like the Timaeus, Galileo, too, bases all further
cosmological explanations on the thesis that the world has
an order. Its parts are coordinated in the most perfect
manner ("con sommo e perfettissimo ordine tra di lora dispaste.") In this way the best distribution ("l'ottima distribuzione e collocazione") of the heavenly bodies, the stars
and the planets arises. However, what is important here is
how Galileo understands the Platonic principle that the
divine demiurge brought the world-material from disorder
to order. He thinks that Plato meant the following: each of
the different planets has a different orbital velocity within
the present order of the world. In order to reach these
velocities, they must, from the instant of their creation,
have passed through all the grades of lesser velocity. The
creator let them fall close to the mid-point of the world in
rectilinear motion, so that the uniform acceleration
pecu~
liar to falling-motion (free fall) could bring them gradually
to their present velocity, at the moment when they reached
the place assigned to them. Only then did He set them rotating, so that they proceeded from the non-uniform recti-
a cosmos. K6aJLoS thus means a self-maintaining condition
linear motion to the henceforth uniform circular motion
of m'~" (order). This condition is the basis of life, life that
maintains itself, produces itself time and again. For life
alone creates itself ad infinitum. Hence the world, precisely as an ordered world, is a self-sufficing animal, a tWov
rxvmpxn. 44 Its own being, as well as the being of its parts,
in which they persist until today. Non-uniform rectilinear
motion along the vertical corresponds, for Galileo, to the
state of disorder, rxmUrx, of which Plato speaks, while uni-
is cpVat.s, that is, Hnatural" being. The natural being of
every entity existing "by nature" is determined by the fact
32
form circular motion, that is, motion along the horizontal
line (for "horizontal" originally means the direction of the
circle of the horizon) corresponds to the present state of
order. With this interpretation, Galileo intends above all
AUTUMN 1981
�to defend the Platonic principle against Aristotle's criti-
new science, it is a "law." Accordingly, the new science in
cisms in De caelo.46
terprets ""'~"' ordo, as law, and construes the order of the
world as the lawfulness of the world. The shift in the meaning of the concept of ordo has its concrete basis here in
the possibility of transferring proportion from the ratios
among the quantities of the relevant elementary-bodies,
or from the ratios of their correlative positions, to the state
of motion of these bodies. This shift, however, eliminates
the order of the elementary-bodies, their r&~"' in the
sense of well-ordering. For the lawfulness of their motion,
the regular sequence of their states of motion, can be constructed only on the basis of their complete equality in
rank, their lack of ordering in the strict sense, that is, their
complete indifference to the place they occupy. The new
science now understands just this lawfulness in the course
of motion, in the temporal sequence of states of motion,
as the order of the world. The order of things moves up
one story higher, so to speak, when the temporal dimension is added. At the same time, however, the disorder of
the elementary-bodies, on which the lawfulness of the
It is not crucial here that Galileo's interpretation finds
no support in Plato's text What is significant is the direction in which he looks for the distinction between order
and disorder: not in the ratio or absence of ratio among
the quantities of the basic materials, not in the correlative
positions of the celestial bodies (although these do appear,
in accordance with the construction of the Timaeus, as
the genuine theme of his inquiry), but in the differences
in the states of motion as such. The bodies themselves are
not subject to comparison (comparatio, as Cicero in his
translation of the Timaeus says for proportion as well), only
a mode of being of these bodies, namely, their motion.
The application of proportion in Galileo's mechanical
works is also consonant with this. The connection with
the Greeks' general theory of proportions is immediate
here, thanks to the direct reception of Euclid and Archimedes, as well as indirectly, by way of a qualitative doctrine of geometrical ratios stemming from the 14th century
Nominalist school.47 What we today call Galileo's laws of
free-fall are intended by Galileo himself as EudoxianEuclidean proportions. In the Discorsi (Third day, Second
Book, Theorem II, Proportio II) a proportion is derived
with Euclidean means which we today would write as:
Both types of magnitude (S and T) are symbolized by
straight lines, in accordance with Book Five of Euclid.
The decisive difference from the cosmological proportion
in the Timaeus is that time becomes one of the elements
of the proportion. What I have said about Galileo also
holds true of Kepler, whose lifework, in his own opinion,
consists in the restoration of the Platonic doctrine of
order and proportion. The relation between the square of
the periods of the planets and the cubes of the great axes
of their orbits, familiar to us as Kepler's Third Law, is once
again conceived as a Euclidean proportion, of the form
ti:ti=d:ri,
or, as it has to be written to conform with Kepler's own
wording in Book One of the Harmonice mundi:
11
world is based, is now understood as Drder." Let us hear
Descartes: In chapter 46 of the Third Part of his Principia
he sets out the basic assumptions of his physics. In the
next chapter Descartes refers to his earlier attempt to
derive the present state of the world by assuming an original chaos. He says: "Even if, perhaps, this very same order
of things, which we encounter now (idem ille ordo qui iam
est in rebus) can be derived from chaos with the help of
laws of nature (ex chao per leges naturae deduci potest),
something I once undertook to show [sc. in Le Monde],
nonetheless I now assume that all the elementary parts of
matter were originally completely equivalent to one
another both in their magnitude and their motion ... because chaotic confusion (confusio) seems to be less fitting
to the highest perfection of God, the creator of things,
than proportion or order (proportio vel ordo) and also can
be less distinctly known by us, and because no proportion
and no order is simpler and more accessible to knowledge
than the one which consists in universal equality." It was
only later, through the work of Boltzmann and then of
Planck, that this "hypothesis of elementary disorder," as it
was called, was made explicit in statistical terms. Its importance for physics is clear from the fact that Planck called
the essence of the Second Law of Thermodynamics the
"Principle of Elementary Disorder."48
The world of mathematical physics built upon this presupposition, the world of natural processes occurring in
accordance with law, determines the concept of nature in
Taken together with the other two proportions which we
today call Kepler's First and Second Laws, it determines
the cosmic order in which we live. In these Galilean and
Keplerian proportions the concept of law, of the lex naturae, becomes visible for the first time. (Although neither
Galileo nor Kepler uses this word as a technical term; it is
first given a fixed sense by Descartes.)
The relation of the new to the old intentionality here
becomes immediately comprehensible. For Greek cosmol-
concept of nX~L>; T&~t.s is now understood as lex, that is, as
ogy, &va'Ao"({a is the expression of rtx~~~, of order; for the
order over time. The ascent from prima intentio to secunda
THEST.JOHNSREVIEW
the new science generally. "Nature" means for it a system
of laws, means-to speak with Kant-"the conformity to
law of appearances in space and time." All the concepts in
this formula (as I have tried to show for "space" and "law")
can only be understood by contrast with the corresponding concepts of ancient science. Above all, the concept of
conformity to law signifies a modification of the ancient
33
�intentio is initiated here by the insertion of the time-dimension.49
How, then, does the new science, on the basis of its intentionality, interpret ancient cosmology? How does it interpret the "natural" world of the Ancients, the world of
r&hs? It interprets it as the qualitative world in contrast to
the "true" world, in contrast to the quantitative world. It
understands the "naturalness" of this qualitative world in
terms of the "naturalness" of the ''true," "lawful" world.
Eddington, in the introduction to his recent book, speaks
in a characteristic way of these two worlds: "There are duplicates of every object about me-two tables, two chairs,
two pens." The one table, the commonplace table, has extension, color, it does not fall apart under me, I can use it
for writing. The other table is the "scientific" table. "It
consists," Eddington says, "mostly of emptiness. Sparsely
scattered,in that emptiness are numerous electrical charges
rushing about with great speed."SO
Translated by David R. Lachterman
1. Leo Olschki has forcefully emphasized this point in his important
work Geschichte der neusprachlichen wissenschaftlichen Literatur, I-III
(Heidelberg 1919-1927).
2. Disputatio de coelo, 1613.
3. Librorum ad scientiam de natura attinentium pars prima, 1596.
4. De motu, 1591.
5. De rebus naturalibus libri XXX, 1589.
6. Commentaria una cum quaestionibus in octo libros Aristotelis de physica auscultatione, 1574.
7. De communibus omnium rerum naturalium principiis et affectionibus,
1562.
8. De certitudine mathematicarum, 1547.
9. Compare, e.g., Leon Brunschvicq, Les €tapes de la philosophie mathimatique, Paris 1912, 105.
10. See Pierre Duhem, La thiorie physique, son objet et sa structure,
Paris 1906, 444 [English translation, The Aim and Structure of Physical
Theory, trans. P. P. Wiener, Princeton 1954.}
11. Galileo Galilei, Opere, Edizione nazionale, 6, 232.
12. Kepler, Opera, ed. Frisch, I, 122 f.
13. Pars IV, Dist. 1, Cap. I & II.
14. Descartes savant, Paris 1921, 124-148.
15. Oeuvres de Fermat (ed. Tannery and Henry), I, 91.
16. Oeuvres de Fermat, 99.
17. Regulae ad directionem ingenii, Rule IV, Oeuvres, ed. Adam & Tan·
nery, X, 376.
18. Opera, ed. Heiberg, I, 48 ff.
34
19. See also Apollonius, ed. Heiberg, I, 6, DeF. 4. (The term "abscissa"
was first used in the 18th century; cf. Tropfke, Geschichte der ElementarMathematik (2nd ed., Leipzig 1921-24), VI, 116 f.)
20. Moritz Cantor, Vorlesungen tiber Geschichte der Mathematik (3rd.
ed., Leipzig 1907), I, 337.
21. Zeuthen [The author may have had in mind H. G, Zeuthen, Geschichte der Mathematik in Altertum und Mittelalter (Copenhagen 1896),
ch. IV: "Die geometrische Algebra," 44-53. Translator's Note.]
22. See Plato, Republic VI, 510 D-E and Aristotle, Metaphysics, #6,
987bl5 ff.
23. Oeuvres de Descartes, ed. Adam & Tannery, VI, 19-20.
24. Oeuvres de Descartes, 551 (Latin text).
25. Oeuvres de Descartes.
26. Oeuvres de Descartes, 20.
27. Oeuvres de Fermat, 93.
28. Oeuvres de Fermat.
29. Ed. Heiberg, I, 4.
30. Critique of Pure Reason, B 179.
31. [The full Arabic phrase is "al-jabr wa'l-muqabalah." For a contemporary discussion of the meanings of "jabr" and "muqabalah" see G. A.
Saliba, "The Meaning of al-jabr wa'l-muqabalah," Centaurus 17 (1972),
189-204. Translator's Note.]
32. F. Hultsch, Article: "Diophant," in: Pauly Wissowa Realenzyklopii.die,
Paragraph 9.
33. Alexander of Aphrodisias, In Aristotelis Metaphysica Commentaria,
ed. M. Hayduck, 85.5-6. See also Aristotle, Physics IV 4, 224a2 ff.
34. Compare Heron, Metrica {ed. Sch6ne), I, 6 ff.
35. [Vieta's Isagoge has been translated by]. Winfree Smith as an appendix to Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of
Algebra (Cambridge, Mass., 1968). The passage cited occurs on page 345.
Translator's Note.]
36. 1621-edition, 4.
37. See, for Aristotle, Metaphysics 6 1, 1026a23-27; K4, l061b17 ff; M2,
1077a9-12; M3, 1077bl7-20; Posterior Analytics A5, 74al7-25; A24,
85a38-bl. Compare also Marinus on Apollonius [i.e. the mention of a
now-lost "General Treatise" (xa86Aou 7rPa'YJ.tO'Tda) in Euclidis Opera,
ed. Heiberg-Menge, VI, 234 Translator's Note.]
38. Timaeus 29D
39. Timaeus 30A
40. Timaeus
41. Timaeus 31C
42. Timaeus
43. Timaeus 33A-B
44. Timaeus 33D; 37D
45. See Aristotle, Metaphysics M3, 1078a36-b6 and compare the title of
Ptolemy's work: h ativm~n (sc. TWv E 1rAavw~-tfvwv The Ordering-Together of the Five Planets.) For this title, see Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. "Astronomie."
46. r2, 300b 16 11.
47. Compare P. Duhem. [The author most probably had in mind
Etudes sur Leonard de Vinci (Paris 1905-1913)-Translator's Note.]
48. Max Planck, Die Einheit des physikalischen Weltbildes, Leipzig 1909.
49. M. Planck, Das Weltbild der Physik (Leipzig 1931, 2d. ed.).
50. Sir Arthur Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World, New York
1929, ix-x.
AUTUMN 1981
�"Sexism" is Meaningless
Michael Levin
W
HEN MY WIFE AND I PLAY TWENTY QUESTIONS,
and my wife must guess a woman, she will often
ask "Is this woman famous for whom she married?" Many would label her or her question "sexist." Indeed, few words have figured as prominently as "sexism"
in contemporary public discourse. Such currency would
ordinarily suggest that this epithet means something, but
in the present instance this impression is mistaken.
Beyond carrying a negativ·e expressive force, like "Grrrr"
11
or "Goddammit," Sexism" is empty. 1
What "sexism" is supposed to mean is clea~ enough.
"Dr. Smith has a roving eye, and his attractive wife is a notorious flirt" is called "sexist" because it implies that interest in the opposite sex is worse in married women than in
married men, and that appearance matters more for
that will serve my son will not serve my daughter. I base
these convictions on a belief in a difference between men
and women. Call these convictions "sexist" if you wish,
but please tell me what precisely is wrong, unreasonable,
or even controversial about them. The discomfort of
women in milieus demanding aggression has been confirmed by experience countless times. If noticing this is
sexism, there is nothing wrong with it. "Sexism" cannot
be used to label the factual judgement that the sexes dif.
fer in certain specific ways and at the same time retain its
automatic pejorative force.
Unfortunately, words are not always used as they should
be. "Exploit" means "to use another without his
consent," but contractual wages are nevertheless de-
is a man's book" is "sex-
nounced in some quarters as "exploitative." The point of
such tendentious misusage is, of course, to get your inter~
ist" because it implies that men more than women enjoy
adventure stories. My wife is a sexist because she believes
that fame often comes to women from their liaisons with
men, and-more egregious-she isn't indignant about it.
"Sexism," then, is typically used to describe either the
view that there are general, innate psychological differences between the sexes, or that gender is in and of itself
important.' Since the first view is simply a factual belief
supported by a vast body of evidence, and the second
view, however objectionable, is held by almost no-one,
neither view is worth attacking. But one thing is clear:
locutor to call wage labor "exploitation" and then to let
the negative connotations of that word impel him to denounce wage labor itself. If you succeed, you have boxed
him into a substantive moral position by word magic.
Once recognized, this trap is easy to elude. Anyone who
approves of wage labor ought to say: "I'll call wage labor
'exploitation,' if you insist on using words that way. But I
see nothing wrong with what you call 'exploitation'." The
same maneuver avoids the feminist's provocation. If, as it
often is, "sexism" is deployed simply to descredit belief in
gender differences, anyone who accepts these differences
those whose active vacabulary includes "sexism" (femi-
can treat "sexism" as a neutral name for this belief. With a
nists, for short) take it to describe something that is both
objectionable and widely held, and hence worth-in fact
requiring-regular and vehement attack.
This relentless tagging of "sexism" on to what it does
not fit suggests, to put it charitably, that feminists are confused about what their subject is and about what they
want to say about it. The word Sexism" simply encapsulates and obscures this confusion.
Take the view that there are innate gender differences.
I doubt that my daughter will become a quarterback. I expect her to develop habits different than those of my son
-and I hope so as well, because I believe that the habits
little gumption he can preface his conversations with feminists with this caveat, and continue to judge his belief on
its factual merits.
Sometimes the trick of illicitly transferring an epithet is
managed by constantly stressing some similarity between
its central cases and vaguely peripheral ones. A polemicist
may seduce his audience into calling wage labor "slavery"
by focusing on what wage labor does share with slavery.
(Both may involve working up a sweat.) To transfer an epithet to new cases ad libitum is harder, the clearer and more
stable its central cases are; easier, the fewer its antecedently
clear cases. At the limit of this process are neologisms, like
"sexism," which come into the world with only negative
connotations and nearly unlimited denotative potential.
"Exploitation" derives its force from the recognizable
badness of its central cases; abusing it consists in exporting it too far from these cases. One might suppose that
women than for men.
"Kon~Tiki
11
Professor of Philosophy at The City College of New York, Michael
Levin has recently published Metaphysics and the Mind-Body Problem
(Oxford University Press 1979). He has contributed to Measure, Commentary, Newsweek, and numerous philosophical journals.
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
35
�"sexism" has acquired its force similarly, by describing
something obviously bad. This would imply that "sexism"
does have some legitimate meaning, however much that
legitimate meaning has been abused.
Not every word, however, functions like "exploitation":
some have only the force of disapprobation. Consider the
communist practice of endlessly reviling enemies as
"bourgeois" and 1'revanchist." These words have lost a11
mooring in the descriptive uses they once had. Nonetheless, their repetition induces confusion and guilt in the
victims of public hate sessions simply because they convey so much hate.
Words used as vehicles for anger will acquire negative
force, whatever the source of the anger. Neologisms like
"sexism," trailing clouds of rage at their birth, are of this
sort. The very ugliness of "sexism" itself supports this account of its genesis, for it you want to endow a word with
a negative force, it is helpful to make the word itself repellent. Calling housework "shitwork," and using the grating
sound "sexism" for those rare cases to which ''misogyny"
might have applied, plays on the human tendency to attribute the qualities of words to things, and, by the animosity implicit in flaunting ugliness, communicates the
rancor behind the word. (Orwell noted that avoidable ugliness is a sure sign of political cant.) Calling my belief in
gender differences "sexist" invites me to perceive my belief as ugly because its name is ugly and comes prepackaged with ugly emotions.
that men and women differ
''sexist" makes for sheer confusion, what of using
"sexist" to describe the idea that gender is intrinsically
important? Obnoxious as this idea may be, it is virtually
without adherents. Suttee and purdah are not features of
Western culture. Despite the frequency and vigor with
which feminists publicly identify their enemy as the doctrine that IDen are inherently superior," 3 its followers
could hold a public meeting in a telephone booth.
That the feminists' enemy here is merely nominal becomes clear with the reflection that "better" means nothing at all apart from some specification of abilities or relevant context. Mr. A cannot simply be better than Miss B.
Of course, we do speak of one person being morally better
than another, and by this we do perhaps intend a judgement of overall value. The feminist's point can hardly be,
however, that women are morally as good as men. Not
only does no one deny this, feminists themselves are constantly deploring the ''stereotype" that woman's "role" is
to civilize the naturally amoral and anarchic impulses of
the male.
"Better," then, must mean "better at this or that particular task," and men are so obviously better at some things
than women that this "doctrine," rather than being the
object of scorn, should pass unchallenged. If "sexism," for
example, means the idea that men can hurl projectiles farther than women, it once again becomes impossible to un-
I
F CALLING THE BELIEF
11
36
derstand why "sexism" is used with such heat. Is "sexism"
the view that men surpass women at some highly valued
activity, like abstract reasoning, while women are better at
other activities like child-rearing-which, outside feminist
circles, are valued as highly as anything men do? If so,
then the view in question once again becomes a factual
hypothesis, indeed a hypothesis which is rather obvious to
the unaided and scientifically aided eye. In any case, we
are back to interpreting "sexism" as a name for a group of
factual beliefs and, as I have already stressed, calling a factual hypothesis by an invidious name is sheer confusion.
The readiness of feminists to attack what no one defends- "men are better than women" -may be explained
by the observation that traits can be significant in two different ways. A trait can be important in itself: intelligence,
for example, is necessary for a variety of tasks and is valued in its own right. This is why employers may permissibly hire the brightest applicants, and why most people
enjoy witty companions.
But many traits not significant in themselves are closely
associated with some which are. People may and do heed
such derivatively significant traits because they confirm
the presence of what actually matters. Illiteracy is not intrinsically bad, but it usually implies deeper incompetence. We permit an employer to ignore illiterates who
want to be laser technicians because an illiterate is unlikely to know much about lasers. Similarly, strength is
what counts for being a fireman, but size and weight are
sufficiently reliable signs of strength to serve as proxies in
deciding who gets to be a fireman. Since we can be pretty
sure of the results beforehand, it is a waste of time to let a
5 foot, 100-pounder try to drag a 120 pound weight up a
flight of stairs.
Values and institutions commonly deplored as "sexist"
because they appear to appeal to the intrinsic importance
of gender really rest on the idea that gender is highly correlated with traits whose significance is not at issue. Take
two examples. Those opposed to drafting women do not
argue that women are women, but that women are less aggressive and less tolerant of the stress of combat than
men. (They also understand that an army is meant to defend its country, not to serve as an equal opportunity employer or a crucible for social experiments.) The pivotal
objection to conscripting women has nothing to do with
any inherent "inferiority" of femaleness, everything to do
with the ability of women to fight.
Take even the "double standard" which judges female
promiscuity more harshly than male. Despite appear·
ances, this difference in attitude is not based on the belief
that there is something intrinsically worse about female
promiscuity. Even the unanalyzed "gut" double standard
that most people still feel rests on a belief about the different psychologies of the sexes. Most people believe that
men can divorce their sexual feelings from their emotional
commitments more easily than women, and hence can
more easily satisfy their sexual appetites without risking
rejection and unhappiness. People thus believe, or sense,
AUTIJMN 1981
�that there is more likely to be something wrong with a promiscuous woman than a promiscuous man. We expectand I know of no statistical or impressionistic evidence
against this-that willingness to have sex with many partners is more likely to be associated with compulsivity and
other personality disorders in women than men. It is this
belief, however inarticulate, that underlies the double
standard, and even feminists must agree that if it is true
the double standard is more than caprice.
I believe that a dispassionate overview would confirm
what these two examples illustrate: almost all views labelled "sexist" because implying the intrinsic importance
of gender amount to factual beliefs about the sexes.4
T
of dubious relevance so certain to be raised at this point that it must be heard. It
runs that judging people on the basis of what is usually true is unfair to the unusual. What of that unusually
strong midget who could pass the fireman's test? What if
there is a female tougher than most Marines who, because
women ar~arred from combat, will never get a chance to
win the Medal of Honor? It must be replied, first, that expectations must be based on what is generally, even if not
universally, true. A sure way to fail to get what you want is
to base your plans on expectation of the exceptional. If
ninety percent of the apples in an orchard are green, it is
sheer irrationality to expect the next apple you pick to be
red. Second, legally mandated discrimination on the basis
of derivatively significant traits is relatively rare. All that
most people want is the legal right to use their own discretion. What is wrong with much "anti-discrimination" legislation is that it forbids attending to what may prove
relevant. (The whole matter is exacerbated in this country
by the alacrity with which the federal government has
overruled local jurisdiction on such matters.) Third, and
most important, it is perniciously utopian to demand that
exceptional cases have a right to be recognized. It is not
unfair, although it is perhaps unfortunate, that a potential
female Audie Murphy goes unrecognized. No one promised her she would be appreciated, no agreement has been
breached if she is not. Nobody promised you at birth that
you would enter the field best suited to your talents, but
this hardly violates some mythical right to self-actualization.
HERE IS A COMPLAINT
B
the impatient feminist might be keen to remind me that there is a middle ground. "Sexism,"
she might say, is prejudice against women and their
abilities. According to her, prejudice is a much subtler
matter than dislike of a morally irrelevant trait like gender
or race: it is the irrational retention of unflattering beliefs
about those who have the trait. A racial bigot need not believe that Negroes are "inferior" to whites: his bigotry
consists in believing on patently insufficient grounds that
Y NOW
Negroes are lazier than
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
~bites.
Prejudice, moreover, in-
valves self-deception. A bigot may believe he has an open
mind-even though he loses his temper whenever anyone
tries to change it. Finally, prejudicial underestimation typically serves unhealthy needs: it bolsters feelings of worth
by representing the Other as inferior, or forestalls guilt by
projecting illicit desires onto the Other. Perhaps, then,
"sexism" should be taken to mean the belief, held with
irrational tenacity, that on the whole men and women differ significantly.
The trouble with this new gambit is that anyone who
claims much of past and current society to be "sexist" in
this new sense must deny that there is good evidence that
men differ significantly from women, and maintain that
people would not change their minds if presented with a
disproof of sex differences. This is not an easy position to
hold.
The most ardent feminist must admit that all the available evidence favors difference. Women differ physically
from men, and act differently. Anyone who has had anything to do with little children observes that these behavioral differences appear before "socialization" takes
hold. Every little boy notices that his little girl friends'
homework is neater than his own, and that they are not so
willing as he is to fight over points of honor. Everyone
sees that fathers are usually sterner than mothers. Anyone
familiar with the artistic and literary classics of other cultures finds that they represent men and women just about
as ours do.
The feminist may deplore these facts, and she may
believe that an environmentalist hypothesis will someday
explain them, but she cannot deny them. Even she must
admit that belief in male/female difference is perfectly
reasonable. People think of the typical physicist as male
simply because almost all physicists have been male. "Liberated" movies and novels which ostentatiously present
female detectives, etc. are so jarring precisely because
their self-conscious implausibility destroys the suspension
of disbelief. My wife asks her question because many
women have derived fame from the fame of their husbands or lovers. To pretend this is not so is to refuse to
face facts and to handicap oneself at such practical tasks
as winning at twenty questions.
Even if the apparent differences between men and
women are the result of conditioning-a hypothesis that
can only be invoked after the innateness hypothesis has
been refuted and some other hypothesis, however ad hoc,
must be invoked-classifying traits as "masculine" and
"feminine" is too well founded to be called prejudice.
Even if there is a shortage of brilliant female composers
because a conspiracy barred women from conservatories,
it is not "sexist prejudice" to expect the next Mozart to be
male.
For all its contribution to modern science, the work of
Copernicus managed to convince the learned world of a
great falsehood: that things are usually not what they
seem. Descartes was only the first of many thinkers who,
shaken by the discovery that the sun's motion is merely
37
�apparent, resolved to regard his senses as liars until
proven truthful, his ordinary beliefs guilty until proven
innocent.
In fact, the instance of Copernicus and the others
stressed by such champions of scientific revolution as
Kuhn and Feyerabend are rare and anomalous. Most
things do turn out, under critical scrutiny, to be as they
seem. Bread really nourishes, water does extinguish fire,
appeasement encourages bullies, and on and on. What
science tells us is why and how these things are so, not
that they are illusions.
I stress this because the falsehood that most scientific
discoveries undo common sense is, I suspect, one of the
main supports of the currently rampant scepticism about
sex differences. Because common experience points over·
whelmingly to important intrinsic differences between
the sexes, it is inferred that the job of science, in this case
social science, is to explain these differences away. What
the history of science should lead one to expect is that, on
the contrary, deeper inquiry will explain the gender differ·
ences revealed by ordinary experience.
But the acid test of the "prejudice" theory is whether
society would abandon belief in gender differences in the
face of evidence to the contrary. This question must be
carefully distinguished from several others. Since the
belief at issue concerns general tendencies, ignoring ex·
ceptions is not prejudice. One can consistently believe
that men are better at mathematics than women while ad·
miring the work of Emmy Noether. Furthermore, a belief
may be important without being irrationally fixed, and
serve a need which is profound but healthy. A belief may
thus be painful to surrender without being a prejudice.
For instance, a man finds it important that his wife's per·
sonality complement rather than copy his own. He meets
enough duplicates of himself in the impersonal world of
work to want something else at home. The suggestion
that the complementarity he prizes is an artifact will natu·
rally disturb him. 5 But this does not mean that his belief
channels guilt or fortifies a weak ego, or that he is wrong
to demand convincing arguments before he accepts the
suggestion.
Nor is the irritation felt by many men at the (alleged) in·
flux of women into "non-traditional" fields evidence that
belief in sex differences is held with prejudicial tenacity.
This outrage is directed against coercion, not against a
challenge to faith. It is provoked by the pressure-group
agitation, lawsuits, and doctrinaire federal fiats that force
women on them. Changes that no one would mind or take
much note of had they occurred through necessity or
social evolution (like the influx of women into factories
during World War II, or the replacement of men by wo·
men as telephone operators earlier in this century) are bit·
terly resented when imposed by ideologues.
Feminists might want to cite, as proof of "sexist prejudice," those famous experiments in which graders gave
the same test a higher grade when told that the testee was
"Norman" than when told the testee was "Norma." (I will
38
not here go into the serious issues that can be taken with
the design and replicability of these experiments, or the
ways in which they have been reported.) Even this evidence is equivocal. If a professor has found over many
years that females write inferior philosophy examinations,
it is reasonable for him to anticipate that the next female
philosophy examination will be inferior. His expectation
will, of course, influence his perception, but this influence amounts to prejudice only if there is no "feedback
loop" by which a run of good female tests can correct his
expectation. A baseball scout used to minor-league incompetence can reasonably attribute a B-league shutout to
atrocious hitting rather than good pitching. His attitude
toward the winning pitcher is prejudice only if he continues to denigrate the pitcher's fastball after it has been
clocked at 97 mph. To return to those grading experiments-there is, however, no evidence that teachers persist in anticipating poorer Norma performances after a
string of good Norma tests. (It is in any case worth remembering in this connection that the tests which provide the
chief quantitative evidence for differences in male/female
aptitudes are standardized and computer graded.)
The performance of women in the military hardly challenges the belief that women cannot do some jobs that
men can, since women have been accommodated by lowered standards. Barriers on obstacle courses, for example,
have literally been lowered so females can get over them.
It is an open secret that universities have compromised
their standards to accomodate "affirmative action" and
live in dread of lawsuits filed by females denied tenure. As
a result, it is impossible to gauge the performance of
women against the standards of scholarship men have had
to meet. Such assessment is made especially difficult by
the great number of academic women who specialize in
"women's studies" and cognate made-up subjects in other
disciplines, subjects in which expertise is the ability to
perpetuate the anger that created them. Throughout
1979 the New York Times chronicled the troubles of the
First Women's Bank, floundering despite a Federal law
mandating assistance to firms with a "substantial"
number of female managers. This law makes it impossible
to tell if women can do as well as men in the realm of
finance.
The closer one looks the harder it becomes to evaluate
the acid test. There is no way of saying how men might
react to evidence against sex differences, because there
isn't any such evidence. The anthropological uevidence" is
fanciful or worse.6 The most recent psychological and
neurological research supports the view that women are
more verbal than men, men more at home with spatial abstractions, and so on.? Indeed, these studies are so decisive
that feminists have lately started to shift the focus of the
debate by trying to minimize rather than, as in the 1960's,
denying gender differences. For instance, Drs. Macoby
and Jacklin insist that of the thousands of variables they
studied, men and women differ "only" in four: verbal ability, spatial visualization, mathematical ability, and aggresAliTUMN 1981
�siveness. This is like saying that the difference between
me and Pavarotti is insignificant because he and I differ
"only" with respect to girth and the ability to sing.
Others who are at least willing to face the scientific
facts 8 stress that intra-gender variations far exceed the difference between gender means: e.g. men average about 6"
taller than women, but the tallest man is about 4' taller
than the shortest man. This is so, but it hardly shows that
inter-gender differences are trivial. Even though Wilt
Chamberlain is much, much bigger than I am, I remain
much bigger than most women.
There is, then, not a shred of support for the view that
the ordinary attitudes of ordinary people toward the sexes
are prejudice, and hence more reason to doubt that "sexism" is the name of anything in heaven or earth.
B
EFORE ADOPTING A STUDIED incomprehension toward those who find "sexism" richly informative, let
us recur to our reflections about words as vehicles
for negative emotions. One can make a kind of sense of
Hsexism" in three stages. First, take "sexism" as the fern·
inist uses it to refer to the conviction that men and
Nomen differ. Second, take her to believe that many people subscribe to this conviction and are in this sense "sexists." Third, to explain why "sexism" is a term of abuse,
attribute to the feminist rage at the existence of these differences and people's acknowledgement of them. The
feminist's usage now becomes quite coherent: "sexism"
denotes a fact of nature while expressing outrage at this
fact and its universal recognition.
If this is the real meaning of "sexism," it is a very mis·
chievous word. Its negative charge invites us not to believe-to insist that it is bad to believe-what can be
shown to be so. Insofar as "sexism" refers to sex differ·
ences themselves, "sexism" invites a negative response to
a fact of nature, a response as inappropriate as annoyance
at the law of gravity.
Only two obstacles impede attributing this array of beliefs and resentments to the feminist. (1) She herself is unlikely to agree that this is what she means by "sexism,"
and would probably repudiate it angrily. (2) Rage at the
workings of D?ture is a peculiar and perverse emotion;
such alientation is rare and should not be imputed to anyone without good grounds.
As for (I), people often deceive themselves about what
they are doing with words and about the feelings that lie
behind the ready use of a phrase. Such blind willingness
to let language do the work of thought is a hallmark of
ideological rhetoric. There is no other way to explain, for
example, the evident sincerity of politicians who call the
forced transfer of income "compassion."
As for (2), it is not hard to understand this particular
form of alienation. Modern society rationalizes tasks,
thereby making them less expressive. Male and female impulses remain to be expressed, but it is no longer easy to
tell by inspection what is a "male" activity and what is
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
"female." Warming a TV dinner is not especially nurturant, nor does riding a bus to work satisfy the urge to
dominate. Western industrial society tends to separate
people from a sense of their own gender and hence their
own identity.' Combine this phenomenon with the radical
egalitarianism and environmentalism of the last half-century,
and widespread gender confusion becomes inevitable 10
A woman who is ill at ease with her essential identity,
who has lost the sense of the values peculiar to her sex
and to herself as a member of her sex, cannot very well admit this to herself. No ego can support such self-hate,
such loss of meaning. But the emotion is there, and the
ego must do something with it. Freud first identified the
process by which the psyche resolves such tensions: the
ego can recognize an unacceptable emotion by projecting
it onto someone else. By calling her self-hate the hatred of
others, and confirming the attribution by endlessly reviling
her imaginary enemies, the feminist can transform a sense
of worthlessness into a sense of moral superiority.
Taking this to be the real function of "sexism" explains
more than how usexism" has acquired such emotional
freight while failing to attach itself to a recognizable object. It connects as well with the larger distrust of human
sexuality that is becoming increasingly evident in the soidisant "women's movement," a distrust fully compatible
with its ritual paeans to sexual activity and to abortion as a
right coequal with free speech. In addressing the fear that
further obliteration of sex roles in the interest of "nonsexist"
childrearing will increase the incidence of homosexuality,
Letty Pogrebin writes "Homophobia, not homosexuality,
is the disease of our times/' and uour fear of lesbianism
for ourselves and our daughters may really be fear of selfhood and freedom." 11
Res ipsa loquitur.
F "SEXISM" IS SO CONFUSED, why worry about it? Since
words that mark no salient fact or distinction usually
fall into disuse, it would seem that "sexism" is destined
to go the way of the names of the humours. Unfortunately,
the situation is complicated by the immense power of
"sexism" to intimidate. No one knows what the label
means, but everyone-especially politicians-knows he is
in for trouble if the label is pinned on him. People have
learned to avoid at all costs doing or saying anything that
attracts it. Feminists have thus perfected a tool for stigmatizing beliefs that they do not like but which they cannot
discredit on rational grounds. The self-evident beliefs
most people hold about human nature have been called
"sexist" so often and so angrily that continuing to hold
them now carries a heavy price. People would rather surrender them than endure the anger and internalized misgivings that holding them provokes. Feminists are not
likely to surrender lightly so apt a tool as "sexism."
A parable and a precedent may serve to suggest the
I
39
�harm done by the persistence of "sexism" in public discourse.
L Suppose an influential group of people began referring to the belief that automobiles should move in
traffic lanes as "stupidism" (or "traffickism"), a word
they always used with rage. They denounced as "stupidist" anyone who thought that if traffic were not
uniform, driving would be too dangerous. Anyone
who requested clarification about why all vehicular
institutions to date were "stupidist" was met with redoubled anger. Through repetition, "stupidism"
would doubtless come to be regarded as more than a
device for expressing rage at the way traffic works.
Eventually, ordinary people-and especially politicians-would start to worry about being called "stupidists." To avoid the imputation of stupidism, they
would, doubtless, begin to agree that traffic should
follow no fixed lanes. They would agree that to say
or even think otherwise was stupidist prejudice. Proponents of "automobile liberation" who gained control of highway policy would denounce the desire to
test the tenets of automobile liberation as the profoundest form of stupidism of all.
I leave to the reader's imagination what a day on the
road would be like.
2. In Nazi Germany, the theory of relativity was called
"Jewish physics." This meant nothing except,
perhaps, the uninteresting fact that the theory of
relativity was invented by a Jew. Enough people
used this phrase, however, and used it vituperatively
enough until-unbelievably, it seems to us-German scientists actually began to disregard the theory
of relativity on the grounds that it was Jewish
physics.
So don't be puzzled when I say words like "sexism" and
"Jewish physics" can mean nothing at all, yet do immense
harm by creating aversion to reasonable beliefs. Happily,
this conditioning can be resisted. My wife usually wins at
twenty questions_IZ
1. The 1980 Report of the President's Advisory Committee for Women
uses "sexism" freely but without explanation. The word occurs most frequently in the subsections ominously headed "Federal Initiatives."
2. The suffix "ism" suggests, often falsely, belief in a doctrine. Socialism is indeed belief in the virtues of a command economy, but "capitalism" -i.e. the practice of anyone who distinguishes what is his from
what is someone else's-typically involves no beliefs at all about economic organization. So here: "sexism" sounds like a doctrine, and "sexists" its followers. Typically, however, practices labelled "sexist" -such
as the use of the generic pronoun "he" -involve no beliefs at all about
the sexes or anything else on the part of those who follow them. Calling
your opponent an "ist" is a good tactic, since most people are sceptical
40
of worldviews and you can thus create an unearned initial distrust for
what you want to attack. I suspect that feminists avoid the word "misogyny" because it carries no connotations of system.
3. See e.g. Iris Mitgang in Commentary, March 1981, 2.
4. Judith Finn made a comparable point simply and well when testifying
before the Senate in connection with the claim that "sexism" and "sex
discrimination" are responsible for pay differences between men and
women:
"Since pay differences are almost completely caused by differences
in jobs rather than the failure to obtain equal pay for equal work,
understanding the earnings gap requires an explanation of the
reasons why women, on the average, hold lower-paying jobs than
men. Women have different job-related attributes and different
amounts of these attributes than men." [Testimony before the U.S.
Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, April 21, 1981;
(my emphasis)]
5. See Bruno Bettleheim, "Notes on the Sexual Revolution," in Surviving New York 1979.
6. For the anthropological material on male dominance, see Steven
Goldberg, The Inevitability of Patriarchy, 2nd ed., London 1977. Martin
Whyte has lately offered the Semang (HRAF, AN7) as a matriarchy in
The Status of Women in Pre-Industrial Societies, Princeton 1978. Goldberg replies in " 'Exceptions' to the Universality of Male Dominance,"
to appear.
7. Even avowed feminists concede important psychological differences:
see e.g. E. Macoby and C. Jacklin, The Psychology of Sex Differences,
Stanfmd 1974.
8. Not all scientists are. The Newsweek of May 18, 1981, carried that
magazine's millionth cover story on "the sexes," which concludes, after
much divagation and vague talk about man's ability to "transcend his
genes," that the latest research demonstrates gender differences built in
by hormones. The editors, perhaps trying to defuse the issue, quote the
geneticist Richard Lewontin to the effect that the whole question is
"garbage from old barroom debates," as if that renders the question
meaningless. Egalitarian fundamentalists are also fond of citing silly
nineteenth century phrenological theories, as if that undercuts modern
research.
9. Edward Levine and his associates have explored this topic in a series
of papers in the Israel Annals of Psychiatry and Related Disciplines (1966,
1971, 1972, 1974), Adolescent Psychiatry (1977) and The American Journal
of Psychiatry (1977).
l 0. This hypothesis predicts parallel if not similar effects among men,
and such effects are appearing. For instance, homosexuality among
black males is increasing sharply, just as urbanization, welfare, AFDC,
and other boons of modern life destroy the black family.
11. Growing Up Free, New York 1980.
12. In an essay entitled "Research on IQ, Race and Delinquency" (in
Taboos in Criminology, ed. E. Sagarin, London 1980, 37-66), Robert
Gordon has occasion to ponder the word "racism" as it is used nowadays of scientists like Arthur Jensen. He concludes that this epithet does
no work whatever: "Clearly, if a scientist reports or hypothesizes ... a
non-trivial difference, perhaps genetic in origin, between racial groups .. .
we have added nothing to the content of discourse by describing him in
addition as a 'racist.' Employed in this way, the term is simply redun·
dant. ... But 'racist' is used in a second sense .... In this sense, use of
the term 'racist' conveys something in addition to the first sense that is
not easily communicated by other means, something plainly unscientific
and gratuitously invidious." Just replace "racism" by "sexism" here and
you have in a nutshell what I have taken many pains to say. The point
itself is obvious to Gordon, to me, and I daresay to anyone who reflects
on the issue for a single moment. Unfortunately, explaining the obvious
involves lessons more complicated than what the lesson is intended to
convey.
AUTUMN 1981
�Going To See The Leaves
Linda Collins
to go to Vermont to see the
leaves, and to invite their son and his wife to go with
them. They could stay, she said, in a really nice inn,
and go for walks, and on Saturday, if it was warm, they
could find a meadow to picnic in with a view of the moun-
I
T WAS MRS. CHILD'S IDEA,
tains.
She had suggested the plan rather tentatively: there
would be a lot of driving, and it would be sure to be quite
expensive, putting up all four. Besides, she was hesitant
about making outright proposals. She preferred to agree
to the suggestions made by others.
HAnd on Sunday," she said, "there is a concert we
might want to go to. And start home from there."
But Thomas agreed at once. He said, "Yes, let's."
Elizabeth felt that he had agreed too quickly, there was
no chance now for her to explain why it was a good idea,
no chance for them to talk about Luke and his wife,
Sarah. Thomas said, "Yes, let's," in a voice that sounded
as though he was putting his newspaper up before his
face. Yes, they should go, Elizabeth needed something.
Elizabeth did want something. It had been at one time
Thomas who used to say, "Let's take Lukie out West." He
had suggested a trip to Kenya, to the Serengeti. One of
his partners had gone there and advised him to go soon
while the animals were still thriving and before Luke was
too old to want to travel with his parents. Thomas's partner
had said it would be the experience of a lifetime. But Elizabeth hadn't wanted to go and so they had stayed home
and gone to the seaside for a week when Luke came home
from camp. But recently Elizabeth thought about places
to go, where, she didn't quite know, while Thomas now
wanted to stay at home in the evening and on long weekends, as well as on his month's vacation.
Thomas did not know what made him agree so quickly
to Elizabeth's suggestion. Still, the proposal struck him as
one that would accomplish something that should be accomplished, touched his underlying understanding of
things, for even to himself his "Yes, let's" sounded too
quickly after his wife's, "Dear?"
HOMAS DROVE, although Luke had offered to drive.
After New Haven, they started north. A blue light,
soft and even, spread from one part of the sky to the
other. It was hot.
Thomas drove, looking straight ahead. Sarah sat behind
Elizabeth, looking out the window. Her hair blew across
T
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
her mouth. She pushed it away with the back of her hand.
Luke turned this way and that, trying to find space for his
long legs. His mother saw his profile and the full, sculptured curve of his lips. He ran his big fingers through his
blond hair which sprang up again after his fingers had
passed.
Elizabeth said: "We used to sing on drives."
Luke began: "Oh, the cow kicked Nelly in the belly in
the barn."
Sarah: "But the doctor said t'wouldn't do her any harm."
The two young people sang out with their loud strong
voices. They heard themselves. Their voices shook their
chests and vibrated in their throats. Sarah tried to outsing
Luke, she sent her voice from her diaphragm, a soldier in
her cause. Luke heard the challenge but would have none
of it. He had no doubt he could wrestle her to the ground,
pin her, outsing her, but she would not accept this. Thomas
sang with them, then fell silent. Elizabeth hummed.
They passed a clump of low red bushes on the grassy
divider. Elizabeth said she hoped they had not come too
early, that the leaves would have reached the height of
their color.
They drove past the domes and cylinders of Hartford.
There were many cars on the highway with out-of-state
plates.
"I wonder how many of these cars are going to see the
leaves," said Elizabeth. She had a strong response to the
idea of people being brought together; the periodicity of
things moved her, and the discovery of community in unexpected places.
Sarah opened her camera case. She loaded three cameras.
"There," she said.
"Black and white?" said Elizabeth, looking over her
shoulder. "For the leaves? Why black and white?"
"She takes a dim view of color," said Luke.
"Oh, Luke," said Sarah. "I want to try to do something
with the leaves. With the light. I don't want just to gawk
at the color."
"You know, in Japan, people swarm to the hillsides to
see the leaves," said Elizabeth, while to herself she said
that Sarah was not being rude to her, only eager about her
work.
Linda Collins's stories have appeared in The Hudson Review and other
magazines.
41
�"Well, so do we. That's just what we're doing, isn't it?
How is it different?" Luke pressed Sarah and his mother
both.
"Nobody calls them 'leafies' in japan," said Sarah.
"How do you know?" asked Luke. "How do you know
there aren't just as many scoffers in japan as here?''
"Peering out from behind screens and saying 'See the
reafies' to one another." Sarah took up Luke's scenmio
with a certain excitement. She tried to adorn it, expand it,
but Luke let it go, turned to the window, and Sarah's
voice trailed off.
Thomas said nothing. He was the driver. He was the
person behind the wheel, taking his wife where she
wanted to go, ferrying the young people. It brought a sort
of peace to him. He had, when he was young, harbored
the idea of some outcome for himself. It had been unclear
to him what it would be, but that it would be, had seemed
unquestionable. For most of his life, he had taken courage
from the thought that a task awaited him. Thomas was still
strong, still smooth muscled and fit. Recently, the thought
had come to him that perhaps the rest of his life would be
no different from the way things were now, that he would
not be called upon. Recently, he had found he could no
longer contemplate his wife in an erotic fashion. Nothing
was said about this. He meant to speak about it, but it
seemed unspeakable. He could not raise the subject. He
was not sure whether the reason was that he feared to
hurt her or that he hesitated to embarrass himself. Sometimes he wished for old age when the issue would be, he
thought, dead.
Soon they would pass Deerfield, where Thomas had
spent his years from thirteen to seventeen. As the little
school buildings came into view, Elizabeth, as she always
did, turned her head to look at them across the fields.
They seemed far away and very small. There Thomas had
played ice hockey and read Ethan Frome. In the early
morning, in all seasons, thick white fog had sat in the low
places in the valley. In spring, limp yellow strings had blossomed on the birch trees. When his parents came to visit,
they took him out to lunch in Greenfield. His father asked
him how things were going. His mother told him what his
cousins and aunts were doing. He felt very small, very
young. It seemed at each visit that he and his parents
were growing farther apart. He no longer cried when they
left. He knew it was untenable to love them.
"How come you didn't send Luke to Deerfield?" asked
Sarah.
"Thomas hated Deerfield. They snapped towels at
him." Elizabeth was always outraged that his parents had
sent him off so young and tender.
But I didn't hate it, Thomas was thinking. That he had
been lonely as a child had seemed only ordinary. He had
merely waited for the end of childhood.
In school, he had walked from building to building. He
had seen, as the morning fog lifted, the color of the leaves,
which had grown stronger during the night. No child remarked to another on the color or observed aloud that the
42
trees, which had been green when school started, were
now orange, or red. The children noticed the leaves but
said nothing.
In the autumn, he had run cross-country; in winter, he
wrestled. He grew, he felt himself to be merely the container of his strength. Who could tell how much stronger
he might become? Running through tunnels of copper
leaves, he thought of nothing but persisting. In winter
afternoons in the wrestling room, he heard the thunder of
the basketball team overhead. In january, the daylight was
gone by the time he got to the gym. Under yellow lightbulbs in their metal cages, he lifted weights and practiced
his moves. On Saturday, all honed and pure, he struggled
with another youth. His veins swelled. He scarcely saw his
opponent. It,was all in terms of something else. If I win
this match, then ... what? His thoughts carried him far,
but something lay beyond them. There was something
more than the trophy to be gained.
In the rear-view mirror Thomas caught his son's glance.
Father and son seldom spoke to one another, but each
sometimes intercepted the other's gaze. Now Thomas
swung out into the passing lane and pressed the accelerator to the floor, causing Elizabeth to sway forward against
her seat belt, and the maps to slide along the top of the
dashboard. Exhaust fumes entered the car as he passed
first one trailer truck, then another, and pulled back into
his lane.
"Thomas, my goodness," said Elizabeth.
As they crossed into Vermont, the color in the trees
intensified.
"Oh, look," said Elizabeth, as they left the Connecticut
Valley and started up into the orange hills, "this really is
the peak. We came at the right time."
I
N THE MORNING, Thomas and Luke got up first. They
met in the hall, testing the locks of the doors they were
closing upon their wives who had not yet risen. Sunlight blazed at a little window at the end of the hall.
Thomas waited for Luke to reach him. He felt a shy excitement which he was scornful of, but nonetheless he
wondered what he could offer Luke that might please
him. Luke approached, bending a little under the low ceiling of the hallway, and together they went down the uneven, carpeted stairs to the dining room.
In the morning light, between butterings and bites and
swallows, Thomas examined his son. He felt able to look
at Luke in a way he could not in his wife's presence. He
was anxious to make his observations acutely and quickly,
before Elizabeth should appear. Luke's skin was fresh, he
looked rested, but what Thomas had thought he had detected yesterday was true, his hair was beginning to
recede. Thomas reached up to touch his own hairline, but
he blurred the gesture by stroking his head where the hair
was still thick.
How old is Luke? he thought. Is he twenty-five or
AUTUMN 1981
�already twenty-six?· Thomas hoped he was only twentyfive.
Luke held his fork with the tines down and pressed a
neatly cut, five-layered mound of pancake into the maple
syrup which had pooled at the outer edge of his plate.
When the syrup had all disappeared into the pancake, he
leaned over his plate and brought the forkful to his
mouth. It was winking with syrup. When he had finished,
he drank the last of his milk, tilting the glass, and then
turned to his coffee.
"Good?" said Thomas. "Did you enjoy your breakfast?"
"Listen, Daddy," said Luke. "I know that you are worried about me. And Mommy is, too. I know that. But
don't. Or do. I know you can't help it. I will be all right."
The morning sun moved in the sky just enough to brilliantly strike the water glasses and the restaurant silver on
the table, flinging blades of light on the walls. The table
cloth was too white to look at. For that moment Thomas
felt that Luke was the father and he was the son. He
wanted to say something to Luke that would be true. At
the £arne time he wanted to say something that would
make him be the father again. He raised his eyes from the
quivering light and saw that Elizabeth and Sarah were
standing in the doorway of the dining room.
~~There you arel" said Elizabeth.
Thomas and Luke stood up. Elizabeth wore a white cardigan over a blouse with little lavender dots, and a blue
denim skirt. She was wearing pink lipstick. Her "There
you are!" had sounded so loud in the dining room that she
was surprised. She crossed quickly from the dim hall to
the bright square of sunlight where Thomas and Luke
were standing, letting herself smile only when she had
reached them. Sarah followed. She wore an olive shirt
with many pockets. When she moved her head, her long
straight hair parted in places, and Luke could see the little
turquoise earrings his parents had given her. She seldom
wore jewelry and he was glad she had put them on.
"How lucky we are!" said Elizabeth and smoothed her
skirt under her as she bent to sit down on the chair
Thomas was holding. "What a beautiful day it is!"
Luke winced at the eagerness and timidity with which
his mother, dressed like a child, had crossed the room.
Both his mother and father had blue eyes. To Luke, it
seemed that they both peered at him as if to see what was
inside his head. Their look seemed to try to exact something from him, some agreement; for instance, as now,
that it was indeed a beautiful day, and since all were
agreed on that, all of one mind, some further harmony
was bound to follow. The mild questioning look of his
mother and father peering at him made him say: "Let's
get this show on the road," but when he realized that his
mother and Sarah had not even ordered yet, he sat back,
abashed.
Thomas ordered Granola for Sarah and muffins for
Elizabeth. While they ate, the men drank more coffee,
and together they agreed on a plan for the day.
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
FTER LUNCH, it took a while to get comfortable.
They shook the crumbs off the two blankets and
·spread them out again to rest on, but they had picnicked in a mown field and the ground was stubbly. Finally, they moved the blankets to the far edge of the field
under the trees where the grass was soft. Thomas was reluctant to leave the car so far out of sight, but Luke said
he wanted to take a nap and Sarah had her tripod and
filters ready and was eager to get to work. For a while, as
they carried the blankets across the field, sending up
showers of crickets with each step, it seemed they were
making too much fuss. Elizabeth tried not to seem to be
arranging things. She knew there could be a reaction
against her for being too managing, too motherly, but she
was willing, right now, to risk it. What had they driven all
this way for, if not for this? Nonetheless, as they walked,
she hung back, not to be first. Thomas took the lead, and
Luke walked with him. The sun shone through the rims
of their ears. Sarah noticed this and said to Elizabeth:
''The sun is shining through their ears." Elizabeth was offended that this young woman should speak so familiarly
about her son's ears, her husband's.
"I think Luke might go back to school next semester,"
said Sarah in a soft voice. Elizabeth knew she was anxious
lest Luke hear them talking about him.
When the blankets were smoothed out, Luke stretched
himself out on the plaid one and folded his arms over his
chest.
"Night," he said from under closed eyes.
Sarah looked at him, the length of him on the blanket,
occupying it fully.
''I'm going to take some wide-angle shots," she said,
with a lift of her chin, and she picked up her tripod and
bag and stalked off down the field.
And so, wheh Elizabeth and Thomas lay down on their
blanket, having carefully made room for one another, the
family was together, mother, father, and son.
After a bit, Luke opened his eyes and turned his head
towards his mother. She was lying on her back with her
eyes closed. The afternoon sun struck her full in the face.
A lavender vein moved stepwise across her eyelid. The lid
was rose-colored; the edge of the lid looked moist and it
trembled slightly. Her yellow-gray hair lay in flattened
coils under the weight of her head. Above her upper lip
fine hairs shone in the light, and from the red cave of her
nostril long yellow hairs emerged. Luke touched his own
nostril and felt the stiff hairs that stuck out of his nose. He
raised himself on one elbow and looked beyond his
mother. His father lay beside her. Briefly, he saw them
both up close, enormous, as though in a fever, or through
a lens. Their faces were magnified in his eyes, for a second
they occupied the entire landscape.
With a guilty heart, he sat up straight and felt in his buttoned-down shirt pocket for a marijuana cigarette. At the
sound of the match striking, both his parents opened their
eyes. As he inhaled the smoke, his father said, "Do you
have to do that, Lukie?" and he said, "Yes, Daddy, I do."
A
43
�He sat with his knees up, one arm around them, holding
his cigarette with his free hand. His parents sat up and
began to brush bits of grass off their sweaters. Leaves, the
color of apricots, with an occasional speck of light green,
were falling from the tree above.
"There's Sarah," said Elizabeth.
Sarah was at the lower end of the meadow. It was diffi·
cult to tell how far away she was. She looked tiny and
there was nothing to measure her by.
Elizabeth stood up and waved, but the sun was behind
her. "Saaa-rah." She gave a sort of yodel. Sarah turned in
their direction but Luke knew that all she could see was
the afternoon sun. They watched her walking up the
slope with her awkward, determined stride. She could as
well have been an utter stranger.
Luke gently tapped his cigarette on a rock in the wall
behind him. When he was quite sure it was out, he pinched
the end, and folded the remains in a bit of paper which he
carefully returned to his shirt pocket. Then he stood up
and in long strides ran the length of the field to Sarah who
was standing at the edge of the woods in a drift of leaves.
She watched him running towards her. The opening and
closing of his legs gave her the impression he was running
in slow motion and she started to reach for her camera,
but he got to her too soon, before she was ready. She
hadn't got the lens cap off when he grabbed her and held
his arms around her. "Oh, Sarah, don't leave me," he said.
She felt his heart leaping like an animal in a cage, she
smelled his sweat and felt the moisture on his neck and
face.
"I wasn't going to leave you," she said, but she felt, as
usual, a certain confusion, an apprehension. Why had he
lain down in the field in front of his mother and father
and taken up the whole blanket? Didn't that mean she
should leave him? How could they be going to lead their
whole lives together? Where was comfort to come from,
where was happiness? From passion? Perhaps, but it was
unreliable. Who was this man, this blond man? How had
she come to lie down with a stranger?
The sun was veiled, as a thin skin of clouds rose in the
west. As the light in the sky paled, the radiance of the
leaves increased. Something solemn and important was
happening in the woods. A chill crept over the meadow.
Luke's lips nuzzled Sarah's neck. His knee pressed between her legs. She saw the small figures of Elizabeth and
Thomas leave the far edge of the field and move toward
them over the stubble. Luke inserted his hand under the
waist of her jeans in the back and reached down to feel
her buttocks, thin and clenched.
"Luke," said Sarah, twisting about, "don't. Don't do
that."
Luke began to laugh. He wanted to wrestle with her, to
push her down in the leaves. The smell of the woods rode
upon the cooling air which poured into the meadow, carrying with it the smell of moss, of mushrooms, of rot, of
black mud, of rotting stumps and the rotting bodies of
small animals, of chipmunks, rats, mice, squirrels, of
44
everything that dies in the woods. The smell of decaying
leaves and decomposition was delicious, it appeared suddenly and turned thoughts to the secrets that lie in the
forest. Luke pressed against Sarah.
~~Later," said Sarah.
"I would like to go into the woods with you now," said
Luke.
He pressed his knee against the hard double seam of
her blue jeans. She stepped back and let herself fall to the
ground. The wind blew a hard gust. Above, the ash tree
let loose a shower of leaves, yellow, the color of dark mustard. They lay in the leaves, laughing.
"OK," said Sarah, in a soft voice, as Luke's parents,
smiling uneasily, drew near, "later."
Elizabeth slept and
woke, hearing the wind and the tap of branches
against the window of the unfamiliar room. She lay
in bed and thought about the leaves and their drying
stems and the trees they dance upon as they try to leave.
She thought about how hard it is for them to leave. The
tree sends juices, the leaf clings; the wind blows and the
leaf turns, spins, bends back upon its stem.
She went to the window and stood looking out. Her
bare feet on the wooden floor made her feel like a girl.
The room was cold. She heard the wind and saw that the
leaves were still falling in the dark. It was a grave matter
that all the leaves were falling, but she was very glad she
had come to see them.
T
T
HE WIND BLEW ALL NIGHT LONG.
in what had been a Congregationalist church, square and white, which had
been renovated to accommodate its new function.
Moulded stackable seats replaced the pews, and recording
equipment stuck out of the pulpit. On the floor, wires
trailed.
It took most of the first movement for Elizabeth to
begin to concentrate. She had to remind herself to pay at·
tention to the sound which drummed or gurgled in her
head, memorably, she thought, but no sooner had the first
bit opened into its development than it was gone. And she
couldn't get it back. She criticized herself, but at the same
time wondered if she was alone in this failing, or whether
there were others like herself who were confused.
The cellist plucked a loose strand from his bow and
poised himself to plunge in again. The cello was pale,
almost yellow; the viola was red. The two violins were similar in color, but one glittered, the smaller one. The second violinist was a woman who wore a long dress of bright
green. The dress was sleeveless and the woman's arms
were white. Elizabeth thought it was no doubt a C<Jnvenience for her not to have sleeves. A loose sleeve would
get in the way, and a tight-fitting sleeve would pull under
the arms, or at the elbow. And yet the young woman was
HE CONCERT WAS PLAYED
AUTUMN 1981
�exposed, and her arms seemed very private, with everyone looking on. Of the four players she was the only
woman. She was neither pretty nor ugly. From time to
time, as she played, she gave her head a shake, and her
smooth brown hair crested and fell back into place. The
first violinist played, and she waited, holding her violin
upright on her thigh. When he had played for several mea·
sures, she raised her violin and held it under her chin, let·
ting the bow hang loose from her right hand, watching the
other players, and nodding her head, until, with a sudden
deliberate movement, she lifted the bow and began to
play vigorously. Her thin arm went rapidly up and down.
The four leaned toward one another as they played. The
music was loud and strong. Then the three others plucked
their instruments and the woman in green played alone.
Afternoon light fell in stripes upon the listeners. In the
darkness between the stripes, motes of dust floated. Eliza·
beth held her breath. Something wonderful was happen·
ing. The music rose from the platform and spread to fill
the space above. The sound resonated upon whatever it
touched, the beams in the ceiling, the planked floor, the
walls. The first violinist and the woman in green were
playing sweetly and loudly to one another, while the
others sustained them with arpeggios. As he finished
drawing his bow and with a subtle gesture of his wrist was
preparing to return it, she was drawing hers to its tip. Her
head was bent down so her chin touched her chest, and
her arms were spread wide apart. Her face was hidden.
Only the top of her bowed head could be seen. The
sounds she was pulling from her instrument were the
sounds of tearing, the sound of something long being torn
in two. The cello and viola fell silent and then the first via·
linist stopped playing as though to honor the last of her
long trembling notes. Elizabeth thought: Then there is no
happiness. A rush of courage filled her completely, and
she thought, I can bear it, now that I know.
From above a peculiar noise distressed her. She realized
it had been pressing upon her for some time and she had
been resisting it, as though holding a door shut against a
great force, but now she gave way. She looked up. On a
ledge under one of the high windows, birds were sitting.
One fluttered out, circled and landed. The others chirped
and shrilled. It was a shocking breach. Could the players
hear? Elizabeth would have liked to do something to save
the situation, but that was ludicrous. What could she do?
Nothing, she thought, but sit there and wait it out. Dis·
tracted, she waited for the quartet to finish.
When the concert was over and the players had come
back several times to bow to the audience, which was
standing to applaud, Elizabeth turned around to look up
at the eaves. The birds had disappeared, but she thought
she saw straw sticking out from one of the high joists. The
glare of the lights caught a feather which was floating
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
down in an uneven way, impelled by whatever drafts
reigned up there.
Luke followed her gla:rrce. He put his arm around her.
"Did they bother you, the birds?" he said.
Love for him weakened her. She wanted to sit down.
She did not want Thomas to see how moved she was, or
Luke either.
"Sparrows, were they?" she asked, turning her face
away slightly to hide her eyes.
"Passer domesticus," he said, evoking thus the days
when he and she had walked together, noting the particulars of the world. She had carried with her her bird book
and little jars in which to bring home beetles or whatever
special things they should find. In this manner she had
felt she was molding him into the kind of man she dreamed
for him to become.
In the parking lot, they saw the cellist set his instrument
carefully in the back seat of his car. They said how glad
they were that they had already checked out of the inn,
that they could start home at once. Thomas agreed that
Luke should drive, and so he and Elizabeth sat in the
back.
Thomas reached for Elizabeth's hand.
"I am glad we came," he said.
"Oh, wonderful," said Sarah. "Thank you so much.
Thank you both."
Thomas fell asleep holding Elizabeth's hand. When she
saw that he was deeply asleep, she gently withdrew her
hand. Darkness gathered quickly. As the light sank out of
the air, the sky became dark blue. Sarah and Luke murmured together in the front seat, laughing occasionally.
Then they fell silent. Sarah leaned her head on the headrest. Soon she too was asleep. Elizabeth looked at the red
taillights extending far ahead and the sweep of the lights
of the northbound cars approaching. By the dim light of
the dashboard she could see the line of Luke's cheek and
his brow when he turned his head to look in the side
mirror.
"Mom?" said Luke softly. "Why don't you go to sleep,
too? I'm going to drive very carefully."
"I wasn't worrying," said Elizabeth, quite truthfully,
but nonetheless she too then fell asleep.
Although they had agreed to stop for a bite to eat somewhere near the halfway point, Luke did not stop at all. He
drove peacefully, absorbed in the task of not driving too
fast, or too slowly, in deciding whom to pass and whom to
let pass, checking the fuel gauge and the mileage. No one
woke until he stopped for the toll at the bridge. Both his
parents woke then, and after a minute Sarah, too raised
her head.
"Where are we?" she said.
"Almost home," said Luke. "You were asleep almost
the whole way."
45
�One Day in the Life of the New York Times
and Pravda in the World:
Which is more informative?
Lev Navrozov
To inform is not the raison d'etre of Pravda, for Pravda is.
no source of news for Soviet decision-makers. The latter
have for their daily information a multi-tier system of
their own "closed" (secret) newspapers like White Tass,
just as they have their own "closed" statistics, or their
own "closed" book publishing. The goal of Pravda, as well
as all uopen" media intended for non~decision·makers, is
to assure the Soviet expendable majority (which is to do or
die, not to ask why) as well as all vassals, allies, and supporters all over the globe that they are on the right (winning) side of history.
In contrast, the Western media must be informative, for
the entire population of the Western democracies makes
decisions, if only by voting, in foreign policy, strategy, and
defense, and the New York Times is the main source of
In 1971 Lev Navrozov left Russia for the United States with all of his
son, and mother (his father had been killed in action in the
Second World War). Trained both in the exact sciences (at Moscow Energy Institute) and in languages, he graduated in 1953 from the Institute
of Foreign Languages, Referents' Faculty-a facility, organized on the
specific orders of Stalin, to produce "outstanding experts whose knowledge of Western languages and cultures would not be inferior to that of
well-educated natives of the relevant countries." In Russia he translated
Dostoevsky's The Poor People and Notes from the Deadhouse and Alex·
ander Herzen into English. In 1975 he published The Education of Lev
Navrozov (Harper and Row), a work he had written in English in Russia.
Among his most important articles are: "The Soviet Britannica" (Midstream,
February 1980); "Liberty and Radio Liberty" (Midstream, January 1981);
"What the CIA Knows about Russia" (Commentary, November 1978);
and a series of reviews of recent novels in Chronicles of Culture. In 1979
he founded The Center for the Survival of Western Democracies. This
article is taken from a forthcoming book, What the New York Times
Knows about the World.
family~wife,
46
daily international news for top American decision-makers, including the President of the United States.
In short, for Pravda to be informative is a gratuitous luxury, while in the case of the New York Times, information
is a matter of life and death for the United States and the
entire non·totalitarian world. But is ~<international news"
more informative in the New York Times than in Pravda?
The top New York Times editors seem to be confident
that it is ridiculous even to compare the two newspapers.
Pravda is free to be informative only within its propaganda assignment. The New York Times is free to be as in·
formative as it wishes. Does it not follow therefrom that
the New York Times is as informative as a newspaper can
possibly be?
Who can compare the international news of the New
York Times whose Sunday edition averaged 558 pages per
issue and weighed seven pounds way back in 1967, with
that of Pravda which still consists of six pages?
In a book of generous self-appreciation written by fortyeight Timesmen," one of the contributors, Max Frankel,
says that at some point in his sojourn in Moscow as a New
York Times correspondent, he could compose a Pravda text
in advance, without seeing it, With 80 percent accuracy":
11
11
WORLD SERIES ... TASS ... NEW YORK ... The peaceloving peoples' valiant struggle for progress throughout the
world is being obscured in the American monopoly press this
month by a great hullabaloo over what American sport finan·
ciers arrogantly call a world championship. Not only the
heroic sportsmen of the Great Socialist Camp but even
America's poorer allies are barred from the games ... 1
We will see if Mr. Frankel's composition is good even as
a parody. Alas, the fact that Pravda is a sensitive and
AU1UMN 1981
�powerful totalitarian tool in an evil cause does not mean
that it consists, as Mr. Frankel assures us, of moronic gobbledygook, in contrast to the New York Times, "by every
objective criterion the most thorough, most complete,
most responsible newspaper that time, money, talent, and
technology in the second half of the twentieth century
had been able to produce," to quote Harrison Salisbury's
Without Fear or Favor.
Unfortunately, utotalitarian" and "evil" does not mean
"stupid" or "funny." Nor should it be forgotten that freedom means in particular the freedom to ascend to the infinite heights of genius as well as the freedom to descend to
the incredible depths of ignorance, stupidity, or general
personality degradation, as is exemplified by Walter
Durante of the New York Times who is now recognized,
even by Harrison Salisbury, to have been perhaps the
worst non-Communist falsifier of information on Russia
in the twenties and thirties.
So let us turn to Pravda and the New York Times as they
are, not as the "top Timesmen" assume them to be. As a
sample for comparison I take the issues of both newspapers dated February 18, 1975, a date I picked at random as
I scanned the New York Times for Cambodia-related
reports and articles.
In its "News Summary and Index" the New York Times
lists five news items as the "major events of the day." The
first of them the newspaper summarizes as follows:
International
Secretary of State Kissinger and Andrei A. Gromyko, the Soviet Fareign Minister, completed their talks in Geneva still in
disagreement over the Middle East. After five hours of discus-
sion on the Middle East, Mr. Gromyko told newsmen that
"there were questions on which our positions did not exactly
coincide." Mr. Kissinger said he concurred with that.
The relevant Pravda article is entitled "Joint Communique on the Talks Between A. A. Gromyko and H. Kissinger" and is the text of the official document so named.
The Pravda text is worth reading for seven words near the
end of the following paragraph:
Special attention in the talks between A. A. Gromyko and
H. Kissinger has been paid to the Middle East. Both sides
continue to be concerned about the situation there which remains dangerous. They have confirmed their determination
to do their best for the solution of the key problems of a just
and durable peace in this area on the basis of Resolution 338
of the United Nations Security Council, with due account of
the legitimate interests of all peoples in this area, including
the Palestinian people . ..
The sole purpose of the "talks" and the "Joint Communique" lay for the Soviet side in these seven words, "the legitimate interests of. .. the Palestinian people," which
were to be officially and publicly endorsed by the United
States Government.
The question is: why did the New York Times leave out
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
these seven words in all relevant texts of the issue under
review?
My explanation, based on my studies of the New York
Times in the last sixty years, is that the New York Times
has always tended to conceal unpleasantly dangerous
"sharp angles" of the outside world and show it far more
benign, safe, and peaceful than it really is.
Here in 1975 there still flourished detente, that is, the
unilateral fantasy that the Soviet war-regime is a peaceful,
cooperative if essentially Russian and hence outlandish
society. And suddenly this American recognition of the
"legitimate interests of the Palestinian people" (read: the
establishment of "Arafat's Cuba" at the heart of Israel).
So the Soviet rulers were pushing their global strategic interests just as before-and much more successfully owing
to the American fantasy called "detente"?
This could upset some Americans, especially Jews, and
in the ensuing panic, paranoia, hysteria, they might (God
forbid!) question the meaning of detente itself!
It is true that the tendency of the New York Times to
conceal "sharp angles" becomes strong if the (future)
tyrant and his (future) tyranny can be connected with
"Left-wing" words like ''revolutionary," "progressive,"
"independence," "national liberation," as opposed to
"Right-wing" words like "reactionary," ~<colonialism,"
"imperialism/' "fascism." However, if the tyrant and his
tyranny are dangerous enough, the New York Times
seems to be anxious to play down the danger, no matter
whether it can be connected with Left- or Right-wing
words.
The New York Times was ruthless to Lon Nol's government in Cambodia since whatever its "ineptitude" and
"corruption" were according to the New York Times, even
the latter never suggested that Cambodia under this government was dangerous to any country on earth.
But the more dangerous the regime is the more determined the New York Times seems to be to conceal the
danger, just as some individuals conceal unpleasant news
from everyone around them and even from themselves,
and speak especially well of those who are powerful and
nasty.
Certainly Hitler and his regime could be much more
readily connected with words like "reactionary" or "fascism" than the government of Lon Nol of Cambodia, "inept" and ''corrupt" as it was, according to the New York
Times. But what was the coverage of Hitler and his regime
by the New York Times?
This digression into the past will not be time wasted.
"If the international Jewish financiers (read: the United
States, Britain, and France) go to war with Germany," Hitler stated in the official translation of his speech of January 30, 1939, "the result will be the annihilation of the
Jewish race in Europe." That is, Hitler officially declared
that he regarded the Jews of Germany and any country he
would occupy as hostages whom he would kill off if the
Western democracies tried to interfere with his conquests.
47
�The intention was clear already in 1938 as Dr. Goebbels's Angriff commented on Kristallnacht, the Nazi's ostentatious pogrom of Jewish-owned businesses in Germany on November 10:
For every suffering, every crime and every injury that this
criminal [the Jewry] inflicts on a German anywhere, every in~
dividual jew will be held responsible. All that Judah wants is
war with us, and it can have this war according to its own
moral law: an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
"Excerpts" from Hitler's speech of January 30, 1939, occupy pages 6 and 7 of the New York Times. But on the
front page we find an article headlined "Hitler's Advice to
U s. "
I had to read the article twice to get rid of the notion
that the New York Times was being sardonic. No, it was
dead serious. It presented Hitler's speech as Hitler's advice
to the Americans. I reproduce the article in full, down to
the last full stop:
"Hitler's Advice to Us"
Berlin, jan. 30-That part of Chancellor Adolf Hitler's
speech dealing specifically with German-American relations
reads textually as follows:
"Our relations with the United States are suffering from a
campaign of defamation carried on to serve obvious political
and financial interests which, under the pretense that Germany threatens American independence, are endeavoring to
mobilize the hatred of an entire continent against the European States that are nationally governed.
"We all believe, however, that this does not reflect the will
of the millions of American citizens who, despite all that is
said to the contrary by the gigantic Jewish capitalistic propa·
ganda through press, radio and films, cannot fail to realize
that there is not one word of truth in all these assertions.
"Germany wishes to live in peace and on friendly terms
with all countries, including America. Germany refrains from
any intervention in American affairs and likewise decisively
repudiates any American intervention in German affairs.
"The question, for instance, whether Germany maintains
economic relations and does business with the countries of
South and Central America concerns nobody but them and
ourselves. Germany, anyway, is a great and sovereign country
and is not subject to the supervision of American politicians.
"Quite apart from that, however, I feel that all States today
have so many domestic problems to solve that it would be a
piece of good fortune for the nations if responsible statesmen
would confine their attention to their own problems."
There is a story about a class at an American school
writing an essay on poverty, and one girl stating: "That
family was very poor, and their butler was poor, too." The
girl differentiated between wealth and poverty, but the
scale of differentiation was very narrow: the wealthy employ rich butlers, while the poor poor ones. The New York
Times differentiated between good and eviL Stalin's regime was good, and Hitler's eviL But the scale of differentiation was very narrow. From the article entitled "Hitler's
48
Advice to Us" it was clear that Hitler referred to "gigantic
Jewish capitalistic propaganda" and so he was an evil
man. But no more evil than Henry Ford I and other such
reactionaries who used the word "Jewish" in this sense.
And despite this evilness, the German Chancellor's
speech is presented by the New York Times as advice,
good and sensible: he is obviously for peace (the conjecture that Hitler may be for world conquest seems in the
context as outrageous as the conjecture that some poor
family may not employ even a poor butler).
But what about Hitler's warning that the "Jewish race"
in Europe would be annihilated? Surely this was the only
news in Hitler's endless verbiage. And surely this on/y
news was the news of the century, certainly so in New
York where so many Jews lived. The New York Times
tucked away this news of the century into the middle of a
paragraph, lost in the full-page expanses of Hitler's speech
far from the front page. I wonder how many scholars
found it. I have never seen it quoted or recalled anywhere.
On page 6, the New York Times printed within a frame
inside Hitler's speech a summary of the speech as a whole.
The summary is attributed to the Associated Press and entitled "Hitler's Salient Points":
BERLIN, jan. 30.-Following are important quotations from
Chancellor Adolf Hitler's Reichstag speech tonight, as contained in the official translation.
There are four salient points. In point I, subtitled "Colonies," Hitler speaks reasonably and peacefully about the
European colonial powers, though he tactfully mentions
no country. Do usome nations" imagine that ' God has
permitted" them to "acquire the world by force and to defend this robbery with moralizing theories"? The Chancellor suggests a peaceful solution "on the ground of
equity and therefore, also, of common sense."
In point 2, subtitled "Support of Italy," Hitler says, no
less reasonably and peacefully, that Germany will side
with Italy if the latter is attacked.
In point 3, subtitled "Need for Exports," Hitler explains~not only reasonably and peacefully, but indeed in
the tone of a pathetic plea-that the "German nation
must live; that means export or die." "We have to export
in order to buy foodstuffs."
And in point 4, subtitled "Foreign 'Agitators'," Hitler is
again made to present a well-justified plaint: when British
agitators rail at Germany this is considered part of their sacred rights, but when Germany defends herself against
their attacks, this is regarded as an encroachment on these
sacred rights of theirs.
So the forthcoming annihilation of the "Jewish race" in
Europe is not even a salient point of Hitler's speech.
In other words, part of the American media, including
the New York Times, had been seeing the totalitarian regime of Germany as a projection of their own American
middle-class experience. According to this projection, international peace is something like peace in an American
middle-class environment. If you have failed to make a
1
AUTUMN 1981
�deal, do not blame the other side: you have been insufficiently understanding, attentive, accomodating. What on
earth are you trying to say? That Herr Hitler does not
want peace like all of us? Chancellor Adolf Hitler is human, isn't he? Of course, he is a Right-wing reactionary.
So what? What about Henry Ford I? Study the interests of
Germany, especially in trade, try to see its side of the case
(you must admit that its grievances are just), negotiate,
resolve conflicts, settle issues, work out problems, and
sign an agreement to your mutual advantage.
Of course, the highest triumph of this kind was the Munich Agreement of 1938. On October I, 1938, the New
York Times announced it in its banner headline as: "AntiWar Pact."
Prime Minister Wildly Cheered by Relieved LondonersKing Welcomes Him at Palace
By Ferdinand Kuhn, Jr.
London, Sept 30-Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had
a hero's welcome on this rainy Autumn evening when he
came back to London, bringing the four-power agreement
and the Anglo-American declaration reaffirming "the desire
of our two peoples never to go to war with one another
again."
"For the second time in our history," he told a wildly cheering crowd in Downing Street, "a British Prime Minister has
returned from Germany bringing peace with honor."
Mr. Chamberlain was comparing himself proudly to Disraeli, who came home amid similar enthusiasm after the Ber-
lin Congress of 1878.
A cynical outsider might have said that part of Czechoslovakia has just been given away to Hitler in exchange for
a piece of paper. The purpose of every conqueror is not
fighting, but conquest The fact that Hitler was taking
over part of Czechoslovakia without a single shot fired
and could and would conquer the rest in the same way
meant that he had won a war without any resistance (the
greatest triumph of every conqueror), not that he desired
~<never
to go to war."
There had been nothing like it here since grateful crowds
surged around David Lloyd George during the victory celebrations of 1918. London usually hides its emotions, and all
this exuberance was more astonishing than a ticker tape parade on Broadway.
Women Almost Hysterical
It had more than a trace of the hysterical about it. Most of
Mr. Chamberlain's welcomers seemed to be women, who
probably had not read the terms of the Munich agreement
but who remembered the last war and all it meant to them.
They flocked from little suburban homes to watch the
Prime Minister pass in his car along the Great West Road
leading into London. They stood outside Buckingham Palace
in pouring rain with newspapers over their hats waiting for
him to arrive for a welcome by King George and Queen
Elizabeth.
The crowd set up such tremendous cheers that Mr. and
THEST.JOHNSREVIEW
Mrs. Chamberlain had to appear with the King and Queen
on the
again.
flood~lit
palace balcony as if this were coronation time
And here is a New York Times report from Munich itself:
"Britain and Germany Agree" by Frederick T. Birchall. Munich, Germany, Sept. 30- The whole aspect of European relations has been changed by developments today following
the signature of the four-power agreement over Czechoslovakia in the early hours of this morning.
However, something far more important happened:
The Czechs have consented to the agreement, but far transcending their acceptance in importance to the world at large
are the results of an intimate conversation between Chancel-
lor Adolf Hitler and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in
Herr Hitler's private apartments just before the departure of
the British delegation.
What is the Czech consent to the agreement (that is,
Hitler's conquest of Czechoslovakia) compared in importance to the world at large with an intimate (yes, intimate)
conversation in Herr Hitler's private (yes, private) apartments?
These results were made known in the following joint communique issued after the conversation:
We, the German Fuehrer and Chancellor and the
British Prime Minister, have had a further meeting today
and are agreed in recognizing the question of Anglo-German relations as of the first importance for the two countries and for Europe.
We regard the agreement signed last night and the Anglo-German naval agreement as symbolic of the desire of
our two peoples never to go to war with one another again.
We are resolved that the method of consultation shall be
the method adopted to deal with any other questions that
may concern our two countries, and we are determined to
continue our efforts to remove probable sources of difference and thus contribute to assure the peace of Europe.
Never has a simpler document been issued in history with
consequences more far-reaching or more pregnant with hope.
If the two men who issued it stick to their resolves the peace
of Europe seems assured for a generation at least.
It is to Czechoslovakia that the New York Times devoted about one-tenth of its editorial space:
Czechoslovakia as it stood before the end of last week was
itself the product of a series of major surgical operations made
in 1919 by the framers of the Treaty of Versaille's. As the
world knows, the results of those surgical operations were far
from uniformly happy. The city of Vienna, which had been
the financial heart of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, became
in many ways a shadow of its former self. The German industries in Bohemia, in becoming part of the new Czechoslovak
State, were torn from most of their previous market in the old
Austria-Hungary. It is partly for this reason that they have suf~
49
�fered so severely that many factories in that district have been
shut down and abandoned, often throwing whole communities into unemployment.
made unmistakably clear to the dictators, who have hitherto
relied upon the threat of force for the achievement of their
ends, that there is a limit beyond which the democracies of
the world will not go. Whatever Hitler may have thought be·
So what was happening to Czechoslovakia was good?
No: there is a serious but.
But if the new territorial amputating and grafting process that
is now going on partly corrects some maladjustments, it is
more likely to create new and more serious ones.
In other words, the New York Times sees Hitler's con·
quest of Czechoslovakia as a split or merger of a corpora·
tion, a mixed bag of advantages and disadvantages.
The message of the editorial is to demonstrate that as
far as the still remaining part of Czechoslovakia is con·
cerned, the new split-and-merger gives it on balance more
disadvantages than advantages. True, it might have been
different:
In a world dominated by pacific sentiments and free trade,
changes in political frontiers might have only a minor economic significance. Trade relations would continue largely in
their accustomed channels, subject to those adjustments
made necessary only by changes in currency, in legal codes,
contract forms and courts, and in the incidence of taxes.
Alas, trade relations are not to continue in their accus·
tamed channels:
But the world today is dominated more than it has been for
generations by nationalism and the doctrines of protection
and self-containment. That is why the amputation of sections
of Czechoslovakia is likely to have so serious an economic effect on the part that remains.
On the editorial page the New York Times published
"Opinions on the Munich Agreement": five letters in all.
The first letter says:
The gains from the Munich settlement for the forces of law
and order are substantial and far outweigh the sacrifices.
The greatest gain of all is that the democracies set out to
enforce peace and succeeded. British and French arms
backed by American moral support brought home to Hitler
that there is a law which he could not defy with impunity-the law of nations, which though trampled underfoot
in China, still has vitality in EurOpe.
The second letter seems to continue the first:
Despite the scramble for settlement on the part of the democracies and their leaders allowing their powerful countries
to be humbled, I think that the Four-Power Pact preserving
the peace of Europe is the greatest tribute to the democratic
form of government.
The third letter assures the good New Yorkers that the
Munich surrender has
50
fore, he knows now that Britain and France are not afraid to
fight and that there are issues for which, if need be, they will
fight.
The fourth letter states that the relevant countries
have been spared untold agonies of slaughter and have saved
billions of dollars by the sacrifice of Czechoslovakia. It is right
that millions in these countries now pray and offer up thanks
for peace ...
And the fifth and last letter deserves to be quoted in
full:
To the Editor of the New York Times:
While it was good politics in Munich for Mr. Chamberlain
and Mr. Daladier not to underscore the important fact that
Hitler retreated shamelessly from the position he took up before the four-power meeting, it is deplorable that the newspapers and the public, instead of emphasizing this outstanding
defeat of Hitler's, concentrate on bewailing what Czechoslovakia lost.
If one thing has been proved beyond doubt at the Munich
conference it was Hitler's realization that threat of force for
power politics does not work anymore, and that the council
table has to replace his former methods.
Obviously, if a threat of force is of no use to Germany's future then Hitler is played out, as there are Germans with
greater competence available to settle its affairs by discussion.
Therefore, for the good of Germany and the rest of the world,
it is Hitler's defeat and not Czechoslovakia's loss that should
be emphasized and advertised.
Alexander Gross
New York York, Oct. 1, 1938
And here four months after this triumph, Chancellor
Adolf Hitler declared like an unreal movie gangster that
the Jews of Europe were his hostages, whom he would kill
off if the United States and other countries came to the
rescue of the rest of Czechoslovakia, which Hitler meant
to occupy in six weeks, or Poland, which he was to invade
late in the year.
Now we can return to February 18, 1975-to these
seven words about the legitimate interests of the Palestin·
ian people which Henry Kissinger duly signed in 1975 on
behalf of the United States government, but the New
York Times deleted.
My Britannica (1970) calls pre-1948 Israel Palestine. The
Arabs who live on the territory or have fled (though the
government of Israel invited them to return, according to
my Britannica) were first called the Palestinian Arabs, to
distinguish them from the Iraqi Arabs, for example. Later
the word "Arabs" was dropped (for brevity?) and they be·
came the Palestinians or the Palestinian people. Now,
surely Palestine must belong to the Palestinians?
AUTUMN 1981
�But there is something called Israel in the area? In reply
to this supposition, the Palestine Liberation Organization
drew in 1968 its "Palestinian National Charter":
The partition of Palestine in 1947 and the establishment of
the state of Israel are entirely illegal, regardless of the passage
of time, because they were contrary to the will of the Palestinian people and to their natural right in their homeland, and
inconsistent with the principles embodied in the Charter of
the United Nations, particularly the right of self-determination.2
Still, what is Israel? "Israel is the instrument of the
Zionist movement," answers the Charter. But what is,
then, the Zionist movement?
Zionism is a political movement organically associated with
international imperialism and antagonistic to all action for liberation and to progressive movements in the world. It is racist
and fanatic in its nature, aggressive, expansionist, and colonial in its aims, and fascist in its methods.
On October 28, 1974, twenty Arab heads of government meeting at Rabat named the PLO with Arafat as its
leader "the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people." The Palestinian Arabs have not elected any
sole legitimate representative, you will say. But who
elected Stalin, the co-founder of the United Nations, to be
the sole legitimate representative there of more than 100
expansion in the Middle East, that the Soviet rulers had
repeatedly tried to crack by means of wars by proxy, and
only an unpredictable counter-attack of Israeli armor had
saved Israel in 1973.
How does one know that Arafat's ~~sovereign state" may
be like Castro's Cuba? But how did one know that Castro's Cuba would be a Castro's Cuba? The New York
Times argued that it would not be: Arafat's "sovereign
state" will be small. But Castro's Cuba was even smaller
compared with both Americas, Africa, and Asia, and yet
look at what it has been doing. There is no harm for the
Soviet rulers to try out Arafat: this is only one move by
one piece on the global chessboard. If the move does not
destroy Israel, some other moves will. If Israel destroys
Arafat, not vice versa, there is no end of spare Arafats in
this world. And if the war spreads to the entire Middle
East, its oil fields will become the first casualty, which will
be of immense benefit to Soviet global strategy, and the
Soviet invasion of the Middle East will be far easier too.
Later, the Soviet rulers will restore oil production in their
Middle East-possibly with Western aid.
On November 22, 1974, the United Nations Resolution
3236 "legitimized the interests of the Palestinian people,"
that is, Arafat's armed group. The Soviet rulers (the "Soviet people"?) voted for it with eighty-eight other "nations" or "peoples," including the Byelorussians or the
Czechs who also figure as (sovereign) "nations" or "peo-
cow a "permanent representation" (a Russian term mean-
ples" because their sole legitimate representative Stalin
wanted it that way. Most democracies, including Britain,
abstained, while a few, including the United States, voted
against. In his speech of explanation of the negative vote,
the United States delegate said that the United States favored the Security Council Resolution 338 of 1973. The
resolution does not mention any Palestinian people, let
alone their interests: it called upon the countries which attacked Israel in the Yom Kippur war and Israel which
saved herself by accident to cease fire in twelve hours and
begin to negotiate.
Pravda's text of the joint document to which Henry Kissinger agreed on behalf of the United States Government
refers to "Resolution 338 ... with due account of the legitimate interests of. .. the Palestinian people." The word
"legitimate" leaves no doubt as to the meaning: "self-determination and sovereign state of the Palestinian
people" in Palestine, as the United Nations resolved. By
having signed the "Joint Communique" the United States
recast its vote in the United Nations, as it were, which
constituted the only news the "talks" and the "Joint Communique" contained and the New York Times extirpated.
This example does not mean that Pravda is truthful by
definition, while the New York Times is mendacious by
nature (as Pravda would assert). The information on the
ing both embassy and consulate). The "legitimate" (in
American side's agreement to "Palestinian sovereignty"
Russian synonymous with "legal" or "law-bound") inter-
that appeared in Pravda showed the Soviet readers that at
the height of so-called detente early in 1975, the Soviet re·
gime was expanding as victoriously as before: the establishment of an "Arab Cuba" at the heart of Israel could
nations of Russia? Arafat is a terrorist? American periodi-
cals I have happened to read at this writing, from the frivolous Time magazine to the sedate Foreign Affairs, explain
that Prime Minister Begin of Israel was once a terrorist
too. True, the PLO killed from June 1967 to September
1979 350 Arabs who disagreed with the PLO, including
Sheik Hashem Khozander, the Imam of Gazda. 3 On the
other hand, I have never heard that Begin ever touched
even the most Arab hair on the most anti-Israeli head in
the pro-Soviet Communist Party of Israel. But the fact
that Lenin killed those who disagreed with him as well,
and George Washington did not, is evidently an irrelevant
minor difference.
In unison with what was or has since become the pre·
vailing view of the American media, not to mention the
media of West-European countries, on July 30, 1974, a
"top-level Palestinian delegation," headed by Arafat was
officially received by Boris Ponomaryov, "head of the International Section of the Central Committee of the Com·
munist Party of the Soviet Union," and in August it was
announced by Pravda that the PLO was to open in Mas·
ests of the "Palestinian people" had thus come to mean
the creation of an "Arab Cuba" to be established at the
heart of Israel, this little hard nut of resistance to Soviet
THEST.JOHNSREVIEW
51
�well mean the destruction of Israel, while the refusal of Israel to have an "Arab Cuba" at its heart would lead to the
"international isolation" of Israel, which would also be
helpful in the achievement of the same goaL
In general, the veracity of Pravda has been improving in
proportion to the growth of the Soviet rulers' global
might When Pravda said on March 6, 1919: "The Soviets
have won throughout the world," and added on the next
day: "The comrades present in this hall" (of the 1st Congress of the International) "will see the establishment of
the World Federative Soviet Republic," that was wildly
untrue. Such a statement today would not be so wildly untrue. Pravda does not now need to make such explicit, extravagant, or premature statements to keep the Soviet
population as well as Soviet allies, vassals, and supporters,
assured as to the "imminent victory of our cause all over
the world." Many Soviet inhabitants, whether they identify themselves with the regime or oppose it, now believe
in the "ultimate victory" of the Soviet regime without any
assurance on the part of Pravda. Because the Soviet regime has matched and surpassed American strategic
power only in the 1970s, it is obvious to them that the Soviet global game of chess has merely begun, and as in
every game of chess, the moves are tryouts, advances, re~
treats, detours, exchanges. Many Soviet inhabitants understand, for example, that the Soviet rulers keep Eastern
Europe on a loose leash just to demonstrate to their
potential vassals in France, Italy, or elsewhere that the latter will enjoy some latitude when they come to power in
their countries-if they behave, of course. Since the Soviet rulers are after the whole globe, they play with their
Eastern European pieces.
was this kind of truth-a truth in keeping with Pravda's
propaganda goaL
Inversely, the New York Times censored out the news
which could prompt some readers to question the view of
the Times that the foreign policy or strategy called detente was working to the advantage of all concerned and,
above all, the United States.
But surely this is a generally expected behavior of an individual or a social group in a democracy. The prosecutor
in a court of justice censors out the defendant's innocence, while the counsel for defense the defendant's guilt
Why should not the New York Times censor out what contradicts its view? The trouble is that the New York Times
has no adequate opposition source or adequate competitor as regards international daily news for American decision-makers. It is the prosecutor (or the counsel for
defense) without the counsel for defense (or, respectively,
the prosecutor). The evidence in the twenty years or so,
beginning with Castro's seizure of Cuba, indicates that
what the New York Times censors out usually remains
censored out in the process of decision-making in American foreign policy, strategy, and defense.
The rest of the New York Times article is sheer verbiage. In contrast to Pravda, it is not a documentary text,
but its own report, which the Times would define as "incisive news analysis" and Soviet decision-makers as Philis-
tine prattle. Whatever it is, it would be misleading in its
own way even if the New York Times had not extirpated
the only grain of news the official text contained.
In this first high-level Soviet-American meeting since Vladi-
What makes Soviet world' conquest so plausible to
vostok and the chill caused by the Soviet abrogation of the
1972 trade agreement, the atmosphere was described as
many Soviet inhabitants is not "Soviet gains" in Europe,
somewhat more formal and slightly more abrasive than in pre-
Africa, the Caribbean, or the Middle East What impresses them is the very fact that the democracies have
been allowing and even helping the Soviet regime to grow
from a militarily backward parochial country in the 1930s
to the global military mammoth of today. Just think what
will happen tomorrow! In 195 3 the Soviet regime still produced 38 million tons of steel a year as against the lO 1 million tons of the United States. In 1978 the Soviet regime
produced 151 million tons of steel, used mainly for military purposes, while the United States produced 124 million, put mainly to civilian uses. What will stop the Soviet
global military mammoth from continuing to outgrow the
democracies? If, having invested in defense since 1947
several trillion dollars, the United States does not yet
know how to defend the Middle East, for example, these
Soviet inhabitants conjecture that the United States will
know how to do it less and less.
In other words, today Pravda can often afford the truth
and thus gain credibility without sowing any doubt as to
vious sessions, but on the whole "joviaL''
The article is a projection of American middle-class life
all over again thirty-six years later-only this time not
onto the totalitarian regime of Germany but of Russia.
The incidental difference is that while the rulers of Germany were, in the columns of the New York Times,
American Right-wing corporation presidents, the rulers of
Russia are American progressive corporation presidents,
the ''imminent victory of our cause all over the world."
pleasant, warm, and forward-looking.
It will be recalled that the "Soviet abrogation of the
1972 trade agreement" the article mentions occurred as a
result of the Jackson-Vanik amendment in Congress
which tried to "attach political strings to Soviet-American
trade and interfere in Soviet domestic affairs," as Pravda
put it. Many top American decision-makers, including
President Ford (whom Pravda quotes on the subject in the
issue under review), agreed that the "Soviet Union" had
a good reason for being offended. And yet the "atmosphere" of the Soviet-American talks was on the whole
The news that the United States government agreed as of
February 18, 1975, to "Palestinian sovereignty," and thus
reneged on its United Nations vote of four months earlier,
dents, the Soviet rulers bear no grudge: Russia, Inc. is future-oriented, optimistic, positive-it looks forward to
52
"jovial." Like up·and·coming American corporation presi·
AUTUMN 1981
�agreements on world peace, international cooperation,
and everything else-in particular in the Middle East, and
this is why the Soviet side is so eager to convene the Geneva conference on the Middle East:
On the Middle East, the Russians have pressed for an early
reconvening of the Geneva conference so that they can play a
more active role. They are co-chairmen with the Americans.
The fact that the Soviet rulers (the "Russians") prepared two wars by proxy to destroy Israel and have been
penetrating the Moslem countries by all expedient means
short of the overall invasion of the entire Moslem world,
does not exist because the Soviet war-civilization and its
rulers do not exist: there is instead Russia, Inc. with its
presidents and lawyers, and naturally, they want to play a
more active role in the establishment of peace in the Middle East-in order to trade with the Middle East, travel
there and enjoy peace in general. What other earthly purposes can a human have?
The United States would prefer to see the Geneva conference reconvened while there was momentum for further
political progress and not as a last-ditch effort to prevent a
Middle East war.
Of course, Russia, Inc. is eager to prevent a Middle East
war. Still greater is its desire to add to the "momentum for
further political progress."
During the discussions, Mr. Gromyko raised the possibility
of an accord to limit arms to the Middle East. But this was in
the context of what would be in the final settlement, not as a
measure to be adopted now.
Actually, "Mr. Gromyko," that is, the Soviet rulers,
meant that the United States would "limit arms to the
Middle East" while the Soviet regime would send them to
their allies, guerrillas, and subversives in the Middle East
so secretly that no intelligence agency of the West would
know (not that it takes any special top secrecy to achieve
this). Anyway, we learn that Mr. Kissinger "dined tonight
at Admiralty House with [British] Prime Minister Harold
Wilson and Foreign Secretary James Callaghan, who just
returned from Moscow."
They compared notes on Soviet relations. The British leaders were the first Westerners to see Mr. Brezhnev since he be·
came ill in December.
Mr. Kissinger reportedly learned from Mr. Gromyko that
Mr. Brezhnev had been suffering from influenza and was
now in "fine health" although he would, by doctors' orders,
perhaps take two more weeks of rest.
A jovial meeting cif corporation presidents and lawyers:
Mr. Kissinger and Mr. Gromyko represent different firms,
of course, but they always swap tidbits of inside info.
THEST.JOHNSREVIEW
Joking with Mr. Gromyko, Mr. Kissinger said he could not
compete with "the oratorical skill" of his colleague . ..
Obviously, no meeting of corporation lawyers is complete without their joking with one another, and since the
entire description is phoney, jokes may be contrived too.
The United States discerned Soviet flexibility on extending
the agreed 150-kiloton limit on nuclear explosions to peaceful
applications.
Yes, flexibility is what also distinguishes Russia, Inc. in
negotiations. In fact, the third part of the New York Times
article is subtitled "A Russian Concession." According to
the Times, it is the Soviet side, not the American one,
which made a concession during these talks. What concession is that?
Having read the two relevant paragraphs of the article,
we learn that the Soviet side agreed that the "Geneva
conference . .. should resume its work at an early date/'
not "as soon as possible," the expression on which the Soviet side had allegedly insisted before. (Is "as soon as possible" necessarily earlier than "at an early date"?) In the
Pravda text of the communique in Russian (which is as
valid as the English text of the document) the expression
is "at the nearest time." So the Russian concession" that
the New York Times espied was lost anyway in the equally
valid Russian text.
While the Soviet side is flexible and makes concessions-as a future-oriented, optimistic, positive corporation should-this is more than can be said about the
American side:
11
Later, on the way to London aboard Mr. Kissinger's plane,
newsmen were told that Mr. Gromyko had urged the immediate reconvening of the Geneva conference on the Middle
East and had accused the United States of bad faith in excluding the Soviet Union from the Middle East diplomacy.
There is no mention, of course, that Gromyko merely
repeated the standard charge Soviet propaganda has been
making: the Soviet side is so eager to negotiate, to be flexible, to make concessions, but the egotistic American side
does not give the Soviet side half a chance in the Middle
East.
To be sure, corporation lawyers rarely agree as soon as
they meet. On the other hand, all issues can be finally resolved. After all, every issue between two corporations
can be reduced to money: who pays whom how much.
And each side will finally decide that it is worth its while
to pay the required sum, settle the issue, and recoup elsewhere the money lost.
The two sides still disagreed on some aspects of the European security conference, but the Americans believe the issues can be resolved.
All that is necessary is good will and legal expertise:
53
�After their talks in the Hotel Intercontinental in Geneva,
Mr. Gromyko and Mr. Kissinger came down to the lobby to
speak with newsmen. Mr. Gromyko said that "on many of the
questions we touched, our positions were close or coincide.''
For Stalin's man, Gromyko, who survived Stalin and
Beria and Malenkov and Khrushchev, to impersonate for
Western consumption a jovial HMr. Gromyko, Russia,
Inc." is about as difficult as for Al Capone or the Godfather to trick school children.
The last sentence of the article adds to the picture of
Hdynamism and genius" of Mr. Kissinger, America, Inc.:
The Secretary will be in Zurich for luncheon with the Shah
of Iran, who is vacationing in Switzerland.
While negotiating on the Middle East (and getting a
concession from the Soviet side), on the European security conference, and even on the extension of the
!50-kiloton limit on nuclear explosions to peaceful applications, he is taking care at the same time of AmericanIranian relations right on the spot, in Switzerland. No
wonder the relations between the United States and Iran
are so good at this writing, what with the American hostages and the rest.
Pravda did not print a word of this verbiage. Why
should Pravda mislead its readers in this way? On the contrary, Pravda readers must know that the enemy made a
concession on "the Palestinian question" because Soviet
might cows the enemy, and this is what detente is about:
Western concessions, servility, self-disarmament, retreat,
surrender, hoping to placate the globally winning Soviet
regime. As for that Philistine prattle, let the Western Philistines consume it-the more the better.
What does Pravda regard as the most important international news of the day? Britain's signing of several extensive Soviet-British documents, each of which Pravda
printed in full. Those who were interested (and I prefer to
read documents rather than their interpretation by the
New York Times) could glean from them some grains of
news.
From "The Soviet-British Protocol on Consultations"
we learn that the Soviet war mammoth and the British
midget are "determined to contribute to the deepening of
the process of relaxation of international tension [the official Soviet Russian-language definition of the word 'detente'] and to render it [the process] irreversible."
The last word is the key. The natural resources of Britain are small compared with those of the United States,
not to mention Russia (the territory of Britain accounts
for l percent of that of Russia proper, excluding Soviet
vassals). When Henry Kissinger launched his detente, the
United States preserved at least the economic ability to
reverse its policy of transfer of American science and
technology to the Soviet military if the Soviet regime
openly invaded Afganistan, for example (at that time a
wild conjecture, of course). But not Britain. "The Soviet-
54
British Protocol" was aimed at making the "process of detente" irreversible for Britain. The definition of this goal
comes up again in "The Joint Soviet-British Statement"
(just as do the "legitimate interests of the Arab people of
Palestine," though Britain had abstained from the United
Nations vote four months earlier). "Irreversible detente":
the impoverished Britain would henceforth be like a hungry little fish on a big strong hook inside the bait of Soviet
imports and exports. The Soviet turn-off of British-Soviet
trade if Britain misbehaved would lead to such deprivations and dislocations that the Government would receive
a vote of non-confidence, not to mention the British trade
unions' wrath. To bite the bait of Soviet trade, Britain offered the Soviet rulers $2.4 billion in trade credits extended over five years: the little hungry fish paid for at
least part of its bait.
In the Soviet strategists' view, Britain is the most resistant country in Europe: it is the only European country
that takes defense at least as seriously (if this may be
called serious) as the United States: British and American
military spending account for almost the same percentage
of their respective GNP's, though the living standards in
Britain are lower than in the United States.
At this writing, I was interested to see how this most resistant country of Europe had reacted to the Soviet open
invasion of Afghanistan. The latest Facts on File carries an
item of three paragraphs entitled "United Kingdom Retaliates against Soviets.''4 The first paragraph can send a chill
down the Soviet decision-makers' spine. Is the little fish
off its big hook?
Great Britain Jan. 26 announced a series of retaliatory measures against the Soviet Union for its invasion of Afghanistan.
The second paragraph will move to laughter even the
most humorless Soviet bureaucrat:
Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington told Parliament that
the government had canceled scheduled visits to London by a
Soviet minister and deputy minister, a performance by the
Soviet Army Chorus, and such ceremonial military contacts
as a planned exchange of naval ships.
The third paragraph announces that the five-year-credit
agreement expires in February (that is right: five years
have passed since February 18, 1975, the date of the New
York Times and Pravda we sampled). Will Britain stop at
least her financing of her transfer of science and technology to the Soviet global war-machine? Oh, no. It will continue to do so Hon a case-by-case basis."
I picked up the British newspapers and learned that two
days later, on January 28, Mrs. Thatcher said in Parliament with awesome gravity:
We have announced [see above] the measures that we shall
be taking with regard to the Soviet Union . ..
AUTUMN 1981
�In addition Mrs. Thatcher said she wanted Britain to
boycott the Olympics (an awesome retaliation in itself).
Alas, the spirit (of Mrs. Thatcher) is willing, but the flesh
(of the hungry little fish) is weak, and many British sportsmen will not inflict on the Soviet regime even the griev·
ous damage of staying home.
One section of "The Joint Soviet-British Statement" as
published by Pravda of February 18, 1975, is subtitled "Bilateral Relations." Here we learn about
the cooperation between British firms and Soviet organizations and enterprises in the field of reclamation of natural resources, including oil, aircraft building . ...
Let us pause here. So British and Soviet aircraft builders will cooperate bilaterally? The Soviet regime has been
producing at least twice as many helicopters and twice as
many combat planes as the United States, even according
to what the United States Department of Defense can observe or detect. Is Britain still dissatisfied? Perhaps Britain
wants to help the Soviet regime to realize its target of pro·
ducing one long-range bomber a day? Are there too few
Soviet transportation planes to carry troops and/or material to any point of the globe?
The documents Pravda published demonstrate how
British science and technology are put at the disposal of
Soviet military growth. Britain had expelled !05 Soviet
agents. But even 10,005 Soviet agents in Britain would
hardly be able to pass so much military-industrial information to the Soviet military. Yet, as of 1975 this all-out mass
espionage was to be called henceforth bilateral cooperation and include all possible forms of transfer of British
.;cience and technology.
Once upon a time Britain acquired colonies in order to
import raw materials from them in exchange for her scientifically or technologically sophisticated merchandise and
thus support her huge population on a small island. On
February 18, 1975, in order to achieve the same economic
goal, Britain made a major step toward becoming a Soviet
colony in economic reverse: that is, a colony which would
supply the Metropolis with her science and engineering in
exchange for raw materials and thus support her huge
population on a small island. In other words, just as Gambia was once a "raw-materials appendage of Britain" (as
Soviet propaganda puts it), so Britain began to move towards becoming a "science and technology appendage" of
the Soviet global military machine, and this is the news
Pravda of February 18, 1975, reported by publishing the
relevant documents.
The New York Times, which had printed the voluminous verbiage of the "Pentagon Papers," did not find an
inch of space for these documents. Instead, the New York
Times printed again a report of its own, from Moscow
"special to the New York Times." As nearly all "reports
from Moscow," the text could well have been written on
the New York premises of the New York Times. It is based
on the same American middle-class projection: the news is
THEST.JOHNSREVIEW
that America, Inc. has been outpaced by Britain, Inc.
which landed a huge hunk of trade with Russia, Inc.:
The announcement of the British credits tended to bolster
Moscow's contention that it could find trading partners elsewhere in the West. In renouncing the 1972 trade agreement
with the United States last month, the Russians expressed
particular annoyance over the low credit ceiling, which is in
addition to about $600-million of loans already outstanding.
The United States does not want to sell on credit what
the Soviet rulers want? Then Britain will:
The credits, which Mr. Wilson said would be less than
£!-billion ($2.4-billion) are part of a broader program for
economic cooperation that was signed today. Mr. Wilson
characterized it as possibly "the biggest breakthrough in Anglo-Soviet trade that I have known."
Trade, cooperation, good relations:
The warm tone on which the British visit ended showed
that relations between the two countries had emerged from
the chill into which they were thrust after London expelled
105 Soviet diplomats on espionage charges in 1971. The
Kremlin accepted an invitation for Mr. Brezhnev, Mr. Kosygin, and Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko to visit Britain.
But why does the Soviet global military mammoth keep
spies in little Britain by the hundred (or by the thousand)?
Because it fears Britain's invasion of Russia? Or because,
on the contrary, Britain is for the Soviet rulers just another Czechoslovakia, or Afghanistan, or indeed, Ukraine?
In terms of the middle-class projection, the only New York
Times answer is that Russia, Inc. kept those 105 spies in
Britain, Inc. in order to improve trade relations between
the two corporations.
Before Henry Kissinger's detente there was a practically
universal embargo on strategic trade with the Soviet re·
gime. After the embargo was repealed, each ally of the
United States began to reason that if it refrained from a
trade deal accelerating Soviet military growth, another
country would seize the opportunity. Henry Kissinger destroyed-possibly forever-whatever economic unity existed among the allies of the United States as against the
Soviet regime. If Hl'nry Kissinger were in charge of for·
eign policy in Russia, for that alone he would have been
put on trial and shot. But since he is on the other side, he
shines at this writing, as ever, and the Soviet rulers cer·
tainly owe him a monument for the destruction of a world
economic alliance against their war~regime.
Anyway, the state of world trade after the undoing of
the embargo on trade with the Soviet regime fits well the
misperception of the New York Times: the world as just so
many corporations vying with each other to sell Russia,
Inc. whatever it wants and on terms it chooses:
Mr. Wilson defended the decision to offer the low-interest
credits at a time when Britain has been hit by recession, while
55
�the Soviet Union has been increasing its foreign currency
holdings with greater oil profits. Moscow has already concluded deals for cash with other Western countries, notably
West Germany.
Or look at France, Inc. Only America, Inc. falls behind,
punishing itself:
The British credit falls short of the $2.5-billion extended by
France in a trade agreement signed last December. However,
it is seven times more than the $300-million limit set by the
United States Congress on Export-Import Bank loans to the
Soviet Union in a four-year period.
Let us now proceed to the third of the five "major [in·
ternational] events of the day" according to the New York
Times.
"World crude-oil prices have begun to sag noticeably
under the impact of reduced consumption by the indus·
trialized nations." No figure for this "noticeable sag." Is it
l, 2, 3 percent? Of what importance was this "sag" if the
OPEC countries had been raising the prices 100, 200, 300
percent? The New York Times ascribes this "sag" to "re·
duced consumption" because this tends to support the
view that the newspaper has been advocating throughout
the 1970s. In his lengthy article (February I, 1980) to
which the New York Times referred editorially with approval and which was put on the Congressional Record
twice in the same month, George Kennan says: "If the
Persian Gulf is really vital to our security, it is surely we
who by our unrestrained greed for oil have made it so."
One wonders whether it is America's greed for the fifteen raw materials without which the American economy
cannot function that has made the rest of the outside
world so vital to American security. Must the United
States overcome its greed for these fifteen critical raw materials and let the rest of the world go Soviet?
The "greatest real threats to our security in the area remain what they have been all along," Mr. Kennan says after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Predictably, the
Soviet invasion is not one of these threats. They are: "our
self-created dependence on Arab oil and our involvement
in a wholly unstable Israeli-Arab relationship." Not the Soviet involvement in this relationship, to be sure.
Let us assume that the United States has overcome its
greed for oil, and so has no need of the Middle East,
which duly becomes Soviet. As a result, the Soviet regime
will have additional hundreds of billions of dollars annually from oil alone, which means as many dollars for Soviet
global military power. Where will the United States take
additional hundreds of billions of dollars annually to invest in defense in order to counter the Soviet investment?
In other words, on February 18, 1975, the New York
Times front-paged an accidental annual or monthly crudeoil price fluctuation to support its view (which is as frivolous as it is lethal) and give it thereby the front-page
weight of a "major event of the day." Naturally, Pravda (or
1
56
1
any other newspaper in the world) did not mention it because it was not an event, whether major or minor.
The fourth "major [international] event of the day" according to the New York Times is another failure of the
Cambodian Government in its war against the "communist insurgents." Here the view of the New York Times
and that of Pravda (that is, Pravda's owners, of course) coincide in the sense that both newspapers assure their
readers that the Cambodian Government is doomed and
the sooner it will fall the better.
The reports on Cambodia in both newspapers are
wrapped in unmitigated gloom (for the Cambodian Government) except one paragraph describing the American
airlift. In Pravda this paragraph is as follows:
Washington, 17. (TASS). The United States has started an
airlift to supply the Phnom Penh regime with additional military material and ammunition. According to the Washington
Post, the first of those transportation planes, DC-8s, which
belonged to American Airlines and which the Pentagon has
chartered, has arrived in the capital of Cambodia.
The corresponding paragraph of the New York Times is:
With the Mekong blockaded, the Americans have expanded their supply airlift from Thailand. The airlift,
technically being handled by civilian contractors but actually
run from beginning to end by the American military, is mostly
devoted to ammunition so food and fuel are increasingly
scarce.
Food and fuel increasingly scarce? But the next para·
graph says that "rice and fuel stocks, if stretched carefully,
can last well over a month and even two months or more."
Does the New Yark Times expect the airlift to carry food
and fuel to the city three, four, or more months in advance? Does New Yark have food and fuel stocks for
three, four, or more months?
The differences between this paragraph of Pravda and
that of the New York Times can be outlined as follows:
Pravda
The New York Times
With Cambodia's defeat made
to seem imminent, Pravda emphasizes American involvement to show that even the
United States is so weak that
it can no longer defend any
country. Whether the planes
belong to American Airlines or
the Pentagon is immaterial.
Both are ultimately at one and
against us.
At the same time, Pravda
does not want to assure its
readers in advance that the
American airlift is ineffective
The New York Times emphasizes the wily wickedness of
the American military: they
have hired civilian contractors
for the airlift, a loophole in the
struggle led by the New York
Times against the American
aid to Cambodia.
The New York Times wants
to assure its readers that anything would be futile: that the
airlift is "mostly devoted to
ammunition," instead of carryAUTUMN 1981
�or futile: no one can predict its
outcome, and Pravda does not
want to commit itself and later
look foolish. Our side is winning, but temporary setbacks
are always possible.
ing also food and fuel to replenish the city's stocks three,
four, or more months in advance. The Cambodian Government is bound to lose, the
American aid must be stopped.
The fifth and last "major [international] event of the
day" according to the New York Times is the theft of pictures at the Municipal Museum in Milan. I am sure that
for a large part of the Western media (such as the other
two major newspapers of New Yark) this was the most important international news of the day or the only such
news worth reporting. Pravda ignored it.
Pravda was called by a Western newspaper the most
boring newspaper in the world. It is true in the sense that
Pravda feels no more obliged to be entertaining than does
the American Congressional Record or a CIA report. But,
having treated the theft as a major international event of
the day, does not the New York Times try to relieve its
boredom not by interesting information, which is so hard
to obtain, but in the same easy way the New York Post
does? Does not the New York Times mix the boredom of
Pravda (minus some of Pravda's grains of information) and
the entertainment of the New York Post?
So much for what the New York Times regards as the
five major international events of the day. Let us now take
a couple of international news items of the New York
Times which are not major events, according to the New
York Times.
On page 8 we find that in the "new winter-spring campaign" in South Vietnam the Vietcong forces, "with large
numbers of fresh North Vietnamese regulars," had "scored
their biggest gains in the Mekong area since the 60s."
This is no major international event. True, some read-
ers of the New York Times could still remember that on
January 27, 1973, the Paris peace agreement on Vietnam
had been signed after years of negotiations. So the Soviet
rulers, who were behind both the war in Vietnam and the
peace agreement in Paris, had treated the United States
But what about vast Soviet help (which is not even
mentioned)? If such exists, it is evidently part of the natural balance of forces. The Soviet rulers are part of the
nature in any country: it is the United States which is extraneous, foreign, aggressive everywhere. A truly minor
event this war is, a reassertion of the natural balance of
forces, a play of nature, as one might say. Who can compare this event to the theft of pictures in Milan or the
noticeable sag of crude-oil prices allegedly as the result of
reduced consumption!
As for Pravda's coverage of this war, here Pravda proves
that it is a totalitarian newspaper. The New York Times
can blot out or distort an event reported by the rest of the
media. But it cannot ignore it forever if the rest of the media persists. Now, according to Pravda, the war does not
exist. Of course, Pravda readers know about it from foreign radios. But Pravda does not risk the report: what if an
American Senator's aide finds such a report in Pravda?
Here you are (he will say): Pravda admits that North Vietnam's perfidious all-out invasion is fully on.
Pravda ran a three-paragraph item entitled "Repulsing
the Violators of the [Paris Peace] Agreement" only about
a month later, on March 14, 1975, after the Soviet rulers
had understood beyond all doubt (if only from the New
York Times' reports and editorials) that the top American
decision-makers regarded the Soviet perfidious all-out attack by proxy on an American ally as something having
nothing to do either with the United States or the Soviet
rulers.
Recently [days, weeks, months ago?] the Saigon administration has extended provocations aimed to undermine the Paris
agreement on Vietnam.
Fortunately, in South Vietnam there already exists the
legitimate government of South Vietnam: the Provisional
Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam (the PRG of RSV). The PRG of RSV will not allow
the "Saigon administration" to violate the Paris peace
agreement.
11
Government as so many fools and used the peace" agree-
ment to prepare and launch an open all-out attack and
win the war. The impression the article creates, however,
is that this attack, brazen, perfidious, contemptuous of
the United States, is some remote war of two obscure
tribes neither of which has anything to do with the
United States, not to mention those jovial corporation
presidents and lawyers of Russia, Inc.
Besides, South Vietnam is not really endangered, according to the article. "So far most of the Communist
gains have come in the more peripheral parts of the
delta."
Some Vietnamese and Westerners therefore believe that
what is happening is a reassertion of the natural balance of
forces, which had been artificially extended in the Government's favor by vast American help.
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
In response to the appeal of the PRG of RSV, the People's
Armed Forces of Liberation of South Vietnam are repulsing
with determination the violators of the Paris agreement.
Then for two weeks Pravda is silent again. On March 28,
1975, Pravda runs a report entitled "Situation in South
Vietnam." What is the situation? The same as before.
True, Pravda now says openly, the Provisional Government of the Republic of South Vietnam governs most of
South Vietnam, and surely South Vietnam must be gov·
erned by its government, not the "reactionary Thieu
clique, stubbornly violating the Paris agreement on Vietnam," as Pravda puts it, quoting the newspaper Nyan Zan
which the "legitimate" government of South Vietnam
publishes.
Pravda does not lie when the truth is to the Soviet rul-
57
�ers' advantage. But when Pravda is called upon to lie, it
lies with the same limitless insolence, professional skill,
and almost inhuman hypocrisy with which it lied on the
6th of November of 1917 when Lenin's troops attacked
the democratic institutions of Russia, while Pravda an·
nounced that we were being attacked.
The other report of the New York Times which it does
not list as a major international event of the day, but which
is remarkable in its own way, is an especially serene lOQQ.
word fantasy by Flora Lewis entitled "Security Talks
Moving to Finale." Since many Soviet decision*makers
are male chauvinists, they would classify this report as a
starry·eyed housewife's chatter rather than (male) Philis·
tine prattle.
There has been a great deal of difficulty over the wording
of the agreements. For example, a Soviet draft used "important" where a Western draft said "essential."
So this is the stumbling block. Otherwise the Confer·
ence on European Security and Cooperation, working on
what was later called the "Helsinki agreements," ushering
in a new era in the history of mankind, is "moving to finale." Take the third section of its epoch·making agree·
ments, for example:
The third section, on human contacts and exchange of information, caused problems last year, but has now been advanced to the point where only a few details are in dispute.
What details?
There was an argument over whether a clause on information should provide for "public access" or "access by the
public."
tution named after Patrice Lumumba, a "hero of African
liberation," has young people from eighty·nine countries.
This is where future Walter Ulbrichts or Fidel Castros
study and are studied in vivo, to be selected in order to be
trained, introduced to their fellows·in·arms, and helped to
come to power in their respective countries: the most am-
bitious and lucrative profession of today, Soviet satrap.
This is the breeding ground for the young personnel of
the Soviet global political infra·structure. This is where
the Soviet global empire is built.
A grand meeting in honor of the 15th anniversary of the
Friendship-of-Peoples University named after Patrice Lu-
mumba, with the awarding of the [Friendship·of.Peoples] Or·
der to commemorate the event, was held on February 17 in
the Kremlin Palace of Congresses.
The Pravda article is heavy, oppressive, monumental, as
befits the builders of the totalitarian world empire. But it
is informative compared with Flora Lewis's daydreams,
for example.
Elected unanimously as the Presidium of Honor was the
Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party
of the Soviet Union, with Comrade L. I. Brezhnev, General
Secretary of the Central Committee, at the head.
This is a university that enrolls young people of eighty·
nine countries. Foreign diplomats and correspondents are
present at the ceremony. Yet even before it begins, these
future doctors, engineers, scientists (and/or subversives,
guerrilla fighters, "revolutionary leaders") of eighty·nine
countries elect unanimously the Soviet Politburo as grand
supranational sovereign over them all, while the present
governments of their eighty.nine countries are not so
much as mentioned.
So in the Soviet regime there will be "public access" or
"access by the public" (the problem is only to decide which)
to exchange of information, not to mention human contacts. The conference is,
The speaker is B. N. Ponomaryov, that same "man in
charge of the globe" who legitimized in the person of Ara·
fat the "interests of the Palestinian people":
as one delegate described it, the only way "to transform detente from just a matter of states to something for individuals,
with human meaning."
Great Lenin was the first man to enunciate and champion
the right of the people of the colonies to self-determination
and national sovereignty. Our country fought for many years
to realize this principle. The debacle of the colonial empires
was the triumph of Lenin's great idea.
As of February 18, 1975, Flora Lewis is still living in a de·
tente which is just a "matter of states" (the invasion of the
state known as South Vietnam, in violation of an agree·
ment, being a remote irrelevant reassertion of the natural
balance of forces). But new agreements (also signed by
Henry Kissinger?) are to "transform detente from just a
matter of states to something for individuals, with human
meaning." As a Soviet lady journalist jeered off the record
on a similar occasion: uOne feels like singing, laughing,
dancing.''
Let us turn back to Pravda. "True to Lenin's Behest:
Patrice Lumumba Friendship·of·Peoples University is
Awarded Friendship·of·Peoples Order." The Soviet insti-
58
What next?
In their struggle for their economic independence, the developing countries are more and more determined to nationalize the property of foreign corporations [the Soviet regime's
property and personnel in these countries being sacred, of
course] and to take other measures assuring their sovereign
right to dispose of their national resources, as well as to con·
duct joint coordinated practical activity in defense of their in·
terests.
HThis course of events," Ponomaryov remarks with
grim satisfaction, "is obviously not to the taste of imperial·
AUTUMN 1981
�ism" (that is, any group which resists Soviet global expansion).
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics challenged them all,
liberated mankind, and saved civilization.
The imperialist powers do their utmost to arrest the progressive changes in these countries and keep these developing
states within the orbit of capitalism.
Our ideological enemies have set afloat the slanderous
myth of "superpowers." Of course, the Soviet Union is a
mighty power. But its might has not been created at the expense of exploitation of other peoples. It has been produced
by our people's labor.
The imperialist powers will fail. Bear in mind growing
Soviet global military might:
However, the international balance of forces has tipped
drastically and continues to change in favor of socialism and
progress [both of which the Soviet Politburo incarnates]. Under these conditions, the imperialists' possibilities to impose
their will on other nations become more and more limited.
The sub text of the message cannot be clearer. Young
people of eighty-nine countries! Do you see what is happening in Vietnam? Our side is winning after the United
States has paid with more than $100 billion and more
than 50,000 American lives to defend its ally against our
side. You will win in your country if you are with us. And
if you are against us, you will lose, as the South Vietnamese who defended South Vietnam are now losing, and the
United States makes believe that this has nothing to do
with them or with us.
We are on the eve of a great day, the thirtieth anniversary
of the victory over Hitlerism. It is common knowledge that
the Soviet Union sustained the he_aviest losses in this war and
made the decisive contribution to the rout of Hitler's Germany, to the liberation of the peoples of Europe from fascism, and to the rescue of world civilization.
How is this relevant to the eighty-nine countries today?
The lessons of World War II remind us of the need to maintain vigilance constantly and wage an uncompromising struggle against the aggressive plans of imperialist reaction trying
to impede the process of relaxation of tension [the official Soviet definition of detente].
Without naming the United States, the speaker makes
it clear that the United States has become a superpower
by exploiting the poor of the world.
In other words, Ponomaryov is propounding what may
be called "global Marxism." According to Marx, the rich
in each country have become rich at the expense of the
poor (who are poor as a result). The poor must rise in arms
and expropriate the rich. "The expropriators are expropriated!" said the Communist Manifesto of 1848. Obviously,
the same can be applied on the global scale to the rich
(countries) versus the poor (countries). There are dozens
of millions of "haves" in the United States, and hundreds
of millions of "have-nots" in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Why not sick these "masses of the underprivileged"
on the "handful of the rich"? It was done successfully in
Russia, Bavaria, Hungary way back in 1918. Why cannot it
be done globally-with the aid of the Soviet global armed
forces?
Ponomaryov's speech may be summed up by the following statement of his: "Domestic national policy of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union has found its extention on the international arena." If, indeed, the Soviet
regime was able to subjugate in the early 1920s the Moslem nations of Central Asia, it can absorb those of the
Middle East, for geographically and historically the Middle East is an extention of now-Soviet Central Asia. If the
Czechs or Eastern Germans fell under Soviet sway with
no more resistance than the Ukrainians or Estonians did,
the same strategic techniques can successfully be applied
to West Germans or North Americans. Ponomaryov is a
universalist: he believes that human nature is basically the
same everywhere-in Moscow, Kiev, Prague, Berlin, or
In other words, on one side, the side of goodness, is the
New York.
Soviet Union, detente, peace, progress, socialism, those
Neither the ceremony nor Ponomaryov's speech are re-
Western capitalists who sell the Soviet rulers strategically
important merchandise on credit, the young people of
eighty-nine countries, world civilization. On the other
side, the side of evil, is Hitlerism, Hitler's Germany, fas-
ported in the New York Times: The Soviet building of a
global totalitarian empire is screened out by the newspaper.
The other news of Pravda and the New York Times reduces to minor items which can be listed as follows for
brief comparison:
cism, all who are against detente, reactionaries, war, imperialism, colonialism, capitalism.
To someone like the philosopher Sidney Hook, this
Manichaean dichotomy may seem absurd. But to many
young people of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and indeed,
Europe and the United States, it may look like an ade·
quate general picture of history today. Some of them may
even believe that the capitalist United States and the
colonialist British Empire were at one with the reactionary Nazi Germany, while the freedom-loving progressive
THEST.JOHNSREVIEW
The New Yark Times
"Syria Bids Arabs Bar A Limited Peace." "Syria" is against
Israeli-Egyptian rapproche·
Pravda
"Syria's Stand." The item
shorter, but no less perfunctory, superficial, empty.
ment.
59
�4
"Makarios Requests U.N.
Council to Meet." "The Cyprus Government of President
Makarios called tonight for an
urgent session of the Security
Council .... Nicosia is believed
interested in the Soviet proposal that the whole Cyprus
situation be taken up at a large
conference." The report does
not cite a word of the Makarios statement.
Statement by Makarios."
"I value highly the stand taken
by the Soviet Union on the
problem of Cyprus, as expressed unequivocally in yesterday's TASS statement,"
declared President Makarios of
Cyprus. " ... We are grateful to
the Soviet Union for its opposition to the Turkish community leaders' arbitrary decision
to proclaim an isolated state."
"Ethiopia, Battling Secessionists, asks U.S. for Airlift of
Arms." The article does not
say or imply that the Soviet regime regards the "military government" of Ethiopia to be on
the Soviet side, according to
Pravda. "United States officials indicated that there was
reluctance to comply with the
Ethiopian request" for arms
because Syria, South Yemen
and Libya will not like it: they
have been aiding the secessionists of Eritrea. The world
is construed by the New York
Times as a mosaic of totally
independent countries: Ethiopia, Eritrea, Syria, South Yemen, Libya.
"For the Sake of Unity." A
300,000-strong demonstration
in the capital of Ethiopia to
support the "military government" in its war to keep Eritrea from secession. It is clear
frOm Pravda that the "military
government" is "on our side."
Small tyrants are likely to be
eventually on the Soviet side.
A tyrant will want the democracies to comply with his tyranny. They will finally waver.
The Soviet rulers will never
waver unless his tyranny is
against theirs.
"Yugoslavs Sentence 15 as
Secessionists." Why Yugoslavs?
Is the regime and "Yugoslavs"
the same?
"Yugoslavia: Subversives on
Trial." The "defendants have
close ties with extremist emigre elements in the West.
'
The other news items do not overlap: Pravda ignores
the news items of the New York Times and vice versa.
The New York Times
Pravda
"The United Kingdom: Can it
Survive?" Secession of various
parts of England: "it is not impossible that the United Kingdom, as we know it today, will
cease to exist."
"Insolent Challenge." Spain
has the insolence of sending
warships to its bases in Africa,
though every sane person
knows that only the Soviet regime can have bases all over
the globe.
"Pakistan Charges Afghan Subversion." "Afghanistan ... has
supported a demand ... for an
independent state to be carved
out of Pakistani territory." No
Soviet involvement at present
or in future is conjectured.
"NO! to Bases." A week of
protest against imperialist (that
is, American or NATO) bases
in the Indian Ocean has begun in Sri Lanka. The global
system of Soviet military bases
is growing without anyone's
protests.
60
"Released Koreans Allege Torture for Confessions." According to this article reprinted
from The Times, London, the
participants in the "demonstrations against the authoritarian constitution" in South
Korea in 1974 have been released and "charge today" that
they were tortured by the
"Korean CIA." Why is the al1leged torturing organization
called the "CIA"? Is the CIA
the world's only institution of
torture?
"The worst days were the
rainy days. I hated them.
The C.I.A. would use the
sharp ends of their umbrellas to prod us around the
cells."
Wait for a rainy day to use umbrellas for torture. The "CIA"
could not use them very well
on a fair day, could it? I doubt
that Pravda would print something so flippant or unintentionally comical.
"Chile: The Tragedy Continues." Pravda is after what may
be defined as an ideal democracy, of the kind the United
States would have been if Senator McGovern had been
elected President, as the New
York Times wished. The motives of the two newspaper~
are different, of course. Pravdd
is after an ideal democracy in
the "target countries" because
it is, according to the Soviet
rulers, the best form of government to be first neutralized
and finally destroyed. Therefore, Pravda is at least as sensitive as the. New York Times to
any violation of an ideal democracy. At the same time,
the article on Chile is very sedate. No torture is alleged, and
the article merely soberly
notes that "even the [Chilean]
authorities admit. that thousands of political prisoners
languish in the prisons of
Santiago alone."
"Saigon Drops Case Against
Six Papers." The Government
of South Vietnam, which the
New York Times calls in its
editorials "totalitarian," has
dropped libel charges against
six newspapers, and so they
can go on publishing allegations of the corruption of the
Government, while the invasion of South Vietnam, a minor event of the day, is on,
to obliterate the "totalitarian"
Government, its alleged corruption, the independent
newspapers, their allegations,
and all.
"Here Where the Chilean junta
will be on Trial." "It is here, in
the Palace of Arts in the capital of Mexico," that the third
session will be held investigating the ''crimes of Chile's military junta." The relevant
"manifesto" has been "signed
by a number of organizations,
including the youth organization of the ruling InstitutionalRevolutionary Party of Mexico." With this sort of social
atmosphere, no wonder the
Soviet rulers were preparing a
Cuba-like coup in Mexico, and
only a Soviet defector frustrated it.
"Ford Preparing Busy Schedule of Trips Overseas in the
FalL" "One source ... said
that Mr. Ford would like to be
on hand to sign personally any
Helsinki agreement." There is
not a hint that the value of this
action is equivalent to Mr.
Ford's being on hand to sign
personally shopping bags before TV cameras, while its
harmfulness goes much
deeper than meets the eye.
"U.S. President's Interview."
Said President Ford, as translated from the Russian of
Pravda: "In the United States
there are many people who realize~and will realize even
better in future-that the abrogation of the Soviet-American trade agreement resulted
from ill-thought-out decisions
in Congress."
AUTUMN1981
�"Gulf Oil Officials in Soviet
Talks." Officials of the Gulf
Oil Corporation started talks
"Preparations for the Conference." No, not the peace conference Flora Lewis reports,
today with the Soviet Government to explore the possibility
but the "power conference"-
of helping to market Soviet
oil."
"U.S. Tuna Men Held in Ec·
uador Are Bitter and in Fight-
ing Mood." A IOOO.word piece
about American tuna fishermen wishing to fight for the
right to fish within the 200·
mile limit off Ecuador though
fifty countries have established the 200·mile limit for
their territorial waters.
"Foes
Intensifying Drive
Against Mrs. Ghandi.''
the "conference of communist
and workers' parties of
Europe."
"Victory of Progressive
Forces." The "candidate of
progressive pardes" was
elected mayor of Kyoto yesterday. Thus, "among the ten
biggest cities of Japan, seven
have mayors representing the
parliamentary opposition, including the Socialist and Communist Parties."
"India: Women's Day." Prime
Minister Gandhi: all women of
the world, unite!
"Vorster Verifies Visit to
Liberia."
Turkey).
"Italians Preparing to Send
"Gambia Yesterday and To-
U.S. Extradition Request for
day" provides a specific illustration of Ponomaryov's global
approach.
Sindona," a run-away Italian
banker.
"Saudi Denies Price Talks
"Riots of Reactionaries" (in
With Kissinger Over Oil."
"Situation on Madagascar."
The "military directoriat"
Kissinger is said to have tried
to impel Saudi Arabia to have
(Pravda would not call "junta"
a junta it favors)" of the Mala·
a heart and bring down the
gasy Republic" smashed the
price of oil sold to the United
States (oh, the power of Kiss·
HQ of the Malagasy Socialist
Party and killed sixteen people
in the process. Pravda regards
inger's diplomacy). However,
Saudi Arabia denies alL
this little massacre of Socialists
as a victory for socialism, that
is, the Soviet rulers' power.
There are several more such news items in both newspapers, but we may as well stop here, observing that in the
volume of international news data, the issue of Pravda (six
pages) roughly matches the New York Times. International
information fills the bulk of Pravda, and its presentation is
mostly concise and factual, if not documentary, while in
the New York Times it is scattered like islands over the
vastness of the newspaper, and is mostly chatty.
The conclusions?
The international information in both newspapers is su·
perficial, easy-to-obtain and insipid (I disregard the enter·
tainment, such as the reporting of a theft in the New York
Times). Both newspapers shape whatever meager information they have to fit their respective views (motives or
goals).
Pravda's mendacity is instrumental: it is a professional
propaganda tool of Soviet global expansion. The mendac·
ity of the New York Times is motivated in particular by its
narrow-minded spineless middle class desire to wrap itself
in its middle-class experience, screen out the outside
1HE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
world, and to substitute an easy fantasy spun out of this
experience. Pravda deceives only others; the New York
Times deceives itself as well.
Apart from individual exceptions, inevitable in any institution, neither newspaper is intelligent or intended for
intelligent readers: certainly the issues under review do
not contain a line which would take more than a mediocre,
conventional, and conformist mind to write. A random
selection of the same number of news items as supplied
by any world news agency would be no less informative.
But all in all, as of February 18, 1975, Pravda presents
the Soviet regime as an expanding global system of power,
with many countries as local arenas of this world struggle.
The New York Times presents the Soviet regime in a far
more false and benign way than the regime presents itself
via Pravda. According to the New York Times issue, the
world is a mosaic of separate countries and local events,
none of which has any bearing on the Soviet regime, seen
as just another chip in this mosaic: a kind of corporation
much bigger than General Motors or Chase, but essentially also seeking-through its representatives-good re·
lations, economic cooperation, and trade.
This parochial world fantasy of the New York Times
makes it on the whole not only uninformative, but
misleading. None of those bits of information which the
New Y ark Times issue contains and Pravda does not can
compensate for this dangerous deceptiveness of the New
York Times dreamland, presenting mankind as its middle
class milieu multiplied to the global scale.
But when all this is said, we must perhaps look at both
newspapers from a higher vantage point.
Quite a few people assume that reality is a certain set of
objects, and so anyone can describe reality no worse than
Einstein or Chekhov-it is sufficient to name objects in
front of you: a house, Mr. Kissinger, a tree. Similarly, it is
often assumed that it is no less easy to describe newschanges of reality: the house has caught fire, Mr. Kiss·
inger is going to Moscow, the tree has grown by ten inches
in one year.
If we look at the New York Times and Pravda through
the eyes of such a Philistine, both newspapers can be said
to describe all the world news there is, and this means all
the reality and all its changes. How and what else can one
describe?
But looking at both newspapers from a higher than
Philistine point of view, it can be said that they have no
sense of reality (the New York Times is more hopeless in
this respect) and hence no sense of changes of reality
known as world news. To claim that the New York Times
presents news about the world at large is the same as to
claim that Philistine twaddle is space-time physics or
literature.
L The Working Press, New York 1966, 71.
2. "The Middle East and North Africa 1973-74," 20th Edition,
Europa Publications, London 1973, 61-62.
3. Middle East Review, Spring 1980, 45.
4. Facts on File, Facts on File, Inc., New York, February 1980, 67.
61
�The Incompleteness Theorems
David Guaspari
[Every mathematician shares] the conviction (. .. which no one has yet supported by a proof) that every
definite mathematical problem must necessarily be susceptible ofan exact settlement, either in the form of
an actual answer to the question asked, or by the proof of the impossibility of its solution.
DAVID HILBERT
An introduction
The Goede! Incompleteness Theorems are perhaps the
most celebrated mathematical discoveries of this century.
I hope to make those celebrations more informed; and, ac·
cordingly, take as my topic not the nature of mathematics
or of the mind-grand things and plausibly related to
Goedel's work-but something rather technical and more
mundane: What, exactly, do those theorems say? What
are the questions to which they constitute some sort of
answer and the new questions to which they give rise?
To understand those questions we must devote considerable attention to some of Goedel's great predecessors:
Frege, Cantor, Russell (and Whitehead), and Hilbert.
The story begins in 1879 with the invention, by Gottlob
Frege, of (formal) logic. This invention was important in
two ways:
l. It was necessary for the elaboration of the so-called
"logicist thesis": the thesis of Frege that arithmetic
is a part of logic; or, as Frege paraphrased it into Kantian terms, that arithmetic is analytic. Russell extended Frege's "logicist thesis" to the claim that all
of mathematics is reducible to logic-that is, that
formal logic provides a fundamental theory, a
grounding, of the whole of mathematics.
2. The devices of formal logic may be used, not to lay
David Guaspari teaches at St. John's College in Annapolis. Most of
his work in mathematical logic has been in set theory and proof theory.
62
out "the" theory of mathematics, but rather as the
basis for rigorous axiomatic theories of geometry,
algebra, set theory, etc. (For the distinction between
"an axiomatic theory of X" and "an axiomatic theory
which reduces X to logic" see section l.) This secondary use of formal logic makes possible a mathematics about mathematics, by providing it with a
precise object of study-formal theories.
Hilbert proposed the invention of just such a theory of
formal systems, umetamathematics" or "proof theory", as
the basis for a radical philosophy of mathematics. The domain of meaningful mathematics was to be reduced, essentially, to the domain of mere calculation. Mathematics
was to be framed within formal theories, and any non-calculational propositions of those formal theories were to be
seen merely as byproducts generated on the way to calculations.
Hilbert wanted to have things two ways: to have the
power of modern methods, while avoiding the difficulty
of explaining or justifying those methods. In order to
understand Hilbert we will therefore need to know something about the methods he wanted so desperately to
save.
I will use Cantor's invention of set theory as a synecdoche for the whole of the modern upheaval. Cantor did
not invent the notion of "set" or "class": he invented set
(or class) theory. Classifications (rather than things classified) became the objects of study, and mathematics became the study of patterns, not things: of "the third position in the sequence of natural numbers", not of "three".
AUTUMN 1981
�After winning his way to this position, Cantor made the
further and frightening step of pressing toward its logical
conclusion (which, we will see, skirts paradox). We will be
interested in Cantor not as a participant in the controversies about the character of mathematics, but as one of the
forces which, by radically altering mathematical practice,
made those controversies urgent.
I
The logicists
Classical logic-more or less a code word for Aristotleis plainly inadequate to give an account of the most elementary sorts of mathematical reasoning, for it gives no
account of sentences involving more than one term expressing generality: sentences such as "Everybody loves
somebody.''
Medieval logicians introduced elaborate theories treating of certain sentences with two general expressions.
Those theories were correct in that they certified the correct inferences to and from such sentences; but they were
both complicated and incapable of extension to more
elaborate sentences; which is evidence that they were just
plain wrong.
What was wrongheaded in medieval logic was the attempt to treat "Everybody loves somebody" as though it
were like "John loves Mary." "Everybody" was to be, like
11
John", a kind of name, referring to certain people who
somehow or other loved a person or persons denoted by
"somebody." The difficulties with this are legion: for
example, a proper name like "Mary" always stands for the
same person, while "somebody" -assuming it ought to be
thought of as standing for someone-can stand even in
the same context for different people: If John loves somebody and somebody is the mayor of Cleveland it does not
follow that John loves the Mayor of Cleveland. Again:
"John loves Mary" is equivalent to "Mary is loved by
John." If "everybody" and "somebody" were genuine
names we would be able to make the same switch. But we
cannot: "Everybody loves somebody" and "Somebody is
loved by everybody" are not equivalent.
In the restricted cases to which their theories applied,
medieval logicians surmounted such difficulties by making distinctions about the various kinds of ways in which
general terms could refer to their objects. Unfortunately
there seemed to be no end to the making of such distinctions, and with such a logic the best one could look forward to was an ever-expanding collection of ad hoc methods
and distinctions.
According to Frege his predecessors were misled by accidents of grammar, such as the accident that "John" and
"somebody" are governed by the same grammatical rules.
The logical structure of mathematical statements-i.e.,
those features in virtue of which statements can legitimately enter into chains of inference-are not systematically displayed (and sometimes not displayed at all) by the
grammar of ordinary speech.
THEST.JOHNSREVIEW
If the logical structure of a sentence is to show on its
face-in its syntax-then a revised syntax and some new
grammatical categories become necessary. Frege's revised
language is not intended to give an exhaustive account of
natural language. It gives no account of metaphors, ambiguities, tenses, modalities, puns, or jokes. Its success
comes to this: the fact that all mathematical argument
(and therefore all deductive argument) can be expressed
in Frege's language and so be made altogether explicit.
(The principal novelty is Frege's introduction of thecategories of "quantifiers" and "variables", which constitute
an analysis of the uses of troublesome general terms like
"somebody." He also discards the "subject-predicate"
analysis of sentences, because of its intrinsic demerits and
because of the requirements of the quantifier-variable
analysis of generalization.)
In addition, Frege listed a small number of rules which
suffice for the purely formal derivation of all valid inferences. By calling the derivations formal I mean this: We
can apply the rules-i.e., determine whether a sentence is
an immediate consequence of some other or group of
others-simply by inspecting the syntax of each sentence
involved; and the procedure for doing so is mechanical. A
machine can check such derivations just as it checks multiple choice tests.
Frege wanted to attain rigor-and he did. Rigor cannot
go any further; controversy over the validity of a proof
came to have the same character as controversy over the
correctness of a long division. Frege had made it clear just
what complete rigor consisted in.
This achievement did not, however, have the desired
practical effect of making mathematical argument completely certain. An attempt to verify the validity of an ordinary prose proof by translating it into Frege's system
will in general involve so many steps that a clerical error
seems no less likely than a logical error in checking the
original informal proof. Nonetheless, the theoretical possibility of rigorously formulating mathematical theories
makes Frege's language and logic, and their kin, analytical
tools for investigations about those theories.
I will from now on call a language and logic like Frege's
a forma/language and the formulation of a theory in such
a language a formalization of the theory. Formalization is
therefore the first step in laying out a completely rigorous
axiomatic theory. It is not a trivial step.
If, for example, we tried to formalize Euclid, we would
immediately be forced to see that the basic terms of geometry are not only those denoting its objects-points, lines,
planes-but also those denoting certain relations among
them: e.g., the relation of incidence, which holds between
a point and a line when the point lies on the line. Symbols
for those relations would have to be included in the language as part of the special vocabulary of geometry. When
we looked for a suitable collection of geometrical axioms
we would come to see that Euclid's unexpressed assumptions largely concern those relations.
63
�In I884 Frege published another book, The Foundations of Arithmetic, this one about the nature of mathematical truths. He was interested not in how we acquire
mathematical truths, or why we happen to believe them,
but in the ultimate justification for believing them. Frege
asserted that the truths of arithmetic and algebra (although
not those of geometry) are truths of logic:
Frege was undertaking to do more than merely to lay
out a formalized theory of arithmetic. I might well frame a
(mere) formalized theory of arithmetic by beginning with
primitive signs for "1 "~ "2", "plus", "times", etc.-signs
which, so far as the theory is concerned, are employable
only as directed by the axioms. From the rules of logic
alone we could then deduce "I=1" and even "1+2=
1 + 2", but not, e.g., "1 + 1 = 2". The specifically arithmetical content of the theory I am describing would have to be
supplied by a list of arithmetical axioms. (The provision of
a suitable list is a mathematically deep, but for our purposes technical, problem.) We need the axioms because
"1 ", " + ", and "2", being non-logical (and therefore arbi-
trary) signs, can stand in no intrinsic logical relations to
one another.
If, however, "1", "+", and "2" are signs which are
themselves defined in other terms, it might happen that a
purely logical explication of those definitions would result
in a deduction of "l + 1 =2". Frege claimed just that, that
plus, times, etc., etc., could themselves be defined in
"purely logical terms," and that from those definitions
alone, and with no need for extra hypotheses, the arithmetical truths would follow.
Arithmetical truths could-and, to be properly understood, should-be regarded as highly compressed abbreviations of logical truths. The statement "2 + 2 = 4" or
''there are infinitely many primes" would be more compli-
cated than, but of the same character as, "A implies A."
Philosophical questions about the certainty and applicability of arithmetic would then be reduced to questions
about the certainty and applicability of logic.
The terms of Frege's proposal require explanation. A
satisfactory account of arithmetic must cover not only
statements like "7 + 5 = 12" but also certain kinds of empirical statements-but not all empirical statements-involving numbers, for there is no need to account for "2 is
my favorite number." The point of contact between arithmetical theory and its empirical application is counting.
The record of a bit of counting-"There are 2 bats in the
belfry" -is what Frege calls a "statement of number."
We must account for the statements of pure arithmetic
and the statements of number.
Next we need to ask what it would mean to "define" 2
at all, and what, in particular, it would mean to cast that
definition in purely logical terms. For Frege it is pointless
to ask what 2 "actually" is. That does not mean that talk
about numbers is talk about imaginings and private fantasies. Rather, to give the meaning of the word "2" is to give
an account of the contribution it makes to specifying the
64
conditions under which arithmetical statements containing "2" are true or false. Whatever does so correctly is entitled to be called a definition of "2".
Here is an example, a purely logical explanation of the
use of "2" in "There are 2 kings of Sparta."
For some x andy, x differs from y and each is a king of Sparta;
and,
it is not the case that there are x, y, and z, each of which is a
king of Sparta and all of which are different.
This explanation is correct; that is, it is true to say that
there are two kings of Sparta in precisely those circumstances in which our elaborate paraphrase is true. Furthermore, the account is perfectly general, being an
account of the role of "2" in all such sentences: to explain
"There are 2 bats in the belfry" we simply replace "king of
Sparta" everywhere by "bat in the belfry." Finally, the
fixed terms of this general explanation (that is, all terms
except "king of Sparta") are purely logical words; and the
non-logical phrases ("king of Sparta", "bat in belfry") occur
only in the simplest way possible, as simple predications.
This account is not a definition of "2". It explains the
role of ''2'', ''3", etc., in particular statements of numberthat is, the adjectival uses "There are 2 X's", "There are 3
X's", etc. It is insufficient to account for the uses of "2" as
a noun, especially for the thinghood we seem to attribute
to numbers by generalizations such as "For every number ... " Frege took the noun-like uses as fundamental. He
argued that it would be incorrect to analyze arithmetical
statements in such a way that numbers (some collection
or other of entities to be called numbers) disappeared altogether. His analysis replaced each appearance of "2" by a
noun phrase denoting, essentially, a certain set or class.
He then explained statements of number as elliptical references to such classes and explained generalizations at
face value as generalization over the lot of them. This
counted as a logical explanation because he regarded a set
as a kind of logical object.
My example has been intended only to show what kind
of thing a purely logical definition is, and to show that
Frege's proposal is: (a) neither opaque nor occult (which
already suffices to set it apart from most accounts of the
subject); and (b) altogether unconcerned with what happens to go on in my mind when I say or believe that there
are two kings of Sparta.
Frege outlined this program (the "logicist" program of
reducing arithmetic to logic) in The Foundations of Arithmetic and carried it out in the two volumes of The Basic
Laws of Arithmetic, the first published in 1893 and the
second, delayed by the discouraging silence which met
the first, in 190 3.
There turned out to be a problem. One of Frege's fundamental notions was that of "the extension of a concept" -what we would now call the set or class of things
AU1UMN 1981
�falling under the concept. He regarded "class" as a logical
notion-and in any event could see no way to do without
it- but pointed out that its treatment was the problematic part of his system. It turned out to be, in a sense, unproblematic-because it made the system inconsistent.
Frege learned of this, while volume two was in press, in
a letter from Bertrand Russell setting out what has come
to be called the Russell Paradox. Russell's paradox is a sort
of liar's paradox. Formulated for a theory of sets, it shows
its sting by demonstrating that an assumption seemingly
fundamental, natural, and innocuous, leads swiftly to a
contradiction. The assumption is that to every property
there corresponds a set, whose members are precisely those
things which possess that property. If we apply this assumption to the property "not a member of itself' and
call the corresponding set R (so that the members of Rare
precisely those sets which are not members of themselves)
we turn up a contradiction by asking: Is R a member of R?
For, R is a member of Ras long as Rs-atisfies the defining
condition "not a selrmember"; which is to say, as long as
R is not a member of R. Frege dashed off a quick and woe-
fully inadequate fix in an appendix beginning, with characteristic detachment, "Hardly anything more unwel·
come can befall a scientific writer ... " and concluding,
hopefully, " ... still I do not doubt that the way to the solution has been found."
Russell was not Frege's adversary, but rather his heir.
Principia Mathematica, published by Russell and Alfred
North Whitehead between 1910 and 1913, advanced even
more sweeping claims for logic: the system of Principia
Mathematica (from now on, PM) was a revision of Frege's
logic which purported to reduce all of mathematics to
logic. That PM sufficed for the derivation of known mathematics, Russell and Whitehead made clear. That it might
justly be called logic they did not. And no one could tell
whether PM would suffice for all future mathematics.
II
Cantor and "Modernism"
Meanwhile, mathematics went on. One of the things
that went on is commonly called a "crisis" -a "crisis in
the foundation of mathematics" -perhaps suggesting to
the innocent (falsely, as it turns out) that mathematicians
around the world were hurling themselves from their of·
fice windows. The central event in this drama was the ap·
pearance of a large array of paradoxes and contradictions
in the theory of sets, the Russell Paradox among them.
The thinking man's reaction might well be ... So what?
Why should the collapse of some particular theory be of
more than local interest? Frege's scheme fell to the
ground and no llcrisis" resulted.
In order to understand why the difficulties with set theory are of interest to other branches of mathematics it is
necessary to understand why set theory has become the
idiom of mathematics.
Set theory was invented by Georg Cantor in a series of
papers published between 1879 and 1897. It is important
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
to know that Cantor's creation of set theory grew directly
out of his work on one of the important mathematical
problems of his day-on the convergence of a particular
kind of infinite series called a Fourier series. just what a
Fourier series is is not important to us, but two things
about Fourier series are: (1) Fourier series are a part of
hardcore applied mathematics. (Fourier introduced them
in order to study heat transfer.) (2) The theory of Fourier
series was, in Cantor's day, at the cutting edge of two important questions: What is the continuum? What is a
function?
If I needed a slogan to characterize the radical features
of twentieth century mathematics I would try something
like this: Functions are things, and things are extensional.
"Extensional" stands in opposition to "intensional", in
opposition, broadly speaking, to any concern for the "in·
ner nature" of mathematical things.
Consider Euclid's definition of "point." That definition
is never appealed to in proofs, and for that reason has no
mathematical interest. Nothing follows from it. The only
way in which something which we might call the "nature"
of a point has any mathematical significance is by way of
postulates about the relations between points and the
other geometrical notions, such as: Between any two
points there is a unique straight line. Euclid's definition of
point is an "intensional" attempt to tell us something
about the "nature" of points.
In contrast, what matters about a function is that certain inputs result in certain outputs. What a function has
by way of a "nature" is exhausted by the record of the in·
put-output pairs, conveniently representable as the set of
all such pairs. Relations are treated in the same way. The
"nature" of the relation "less than" comes to nothing but
a record of which numbers are less than which.
Galling the things of mathematics extensional comes,
grandly and vaguely, to saying something like this: What
interests us about a mathematical object is not its putative
internal constitution, but rather the role which that object
plays in the system of mathematical objects. Mathematics
is about the patterns into which things fall, not about the
things.
The other half of my slogan reads "functions are things."
What is at stake in calling functions things? The account,
I'm afraid, will begin and end in metaphor.
Think of a function as a black box from which; in some
way or other, the input-output record can be extracted.
Then I can, if I want to, take those things, those black
boxes, and put some or all of them into another box-so
that I have a big box full of functions. I offer this merely as
one example of what you can do with things. You can
heap things into big boxes.
I want to contrast this picture of function with another.
In the other a function is not a thmg, but a kind of continuing process, which you cannot put your hands on all at
once and therefore cannot pick up and toss into a box.
What's at issue behind these varying metaphors w11l have
to be considered later.
65
�Let me first give an example of the usefulness of the
first picture-function as thing. Quantum mechanics as·
signs to each thing in the world-electron, atom, cow-a
representative, a function called its wave function. Wave
functions, it so happens, input real numbers and output
complex numbers (the outputs are thought of as representing certain probabilities). All the.se wave functions are
then heaped together in a box called Hilbert Space. What
stands for the world is a box of functions.
Now, one of the other things you can do with things,
beside tossing them into boxes, is to input them into functions. It turns out that momentum, for example, can be
conveniently represented by a function which inputs not
numbers but those boxes in the Hilbert Space, and out·
puts not numbers but other boxes in Hilbert Space. Momentum and its kin, being functions, are therefore things,
and can themselves be heaped in boxes, input into still
other functions, and so on and on. All these entities have
in an important sense the same status as numbers. You
can do the same kinds of things with and to them. (An
aside: This example may give you some idea why it's wildly
wide of the mark to call our mathematics a "science of
quantity.")
To make functions and relations into things, and to be
concerned only with the extensional aspects of those
things, is to make the very fabric of mathematics a search
for patterns and analogies, whose aim it is to exploit the
power of generality. It is important also to realize that
study of the tops of those towers of generality can yield
consequences about things at the bottom. The elaborate
machinery of quantum mechanics yields testable predic·
tions about the behavior of atomic particles. Deep results
in number theory, which concerns the integers, have been
discovered by studying the calculus of complex numbers.
This raises a question to which we will return: Even if
such high-powered methods are helpful for finding theo·
rems and their proofs, are they in some way essential?
Set theory is important not in its details, but because
the point of view which is so conveniently formulable by
means of set theory is fundamental to the current mathematical enterprise. In David Hilbert's famous words: "No
one shall expel us from the paradise which Cantor has cre·
ated for us."
Hilbert was not voicing a consensus. He was uttering a
battle cry. The reception of Cantor's work made plain
deep and radical divisions among mathematicians. Those
opposed to set theory typically argued along lines like this:
Set theory is riddled with paradoxes and contradictions
because it admits as objects "infinite things", such as the
set of all numbers, and the notion of an "infinite thing" is
inherently contradictory. The two metaphorical pictures
of "function" show the same opposition. A function
which is a "thing" is, in general, an "infinite thing" -an
endless ledger of inputs correlated with outputs. A function, which is an "uncompleted process", is never present
all at once, but is a sort of drama at any stage of which only
66
finitely much has happened. The controversy over set
theory becomes "the problem of infinity."
This is not a problem about some alleged power, entity,
or principality called The Infinite. I, for one, have no idea
what that could mean. Nor has it anything to do with God,
goose bumps, mysticism, or eternity. (There is evidence
that Cantor thought: that it had to do with all these
things; that theological considerations vindicated set
theory; and, at times, that set theory had been granted
him by divine revelation.)
It would be better, but still not very good, to say that we
are asking whether there "really are" infinite sets. Part of
the trouble with that formulation (the passionate but redundant "really" gives it away) is that it has an air, wholly
spurious, of being clear and commonsensical, as though
the matter could be settled by an argument like Samuel
johnson's "refutation" of Berkeley: Johnson's proof that
there "really are" stones consisted of kicking some.
The fruitful view, I think, is that the important differ·
ence between the two positions is entirely expressed as a
difference in mathematical practice. In the mathematical
practice of one side infinite sets play the role of things,
and in the practice of the other side they do not. (In our
speech about Hilbert Space functions are assigned the
role of things: they serve as inputs and outputs of functions; they are collectable into boxes; they comprise a domain over which we generalize ... Moreover, that way of
speaking has been fruitful for the physicist as well as for
the mathematician.)
In one sense the practical problems of set theory were
solved in 1907 by Zermelo, who informally described a notion of set that seemed clear and persuasive, and pro·
duced axioms for that notion from which followed all of
the desired consequences of set theory and (so it seemed)
none of the undesired. To opt for Zermelo's set theory
was to opt for treating infinite sets as things. What
grounds might there be for making that choice?
The practicing mathematician might be satisfied by the
fact that set theory provides new terms in which to answer old questions, illuminates the work of his predecessors, and poses interesting new questions. If unimpressed,
however, by Zermelo's framework, he might maintain that
"infinite things" had to lead to contradictions and that
Zermelo's system would eventually tumble. He might hope
to find empirically interpretable consequences of set theory to test against experience. He might be appalled by set
theory's sheer perversity: Cantor said of one of his most
famous results, "I see it, but I don't believe it."
Set theory, in and of itself, is not a fundamental theory.
It is not an attempt to ground or to explain the nature of
mathematics, but is rather the organ of a revolutionary
change in mathematical practice. A set theorist can happily be an opportunist, tinkering with the axioms ad hoc
in order to avoid an awkwardness or a paradox. Set theory
is useful to "foundational" studies because it yields a formalization of all known mathematics, thereby making of
"mathematics" a precise object of study.
AUTUMN 1981
�III
Hilbert's metamathematics
In 1900 Hilbert began to formulate a radically new reason for deciding in favor of set theory, based on the possibility, which he seems to be the first to have fully grasped,
of using formalization as a tool for the investigation of
theories. Frege, well aware that deductions in his system
could be carried out mechanically, insisted on the importance of the fact that those deductions nonetheless had a
meaning. According to Hilbert, the fact that "deductions"
could be adequately guided by mechanical rules freed us
from the burden of trying to assign a meaning to each step.
Thus freed, we are free to see that much of the "meaning" we find in mathematics is nonsense.
Hilbert divided the statements of mathematics into two
classes: "real" statements, which are intuitively meaning·
ful and can be said to be true or false; and "ideal" statements, which are not, and cannot. Let us for the moment
sidestep all dispute about the legitimacy of such a distinction or about where to draw the line, and call anyone who
wishes to make such a distinction "Hilbertian." Let us
also temporarily adopt a "Hilbertian" position much less
stern than Hilbert's own: that the meaningful mathematical statements are the statements of elementary pure
arithmetic, such as "2 + 2 = 3", "There are infinitely many
primes," etc. Accordingly, propositions about real numbers~
calculus, or Hilbert Space are "ideal."
Let us further suppose ourselves to be contentedly employing a formal-and meaningful-theory of axiomatic
arithmetic, and to be one day confronted by Cantor. He
offers us a (non-meaningful) set theory which incorporates
our theory of arithmetic as a small part. Do we accept?
From our "Hilbertian" point of view we can think of set
theory as an ideal superstructure superimposed on a meaningful theory of arithmetic. Suppose it happened to be
the case that any meaningful proposition derivable in set
theory by ideal methods is also derivable by meaningful
methods-i.e., according to our present stance, from the
axioms of arithmetic. Then, in the "Hilbertian" view, the
controversy about set theory would be finessed out of existence. All the ideal machinery could be explained away
as an ingenious engine for facilitating proofs. We would
have saved set theory without giving in to the vulgar requirements of saving the sets; we would establish a paradise without angels.
To ask whether the ideal machinery of a formalized theory is redundant is to ask a precise mathematical question.
By formalizing a theory we make it an object of study. Its
statements are patterns of signs, comparable to positions
on a chessboard; and we possess, analogous to the rules of
chess, specified procedures, colorfully but irrelevantly
called proofs, for singling out certain of the sign patterns,
colorfully but irrelevantly called theorems. So that the
question "Does such and such a statement have a proof
employing no ideal mean?" has exactly the same character as the question "Could such and such a position on
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
the chessboard have been reached without White's having castled?"
With some historical justification I will call the proposal
to justify the ideal means of set theory by demonstrating
their redundancy, the "Hilbertian" Program. To carry out
the "Hilbertian" Program we have to prove a mathematical theorem about a theory; and that proof itself must be
above suspicion or our justification would be circular.
This new branch of mathematics, the mathematical theory of formal theories, Hilbert calls "metamathematics" or
"proof theory."
To carry out the "Hilbertian" Program is also to demonstrate that all the meaningful consequences of set theory
are true. For we would be guaranteed that any meaningful
consequence of set theory, however originally obtained,
would also possess an uncontroversial proof, one employing only those arithmetical methods we had previously
been content to employ.
The "Hilbertian" Program hopes for a certain rough justice: that meaningful statements should have meaningful
proofs seems only fair. There is also some evidence in its
favor: many theorems of number theory originally proven
by ideal means have turned out to be derivable from the
axioms of elementary arithmetic. In any event, there is
now out on the table a genuine mathematical question,
susceptible to proof or disproof: Can all those positions be
reached without castling?
The Incompleteness Theorems answer, among others,
that question. Before turning to Goedel's paper, let me
summarize these three introductory sections.
Frege began his work as a participant in one of the great
intellectual enterprises of the nineteenth century-the attempt to make mathematics rigorous. He succeeded in
providing an analysis of mathematical proof which made
the notion of rigor precise and which provided all the
technical tools necessary for the elaboration of rigorous
deductive theories. This analysis led him to the conviction
that mathematics is in fact a part of logic. Neither this
thesis nor his powerful criticisms of other views of mathematics (the first half of The Foundations of Arithmetic is a
model wrecking job) received much notice until they were
partly rediscovered by Russell. Wider interest in the problems of founding mathematics arose not from Frege' s
work, but from the practical need to secure set theory
from paradox.
Hilbert, guided partly by his "faith" -the belief that all
mathematical problems can be solved-and by the specific desire to save for mathematics the generalizing
power of set theory, proposed a radically different foundation. Set theory would be saved by declaring most of it to
be meaningless; and by a proof (which he hoped to carry
out) that set theory could nonetheless be safely employed.
Goedel's 1931 paper "On formally undecidable propositions of Principia Mathematica and related systems" replies to the characteristic questions of Frege and Hilbert:
Can mathematics be reduced to logic? Are the ideal methods of set theory redundant? Is "mathematics" com-
67
�pletely specifiable? I take this last question to be a concern
of both Frege and Hilbert. Frege attempted to encompass
mathematics within logic. Hilbert's "faith" can be construed as a belief in the possibility of devising a formal system adequate for known mathematics and capable of
proving or disproving every proposition arising within it.
To each of these questions Goede! gives the answer no.
What, then, can mathematics be supposed to be? Goedel's
own view is that mathematics must be understood not as
a body of tautologies, or as the result of our constitutive
mental activity, but as something we discover.
IV A first look at Goedel's theorems
In the first part of his paper Goede! exhibited an arithmetical statement in the language of PM which is independent of PM-i.e., neither provable nor refutable from
the axioms of PM. By itself, that is a striking technical
achievement, and evidence for the fruitfulness of Hilbert's
point of view: If you make theories into objects of study
just look at the surprising things you can find out.
Let us call a theory incomplete if some of its statements
are independent; and otherwise, complete. It might now
seem that we should get to work, promulgating some new
axioms in order to extend PM to a theory which is complete. If we can demonstrate the incompleteness of some
theories we surely ought to be able to demonstrate the
completeness of others. Then we would have justified Hilbert's "faith" by a proof. For a complete formal system
provides the means for solving every problem expressible
in its language.
Unfortunately, Goede! showed more. He pointed out
that his argument applies not only to PM, but to any
formal system which is sufficiently strong (strong enough
to contain grade-school arithmetic). Such a system must
be incomplete.
The last two sentences contain a mild lie. I can easily
describe a complete formal theory by stipulating that the
list of its axioms is to be precisely the list of all true statements of arithmetic. The trouble with that theory is that
we cannot use it. Should someone hand us a purported
proof in that theory we would not be able to appeal to any
general procedure for checking it, for we have no general
procedure for determining which propositions are axioms.
If we intend to use a formal theory in our demonstrations
or to provide a standard for our demonstrations, then we
must at least require that there be an infallible (mechanical) procedure for checking the validity of its proofs. The
First Incompleteness Theorem says that any sufficiently
strong theory with that property (the property that its
proofs can be checked mechanically) must be incomplete.
How does this bear on Hilbert, or Frege, or us? Can all
mathematical problems be solved? One precise way to
construe that question is: Is it possible to construct a usable, complete formalization of mathematics? Goedel's
theorem tells us that the answer is no. Frege's program
seems dead as well. If arithmetic really is logic, then since
68
arithmetic cannot be completely axiomatized neither can
logic be. There would be no general procedure for testing
the validity of proofs in such a so-called logic.
The "Hilbertian" Program is alive only until we ask:
What about Goedel's independent arithmetical statement?
Is it true or false-or, if the axioms of arithmetic (or PM)
contain all that we think we know about arithmetic, does
the question of its truth or falsity even have any sense?
Goedel's paper contained an informal demonstration that
that independent statement is true. His argument can be
formalized and carried out in set theory-proving that set
theory is not redundant. Goede! has provided an explicit
example of a "meaningful" statement unprovable by
"meaningful" means, but provable by the "ideal" methods of set theory. Therefore our "Hilbertian" Program,
and every "Hilbertian" Program which accepts Goedel's
independent proposition as meaningful, fails. (It will be
claimed below that no "Hilbertian" Program can succeed.)
The Second Incompleteness Theorem speaks directly
to Hilbert's (actual) Program, to understand which we
need a brief excursion. Hilbert called himself a "finitist".
He maintained that a precondition to thought is an immediate intuitive grasp of certain "extralogical concrete objects", which must be surveyable "completely in all their
parts" and must therefore be, in particular, finite. It is
only about such things and by means of such intuitions
that we can perform genuine ''contentual" inferences. An
adequate expression of "contentual" inference is the manipulation of signs. The concrete objects considered by
mathematics are the mathematical signs themselves-the
numerals. Accordingly, the "real" propositions are simply
the assertions about particular calculations: "7 + 5 ~ 12",
"2 < 3", '' l =/::. l ", etc. The ''contentual" reasoning by which
we attain to the truth or falsity of these propositions Hilbert calls elementary.
In Hilbert's thought not even the formula "x + 2 ~ 2 + x",
regarded as a shorthand for the assertion that "for every x,
x + 2 = 2 + x", designates a real proposition-for we cannot directly verify the infinitely many instances of true
propositions which it summarizes. Another way to say this
is to say that we cannot really negate that assertion; for
the purely existential claim that "there is some x for
which x + 2 ,P 2 + x", since it points to no particular x, has
no finitistic meaning.
Is any mathematics left? Hilbert is willing to admit the
"ideal" propositions such as ''x + L. = 2 + x", the proposi-
tions of algebras and calculus, etc., but denies that they
have any content in and of themselves. The introduction
of "ideal" propositions is analogous to the introduction
into algebra of~ which simplifies and unifies the algebraic rules. Although the ideal propositions are individually insignificant, the system of ideal propositions is
fruitful by virtue of its ability to simplify and unify, and
the ultimate reason for its success is that it discloses the
structure of our thinking.
To justify the introduction of ideal propositions (and
rules for their manipulation) we need only an elementary
AUfUMN 1981
�proof of the consistency of the resulting system. Hilbert's
Program is the proposal to provide such a proof.
Hilbert's Program is connected with our previous no·
lion of a "Hilbertian" Program as follows. The calculating
rules of grade school arithmetic suffice for the formal
demonstration of every real truth. Those calculating rules
are derivable in, e.g., set theory. Set theory, however,
might also contain a formal refutation of one of those
truths. That is, the only way in which set theory could be
non-redundant (with respect to "contentual" inference)
would be the ruinous way of being inconsistent. Hilbert's
Program, although differently expressed, is merely that
"Hilbertian" Program that corresponds to Hilbert's austere notion of "real".
The Second Incompleteness Theorem says, roughly,
that the means available in a theory are not sufficient to
prove the consistency of that theory; so that the consistency of axiomatic arithmetic-let alone of set theorycannot be demonstrated in an elementary way.
All this needs some explanation, since arithmetic is, after all, about integers and not about formal theories. How
can we even pose the problem "Is arithmetic consistent?"
in arithmetical terms?
The answer is that we communicate with a speaker of
the language of arithmetic just as we communicate with
speakers of other foreign languages-by means of translations. Suppose we wanted to discuss the consistency of
arithmetic with a computer. We could do so be devising a
numerical code in which to signify statements and proofs.
The statement "Arithmetic is consistent" could then be
translated as a lengthy statement, from now on called
CON, about numerical calculations involving the code.
(Those who are worried by this may be justified. The
sense of the claim that the coded translation CON
somehow "means the same as" the original is not immedi-
ately clear.)
Goede! showed that CON is unprovable in axiomatic
arithmetic. Now, axiomatic arithmetic is, I take it, consistent; that is, CON is true under the ordinary interpretation of its signs. Indeed, CON is provable in set theory,
and is therefore another example of an arithmetical truth
which becomes provable as a result of adding to arithmetic the "ideal" superstructure of set theory. This is a
perfectly general phenomenon: no consistent, usable, sufficiently strong theory can prove its own consistency; and
whenever we are able to add to such a theory a suitable
"ideal" superstructure, the consistency of the original the-
ory becomes one of the newly provable arithmetic truths.
This shows that no "Hilbertian" Program can succeed.
An elementary proof that an ideal superstructure is redundant immediately yields an elementary proof that it is consistent. If it is granted that the elementary means of proof,
whatever they may be, are exhausted by the means available in ordinary arithmetic, there can be no elementary
proof of consistency, and therefore none of redundancy.
If we use a theory we are, of course, implicitly assuming
that it is consistent. Nonetheless, that supposition is
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
something over and above the suppositions of the theory.
Whatever convinces us that the theory is consistent lies
somehow outside its purview. That fact is a genuine piece
of news, even though the consistency of arithmetic is not
controversial.
Many mathematical questions which have at one time
or another been topics of active research have been
shown to be independent of the currently accepted axioms for set theory. It is a distressing fact that few of these
problems seem to be solvable by extending set theory
along the lines of its original inspiration; and that, indeed,
many are only known to be solvable by adding to set
theory hypotheses which are at best implausible and at
worst bizarre.
As a result the mathematician-in-the street typically responds to such news about a problem (the news of its independence) by losing interest in it and regarding this as
evidence that however things might have seemed at one
time the problem is not one of central importance. He can
sometimes justly say that he was seduced by set theory
into studying the wrong problem, or the right problem in
the wrong terms; but that would suffice as a general explanation only if the family of set theories were uniquely subject to the Incompleteness Theorems.
V A second look at the
First Incompleteness Theorem
Let me conclude by stating the First Incompleteness
Theorem correctly, in its most radical form, so that it is
tied to no particular formalism or formulation of logic, and
to no particular notion of proof. To do that it will be nee·
essary to look briefly at its proof. Goedel's original argument, which is important, is widely regarded as utterly
mysterious. From this apparent mysteriousness the Incompleteness Theorems derive some of their cachet. I
shall outline a different proof, which shows that the Incompleteness Theorems can be understood as facts about
mechanical procedures.
In 1936, A. M. Turing produced a precise definition of
the notion of "algorithm", or "computing rule" by defin·
ing a kind of paradigm computing agent (now called a
Turing machine). Turing machines can work in any symbolism you like and on any problem you like. We may as
well stick to machines that work on numerical problems.
Machines can provide solutions to calculating problems in
two ways-by decision procedures and by listings. Consider
the problem of determining which numbers are even
numbers. A decision procedure for the property "even
number" works like this: We hand our imaginary computer the name, in some specified notation, of a number;
it calculates awhile and then answers yes or no, according
as the number is even or not. It always answers and always
answers correctly. A listing of the property "even number"
works differently: We sit in front of the computer and
watch it. From time to time it writes down, in some specified notation, the name of a number. Only the names of
69
�even numbers appear in the list, and sooner or later the
name of every even number appears in the list.
There is no general procedure for turning a listing machine into a deciding machine (which might lead one to
suspect, correctly, that some listable properties are not decidable). Suppose I want decisions about the evenness of
6 and 7, and try to use the listing machine to get them. I
sit and wait. Eventually "6" turns up, at which point I
know that the decision about 6 is "yes." I'm still waiting,
but there has been no "7". I can never safely conclude
"no," because, for all I know, were I to wait just a little
longer 7 might turn up in the list.
"Evenness", of course, has both listing and deciding
machines, but there are indeed properties which can be
listed yet not decided. One example is the property of
"being a computer program that will run successfully." If
that were decidable (in some efficient way) life would be a
lot simpler. A Russian mathematician, Juri Matijasevic,
proved in 1971 that there is a listable but undecidable
property P of the following remarkably simple kind: For a
certain (polynomial) equation with "x" among its unknowns, x has property P (from now on, abbreviated
"P(x)"), if there are integer solutions for the other unknowns. That is, P(x) looks like the following assertion,
which I'll temporarily call R(x): There are integers y and z
for which 3xy + 2y2 + x2z +I ~ 0. So that 2 has property R
(or, for short, "R(2)") if and only if there are integers y and
z for which 6y + 2y2 +4z +I ~0.
Here is an outline for a proof of the First Incompleteness Theorem which, in a sense, only restates the fact that
there are such simple undecidable properties. Officially
we are proving a theorem about PM, but to show how
general the proof is, I will point out the only two facts
about PM which will be appealed to. The first is this:
(l) PM can "express" some undecideable
property~e.g.,
the
P(x) mentioned above. (From now on this will be abbreviated
as: PM is sufficiently strong.)
It takes a little effort to say just what "expressing" is.
For example, "+" does not happen to be one of the signs
of PM, but is instead defined in terms of others. So our
rendering of P(x) into the language of PM will be a little
indirect. That, however, is a minor point and will be ignored. I will suppose that the arithmetical signs we ordinarily use do appear in the formal language, so that "P(x)",
"P(O)", "P(l)", etc. occur both in English and in our formal
language. More important is the question: What does it
mean to say that some formula in a formal theory "expresses" the (English-language) notion P(x)? We can put
our rather weak requirement this way: Whatever PM happens to prove about the property is true. More exactly,
should the string of symbols for P(l7) occur among the
theorems of PM, then the English sentence P(17) is true,
which is to say that a certain equation with coefficient 17
has integer solutions. Should "not P(l7)" occur among the
theorems of PM, then we require that P(l7) be false. Weak
70
as this assumption is, we could get by with much less. If a
theory of arithmetic lacked the means to write down simple equations, or had the means but proved falsehoods
about them, it would not be of much use. So, for our purposes, this restriction is no restriction at all. The only theories of interest are those which are sufficiently strong.
The other thing we need to know about PM is this:
(2) The property of "being a theorem of PM" is listable.
For our purposes this is no restriction either, because it
turns out that (2) is a consequence of:
(2 ') The property of "being a proof in PM" is decideable.
I have already argued that a theory is of no use for theorizing if we cannot decide what counts as a proof.
The First Incompleteness Theorem says:
Any sufficiently strong, listable theory is incomplete.
Therefore no useful theory-PM, axiomatic arithmetic,
set theory-is complete; no useful theory can even settle
all the simple questions of elementary arithmetic.
To see the extreme generality of this it might be better
to replace the word "theory" by something like "recordable mathematical activity." We need assume nothing
about symbolism, logic, or the nature of the proofs that result from this activity, except that the activity can treat of
simple equations, and that a machine can decide whether
the record of some bit of activity counts as a proof.
The proof of the First Incompleteness Theorem is a
proof by contradiction. Assuming first that PM is listable,
I will describe a mechanical procedure (from now on to be
called M) which is an attempt at a decision procedure for
Matijasevic's property P. That is, the inputs to M will be
natural numbers and the outputs ''yes" and "no". We
know that there can be no decision procedure for P. That
is, for some input M must either give the wrong answer or
fail to give any answer at all. On the other hand, from the
assumptions that PM is sufficiently strong and complete
it will follow that M is a decision procedure for P, and
therefore at least one of the three assumptions "listable,
sufficiently strong, complete" is false. Having established
that we have established the First Incompleteness
Theorem.
Here is procedure M: Handed an input, say 17, turn on
the machine which lists the theorems of PM. If "P(l7)"
ever appears on the list, output "yes"; and if "not P(l7)"
appears, output "no".
Suppose now that PM is sufficiently strong. Then procedure M, whenever it does give an answer, gives the
right answer. Suppose further that PM is complete. Then
procedure M always yields an answer, because one or the
other of "P(l7)", "not P(l7)" is a theorem of PM and is
therefore bound to turn up in the list. It follows (from all
these assumptions) that M is a decision procedure for P.
AUTIJMN 1981
�That concludes the proof of the First Incompleteness
Theorem. (By juicing this up a little bit we can exhibit
a particular instance of property P which is independent
of PM.)
It might seem that this proof merely transfers the burden
onto the shoulders of Mr. Matijasevic, with his magical
property P. In fact, simpleminded undecideable properties are not hard to find. I chose property P only because it
seems evident that any self.respecting theory ought to be
able to express it.
We can easily tidy up the last loose end by showing why
(2') guarantees (2)-why the theorems of PM are listable.
A proof is a finite sequence of signs from the language of
PM. We therefore begin with a machine that lists all finite
sequences of signs of PM. (It is left to the reader to build
such a machine for himself.) This machine feeds its output to a proof checking machine. (Here is where we make
use of (2').) The proof checker decides which of those sequences are proofs and feeds the legitimate proofs to a
third machine; and that one writes down for us the proposition that each proof proves.
(Note: The First Incompleteness Theorem is itself
proved by elementary means. Although the hypothesis
"PM is sufficiently strong" cannot be so established, the
incompleteness of PM follows from that hypothesis by a
long chain of reasonings of the most elementary sort.)
Goede!' s own interpretation of his work is in some ways
quite cautious: Hilbert's Program has not necessarily been
shown to be impossible, because the notion of "elementary means of proof' is vague.
.
In other ways Goedel's interpretation is breathtaking:
Notice, he says, that the argument of the paper has resulted in a curious situation. Having shown that a certain
proposition {CON, let's say) is undecidable in PM, we
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
have nonetheless been able to determine that it is true.
That is, we have been able to appeal to a standard of truth
and falsity independent of the notions of provability and
refutability in PM. What could be the basis of such a standard of truth? Here Goede! reaches back to one of the
most ancient answers of all-to an independent, extramental world of mathematical objects. We believe in tables and chairs because we see no other way to make
sense of our sensible experience. Goede! feels equally
compelled, in order to make sense of his "mathematical
experience", to believe in the objects of mathematics.
Along this line of argument Goede! has few followers.
Aside from its philosophical difficulties, Goedel's view
must face a fact of our recent mathematical experience:
CON is a proposition which has been cooked up in order
to be undecidable. When we consider those set-theoretically undecidable propositions which have simply been
stumbled upon in the course of doing mathematics, we almost invariably find that we have no idea how to resolve
them or where to look for relevant "evidence."
What, then, do the Incompleteness Theorems say? As
soon as we get beyond the bounds of mere calculation, as
soon as we allow ourselves to enquire whether something
is so not merely for this or that number, but "for every
number"-we can no longer appeal to any systematic
method for obtaining answers. No improvements in mathematics or philosophy can get around that fact.
Philosophy is called on for a clarification-not to discover the address at which the numbers reside (or, perhaps, their convenience mail drop), but rather to give an
account of what we can justifiably mean by those problem-producing generalizations over the (infinite) domain
of numbers. To speak in a slightly loose and pre-Fregean
way: We need an account of the word "all".
71
�Philosophy and Spirituality in Plotinus
Bruce Venable
1 Knowledge as unity with God
The essential insight of Plotinus and, for us, the central
problem in studying the Enneads is that in them the practice of philosophy and the desire for mystical experience
are inseparable. For Plotinus, a philosophy that does not
culminate in mystical experience is an empty speculation;
the most justly celebrated passages of the Enneads, those
that have caused them to be read and cherished, are those
in which, after many pages of arduous dialectic, technical
distinctions, and dense argumentation, he summons the
reader to the state of serene union with God that fulfills
and transcends them. He felt, however, that a personal
religion that strives for mystical experiences without
grounding itself in philosophy is likely to degenerate or go
astray, like the Gnostics, into melodramatic fantasies and
delusions of cheap salvation. For those who regard philos·
ophy or, if you like, science and religion as independent of
one another their mutual dependence in the Enneads
must seem very strange and might seem even to invalidate them both because Plotinus presents neither a coherent rational philosophy nor a genuine piety, but only an
unsatisfactory muddle of the two.
In what sense is philosophy the necessary preparation
for mystical experience? In what sense is mystical experience the necessary culmination of philosophy?
Those acquainted with medieval scholasticism should
be advised that I shall not discuss this interdependence in
the form most familiar to them: the attempt to reconcile
faith and revealed religion with reason and philosophy.
The problem as it appears, for example, in the first question of the Summa Theologiae of St. Thomas Aquinas
does not appear in the Enneads for two characteristic reasons: Plotinus recognizes neither divine revelation nor an
Bruce Venable is at work on a study of Nco-Platonic spirituality. A tutor
at Sante Fe, he delivered this essay as a lecture at St. John's College in
Annapolis on October 22, 1976, and at St. John's College in Santa Fe on
November 5, 1976.
72
independent science of theology UJ1der which the various
claims of revelation and philosophy are reconciled.
The strangeness of Plotinus' view can be somewhat dissipated if we try to peer beyond the fantastic formal complications of the Plotinian system in order to isolate the
ultimate or highest state of existence envisaged by that
system, briefly, a state of unconditioned unity and freedom. It appears in the Enneads twice: as the Good or the
One that is the unknowable first cause in metaphysics,
and again as the self that is the hidden center of the soul.
These two are very similar, if not identical, because, for
Plotinus, to ascend in thought above all created things to
a contemplation of the One is also to descend within the
soul to the hidden depths of the self. Furthermore, just as
a person does not view his self, but rather comes to exist
at that fundamental level, so also a person does not have a
vision of the One, but is rather unified with it. Returning
upon oneself is returning upon one's first cause and in at~
taining to this cause, one meets no stranger, but one's
very self.
Anyone who makes these assertions would consider
religion and philosophy inseparable and even very similar
to each other. But these assertions are rather strange.
Even setting the One aside for a moment as the mystery it
properly is, what about this notion of the self? Where does
it come from, what does it mean, and do we need it at all?
Plotinus, who was perhaps the first philosopher to feel the
need of such a concept of the self, frequently distinguishes the self as more inclusive and elementary than the
soul. The soul means the conscious activities, the acquired traits and personality, as well as the latent contents
and unconscious powers of the intellect, emotions, and
perceptions. The self means something both more primitive and more exalted than the soul. Not acquired or augmented by experience, education, or practice, it does not
present itself directly in any conscious activity, although it
supports and unifies them; the inclusive totality of the
psychic contents and powers, it is also independent of
them, isolated and aloof, unmanifested, unknowable, and
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�unique. It is freedom. When the soul is free, it has withdrawn itself from its conscious life, its scattered thoughts
and feelings, its activities projected outward into the
world, and has gathered its powers into a motionless inward concentration. When it emerges again, the soul rea].
izes that all the goods which previously it sought outside
of itself belong to it naturally, eternally, are proper and intrinsic to itself. The soul is happy.
This description makes it clear that the self, as Plotinus
conceives it, is very similar to the One. It also makes clear
why union with the self will be union with the One. But
why did Plotinus use or even perhaps invent such a concept of the unknown self that is similar to God, when he
had already at hand the perfectly useful notion of the observed soul that is certainly not similar to God? If he had
not used this concept of the self he might have avoided
his confusion, perhaps an accidental one, between philosophy and religion.
Plotinus was certainly impelled by intimate religious desires to create and teach his philosophy. The fervor of his
desire for God is manifest in the Enneads, but something
of its inner meaning has not been shared with us. Because
he expressed his religious desires in the external form of a
philosophy that was in constant conversation with his
great precedessors in the Greek tradition, we can, by reexamining some relevant aspects of that more familiar or
less esoteric tradition, see the innovations of Plotinus in at
least the intellectual context in which he himself considered them and found them necessary. Because of his insistence on the mutual dependence of philosophy and religion,
Plotinus never teaches any religious doctrine, however
intimate its origins, that he would not be prepared to explain, amplify, defend, and fight for on purely philosophical grounds.
There was no philosopher with whom Plotinus' conver·
sation was more intimate than Aristotle. I shall begin,
therefore, with that strange passage in De anima book
three, chapter five that has caused commentators so
much vexation and disappointment.
Aristotle says that in every nature there is something
that is its matter; this is passive and receptive and becomes all the forms of that kind of being. There is also an
active or productive cause that makes all these forms in
the passive matter. It is necessary that these two exist also
in the soul: there is an intellect that makes all the forms
(of knowiedge, presumably) and an intellect that receives
or becomes these forms. The active or productive inte].
lect is like light which makes potential colors actual colors-the light that makes them visible and actually seen.
This active intellect is "separable, impassive, and unmixed." This means that the active intellect is independent of the body. Of these two intellects, Aristotle says,
the potential or passive intellect, which receives the forms
of knowledge, is temporally prior, but only in the individual; in general, the active intellect is prior. This is more
difficult to explain. The first clause seems to mean that in
each individual person, the potential for knowing exists
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
before any actual knowledge. But to say that in general
this is not so seems to imply that there is some other, nonhuman, intellect. Many ancient commentators said, therefore, that Aristotle here refers to the divine intellect.
The view that Aristotle does mean the divine intellect
gains support from his following remark that there is an
active intellect that is eternally thinking; or, as he puts it,
"it does not think sometimes and sometimes not think."
But what follows is again more puzzling: "only when it is
separated is it just what it is and this alone is immortal and
eternal." If ''separated" means "separated from the
human body," then Aristotle refers here to the destiny of
the active intellect of every individual person after the
death of the body. What follows seems to confirm this:
"But we don't remember because the active intellect is
impassible, but the passive intellect is mortal." The most
obvious interpretation of this sentence-although I don't
suppose that its being obvious must necessarily be held to
recommend it-is that every human soul contains two
intellects, an active and a passive; that only the active intellect is immortal, but that this active intellect, when liberated by death from the body, has no personal memory
of ourselves because it cannot receive the impression of
anything merely temporal and transitory, but on\y makes
universal ideas or concepts; the passive intellect does
receive the experiences of ordinary life and is related to
what we should call our personality; but this intellect
perishes along with the body. Thus there would be no personal immortality.
This interpretation was popular enough in antiquity to
cause it widely to be believed that Aristotle denied the
survival after death of any personal consciousness. Aris·
totle appeared to many as an enemy of the hopes for the
afterlife expressed in the Phaedo and the Republic.
This interpretation was not, however, without its opponents, who insisted that by the active intellect Aristotle
means the divine intellect. Many of these commentators
identified the active intellect with the thought of the unmoved mover which eternally thinks only itself. In support
of this identification, they argued that it was impossible to
imagine that Aristotle refers to any human intellect when
he says that the active intellect thinks eternally. But if this
chapter of the De anima concerns the divine intellect
rather than the human intellect, other commentators
wondered why it appears in Aristotle's book on psychology rather than in his books on metaphysics or theology.
So problems remain.
My only reason for discussing what Aristotle means in
this difficult chapter at all is to locate Plotinus in the con·
text of the problems that this chapter caused for ancient
philosophers: the possibility of something like God in the
human soul. It is easy in this context to combine or confuse metaphysics and psychology, as Plotinus seems often
to do. Perhaps it will be possible to combine or confuse
metaphysics and religion as well.
One of the most notorious interpretations of this passage
in the De anima is that of Averroes, an Arabic philosopher
73
�who lived in twelfth-century Spain. Averroes decided that
the active intellect is divine, universal, and immortal,
while the passive intellect is human, individual, and does
not survive the death of the body. An individual human
intellect actually knows only when it is illuminated by the
active intellect, passively receiving from it the forms, essences, or definitions of the things eternally known by the
active intellect. The human intellect is the mere disposition to receive intelligible objects and to suffer knowledge
to occur in it. Knowledge is not an act of the human intellect, because that intellect is purely passive, but only an
event that happens in and to the intellect. The human
person is a particular individual, but knowledge itself remains universal. Nevertheless, the individual's experience
of knowledge is a kind of contact with God. Because, however, the passive disposition of the human intellect perishes with the body, there can be no personal immortality,
no eternal life with God. In the language of religion, the
human individual is of no eternal significance and cannot
be saved. It is passive, transient, and helpless. There is a
conflict between the conclusions of philosophical psychology and the word of God as revealed in the Koran
which proclaims salvations and teaches personal immortality.
The consequences of this interpretation seemed intolerable to St. Thomas Aquinas, writing about a century
later, and he wrote a commentary on the De anima to
prove that the interpretation of Averroes was not in fact
the doctrine of Aristotle. He asked: If, as Averroes, says,
there is no individual active intellect, what sense does it
make to say "This individual person knows"? No sense at
all, St. Thomas thought. He maintained against Averroes
that, distinct from the divine intellect, every human soul
contains an active intellect as well as a passive intellect.
The passive intellect receives from the senses the images
of perceptible things; the active intellect, by its natural
power, extracts from these images their intelligible forms,
essences, or definitions. The active intellect is said to
"spiritualize" the images. In St. Thomas' reconcilation of
the psychology of Aristotle with the teachings of revealed
religion, the active intellect is spiritual in its essence:, sur-
vives the death of the body, and is immortal.
What, according to these interpretations of Averroes
and St. Thomas, is the relation between the individual
soul and the divine truth? Despite the differences between these two interpretations, this relation for both of
them is extrinsic or external. In neither interpretation is
the act of knowledge a co-operation or conversation between the soul and the truth.
For Averroes, the soul is completely passive; it receives
the illumination of the active intellect and experiences
knowledge, but remains, nonetheless, unchanged, without any intelligible content or intellectual power of its
own. The soul receives the truth as an inspired prophet
receives the divine revelation, as a free gift of a God who
exceeds the human capacity to imagine his purposes.
Because the soul is completely passive, it is not trans-
74
formed by the truth, nor can the truth save it, because it
has no immortal part.
For St. Thomas, it is of the soul's destiny and inherent
power to know the divine truth. But the soul constructs
this truth for itself, rather than receiving it from God. The
soul does not require the direct intervention of the divine
intellect to experience knowledge because the soul has an
autonomous and immanent power to know the divine
truth. This situation implies, however, that the soul is isolated; it does not meet, in the act of knowledge, any divine
being, power, or operation. Again, the act of knowledge,
and therefore philosophy, is without religious significance
for personal salvation. Also, as in the theory of Averroes,
knowledge has no specifically individual content. Although
the senses have particular experiences, the active intellect
extracts a uri!versal meaning from them. Individual salvation, therefore, according to St. Thomas, is conferred
upon the soul by an external donation of grace. Although
there is a cognitive content to this.salvation, it is incomprehensible to the human intellect unaided by grace. For
St. Thomas, as for Averroes, the soul, empty and helpless,
must accept its hope of salvation from divine revelation
alone. There is no continuity between its experience in
knowledge of the universal truth and its private desire in
religious feeling for a personal God.
St. Thomas and Averroes sought to resolve, perhaps
successfully, the conflicts that appeared to remain between philosophical psychology and personal religion.
The success of these efforts is not important here, for
these theories are far from anything that happens in the
Enneads. Averroes and St. Thomas begin with a stark contrast and separation of the human and divine intellects;
Plotinus regards them as connatural: of the same nature
and inseparable, they always act simultaneously. He considers human perfection to be a sharing in the divine act
of knowing but he does not want to have anything to do
with grace. Perfection must be real elevation of psychic
life to a higher act of existence, but must not be given to
the soul as something extrinsic to it. Perfection must be
internal and personal, it must be a discovery of and a
proper act of the self. It must also be divine; it must be
contact and union with God.
The difficulty of attaining perfection or even of describing it appears already in Aristotle: there seems to be no internal continuity between the individual human soul and
the universal divine intellect; there seems, therefore, to
be no way for the soul to share in the divine existence
without abandoning its own. In the passage from the De
anima Aristotle never says that he is discussing the divine
intellect, but he must mean the divine intellect when he
says that the active intellect thinks eternally, for surely no
human intellect can be said to think eternally.
With his usual taste for radical solutions, Plotinus says
that the human soul does indeed think eternally. Does
this mean that the human intellect shares what would
seem to be an exclusively divine power? How can an infinite divine power be present in a finite being without
AU1UMN 1981
�compromising the absolute distinction between God and
the soul (a distinction that Averroes and St. Thomas presuppose)? How can one resolve the problems of knowledge,
as posed by. Aristotle in the De anima, as the relation between the active and the passive intellects, without isolating the soul from God and without separating philosophy
from the practice of religion, as Averroes and St. Thomas
did? We seem to have either tgo much unity between
God and the soul or else not enough.
The ordinary philosophical question "How does the
soul get its ideas?" can develop convolutions that involve
the entire destiny of the soul and the religious problems
that surround that destiny. The soul has to be in contact
with God in order to have knowledge at all, but this contact with God threatens to engulf and dissolve the soul in
the ocean of the divine being.
2 Existence as unity with God
I now turn to the question of unity from a metaphysical
point of view, rather than from the point of view of knowledge and its possibility. The question of unity again develops consequences for personal religion and spirituality. It
will be seen again, I hope, that the distinction between
what happens inside the soul and what happens outside
of it becomes vague.
The Pannenides raises the problem of the participation
of material objects in their common, immaterial form.
The problem is seen there as an antinomy of immanence
and transcendence. If the many particular objects truly
participate in the single form, the form becomes immanent in them and is infected with their plurality; if they
partake of the form, they seem to take parts of it, to divide
it, and so do not all have a share of the same integral form
and so cannot all be called by its single name. Yet if the
form remains intact, if it remains untouched by, aloof
from, and transcendent to, the particular objects, it seems
that the particulars cannot participate in it at all.
The philosopher has two problems here: he wants the
form to be transcendent to the particular objects, single
and undivided, because he wants the form to be the authentic, unchanging object of knowledge, distinct from
the uncertain and changing appearances of the particulars, which can be the object only of opinion. At the same
time, however, or perhaps not quite at the same time, he
wants the form to be in some sense the cause of the particulars. This demand seems, however, to imply some contact between the form and the particulars that will violate
the integrity of the form as an object of knowledge.
This antinomy quickly became a traditional point of
argument in ancient philosophy. Most schools maintained
against the Platonists that the forms were in some way
immanent, or embedded, in the material particulars; the
Platonists strove to preserve the integrity and dignity and
the forms by keeping them separate from the sadness and
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
disorder of the material world. One typical gesture in this
direction was the view that the forms were the thoughts
of the divine intellect, the paradigms that guide its creation of the material world.
Eager to affirm the primacy of unity at all levels, Plotinus
would have inclined, as his theory of emanation suggests,
to a theory whereby the particulars, produced immediately by their causes, retain contact with them. His religious language, however, constantly exhorts one to flee
the confusions of this lower world for the true visions and
delights of a divine world somewhere "higher" and certainly separate from this one. The dilemma about unity
looks this way in Plotinus: how can the divine power
create and sustain the sensible world without (l) compromising its own transcendence and unity or (2) destroying
the real multiplicity and diversity of the sensible world?
Either the divine power will be dissipated in the world or
the world will be completely reabsorbed into the monochromatic unity of the greater power that creates it.
Plotinus devotes two long tractiltes to this technically
complex problem. He begins by attacking the Stoics who,
like him, were monists~people who emphasized the unity
of all things, but who, unlike Plotinus, were materialists.
The Stoics tried to solve the antinomy of transcendence
and immanence by making the world-soul present at
every point of the material universe. They diffused the intelligent, creative divine power throughout the world.
Plotinus objects that (l) the divine power is thus thought
of as material and that (2) it loses its unity with itself
because it is spread around on or in other material objects.
(Nothing will make Plotinus accept materialism: he thinks
it degrading. Some of the peculiarity of his own theory of
matter is due to this feeling.) Plotinus further objects that
the Stoic solution is impossible because two separate material things cannot participate in each other, they only
muddle together and lose their mutual independence. If
the world-soul is material, as the Stoics held, then the material world cannot participate in it at all. The world-soul
is left without any power to create or direct it. The objections of Plotinus to the materiality of the world-soul recall
the objections to Averroes' doctrine of the active intellect:
it abolishes the necessary distinctions between the creator
and the created.
The later Neoplatonists such as Proclus betray a desire
similar to St. Thomas Aquinas' in his doctrine of active intellect. They sought to preserve the dignity and integrity
of the transcendent form while allowing the immanent
form to govern the particulars, by distinguishing simply
and sharply between the transcendent forms in the divine
intellect, calling them unparticipated forms, and the
forms immanent in particular material things. The Neoplatonists had nevertheless to explain the real relation between the immanent forms and the transcendent form,
but not, of course, as participation. In their efforts to explain this relation they multiply distinct terms in a relation and then seek to justify their logical continuity~a
procedure that contrasts strikingly with Plotinus' method
75
�of establishing continuity between the transcendent form
and the material particulars.
I call Plotinus' solution the theory of integral omnipres·
ence. Typically, Plotinus accepts everyone's terms and
seeks to solve everyone's difficulties by comprehending
them in a universal theory that explains not only how
things are but also why other philosophers have the par·
tial and therefore false views of things that they do have.
It is a theory of consciousness, of attitudes and knowledge, as well as a theory of metaphysics, i.e., a theory
about the objects of consciousness. First, the metaphysi·
cal side of the theory because it is slightly less paradoxical
than the theory of consciousness, and because this order
provides an edifying climax.
The theory of integral omnipresence is a characteristic
expression of Plotinus' intuition of the universe as a single
spiritual life. In his philosophy, the distinctions of a static
structure of reality were overlaid and dominated by the
notion that this structure is in fact a dynamic interrela·
tionship of spiritual forces. The notion of life as a power
of self-movement and transformation prevails over the no-
tion of existence as formed and completed. Being is pri·
marily power and activity and only secondarily, form and
hypostasis (6.4.9, 23-25).
For Plotinus a form in the divine intellect is a radiance
or a power, illuminating and actualizing the particulars,
rather than an archetype or paradigm separate from them.
The transcendent form is universally present in particular
qualities. Conversely, the particular quality acts as the
form, locally present, although with diminished strength
and intensity. For example, the white color throughout a
bowl of milk is also the white color in two different bowls
of milk, because color is a quality not a quantity and,
therefore, has no parts (IV.2.l; IV.3.2). In more modern
terms, Plotinus equates the intension of a quality, its defi·
nition, with its extension, its range of application.
If the form in the divine intellect is omnipresent in its
spatially-separated and material manifestations, does this
presence not make the form itself spatial and material? If
so, Plotinus will have failed in his attempt to outflank
Stoic cosmology while retaining its dynamic character.
Plotinus attempts therefore to purify his notion of crea·
tion and created diversity from all spatial references, correcting thereby the materialistic implications of his own
imagery of emanation by which he represents the diffusion of infinite creative power into successively' lower and
weaker, but more determinate, forms of existence, desending at last to visible and tangible matter. He takes up
his own imagery and revises it carefully to remove from it
every spatial or material reference.
For clarity's sake the argument has often tried to lead the
mind to understand the origin of multiplicity by making an
image of many radii emanating from a single center. (cf.
5.1.!1, !0-!5). But one must add to this image the idea that
the radii become many while remaining together. One removes, as it were, the lengths of the radii and considers only
76
their extremities, lying at the center, where they are all one.
Again, if you add the lengths again, each radius will touch the
center still. Nevertheless (despite the length of the radii), the
several extremities at the center will not be separated from
the primary center but will be simultaneous with it. The
centers will appear to be as many as the radii which they
touch, but they remain all together. If, therefore, we liken all
the intelligible forms to many centers related to and unified
in one center, but appearing many because of their radii (although the radii do not generate the centers, but only reveal
where they are), let the radii be analogous to the material
things which, when the intelligible form touches them, make
the form appear to be multiple and to be present in many
places. (6.5.5)
In this chapter he uses a spatial image to express a
dynamic notion of causality: the generation of multiple
beings as distinct forces emanating from a single source of
creative power. Plotinus then carefully revises the image
in order to remove from it every spatial or material sugges·
tion: he strives to represent direction without quantity
and forces without a space across which they are extended.
Multiplied and diversified, the power of the creative
cause remains (paradoxically) concentrated and undiffer·
entiated in the cause. The diversity of the created world is
simultaneous with the simplicity of its cause, but utterly
distinct from it because each created being takes a direc·
tion in which it is manifested spatially and materially,
whereas the single cause is free from every specification
and limitation. The relation between cause and effect is
asymetrical; the cause has a transcendent existence be·
cause it is not exhausted in its relation to its effects: the
effects are completely defined by their dependence upon
their cause and their limited and local appearance in the
sensible world. This asymetrical relation is eternal and can
never be reversed. The primacy of the first cause lies in its
infinity and power which contrasts with the structured di·
versity of its effects.
This discussion shows one reason for introducing this
new theory. If all individuals, even the archetypes in the
divine intellect, are not constantly present to their trans·
cendent cause, the One, they will be separated from it
and deprived of its power. They will have no power of
self-subsistence and would perish as heat fades when fire
withdraws. Their death would leave the One as the single,
universal being, the imperishable substrate of its transitory
modes or emanations. A further consequence of particu·
Jar interest is that there could be no personal immortality
of the soul.
Plotinus offers this theory as a solution to the pantheis·
tic and monistic dilemmas encountered by his predeces·
sors. Nevertheless, one must admit that in seeking to solve
all possible difficulties he has invented a theory t)lat is far
stranger than anything his predecessors even imagined.
(I hope that you do not think that I am approaching my
subject frivolously. I have been provoked to this some·
what unscholarly fashion of speech in order to set the
problems aroused by a prolonged study of Plotinus in all
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�their immediacy. Many scholars will blandly present a
bizarre theory like the present one without a hint of why
Plotinus should have desired it at all, without explaining
what sort of satisfaction he might have taken in it.)
The weirdest aspect of this theory is that it seems to
disregard matter entirely. Plotinus was ready for this objection. He points out that the greatest obstacle to understanding his theory is the persistent human weakness that
remains convinced, despite his many demonstrations to
the contrary, that the visible world is real and that consequently the intelligible world must be extended in space
to form and govern it (6.4.2, 28-43). He insists that the
material world is specious, the last feeble manifestation of
intelligible power in the blank and insubstantial substrate
of matter. This manifestation is appropriate only to the
most feeble exercise of thought: the naive opinion that
takes things for what they only seem to be.
Let me hasten to add that Plotinus does not deny that
matter is somehow real; he merely insists that its reality is
not intelligible in itself, but only with reference to the
divine intelligible power that creates, informs, and sustains it and with reference also to the power of human intellect that beholds it and seems to penetrate its deceptive
appearance. Matter is an illusion only in the sense that it
is the most diffused appearance of the divine thought
which recognizes it not as delusion or falsity, but as its
own exuberance and self-revelation. For Plotinus, all mere
existence (for the One is beyond existence) is appearance,
a real apparition of divine energy, in a particular intelligible, psychic, or material form, relative to the level of
consciousness that is able to perceive and understand it.
He insists only that the reality of these appearances is not
in themselves but in their cause because reality means in~
telligibility. All levels of reality are strictly relative to the
levels of consciousness-perception, emotion, discursive
knowledge, pure contemplation-which apprehend them.
The soul ascends to a higher level of reality as it attains to
a higher level of consciousness: the soul ascends to God as
it attains a divine power of thought. A topography of salvation is completely internalized.
This kind of thinking is unfamiliar to us and even Flolinus' contemporaries seem to have been puzzled by it.
Why does Plotinus want to think and talk this way?
Plotinus concludes from the immateriality of the intelligible world that whatever is able to participate in it, participates in it as a whole. Where there is no question of
extension or magnitude, whatever is present to any. must
be present to all (6.4.2, 43-49). The truth of this inference
is easy to see in the case of demonstrative knowledge
which, if it is to be genuine, universal knowledge, must be
the same for all human intellects, despite the differences
in human personalities. Plotinus' idea is another form of
the Aristotelian theorem that the intellect in act is identical with the intelligible in act. If individual intellects know
the identical object of knowledge, they must each become
it identically. Plotinus, therefore, says that participation in
knowledge, in the divine intellect, is identical because
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
knowledge, being immaterial, is equally present to all intellects that know it. The object of knowledge, likewise, is
equally available to any intellect that turns its attention towards it and becomes present to every intellect in proportion to its individual ability. to know it. But the differences
among actually attained knowledges are all on the side of
the individual human intellects; the divine intellect is
equally present to all. But this truth is not too obvious in
the case of existential participation, e.g. human participation in the divine virtues. Why, one may object, does this
participation not also appear uniform? Why in fact does it
appear to be wildly diverse, there being perhaps not a
single form-justice or beauty, for example-that appears
to be evenly distributed in the world? Plotinus answers
that there are manifest degrees of participation because
they correspond to the differing abilities of created things
to accept the impression of the form whose power is
nonetheless present and available to it (6.4.8, 39-40; 11,
3-5). These varying abilities to participate correspond in
turn to different intensities of the desire to receive the
quality or form (5.3.17, 28-32; 5.5.8).
Here Plotinus again uses the vocabulary of psychology
in a metaphysical discussion. But Plotinus is not just careless about his vocabulary: he wants the identification or
confusion of metaphysics and psychology to be an explicit
principle of his philosophy. Free will and not existence is
to be its foundation.
Because divine being is omnipresent and because its
presence is realized in the actual existence of each particular being according to the capacity and desire of each to
receive a divine mode of existence, this relation of the
transcendent power and immanent presence of the divine
being will be valid also for the individual soul. Because,
moreover, all divine reality is both intellectual and intelligible (both thinks and is the object of thought), the soul
shares in divine reality through contemplation, both expanding its knowledge and strengthening its power of
thought. The metaphysical interrelation of transcendence
and immanence is the structure of personal salvation. The
soul is elevated through contemplation to a divine and
universal mode of existence without losing its uniqueness
in that greater power. The divine existence appears as the
individual existence without resigning its transcendence.
This development reveals the importance of the idea of
the self as distinct from all the powers and contents of the
soul. (Compare the argumentation throughout 5.3, 3-4).
The human soul and intellect are manifestations of and
participations in the world soul and the divine intellect.
Just as, in the universe, the world soul and the divine intellect are unified by the comprehensive power of the One,
so, in the individual human person, the individual soul
and intellect are unified by the comprehensive power of
the self, superior to them and usually hidden by them.
Further, just as the One generates the world soul and the
divine intellect out of itself but remains unlimited by their
specific natures and undiminished by their specific activities, so the human self is the real source of the individual
77
�soul and intellect, but a source that remains unaffected by
their diverse natures and acts.
The soul is many things and all things, both the things above
and those below down to the limits of all life. We are each one
an intelligible cosmos, touching the lower world by the
powers of the soul belOw, but with our higher powers attain-
ing the entire intelligible realm. We remain with all the rest of
the intelligible above, but by our lowest edge we are bound to
the world below. (3.4.3, 21-27)
Only the attachment of the soul to a material body dulls
its perception of its continued residence in the divine
world. The soul does not literally descend into a body. Its
only descent is ignorance of its divine origin and nature.
Detachment from the body liberates the higher sensibility
and delivers the soul again to its original beatitude. Salvation, the ascent of the soul to divine life, is therefore selfknowledge; salvation is a re-awakening of the soul from
the torpor of incarnate existence to the eternal world of
its origin and its higher, inner, and secret life. Because the
interior cosmos of the soul mirrors the cosmos of the uni-
verse, the life of the philosopher becoming conscious of
himself is an archetypal personal history in which his individual existence is elevated to the status of an archetype
because it is consciously conformed, through his contemplation, to the pattern of universal being, a pattern that is
always present in his soul as an inherent possibility and
power of existence, the power to transform his life in the
image of the divine realities he contemplates.
As a consequence of the theory of integral omnipresence, a general theory of universal being becomes the
equivalent of the practice of the interior life of contemplation. Because of this equivalence, self-knowledge is
knowledge of God; because knowledge of God is salvation, self-knowledge is salvation.
Or is it? The One is unknowable.
But is the One God? Yes.
But is the One present in us, so that knowledge of the
self can be knowledge of the One? Yes. In the first tractate of the fifth Ennead, after outlining his metaphysics,
Plotinus continues:
It has now been shown that we must believe that things are as
follows: there is first the One which is beyond being, as our
discourse tried to demonstrate, so far as it is possible to dem-
onstrate about such things; next there is intellect and then
the soul. As these three exist in nature, so it is necessary to
believe that they exist even in ourselves. I do not mean in the
perceptible parts of ourselves-for these three are incorporeal-but in those parts that Plato calls "the inner man."
Even our soul, then, is a divine thing and of another nature,
such as is the universal nature of soul. (5.1.10, 1-12)
Plotinus says in other passages that we are joined to the
One, that we touch the ultimate Godhead, by a similar
nature in ourselves. He even says at one point, after hav-
ing described the ethical purification he demands as preparation for the contemplation of divine reality, "but our
78
desire is not to be free of sin, but to be God" (1.2.6, 2-3).
What is the meaning of this dark utterance? It is one
thing, and a thing whose meaning has, I hope, become
somewhat clearer in the course of this essay, to say that
the authentic self is an archetype in the divine intellect, a
self that is therefore unique, divine, and immortal; the
self, on this view, is a determinate aspect of the divine wis-
dom, relative to its limited sphere of manifestation in the
created world. But to assert that the One dwells in the self
seems to make an unrestricted claim for the divinity of
the self, seems to abolish the distinction between the
created self and the ultimate source and desire of all
created existence. Furthermore, because the One is said
to be present in every self and in every form in the divine
intellect, it seems that even the distinction between the
One and the divine intellect, so carefully made and so
strenuously defended, would disappear and with this distinction would disappear all rational justification for
created diversity and multiplicity.
The desire of Plotinus to unify metaphysics and personal religion has caused a serious problem.
3 Mystical Unity
I shall proceed obliquely and by negative contrasts. If
we find difficulties in the system as Plotinus presents it,
let us wonder what it would have been like if it were not as
Plotinus presents it. Specifically, if we see problems in the
distinction between the divine intellect and the One and
in the assertion that the soul can be unified mystically
with both of them, let us consider what the system would
look like without these features. I hope by this procedure
to reveal the appetites of Plotinus in making his system
and his satisfaction in it.
If, then, Plotinus had not posited above the divine intellect another deity, incomprehensible in thought, but attainable in an immediate, non-rational union, his religious
aspiration for union with God could still have been satisfied. He already speaks of the divinization. of the soul
through union with the divine intellect (5.8.7, 32-35;
5.8.10, 39-40; 5.8.11). He could have developed this idea
much as Averroes was to do, by making the conjunction
of the human passive intellect with the divine active intellect the goal of all religious and philosophical striving.
Such a theory would, however, have implied a different
notion of the self than that embodied in the system as Plotinus has it. The self for such a theory would be defined
by its being coextensive with the divine intellect as a system of laws, relationships, and pure archetypes of being.
The self would exist insofar as the truth of the divine intellect, its unity as perfect knowledge, is valid. This theory
implies a fundamentally abstract and impersonal view of
being; the self would be a law of knowledge, coextensive
with the divine intellect, rather than a life or a free will.
(Averroes, who professed this view of human beatitude,
found no need for an additional, personal immortality.)
AUTUMN 1981
�Even if this system included within the divine intellect
the forms of human individuals, the self, although imperishable, would still be defined as a unique point of view on
the finite content of the divine intellect. Its desire for
union with God would have no uniquely determined personal significance. Its immortality would be guaranteed by
the conformity of the intellect to the perfect order of the
divine intellect. This order has two essential characteristics: finitude and necessity. The self, in turn, would be
finite and contained by the necessity that governs all intellectual being. The divine intellect would be the single,
final, and absolutely integrated self and the pattern of all
genuine selfhood.
Against or, more accurately, beyond this notion of selfhood and of divinity, Plotinus sets another, for which intellect and consciousness are not the highest values. His
decision to do this sets him apart from his predecessors in
the Greek philosophical tradition. For Plotinus the two
most important personal qualities are freedom and, dependent upon it, love. It is precisely these two qualities,
insignificant in an impersonal notion of selfhood and
divinity, that Plotinus sought to preserve and exalt in the
mysticism that culminates in union with the One.
The basic affirmation of "intellectualistic" mysticism is
that each human individual is an archetype contained in
the divine intellect. Union with the divine intellect elevates the human intellect to the universality of the divine
intellect, but allows no freedom in that unity. If the self is
preserved as an eternal mode, moment, or aspect of the
divine intellect, its existence is limited and determined by
the necessary causal dependence that creates and maintains it. Such a self is not free and its personal religious
aspirations are ultimately irrelevant because that self will
cease to exist as separate. The intellect sees the One as
the supreme object of metaphysical speculation. Personal
religion desires not to understand the One, but to be
united with it as the object of its love.
This union of love reveals not only a new aspect of the
God that is loved, but also of the self that loves Him. (In
such descriptions Plotinus uses the masculine pronouns
which name a personal God instead of the more usual
neuter pronouns which name an abstract principle or im-
personal cause.) In this union with a personal God, the
self and its love are experienced as infinite and free. The
desire to experience the native infinity and freedom of the
self, in addition to purely metaphysical reasons, motivates
Plotinus' description of the One as itself (or Himself) infinite and free.
Here ·is a passage from the long and careful discussion
of how the One may be said to be free, in which Plotinus
makes it clear that his doctrine about the One's freedom
implies a similar nature in ourselves, a state of isolation
and self-mastery.
When we say that He (the One) receives nothing into Himself
and that nothing else contains Him, intending to place Him
outside of chance, we mean not only that He is free by reason
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
of His attainment of self-unity and purity from all things, but
also that, if we discover a similar nature in ourselves that has
nothing to do with those things which depend upon us and
by which we suffer accident and chance (the body and its
emotions), we mean that by that nature alone we have the
same self-mastery that the One has, the autonomy of the light
that belongs to the Good and is good in actuality, essentially
superior to any intellectual light or goodness. When we ascend into that state and become that light alone, having discarded everything else, what else can we say but that we are
more than (intellectually) free, more than autonomous?
(6.8.15, 8-23)
It would be impossible to state more emphatically that the
discovery of an utterly transcendent God corresponds to
the attainment of a state of personal transcendence that is
the unceasing presence of that God within the self. In
religion, as in metaphysics, there is a union or coincidence
of an immanent power and its transcendent cause.
In this union with God the soul discovers that its deepest ground is not its archetypal being contained in the
divine intellect, that its highest aspiration is not, therefore, to become perfect self-consciousness, omniscence,
and formed existence. Its ultimate uniqueness is a mystery
inaccessible to discursive reason, because its authentic
self is infinite and free. The self is an ideal, a teleological
notion because the self can withdraw itself from its apparent, projected, personality (within whose boundaries it
can have only finite satisfaction) and can thereby discover
its infinity and freedom in union with the infinity and
freedom of the One (6.5.7). The aspiration of the self to
know itself as unique finds its complete satisfaction only
in this union with a God unlimited in activity and uncomprehended by thought. The One is experienced in this
union as one with the deepest point of the self (6.9.11).
But we must return to our problem: how did Plotinus
think that he could get away with this? We must return
because Plotinus himself had no patience with religious
enthusiasm unsupported by philosophy.
Plotinus does not see this problem quite as we do
because he is completely unaffected by incarnational
thinking and probably completely ignorant of it. He
believes that the divine world is omnipresent: its powers
and possibilities underlie every derived existence. The
One is present to the intellect as an innate desire to surpass its self-reflective unity of being and thinking; this
desire, moreover, is prior to the subject-object duality of
intellect precisely because the desire to be at one with
oneself is the presence of the One in the human person as
its innate unity and simplicity. The life of the One persists in the intellect as its inner light which strives to
return from thoughts to its original free and undefined
condition. The One is present everywhere as this spontaneous desire to transcend every internal division, as the
desire of all things for their inherent unity (6.5.1; 6.9.1-2).
Intellect is a principle of diversity and multiplication,
"for intellect is an activity manifest in the expansion of all
things" (3.8.9, 20-33). The One is an act of contraction of
79
�the soul upon itself, a descent into itself, a negative activity that shrinks from the nullity of phenomena mto the
core of the self. All consciousness IS concentratiOn, a
strengthening of the contemplative power upon the inside of the soul. The One appears as the final event of this
concentration. This state is not an intellectual intuition of
the self nor of an absolute unity, but is a coincidence of
the self with the One, not a coalescence of substances but
a coincidence of activities. In this coincidence neither the
transcendence of the One nor the dependence of the self
as created are violated.
Plotinus often recalls the language of the Symposium
when describing this union (1.6.7; 6.7.22; 6.7.34-35). Plato
interpreted erotic passion as the vehicle of personal transcendence into the world of true bemg because eros discovers and actualizes the likeness of the soul to that world.
The sequence of transcendences that conducts the soul to
a final vision of the forms and contact with the truth IS
described in the Symposium as an ascending dialectic of
desire stimulated and desire fulfilled, of beauty perceived
and beauty attained, of love aroused by vision and love at
rest in its object. Plotinus makes one significant addition,
speaking of "beauty perceived and beauty acquired" as
the contemplative soul affectively mmors the dlVlne perfections it beholds. The soul actualizes its visions as
deeper levels of its own virtual existence. Therefore the
dialectic of love in Plotinus culminates not m VISIOn but m
union. But it is a union of lovers that does not obliterate
their distinction, for that would obliterate also their love,
but causes them to forget the distance between them.
This union is two-fold: because it is an attainment of
the authentic self, it occurs within the boundaries of the
soul but because it is union with the One, it is also a certain'transcendence of the soul's individuality. This union
is the mystical counterpart of the metaphysical theory of
integral omnipresence and is a particular application of It.
The One is transcendent because it is the efficient cause
of the lower forms of existence which proceed from it; yet
as their final cause it is immanent in its effects because
they can return to it only by enfolding and concentrating
their activity around the center of their own existence.
Transcendence corresponds to the desire stimulated by
one's unattained good; immanence corresponds to the
tranquil possession of one's good as the part and activity
of one's own self. The soul is not poor: its best part, its
innermost self, is already somehow transcendent (3.5.3,
25-26). The soul does not need to become divine by grace
because its deepest point is already God.
We must put aside all else to remain in that Alone and to
become it, discarding all other attachments. We are impatient
to depart this life and to be free of it so that we may be enfolded upon our own entirety and have no part in us but ~hat
through which we have contact with God. Then it is possible
to see Him and one's self together, insofar as one may speak
80
any longer of vision. It is a vision of a self resplendent, full of
intellectual light, pure, weightless, lightsome, a self that
~as
become God, or rather that is God always, but only then wtth
its Godhead enkindled. (6.9.9, 50-58)
The spiritual meaning of the theory of integral omnipresence is thus made clear. When the soul is saved, it apprehends and possesses its good, it is assumed into and possessed by the more inclusive existence of its good, but II
has not departed from itself in an ecstasy nor has It received a new self by grace; it has only for the first time
realized the good inherent in itself.
.
This union with the God is both the culmination of philosophy (because philosophical contemplation is the only
valid preparation) and also a transcendence of philosophy
(because the union surpasses and temporanly obliterates
the subject-object duality of all contemplation). Phtlosophy is not a mechanical method that. will inevitably supply
the desired mystical experiences (such a view would
violate the freedom of God); the self must prepare·itself
for these experiences and wait (5.5.8; also 1.6.9; 5.3.17,
28-32; 6.5.12, 29-31). The visions of the sober intellect
are annulled by the experiences of the drunken intellect
in love with God (6.7.35). In this sense philosophy is itself
left behind by religion, although it will again be asked to
interpret the experiences at the essentially inferior level
of thought and speech.
The final personal tr')nsformation is to have one's
desire for God and one's vision of God so cldsely united to
one's essential self that the self becomes the pure mirror
into which the final revelation of God is suspended. The
whole sequence of contemplative vision is accomplished
within the soul as a life of theopathy, suffering the divine,
because the transfiguration of these visions occurs only
for the soul that is transformed by them. The important
factor is the correlation of the real apparition of God to
the soul and the soul's degree of inner association with
God, the degree to which it concentrates and strengthens
its inner light into likeness with God.
The ultimate spiritual attainment of the self and the
form of its salvation coincide with the ultimate manifestation of God. The true self, experienced only in union with
the One, is perfect freedom; the ultimate God, experienced only in union with the self, is pure creative spontaneity. The return of the soul through gradual simplifications of intellectual vision to the motionless self reveals at
the same time that self, in its purity and freedom, as the
only perfect revelation of God.
We have returned to the beginning, we have seen Flolinus' idea of the self, its inseparable connection with his
experience of God, and we have solved all problems. I
hope, finally, that it is clear, through th1s discusswn of the
union of the deepest self with the highest God, how the
entire philosophy of Plotinus is but the preparation and
intimation of the silence of that unimaginable splendor.
AUTUMN
I981
�OCCASIONAL DISCOURSES
The Permanent Part
of the College*
By "the permanent part" of the College
in the title of my address, I mean, as you
have probably guessed, you, the alumni.
That is not just an ingratiating way of
speaking devised for the occasion, but it
has some facts in its favor.
Before I explain myself, let me remind
you of an occasion in which many of you
have participated-the president's Senior
Dinner. One part of it that is sometimes
quite moving is the Dean's Toast to theRepublic. If he is feeling thorough, it will
have four parts, ascending in order of
worldly magnitude and then dropping into
intimate immediacy. There will be celebrated the Republic of Plato, which is the
world's first book to set out the program of
a true school, the republic of letters which
is the commonwealth of all those who love
the word, the republic of the United States
of America which is the ground and foundation of our worldly being, and finally, St.
John's College, the living community of
learning.
The question concerning the continuity
of all these commonwealths with each
other, and of each in itself, in other words,
the question in all its range of the continuity of community has always been a preoccupation of mine. As I understand it, it is
an aspect of that question that you, as
alumni, want me to speak about, and I welcome the occasion for becoming clear
about it to myself. So to return to the position of the alumni within the college community.
Consider the students at any time attending the college. Presently they graduate, they go to a first degree of academic
honor and are students in the strict sense
no longer. The Board of the college changes
*Delivered at a gathering of San Francisco area
alumni of St. John's in the fall of 1980.
THE ST.JOHNS REVlEW
all the time; its members have a fairly short
term. Our last president was with us an
amazingly long time-the longest or among
the longest of any twentieth century college president. But he has now sworn not
to set foot on either campus for a year, for
a well-earned period of distance and refreshment. May our new president, whom
you will meet later in the year, be with us
for that length of time which betokens a
good fit!-but it will not be permanently.
And finally, the tutors themselves, who
may seem to you to be truly permanent fixtures at Annapolis and Santa Fe-they too
must retire late in life <!nd become
"emeriti," members of the college by
reason of their meritorious past but now
completed service.
Alumni, on the other hand, are alumni
for good. Their very name proclaims itthey are "nurslings" who have, presumably, absorbed something of the college's
substance. By the college Polity all students, once matriculated, become alumni
of the college, whether they leave with or
without a degree, and no one can retire or
"terminate" them. All other membership
in the college is by choice; that of alumni
alone has in it something analogous to being by nature.
So as nurslings of the institution, alumni
are first of all asked to nourish it in return. I
know very well and have a certain limited
sympathy for the complaint that when the
college communicates with graduates it is
too often about money-exactly the complaint parents have about their student
children. It has to be. Private colleges are
charitable institutions that give their services almost half free. Money-raising is the
price they pay for their freedom to choose
to be what they are. It can be done crudely
or tactfully, but done it must be, by our
president as by all other private school
presidents. Of course, the response is a
matter of choice. That choice may well be
determined not only by a general sense of
responsibility for the continuation of nongovernmental education but also by gratitude. For example, I have a fixed, and fairly
well-kept rule of sending twenty-five
dollars to St. John's whenever the institutions from which I graduated-whom I respected only as the employers of much
admired but very remote professors and
loved not all.-solicit me for money.
But, of course, the notion that the alumni's relation to the college-at least to our
college-begins or ends there is absurd. So
let me now consider the question what
constitutes the after-life of a student from
its most specific to its widest aspect.
First of all, and this turns out to be by no
means a mere formality, the alumni participate in the governance of the college
through their board representatives and informally by the weight of their organized
opinion. That opinion has on occasion
decided issues-such as the proposed
abandonment of our old name.
The college in turn, we all agree, owes its
alumni certain reliable services and wellorganized, substance-informed occasions
for their return. Among the first is the
prompt and effective composition of letters of reference. Among the second are
Homecoming with its seminars, and the exhilarating summer alumni seminars that
take place in Santa Fe. Then there are the
alumni meetings in the various cities, such
as this one. For all of these affairs the
tutors who help with them volunteer their
time and efforts, in acknowledgement of
the permanent bond between them and
their former students.
But the tutors have another kind of
duty~that more informal kind of duty
which, were it not such a pleasure to per-
81
�form, would probably not be very faithfully
observed. It is a duty which, even though it
is more sporadic than undergraduate
teaching, is as serious and as satisfying. It is
to be in some practical sense there for
alumni, to write to in weal or woe, to visit
on the way to a new departure or on a sentimental journey, to bring the conclusions
of life to. Those visits from former students-sometimes there is time only for fifteen minutes of conversation in the coffee
shop-are always talked about among us.
Nothing brings home to us the ultimate
impotence of the profession Of teaching
and the deeply dubious character of the
program as does a visit from a former student who is lost and who attributes that
condition to having been touched by some
unassimilable intimation of paradise or of
hell in this school. Nothing gives so exhilarating a sense of stability in change as the
appearance of alumni who have so well
and truly put the college in the past that it
is equa11y well and truly present in them:
an oracular saying which I am certain will
have some immediate meaning for most of
you, and of which I want to say more later.
But the feelings with which these encounters leave us, from disturbed regret to
a sense that the deliberate benevolance we
felt towards you in your student daysgood teachers are never "close" to their
students-is about to turn into life-long
friendship, are not my present point. That
point is that alumni are in a more than
metaphorical sense returning home, and
have a right to be received in that spirit.
Those, then, are the continuing relations
of the alumni with the college as a home
community, made up of officers and two
campuses and one faculty. Now I come to
the after-life of alumni on their own. How
does the college continue with them? It is
by far the more problematic topic and a
better subject for reflection.
Of course, it too has a practical and organizable part. The alumni organizations are,
as it were, independent extensions of the
college. In bringing former students together in the kind of event which is characteristic of St. John's, in seminars and
lectures legitimated by discussion, they
propagate the life of the college and provide members with the means for continuing to live it at their leisure. For us to hear
that a city has a lively alumni group is to
have a sense of having friends in the world,
82
and to come to such a city, for example, to
San Francisco, is a little like the experience
of the shipwrecked Greek who, being cast
up on a wild coast, saw scratched in a rock
the diagram of Eucid I, 47 and said: "Here
too are humans."
(Let me hasten to add that this feeling is
absurd. Humans, that is to say, people to
talk to, are everywhere. And yet, absurd as
it is, it is also humanly sensible, for it is humanly sensible to feel relieved at finding
one's own.)
This external, organized continuation of
college life away from the campuses is, of
course, only the expression of any inner individual continuity. Let me again begin at
the easy end by giving some plain and practical tutors' answers to the questions about
alumni life.
Alumni should continue reading. I imagine that most of you read quite a bit in the
ordinary course of your lives. Much of that
reading is in so called "papers" -newspapers, position papers, official paperseverything I call to myself "instrumental
junk.'' Mally of you probably also read
reams of poetry and of novels-my own
favorite genre-of that mean range of
excellence which goes down easily and yet
nourishes the imagination. Many of you
will have emerged from the program hungry for history written to that same
standard. I have often thought that the
much-bemoaned heavy tread of our program readings has in the best event this
happy side effect-that it leaves students
with a great appetite-some of you may recall that the Greeks called it boulimia, "oxfamine" -for miscellaneous reading. But
this kind of reading, which we share with
the rest of the literate world, is not what I
have in mind.
I am thinking of a very deliberate effort.
It involves first of all letting the time ripen,
by keeping the thought in mind without
pressing on to the execution. But then,
when you are ready, pick up the program
list. Readiness may be that the new ways of
life which you have, in a healthy zest for
contrast, thrown yourselves into have begun to fail you. It may mean that some specific question has returned to preoccupy
you, or that you see its true shape for the
first time. It may mean simply that you feel
the wave of activity floating you away from
the isle of contemplation.
Pick up the list and choose a text. Then
read it. Read it as experienced grown-ups
reread the books of their youth: with a
twinge of nostalgia for the circumstances
of its first reading and with some wry admiration for the lordly consumption of metaphysics of which you were once capable,
but after that with the critical discernment
which comes from a well-digested, that is
to say, half-forgotten education. That is my
small but precise recommendation for
doing alumni-deeds.
But now the moment has come for matters of larger scope. Let me work my way
into them by dwelling on a dilemma often
discussed or displayed by visiting alumni, a
dilemma at once highly specific to this college and of the widest human importance.
Alumni sometimes arrive with a shamefaced and apologetic air about them. How
have they sinned? They are respected at
their work and loved at home, but now
they have come to the place of accountgiving, and they feel wanting. The matter
is this: they are not living the philosophic
life.
Now that is a difficulty that I can only
imagine a St. Johnnie as being oppressed
by. Other students might be anxious before their teachers for having failed in the
world or even for having lost their soul, but
they would not usually know much about
or honor the philosophic life. I am always
charmed by our students' anxiety because
it shows on their part a willingness to take
root in a deep and wise tradition concerning the good life. But I am also, in turn,
anXIOUS.
Let me backtrack for a moment to be
more accurate. Sometimes there really is
something amiss in these uneasy visitors.
They may have become enmeshed in what
I will simply denominate here by its all too
instantiable formula, "the hassles of contemporary living". Or they are absorbed in
the mild miserie~ of forgetfulness and can't
come to. But more often their account of
their life is full of shy ardor and quiet intelligence. Then I ask myself: what on earth
does he or she, what do we all mean by the
philosophical life?
So the matter needs to be thought out.
Let me give you some of my thoughts,
some long in coming, some thought out for
the occasion.
When the ancient philosophers speak of
the philosophical life, the bios philosophiAUTIJMN 1981
�k6s, one thing is immediately clear. It is a
life and not a profession they are speaking
of. Professors of philosophy have certain
real disabilities in living the philosophical
life. For as professors they have a position
to maintain in the world, and work, not leisure, is their element. It is just the same
with returning graduate students in philosophy. Sometimes they are full of interesting reflections on their activity, but
sometimes they are so lost in their profession that it makes one's heart sink.
Not that tutors are altogether different.
To be sure, one incident that did much to
win my heart for the college was a salary report prepared now almost a quarter century
ago by Winfree Smith.
Its preamble declared that although tutors were paid to live, they were not paid
for their work because that was invaluable.
It was invaluable both in being a pleasure
and the need of their soul to perform and
because its value was incapable of being
quantitatively fixed. But while it is an inner
truth that tutors do not work for wages, it is
an external fact that we are the employees
of a demanding institution, who converse
by appointment, teach on schedule, and
study according to a program-and to miss
any of these official obligations without a
reason is highly unacceptable behavior.
It follows that we too are professionals,
and not free to live a daily life of absorbed
contemplation. But perhaps if no one we
know lives a philosophical life by reason of
even the best loved profession, it is still
true that that life is compatible with any
work, and any work can be done in a philosophical spirit. Let me pursue that.
The life of philosophy seems to me to
have one external condition, leisure, and
one reason for being, the search for truth.
That leisure is not exhausted "time off'
from work, bUt the free time for the sake of
which the other times of one's life are
spent. Of the search for truth let me say
only that it is not only a possibility but a
necessity for most human beings. In whose
life have there not been moments when all
considerations have waned but the desire,
the exigent desire, to know the truth?
The long and short of it is, I think, that
like all fundamental human modes the phil·
osophical life comes in graduated versions
which are continuous and even complementary, and those who come nearest to
living it in some pure form hold its shape in
THE ST.JOHNS REVIEW
trust for those who, from duty or preference, do the world's business.
For in spite of what I said before, there
are protected environments for that life,
and the college is the best place I know for
study and reflection. Its program and its
schedules are, after all, intended to be the
ladder and the handholds in the reflective
climb; most of us certainly I, myself, need
such prescribed paths, since a life wholly
free of stimulants and constraints leaves us
more melancholy than illumined. The
business of our college is in the service of leisure; it is a true schOol, if I m"ay recall to
you the old chestnut, that that word itself
comes from schole, Greek for '~leisure."
Of course, it is for that very reason not
the so-called real world. No one knows that
better than its long-term inhabitants, particularly since they also live out of it, as
neighbors, consumers, taxpayers, voters,
and world-watchers. To be sure, in large
academic conglomerations theoretical megalomania and practical impotence come together in that Lilliputian preoccupation
known as academic politics. But the atmosphere of smaller schools is usually no
more strained than that of an intensely
close family, while the tutors of St. John's,
because of the common allegiance to a program with integrity, form a remarkable
community of friends, willing to talk to and
to trust in each other.
Not only is the philosophical life best
carried on in a special place, it is even most
apt to be carried on by distinctive people.
That distinction seems to me to be less one
of nature or kind than of circumstance and
predeliction. For example, our students approach the leading of such a life by reason
of their being in leisured circumstances,
and most of us tutors come near it more
through our inclination than capacity for
intellection. I know that in saying all this I
can be accused of showing myself a child
of my time and of depreciating the philo·
sophical life. Those would be heavy
charges, but perhaps I must face them in
the question period.
How then is this special life, the life of
philosophy, related to the life of action, if
they are not in principle discontinuous? I
used to think that the movement back and
forth between them was entirely possible.
In particular it seemed to me that someone
who had thought deeply about the world
should be able to act wisely in it. I was
never such a fool as to think that academics or intellectuals would cope particularly
well ·with ruling responsibility, but I was
thinking of philosophers, people whose
thought is not divorced from the nature of
things. The notion of a philosopher kingor queen, for that matter-did not seem
impossible to me. I have not totally recanted, but the facts of life loom larger
now. I honor experience more, though that
is an argument against the activity of the
young as much as of the philosopher. What
matters more is that the rhythm and therequirements of the two lives seem to me
more irreconcilably different. From the
point of view of the life of reflection, the
other life seems unbearable for the continual curtailment of thought and its incessantly instrumental use, for the lack oflong
legatos of development and the hurried
forestalling of spontaneous insight it brings
with it. From the point of view of the life of
action, the inability to reach conclusions
without going back to the primal ameba (as
Elliott Zuckerman likes to say), the ob·
struction of progress on mere principle, the
lack of feel for possibilities, the sheer impotence of those who represent the other life,
must be repellent. I conclude that with
whatever freedom we may begin, at some
time we become habituated to one or the
other of the lives, and we will settle into
our profession and our setting accordingly.
But there is nothing at all in this against
frequent cross-overs. On the contrary, just
as those who make reflection the center of
their life must keep their worldly wits
about them to have anything to reflect on,
so those who do the world's business can
and ought to philosophize, either as a
steady accompaniment of their work, or intermittently, in their times of leisurewhichever fits the economy of their life. I
think our alumni often live just that way.
Would that they knew how close to us they
seem when they do it!
That is what I wanted to say about the
relations between the college as an institution and its alumni.
Now I would like to conclude by consid·
ering how alumni might cope with the college insofar as it is a place and a time in
their lives. I would like to entitle this section: "How rightly to forget the college."
By forgetting I mean, to begin with, a
phenomenon well known to theorists of
learning-and of course, to learners. Most
83
�learning begins in proud but hesitant selfconsciousness and later subsides into a
latent, yet ever active, condition. Such
learning informs the soul as a second nature-it reshapes it with good nourishment
and right exercise. It is in the hope that
something of that sort has happened that
alumni are called alumni. I think much of
that inner shaping, that passage into the
past by which what was once a time in your
life becomes a permanent possession, actually takes place in the decade after you
have left the place itself, and takes a considerable digestive effort.
Let me tell you what seem to me the
signs that the passage has taken place. My
recital will be illustrative rather than
exhaustive, because I am not much enchanted by analytic check lists of the lib·
eral skills and attitudes, and those are, of
course, what I am talking about. If you like,
we can talk more about these in the question period. And my examples will be given
pell-mell, mixing the sublime and the trivial-always remembering though, that
"trivial" originally meant: belonging to the
trivium, the triple arts of language, gram·
mar, rhetoric, logic. Here, then, are some
of the features of that second, that alumninature, which we always recognize with
deep satisfaction:
l. An unpretentious, companionable
closeness to some deep and difficult
books.
2. A fairly wide factual learning of the
sort that is absorbed incidentally, in
the course of trying to understand
some matter.
3. A resourceful recalcitrance toward
all translation, be it from Greek into
latinate English, from common language into technical jargon, from
book onto screen, from original text
to popular paraphrase.
4. A long perspective on our modern
tradition which avoids either kvetchy cavilling or easy riding, because
it is based on some knowledge of our
roots and our revolutions.
5. Knowing that the plural of eYdos is
etde.
6. A carefully cherished ignorance that
texts of mathematical symbols and
of musical notes might be anything
but essentially accessible expressions
of the human soul.
7. A determinedly naive faith in the
possibility of principled political action, supported by a shrewd and
ever-evolving theory of human nature which will neither buckle under
the weight of the world's wickedness
nor invite more of it.
8. A love for the illuminations of the
studies of motion and of life, that is,
physics and biology, and no disposition at all to be taken in by them.
9. As a precipitate of many etymologie::;
studied and many meanings discussed, a constitutional inability to
use even the most current words
without taking thought for their origin and the accumulated burden of
sense they bear.
10. A disposition toward that marriage
of radical reason with reverent respect which was when you were
there, and always will be, the best
mood of the college.
Let me finish by telling the second way
in which the college might pass into a recollection. This way has to do with the fact
that it is the place of your youth. It seems
to me likely that you never had been, nor
ever will be, so young again. Such places of
quintessential youth tend to leave a powerful after-image. McDowell Hall and Peter·
son Student Center become temples
through which float diaphanous figures
swathed in love and logos. Sometimes
when you return, this image may suddenly
fit itself onto the reality-the result will be
pure romance. However, let me try to be
sober about this phenomenon, for it is, I
think, an indispensible instrument in the
shaping of a good life-but only if the col·
lege has become a true object of recollection. By that I mean that you have allowed
life to carry you cheerfully away from its
temporal and spatial coordinates, until the
after-image has in it neither regret nor nostalgia and has become a mere vision.
When those conditions are met, the inner image can and should serve as a source
-a source, not the source-of shapes for a
good life. Then it may provide a paradigm
-a paradigm, not the paradigm-of that
earthly paradise I imagine our alumni as
forever trying to prepare for themselves: a
community of friends held together by a
love of learning. Then you will have put
the college well and truly behind you.
lie policy. But the complexity of the controversies among the great philosophers of
the past should caution us not to expect
easy answers to the questions that are
raised by such an inquiry. Philosophy and
Public Policy is a collection of twenty-one
essays that Professor Sidney Hook has selected from his work over the past thirtyfive years and edited for publication as a
book. Nowhere in this book does the author give more than passing attention to
the important disputes among the great
philosophers. Instead, he offers one admir-
ing essay about John Dewey and one introductory essay of his own on the general
theme of "philosophy and public policy."
Early in this introductory essay, the author summarizes the results of his historical studies: "The most comprehensive as
well as the most adequate conception of
philosophy that emerges from the history
of philosophy is that it is the normative consideration of human values." This definition, though the author gives Dewey credit
for it in another essay, is somewhat reminiscent of Socrates' exhorting us to think
EvA BRANN
FIRST READINGS
Philosophy and Public Policy, by Sidney
Hook, Southern Illinois Press, Carbondale
& Edwardsville, 1980.
Philosophy and politics have enjoyed a
strangely intimate and uneasy relationship
in Western civilization. This curious entanglement, which began no later than the
time of Socrates, remains today at least as
difficult to understand as it ever was. The
historical fact of the relationship should
move every student of politics to inquire
about the influence of philosophy on pub-
84
AUTUMN 1981
�about the pre-suppositions of our ordinary
opinions and activities. Such exhortations
may help move certain people to begin
seeking wisdom, but the definition does
not by itself enable us to distinguish philosophy from ordinary moral reasoning. When
the author tries to provide this distinction,
he encounters difficulties that he does not
surmount. He concedes that philosophic
inquiry is not always about moral phenomena and is not always "morally motivated"
in the usual sense of that term. But he
avoids pursuing the difficulties in the relationship between morality and philosophy
by saying that "[t]he relationships among
the various philosophical disciplines is a
meta philosophical problem, and sti11 open."
At the end of the essay he seems to return
to his original position by saying that "[t]he
philosopher is uniquely a moral seer .... "
But nowhere does he say precisely what a
moral seer is, how he comes to be, why he
does what he does, or what he is good for.
In place of ~m adequate account of philosophy, the author attempts to distinguish
the philosopher by the special skills and
outlook that he might bring to the discussion of public affairs. But the outlook and
skills he describes are available to any
thoughtful man. What Professor Hook
offers is very little more than the uncontroversial standard according to which philosophers' speech, like everyone's, should be
reasonable. That standard is a good one,
however, and I shall try to apply it to the
other essays in this volume, most of which
concern specific political issues.
Perhaps partly because he has not undertaken a thorough examination of the
Western philosophic tradition, Professor
Hook is an extreme liberal, or as he calls
himself in one essay, a "social democrat."
Though he stays well within the boundaries of modern liberal principles, he is not
as crippled by that limitation as many other
contemporary writers are. The cause of
this, I suspect, is that he has the great gift
of common sense. But whatever the cause,
he writes very well when attacking Communists, who subscribe to one of the most
poisonous liberal heresies, and when criticizing liberal fools, whom he calls "ritualistic liberals." Common sense operates best
when dealing with narrow issues, and on
such issues Professor Hook often steps resolutely aside from the sad coffle of liberal
opinion. Confronted with the little tyrannies brought to us by recently fashionable
forms of racism and feminism, he provides
a careful and devastating liberal critique of
what is so euphemistically called "reverse
discrimination." In the same spirit, he
THE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
shows that William 0. Douglas's confused
and intemperate defenses of political violence are incompatible with the principles
of liberal democracy. And Professor Hook
reminds us that to be a liberal one need not
substitute a fetish about the free speech
clause of the First Amendment for an intelligent interpretation of the Constitution.
But when he takes up topics that are
very general or remote from specific events,
Professor Hook is apt to become confused
and unilluminating. The volume's longest
essay, which is devoted to "human rights,"
displays this shortcoming vividly. In the
fashion of contemporary academic philosophy, the author is much concerned with
defining his terms and defending his definitions. His discussion tends to revolve
around the following statement:
A human right is a morally justifiable
claim made in behalf of all men to the enjoyment and exercise of those basic freedoms,
goods, and services which are considered
necessary to achieve the human estate. On
this definition human rights do not correspond to anything an individual literally
possesses as an attribute, whether physical
or mental. Morally justifiable claims are proposals to treat human beings in certain ways.
Human rights are not names of anything.
They specify procedures-courses of action-to be followed by agencies of the
government and community with respect to
a series of liberties, goods, and services.
If we follow ordinary usage, in which the
term "right" means something justifiable,
the first sentence appears to be little more
than a tautology. Later in the essay, the author uses the terms "rights" and "freedoms" interchangably; while this would
eliminate the tautology, it would leave us
to wonder how a freedom can be a claim to
a freedom.
Much of the essay is devoted to criticizing other definitions of human rights;
these others are worse, and most of his criticisms are appropriate. But not once does
he mention the notion of "natural rights,"
which is the best known-and I believe
also the best-alternative to his own conception. That he means to reject that
notion is evident from his claim in the quotation above that human rights are not
names of anything and are not attributes of
human beings; and his rejection of it is implied even more clearly when he later asserts that human rights "are not derived
from the reason of things or the reason in
God, Nature, or Man." The closest he
comes to offering any evidence against
such a derivation is to point out that bills of
rights are altered and re-interpreted as time
passes. But this fact does not even begin to
prove that the truth about rights has ever
changed or ever will.
Despite its lack of any arguments against
the concept of natural rights, Professor
Hook's essay does contain hints of at least
three grounds upon which that concept
might be discarded. Perhaps an appeal to
natural rights would be rhetorically ineffective in our time because of the power of
cultural relativism among our most literate
and influential citizens; or perhaps "nature" is a term so broad that it induces us
to pay insufficient attention to the particular political conditions within which all human rights are enjoyed and circumscribed;
or perhaps we should rely on human progress rather than reason, nature, or God to
tell us what the limits of human claims and
freedoms should be. There may be some
merit in one or more of these suggestions,
but Professor Hook does not defend them
adequately. His own rhetoric in this essay
is so convoluted and academic that even
such old-fashioned writers as Jefferson and
Lincoln still sound strong and timely by
comparison. And despite the author's frequent insistence on the need to understand rights in their historical context, he
offers some strained interpretations of history; with perfect seriousness, for example,
he treats the Bible's injunction to observe
the Sabbath as a recognition of "the right
to rest and leisure." In general, Professor
Hook tries to talk about rights without
specifying their limits, apparently in the
hope that this will contribUte to the expansion of human rights and human happiness. But this leads him to substitute a
rather hazy optimism about human possibilities for a definite statement about human nature and enduring human needs.
One result is that he pays too little attention to the practical constraints on the expansion of human rights. He defends the
United Nations Universal Declaration of
Human Rights without showing that it can
ever be more than a pious fantasy; and he
acquiesces in Justice Douglas's fabrication
of a constitutional right to privacy without
so much as mentioning the grave political
consequences that this doctrine has had
through the Court's abortion decisions. Before we forsake the notion of "natural
rights," which has been such a central element in our political life, we should wait
for a more solid substitute than the one
Professor Hook offers in this essay.
On occasion, Professor Hook's weak
grasp of general issues leads him to make
statements that are simply astonishing.
85
�One example occurs in an essay on the
rights of victims of crime:
I am prepared to weaken the guarantees and
privileges to which I am entitled as a potential criminal or as a defendant in order to
strengthen my rights and safeguards as a potential victim. Purely on the basis of probabilities, I am convinced that I run a greater
danger of suffering disaster as a potential
victim than as a potential criminal or defendant. It is these probabilities, that shift from
one historical period to another, that must
be the guide to wise, prudent, and just administration of the law.
The crude egoistic utilitarianism of this
statement appears nowhere else in the essay or in the rest of the book. One can easily advocate a firmer enforcement of the
criminal laws without elevating fear for
one's own safety into a principle of justice,
and elsewhere in the essay Professor Hook
does just that. But through this one careless formulation of the principle upon
which the rights of defendants should be
circumscribed, he allows his otherwise reasonable and public-spirited arguments to
seem motivated by a selfish calculation of
his own advantage.
Another example of the author's clumsiness with general formulations occurs at
the end of an essay on political heroism:
The democratic republic that was born in
this hemisphere some two hundred years
ago is the only political alternative ever
devised to mediate, in Lincoln's phrase, "between anarchy, on the one hand, and despotism on the other."
The patriotism of this statement is touching, but the claim is preposterous. The
United States is not the first, let alone the
only, nation to escape the evils of anarchy
and despotism; and an Englishman could
remind us that our republic is not even the
oldest existing alternative to those evils.
Abraham Lincoln, in whose works I have
not been able to find the quotation offered
above, would certainly protest that his position has been distorted. In the First Inaugural Address, Lincoln does say that the
majority principle, rightly understood,
must be maintained lest the country fall
victim to anarchy or to some form of despotism. But Lincoln's whole argument is
directed to the controversies about secession that were burning in America in 1861.
He does not claim that the Union is the
first or only legitimate polity in history, nor
even that it is the best; he says nothing
about other countries, nor about the forms
86
of government that might be suitable to
them.
Not all the disagreeable statements in
the book result merely from the author's
carelessness in formulating his positions. In
one essay, Professor Hook very sensibly argues that the Cold War has been the best
mean between suicidal appeasement and
the terrible dangers that are now inherent
in military warfare between the great powers. But a little later in the same essay, he
makes this remark:
In the past, President Eisenhower, whose
charming and vacuous smile matched his
knowledge of international affairs, and who
confessed.himself stumped by General Zhukov's questions as to what ideals inspired the
West, repeatedly warned us against the dangers of "atheistic communism" as if a communism that was not atheistic would be any
less objectionable.
The language at the beginning of the sentence lacks precision, but the meaning is
clear: President Eisenhower was a buffoon.
It is unfortunate that Eisenhower became
perplexed in the encounter with Zhukov,
but that does not justify this casual and
premeditated display of disrespect; and the
injustice is especially striking since it
comes at the expense of the man who presided over the execution of policies that
Professor Hook has just spent several pages
defending. At the very least, Professor
Hook should explain to us how this buffoon managed to lead our nation through
eight years during which Communist imperialism was successfully contained and
during which prosperity at home grew almost without interruption. But the main
point of the author's sneering remark concerns President Eisenhower's opposition to
"atheistic communism." Does Professor
Hook consider all communism, whatever
its form, equally evil? Was the Oneida
COmmunity as objectionable as the Soviet
Union? Is life in the Israeli religious kibbutzim comparable to life in Cambodia? The
insistent atheism in Marxist-Leninist doctrine is certainly not the only source of its
errors; and the atheism of Communist regimes is certainly not the sole cause of the
horrors that they bring about. But one has
to ask why Professor Hook refuses even to
consider the possibility that atheism might
be one of the soui-ces of Communism's
evils.
The explanation probably lies in the author's own manifest, though unacknowledged, atheism. For reasons that are not
made clear in the book, he fails to state his
position forthrightly. But that position
becomes visible when he calls himself a
''militant secularist.'' And it becomes trans·
parent when he makes, almost in passing,
the following theological pronouncement:
"It is only because human beings build
gods in their own moral image that they
can reasonably hope that the divine com·
mandments can serve as a guideline in human experience."
Professor Hook has included in this vol·
ume Jacques Maritain's graceful and pow·
erful critique of Hook's secular humanism.
The heart of Maritain's position lies in
three propositions: "no society can live
without a basic common inspiration and a
basic common faith"; this faith must in·
elude "convictions ... which deal with the
very substance and meaning of human
life"; and for this purpose no decent substitute for religion has been found. Professor
Hook tries to refute this view by pointing
out the weakness of the logical link between religious faith and allegiance to
democracy. This weakness is obvious, and
it should remind us that tolerance of atheists is not necessarily incompatible with
preserving a decent polity; it should also re·
mind us that strong religion does not guarantee good politics. But Maritain never
denies the Weakness of the logical link: his
claim is that religion, and religion alone,
can provide a society with the durable
common morality that is one necessary precondition of political democracy. Professor
Hook, who maintains that the "validity [of
moral principles] rests upon their fruits in
human experience," offers not a single example of a society that has given up
religion without degenerating into savagery. Nor does he offer any evidence to
show that such a society can be brought
into being; indeed, the poverty of his own
anti-religious faith is manifest in the last
paragraph of the book: "How to inspire, ex·
tend, and strengthen faith in democracy,
and build a mass movement of men and
women personally dedicated to it, is a difficult problem which cannot be treated
here."
Despite its weaknesses, Philosophy and
Public Policy contains much that is sound.
The strengths of the book appear most
clearly in the section on "Heroes and AntiHeroes." The section begins with a loose
and unimpressive general essay on the
place of leadership in democracies. But
when he turns to criticizing the Communists, liberal fools, and leading hypocrites
of our time, Professor Hook emerges as a
powerful and sometimes brilliant polemicist. In a review of a biography of Trotsky,
he shows why even large men cannot be
AUTUMN 1981
�truly great if they cling to Lenin's doctrines. In a discussion of Bertrand Russell's
political ravings, he shows quite clearly
why America's involvement in Viet Nam
may have been moral without necessarily
also being prudent. In an essay on the Hiss
case, he vividly reminds us that this country has indeed recently been threatened by
at least one genuine and dangerous conspiracy. And in the volume's best piece,
Professor Hook destroys Lillian Hellman.
He is brave enough to call her "an eager
but unaccomplished liar"; he is well informed enough to convict her of act after
act of "political obscenity"; and he is generous enough to distinguish her from
Dashiell Hammett, who kept his integrity
despite his colossal political misjudgments.
Because Philosophy and Public Policy
displays so much common sense and anti-
Communist passion, it could be good medicine for contemporary liberalism. And
because the author accepts most of the liberals' leading assumptions, there is no good
reason for them to refuse him a hearing.
tory and progress~makes for the power of
Europe. But Europe also brings corruption:
Hit was Europe, I feel, that also introduced
us to the lie ... we were people who simply
did what we did. But the Europeans could
do one thing and say something quite different. .. It was their great advantage over
us." Salim discovers that a line supposedly
from the Aeneid on a Belgian monument
commemorating the founding of the city
has been altered. It reads: 41He approves of
the mingling of peoples and their bonds of
union"; but in the original the gods warned
Aeneas not to marry Dido, not to mingle
Europe and Africa. "Rome was Rome.
What was this place? To carve the words
on a monument beside this African river
was surely to invite the destruction of the
town."
The self-deluded Europeans are now
gone, driven out by their former subjects,
but their example remains ~n all its ambiguity. The Africans imitate European institutions, buy European goods, and, increasingly, look on Europe itself as a place of
refuge. As his mentor and fellow Indian
Nazruddin explains to Salim on a visit to
London, HAll over the world money is in
flight. People have scraped the world clean,
as clean as an African scrapes his yard, and
now they want to run from the dreadful
places where they've made their money
and find some nice safe country." In London, foreigners from all corners of the
Commonwealth threaten to undermine
unquestioned European values. With a
mixture of irony and dismay, Salim observes that the Arabs in London have
brought with them their black slaves; Britain now tolerates at home the slave trade it
had once stamped out in East Africa. "In
the old days they made a lot of fuss if they
caught you sending a couple of fellows to
Arabia in a dhow. Today they have their
passports and visas like everybody else, and
nobody gives a damn."
The escape to Europe is possible only for
a handful, but the pressures of modern African life~ the insecurity of rapid and random change-foster escapism throughout
the population. Salim realizes that even in
the city "when you get away from the chiefs
and the politicians there is a simple democracy about Africa; everyone is a villager."
In times of trouble the city empties as people return to their villages and the simple
life of the bush, to re-emerge when things
quite down. A new generation of young Africans, however, without ties to the bush,
who know nothing except the empty and
imitative life of the cities, has no place to
retreat. At the same time the country's
leader opens up the countryside to bring
the previously inaccessible rural population under his control.
The dilemma of the "new African" is
symbolized by Ferdinand, a young man
whom Salim befriends. Born in the bush,
Ferdinand goes to school at the Europeanrun lycee, is trained at the Domain (the Big
Man's school for future leaders), and eventually becomes the local district commissioner. Ferdinand is trapped by his own
modern upbringing, and by the precarious
nature of political life, where every official
is at the mercy of the Big Man, who rules
through a talent for playing his enemies off
against one another. At first, Ferdinand is
confused, his mind "a jumble, full of all
kinds of junk." But in the end he achieves
a terrible clarity: "Nobody's going anywhere. We're all going to hell and every
man knows this in his bones ... Everyone
wants to make his money and run away.
But where? That is what is driving people
mad. They feel they're losing the place
they can run back to ... "
The political stratagems of the Big Man
produce temporary peace and prosperity,
but in the end serve only to break down
traditional restraints. When they fail to
quell a rural uprising, the soldiers of a tradi-
NELSON LUND
Nelson Lund teaches political science at the
University of Chicago.
'THE MINGLING OF PEOPLES
A Bend in the River, by V. S. Naipaul, 278
pp., New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., !979,
$8.95
V. S. Naipaul's novel, A Bend in the
River, never names the city and country in
which the narrative takes place. Its true
setting, however, is clearly Kisangani
(formerly Stanleyville), the second-largest
city of Zaire (formerly the Belian Congo);
and the mysterious Big Man, the unnamed
country's ruler, is Sese Mobotu, Zaire's dictator for the past fifteen years. Though
Mobotu's Zaire is a poor and ill-governed
Third World country, Naipaul does not
take the stance of an expert trying to
diagnose and cure the 'disease' of underdevelopment. The principal danger he foresees is anarchy 3.nd nihilism, more often
cause than result from the impoverishment that preoccupies the experts.
The disorder and despair which permeate the novel result primarily from the
haphazard coming together of different religious, ethnic, and cultural groups. Naipaul's protagonist, Salim-an Indian
brought up in an Arab-dominated section
of East Africa, educated in British schools,
who now lives in a newly-independent black
African state-embodies Africa's contradictions. The book's great theme is the
disaster this mingling of peoples brings to
Indians, Africans, and perhaps to Europeans as welL
Europe has been the catalyst; it provides
the possibility of self-understanding for
Africans and Indians alike. Salim says: ''All
that I know of our history and the history
of the Indian Ocean I have got from books
written by Europeans ... without Europeans, I feel, all our past woUld have been
washed away, like the scuff marks of fishermen on the beach outside our town." The
ability to detach oneself, to form a distinct
self-image of one's past, present and especially future condition~the source of hisTHE ST. JOHNS REVIEW
87
�tional warrior tribe are treacherously disarmed and dispersed by an imported force
of white mercenaries. Unable to adopt
commercial or agricultural ways, they form
the nucleus of a new and deadlier rebellion. Official corruption, fostered by the
pervasive insecurity, makes a mockery of
the regime's motto, "Discipline Avant
Tout." The opposition turns by degrees to
unqualified hatred: "When they've finished nobody will know there was a place
like this here. They're going to kill and kill.
They say it's the only way, to go back to the
beginning before it's too late."
Salim too seeks safety, a place of retreat.
He and the other Indian expatriates fight
an ongoing battle with nostalgia and regret,
with the temptation to find refuge in the
past, in the memory of their lost East
African birth place. Unlike his friends who
become rich by acquiring the town's "Big
Boy" franchise, Salim does not forget himself in the successes of commerce. At the
end his property is nationalized, and he be-
88
comes a homeless refugee. He finds his But people are like that about places in
safety in the personal equilibrium, de- which they aren't really interested and
tached and clear-sighted, that shows itself where they don't have to live. Some papers
in the book's opening sentence: "The world spoke of the end of feudalism and the
is what it is; men who are nothing, who al- dawn of a new age. But what had haplow themselves to become nothing, have pened was not new. People who had grown
no place in it."
feeble had been physically destroyed. That,
Salim's hard-won balance does not de- in Africa, was not new; it was the oldest law
pend on condemning those who are inca- of the land." Unlike the manipulative coldpable of such accomodation. He does not blooded ness of the development theorist
explain away the Big Man's machinations or ideological reformer, Salim's detachas 'necessary' or 'progressive'; he appreci- ment comes from experience of the perenates success but rejects the ruthlessness nial laws of the human condition and of
and the denial of the past which so often the ties between personal and historical
accompany it. Naipaul/Salim understands experience.
that Africa's lost balance may be impossible to regain, and that while the losses are
ADAM WASSERMAN
c~rtain, the gains may be illusory. On hearing of the revolution which cuts him off
from his coastal homeland, he is astonished
at the optimism of some of the foreign
papers: "It was exraordinary to me that
Adam Wasserman is a space program analyst
some of the newspapers could have found for the Congressional Office of Technology Asgood words for the butchery on the coast. sessment in Washington, D.C.
AUTUMN 1981
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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 (formerly The College), Autumn 1981
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1981-10
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Radista, Leo
Parran, Jr., Thomas
Wilson, Curtis A.
Sachs, Joe
Brann, Eva T. H.
Jaffa, Henry V.
Josephs, Laurence
Klein, Jacob
Levin, Michael
Collins, Linda
Navrozov, Lev
Guaspari, David
Venable, Bruce
Lund, Nelson
Wasserman, Adam
Description
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Volume XXXIII, Number 1 of The St. John's Review, formerly The College. Published in Autumn 1981.
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The_St_Johns_Review_Vol_33_No_1_1981
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Annapolis, MD
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St. John's College
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English
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text
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pdf
St. John's Review
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